Tut (14 page)

“I could train them,” Henry said.

“I think you need to be immortal to control them,” I said.

“That's a technicality,” Henry said. “I'm sure there's a way around it.” He set Major Rex back down.

Major Rex returned to his position guarding me.

“So I don't get it. Why are you here?” Henry asked.

“Why not? I live here,” I said.

“No. I mean why aren't you back in your tomb?”

So I gave Henry the short version. The version that glossed over the facts and left out the murderous details of Horemheb killing off my entire family. This version of reality focused on a spell being cast and me living forever.

“Immortality. That's kind of cool,” Henry said.

“It has its plus side.”

Of course, it also had its minus side. Like Horemheb. Which put a damper on my whole mood. The week had been a complete disaster. First Horemheb had declared war on me, blowing up the obelisk only seconds after I recharged. Who knew if it would ever be safe for me to recharge my scarab heart again? Second, not one, but two people now knew my true identity: Tia and Henry. For thousands of years, it had been my best-kept secret. I'd failed miserably.

I yawned without even having to pretend I was tired. Exhausted was more like it. “You know, I'm kind of beat and my brother will probably be home any minute. Do you mind if we work on our project some other time?”

Henry stood up way too fast. “My parents will probably want me home anyway.”

For Henry not to put up a fight showed just how freaked out he must be.

I yawned again. “Sounds good.” My eyes were drooping. Maybe it was using two spells from the
Book of the Dead
in two days. I envied Rip Van Winkle, wishing I could sleep for one hundred years.

“Don't think you're going to sleep, Tut,” Horus said, like he was reading my mind. “You have things to do.”

“What kinds of things?” Henry asked. He was already halfway to the door.

“Nothing. They can wait.” All I wanted to do was lie down for five minutes.

Horus jumped from his cat scratching post and landed on the ground in front of me. “They can't wait. Horemheb and Set are getting closer. Every second you wait means a second they get closer to killing you.”

“Killing you?” Henry asked. Only seconds before, he'd looked as tired as I felt, but now his eyes were wide open.

I shook my head. “It's nothing.”

“Really?” Henry said. “Because if there's someone trying to kill you, which, given the fact that you just had poisonous snakes delivered to your house, makes me think maybe your god cat is telling the truth, then that seems like a pretty big deal.”

“Fine, yes,” I said. “There is someone trying to kill me. But I've got it under control.”

Horus sniffed the air again in disgust. “You have nothing under control, Tut. And you have one spell left. You're turning what should have been a simple errand into a catastrophe.”

“Cut him a little slack,” Henry said.

I couldn't believe he was sticking up for me to Horus.

“Horemheb and Set aren't going to cut him any slack,” Horus said. “So neither am I.”

“What kind of errand is it?” Henry said. “I'll go with you.”

“You're not going with me.” I resigned myself to the fact that sleep wasn't in my near future. Horus was right. I had to get the knife.

“No, that's a great idea,” Horus said. “Henry should go. Isis loves visitors.”

“Isis?” Henry took a step backward, like Isis being real was impossible to believe. But how could it be? He was having a conversation with a talking god cat and an immortal pharaoh.

“My mother,” Horus said. “She's got something Tut needs.”

“Your mother's a goddess?” Henry said.

“Of course she's a goddess,” Horus said, like Henry was remedial. “That's how things work. For me to be a god, my mom has to be a goddess.”

Horus's condescending tone didn't even faze Henry. “Could she help us with our project?”

Seriously? The project again? At a time like this?

“I'm sure she'd be happy to,” Horus said. “Isis loves projects.”

And so that's how it turned out that Henry was going with me to get the sacred knife. Henry finished his soda and we were on our way.

 

11

WHERE I PAY A VISIT TO DEATH

I tried to leave the shabtis at home, but after the snake fiasco, Colonel Cody wasn't about to let me out of his sight.

“Great Pharaoh, you must allow us to come along,” he said. “Your mortal friend will be worthless in a fight.”

