The Red Pyramid -1 (52 page)

"Yes." Carter glanced at me, and I knew we'd be keeping the details to ourselves. "Everything's fine, thanks to you. The secret name worked."

She nodded, satisfied, and her eyes began to close.

"Hey." Carter's voice quavered. "Stay awake. You're not going to leave me alone with Sadie, are you? She's bad company."

Zia tried to smile, but the effort made her wince. "I was...never here, Carter. Just a message--a placeholder."

"Come on. No. That's no way to talk."

"Find her, will you?" Zia said. A tear traced its way down her nose. "She'd...like that...a date at the mall." Her eyes drifted away from him and stared blankly into the sky.

"Zia!" Carter clutched her hand. "Stop that. You can't...You can't just..."

I knelt next to him and touched Zia's face. It was cold as stone. And even though I understood what had happened, I couldn't think of anything to say, or any way to console my brother. He shut his eyes tight and lowered his head.

Then it happened. Along the path of Zia's tear, from the corner of her eye to the base of her nose, Zia's face cracked. Smaller fractures appeared, webbing her skin. Her flesh dried out, hardening...turning to clay.

"Carter," I said.

"What?" he said miserably.

He looked up just as a small blue light drifted out of Zia's mouth and flew into the sky. Carter backed away in shock. "What--what did you do?"

"Nothing," I said. "She's a shabti. She said she wasn't really here. She was just a placeholder."

Carter looked bewildered. But then a small light started to burn in his eyes--a tiny bit of hope.

"Then...the real Zia is alive?"

"Iskandar was protecting her," I said. "When the spirit of Nephthys joined with the real Zia in London, Iskandar knew she was in danger. Iskandar hid her away and replaced her with a shabti.

Remember what Thoth said: 'Shabti make excellent stunt doubles?' That's what she was. And Nephthys told me she was sheltered somewhere, inside a sleeping host."

"But where--"

"I don't know," I said. And in Carter's present state, I was too afraid to raise the real question: If Zia had been a shabti all this time, had we ever known her at all? The real Zia had never gotten close to us. She'd never discovered what an incredibly amazing person I was. God forbid, she might not even like Carter.

Carter touched her face and it crumbled to dust. He picked up her wand, which remained solid ivory, but he held it gingerly as if he were afraid it too would dissolve. "That blue light," he began to ramble, "I saw Zia release one in the First Nome, too. Just like the shabti in Memphis-they sent their thoughts back to Thoth. So Zia must've been in contact with her shabti.

That's what the light was. They must've been, like, sharing memories, right? She must know what the shabti's been through. If the real Zia is alive somewhere, she might be locked up or in some kind of magic sleep or--We have to find her!"

I wasn't sure it would be so simple, but I didn't want to argue. I could see the desperation on his face.

Then a familiar voice sent a cold shiver down my back: "What have you done?"

Desjardins was literally fuming. His tattered robes still smoked from battle. (Carter says I shouldn't mention that his pink boxer shorts were showing, but they were!) His staff was aglow, and the whiskers in his beard smoldered. Behind him stood three equally battered magicians, who all looked as if they'd just regained consciousness.

"Oh, good," I muttered. "You're alive."

"You bargained with Set?" Desjardins demanded. "You let him go?"

"We don't answer to you," Carter growled. He stepped forward, hand on his sword, but I put out my arm to hold him back.

"Desjardins," I said as calmly as I could, "Apophis is rising, in case you missed that part. We need the gods. The House of Life has to relearn the old ways."

"The old ways destroyed us!" he yelled.

A week ago, the look in his eyes would've made me tremble. He fairly glowed with rage, and hieroglyphs blazed in the air around him. He was the Chief Lector, and I'd just undone everything the House had worked for since the fall of Egypt. Desjardins was a heartbeat away from turning me into an insect, and the thought should've terrified me.

Instead, I looked him in the eye. Right now, I was more powerful than he was. Much more powerful. And I let him know it.