“Hey!” Henry said.

“Don't take offense,” I said. “He's overprotective.”

“What about the mortal thing?” Henry asked as we set out with our entourage of shabtis. “He makes it sound like a disease.”

“I wouldn't say disease,” I said, though I could see Colonel Cody's point. “More like a limitation.”

“That's no better,” Henry said.

We set out for Old Town, cutting across the Mall. The shabtis marched in formation behind us, hiding behind trees and benches when they couldn't blend into the shadows. When we passed the Washington Monument, before I could stop them, palm fronds sprouted from under my feet.

“What's up with the plants?” Henry asked.

I kicked aside a few of the green leaves. “Yeah, that. You see, I have these powers.…”

Henry looked at me like he thought I might start growing an extra set of arms. “You're immortal
and
you have powers?”

“Sure,” I said. “Osiris gave them to me. He's the god of—”

“Plants?” Henry asked.

“Kind of. He's the god of all things fertile. Which makes me able to grow plants anytime I want.”

“Is that good for anything?” Henry asked. He picked up one of the palm fronds and started pulling it apart, maybe testing to make sure it was real.

“Sometimes.” I almost made poison ivy grow up his pant leg just to show him how useful my powers could be, but I held back. “I can also control bugs, like all those beetles around my town house.”

“Yeah, those are kind of disgusting, Tut. I didn't want to say anything, but you should clean more often.”

Henry stopped talking because he tripped.

I looked down to see Colonel Cody holding the end of one of Henry's shoelaces. You don't mess with the shabtis or question their cleanliness.

“Horus likes the beetles,” I said.

Henry shuddered. “What about cockroaches? They freak me out. And they're everywhere these days. Have you noticed how many bugs there've been in the last week?”

I had noticed the increase in bugs. In the streets. In restaurants and stores. They'd even commented on it on the news, calling it the “insect revolution.” Pest-control companies had to be making a fortune.

“Why is everyone so freaked out over bugs?” I said.

“Because they're nasty, dirty, filthy…,” Henry said. “They skitter around and crawl in your shoes. My mom found a roach in her bed the other night. She made my dad pull all the sheets off and spray insect repellent around the whole thing like a barrier.”

“Did it work?” I asked.

“Only in the bedroom,” Henry said. “But we found bugs in our kitchen, bathroom, and even in the pantry. My mom's convinced our maid is putting them there for some kind of twisted revenge.”

“You guys should be nicer to your maid,” I said.

We started across the bridge, avoiding the steady stream of cars. Given that it was Friday night, half the city was out.

“What other powers do you have?” Henry asked.

“Well, generally I can make people forget weird things that happen around me. Except it didn't work on you back at the town house.”

“What do you mean?” He narrowed his eyes.

“I have this spell I use…,” I started.

“You tried to put a spell on me?” Henry said.

Why did people get so upset about that? It's not like I was trying to make them do something stupid like dance in their underwear.

“It was just a little spell,” I said. “So you'd forget about the snakes. And the shabtis. And Horus. But too much had happened. That's why it didn't work.”

“Dude, don't put any spells on me.”

Enough on the spells.

“Anyway, Gil has different powers than me,” I said.

“Your brother's immortal, too?”

“He's the only other immortal I know of,” I said.

Except for Horemheb. No way was I including him, since he totally didn't deserve his immortality.

“What?” Henry asked.

“What, what?” I said.

“Your face turned red.”

I gritted my teeth. “Just thinking about someone I plan to kill.” Okay, maybe this wasn't the smartest thing for me to say, but I didn't care. It actually felt good to get it off my chest.

To Henry's credit, he only hesitated about five seconds—his mouth opening and closing as he tried to formulate his response.

“Anyone I know?” he finally asked.

“My uncle.” I spit out the word, because I hated that I was actually related to him. “He murdered my mother and father and brother.”

Henry stopped walking and pulled on my shoulder so I'd stop, too. “Your own uncle did that?”