"Pride destroyed you," I said. "Greed and selfishness and all of that. It's hard to follow the path of the gods. But it is part of magic. You can't just shut it down."

"You are drunk with power," he snarled. "The gods have possessed you, as they always do.

Soon you will forget you are even human. We will fight you and destroy you." Then he glared at Carter. "And you--I know what Horus would demand. You will never reclaim the throne. With my last breath--"

"Save it," I said. Then I faced my brother. "You know what we have to do?"

Understanding passed between us. I was surprised how easily I could read him. I thought it might be the influence of the gods, but then I realized it was because we were both Kanes, brother and sister. And Carter, god help me, was also my friend.

"Are you sure?" he asked. "We're leaving ourselves open." He glared at Desjardins. "Just one more good smack with the sword?"

"I'm sure, Carter."

I closed my eyes and focused.

Consider carefully, Isis said. What we've done so far is only the beginning of the power we could wield together.

That's the problem, I said. I'm not ready for that. I've got to get there on my own, the hard way.

You are wise for a mortal, Isis said. Very well.

Imagine giving up a fortune in cash. Imagine throwing away the most beautiful diamond necklace in the world. Separating myself from Isis was harder than that, much harder.

But it wasn't impossible. I know my limits, my mother had said, and now I understood how wise she'd been.

I felt the spirit of the goddess leave me. Part of her flowed into my necklace, but most of her streamed into the Washington Monument, back into the Duat, where Isis would go...somewhere else. Another host? I wasn't sure.

When I opened my eyes, Carter stood next to me looking grief-stricken, holding his Eye of Horus amulet.

Desjardins was so stunned, he momentarily forgot how to speak English. "Ce n'est pas possible.

On ne pourrait pas--"

"Yes, we could," I said. "We've given up the gods of our own free will. And you've got a lot to learn about what's possible."

Carter threw down his sword. "Desjardins, I'm not after the throne. Not unless I earn it by myself, and that's going to take time. We're going to learn the path of the gods. We're going to teach others. You can waste time trying to destroy us, or you can help."

The sirens were much closer now. I could see the lights of emergency vehicles coming from several directions, slowly cordoning off the National Mall. We had only minutes before we were surrounded.

Desjardins looked at the magicians behind him, probably gauging how much support he could rally. His brethren looked in awe. One even started to bow to me, then caught himself.

Alone, Desjardins might've been able to destroy us. We were just magicians now--very tired magicians, with hardly any formal training.

Desjardins' nostrils flared. Then he surprised me by lowering his staff. "There has been too much destruction today. But the path of the gods shall remain closed. If you cross the House of Life again..."

He let the threat hang in the air. He slammed his staff down, and with a final burst of energy, the four magicians dissolved into wind and gusted away.

Suddenly I felt exhausted. The terror of what I'd been through began to sink in. We'd survived, but that was little consolation. I missed my parents. I missed them terribly. I wasn't a goddess anymore. I was just a regular girl, alone with only my brother.

Then Amos groaned and started sitting up. Police cars and sinister-looking black vans blocked the curbs all around us. Sirens blared. A helicopter sliced through the air over the Potomac, closing fast. God only knew what the mortals thought had happened at the Washington Monument, but I didn't want my face on the nightly news.

"Carter, we have to get out of here," I said. "Can you summon enough magic to change Amos into something small--a mouse maybe? We can fly him out."

He nodded, still in a daze. "But Dad...we didn't..."

He looked around helplessly. I knew how he felt. The pyramid, the throne, the golden coffin--all of it was gone. We'd come so far to rescue our father, only to lose him. And Carter's first girlfriend lay at his feet in a pile of pottery shards. That probably didn't help either. (Carter protests that she wasn't really his girlfriend. Oh, please!)

I couldn't dwell on it, though. I had to be strong for both of us or we'd end up in prison.

"First things first," I said. "We have to get Amos to safety."

"Where?" Carter asked.

There was only one place I could think of.