“Nice family, right?” I said, trying to laugh it off.

Henry saw right through it. “I'm sorry. That stinks.”

“It's nothing.”

But Henry wasn't going to let it drop. “No, really. I can't even imagine that. My only uncle gives me a new set of Mickey Mouse ears for Christmas. He has every year since I was two. And during the summers, I visit him for a week. He works at Disney World. I get to skip all the lines. And see behind the scenes.”

“Maybe I can come along next summer,” I said, because right now, the idea of doing something as normal as going to Disney World with a friend sounded like paradise.

“That's a great idea,” Henry said.

It had been centuries since I'd really talked to anyone besides Gil or Horus, and it was nice to have a friend. Even if Henry was destined to grow old and die just like the rest of the mortals in the world.

“I need to get rid of my uncle first,” I said. “That's my top priority.”

“Seriously?” Henry said.

“Seriously. There's this special knife I need. It's the only way to kill an immortal.”

Henry kicked a rock down the gravel path. And then he kicked another. And then he finally said, “I never signed up for killing someone.”

I patted him on the shoulder. “You're not going to kill anyone. I am.”

“But…,” he said. “What if he kills you instead?”

“Yeah, that would be a problem,” I said. Because that wouldn't be revenge. That would be stupidity.

“What does Horus's mom have to do with this?” Henry asked.

“She has the knife.”

“And we're going to get it?” Henry said.

“Right.”

Colonel Cody and his four majors shuffled around in front of us, slipping out of the shadows. “Shall I lead onward, Great Master? Or do you intend to stand here all evening speaking with the mortal?”

It was his polite way of telling us to get a move on.

“Lead onward,” I said, and we set out again.

Henry didn't say another word until we got to Old Town. Maybe if I hadn't been so focused on killing Horemheb, I would have given more effort to conversation. But the knife was within my reach. This was really going to happen.

“Dynasty Funeral Homes?” Henry said when we stopped in front of the white building. It looked like something out of a Civil War movie, with grand pillars stretching up to the roof far above and black shutters next to all the windows. “They're the ones with that stupid little jingle. Doesn't it go something like, ‘With over fifty locations to serve you best, Dynasty Funeral Homes is where you want to rest.'”

“Isis owns them.” I cut him off before he sang anymore. It was hard enough to keep the tune out of my head.

“I hate that jingle,” Henry said. “But everyone knows it. My own parents even preplanned their funerals through Dynasty. Isis must be making bank.”

Money was not something the gods worried about. Money wasn't something I even had to worry about. With immortal powers and an endless amount of time, there were tons of ways to make money. The only time I'd lived poor was once when Gil and I were in hiding, back during the Crusades. Not an experience I ever wanted to repeat.

We climbed sixteen granite stairs to the massive front doors of the funeral home. A sign in the window read,

“NORMAL OPERATING HOURS:

8:00 A.M.–5:00 P.M. DAILY.

PLEASE USE SIDE ENTRANCE DURING NON-BUSINESS HOURS.

DEAD OR ALIVE, YOUR ETERNAL HAPPINESS IS OUR GOAL.”

So we walked back down the stairs and around to the carport. An armada of ten black hearses was parked in the back. I rang the bell …

… and waited for an eternity. Finally, the lock unlatched and the door opened.

It was Tia. She was just draping a new necklace over her head. The pendant hanging from it was a lot like an ankh but was actually called a
tiet
and was, I'm sure by no coincidence, a symbol of Isis.

“What are you doing here?” I said.

“Visiting.” Tia settled the necklace on top of the others and patted it in place.

“You're visiting Isis?” I asked. “How do you even know about Isis?”

“Wait, she knows about all this god stuff, too?” Henry said.

“Unfortunately,” I said.

“Oh, Tut, you offend me,” Tia said. “I thought we had a bond.”

She'd stolen my scroll. That was no way to form a bond.

“It's been a long day,” I said. “And then there were these snakes.”