C A R T E R

41. We Stop the Recording,

I CAN'T BELIEVE SADIE's GOING TOlet me have the last word. Our experience together must've really taught her something. Ow, she just hit me. Never mind.

Anyway, I'm glad she told that last part. I think she understood it better than I did. And the whole thing about Zia not being Zia and Dad not getting rescued...that was pretty hard to deal with.

If anybody felt worse than I did, it was Amos. I had just enough magic to turn myself into a falcon and him into a hamster (hey, I was rushed!), but a few miles from the National Mall, he started struggling to change back. Sadie and I were forced to land outside a train station, where Amos turned back into a human and curled into a shivering ball. We tried to talk to him, but he could barely complete a sentence.

Finally we got him into the station. We let him sleep on a bench while Sadie and I warmed up and watched the news.

According to Channel 5, the whole city of Washington was under lockdown. There'd been reports of explosions and weird lights at the Washington Monument, but all the cameras could show us was a big square of melted snow on the mall, which kind of made for boring video.

Experts came on and talked about terrorism, but eventually it became clear that there'd been no permanent damage--just a bunch of scary lights. After a while, the media started speculating about freak storm activity or a rare southern appearance of the Northern Lights. Within an hour, the authorities opened up the city.

I wished we had Bast with us, because Amos was in no shape to be our chaperone; but we managed to buy tickets for our "sick" uncle and ourselves as far as New York.

I slept on the way, the amulet of Horus clutched in my hand.

We got back to Brooklyn at sunset.

We found the mansion burned out, which we'd expected, but we had nowhere else to go. I knew we'd made the right choice when we guided Amos through the doorway and heard a familiar,

"Agh! Agh!"

"Khufu!" Sadie cried.

The baboon tackled her in a hug and climbed onto her shoulders. He picked at her hair, seeing if she'd brought him any good bugs to eat. Then he jumped off and grabbed a half-melted basketball. He grunted at me insistently, pointing to a makeshift basket he'd made out of some burned beams and a laundry basket. It was a gesture of forgiveness, I realized. He had forgiven me for sucking at his favorite game, and he was offering lessons. Looking around, I realized that he'd tried to clean up in his own baboon way, too. He'd dusted off the one surviving sofa, stacked Cheerios boxes in the fireplace, and even put a dish of water and fresh food out for Muffin, who was curled up asleep on a little pillow. In the clearest part of the living room, under an intact section of roof, Khufu had made three separate mounds of pillows and sheets--sleeping places for us.

I got a lump in my throat. Seeing the care that he'd taken getting ready for us, I couldn't imagine a better welcome home present.

"Khufu," I said, "you are one freaking awesome baboon."

"Agh!" he said, pointing to the basketball.

"You want to school me?" I said. "Yeah, I deserve it. Just give us a second to..."

My smile melted when I saw Amos.

He'd drifted over to the ruined statue of Thoth. The god's cracked ibis head lay at his feet. His hands had broken off, and his tablet and stylus lay shattered on the ground. Amos stared at the headless god--the patron of magicians--and I could guess what he was thinking. A bad omen for a homecoming.

"It's okay," I told him. "We're going to make it right."

If Amos heard me, he gave no sign. He drifted over to the couch and plopped down, putting his head in his hands.

Sadie glanced at me uneasily. Then she looked around at the blackened walls, the crumbling ceilings, the charred remains of the furniture.

"Well," she said, trying to sound upbeat. "How about I play basketball with Khufu, and you can clean the house?"

Even with magic, it took us several weeks to put the house back in order. That was just to make it livable. It was hard without Isis and Horus helping, but we could still do magic. It just took a lot more concentration and a lot more time. Every day, I went to sleep feeling as if I'd done twelve hours of hard labor; but eventually we got the walls and ceilings repaired, and cleaned up the debris until the house no longer smelled of smoke. We even managed to fix the terrace and the pool. We brought Amos out to watch as we released the wax crocodile figurine into the water, and Philip of Macedonia sprang to life.