The Serpent's Shadow kc-3 Page 5

  I’d rarely seen Bast look so agitated. I wasn’t sure why. This was a goddess who’d fought Apophis face-to-face, claw to fang, in a magical prison for thousands of years. Why was she scared of shadows?

  “Bast,” I said, “if we can’t figure out a better solution, we’ll have to go with Plan B.”

  The goddess winced. Sadie stared dejectedly at the table. Plan B was something only Sadie, Bast, Walt, and I had discussed. Our other initiates didn’t know about it. We hadn’t even told our Uncle Amos. It was that scary.

  “I—I would hate that,” Bast said. “But, Carter, I really don’t know the answers. And if you start asking about shadows, you’ll be delving into very dangerous—”

  There was a knock on the library doors. Cleo and Khufu appeared at the top of the stairs.

  “Sorry to disturb,” Cleo said. “Carter, Khufu just came down from your room. He seems anxious to talk with you.”

  “Agh!” Khufu insisted.

  Bast translated from baboon-speak. “He says there’s a call for you on the scrying bowl, Carter. A private call.”

  As if I weren’t stressed enough already. Only one person would be sending me a scrying vision, and if she was contacting me so late at night, it had to be bad news.

  “Meeting adjourned,” I told the others. “See you in the morning.”

  C A R T E R

  4. I Consult the Pigeon of War

  I WAS IN LOVE WITH A BIRDBATH.

  Most guys checked their phone for texts, or obsessed over what girls were saying about them online. Me, I couldn’t stay away from the scrying bowl.

  It was just a bronze saucer on a stone pedestal, sitting on the balcony outside my bedroom. But whenever I was in my room, I found myself stealing glances at it, resisting the urge to rush outside and check for a glimpse of Zia.

  The weird thing was—I couldn’t even call her my girlfriend. What do you call somebody when you fall in love with her replica shabti, then rescue the real person only to find she doesn’t share your feelings? And Sadie thinks her relationships are complicated.

  Over the past six months, since Zia had gone to help my uncle at the First Nome, the bowl had been our only contact. I’d spent so many hours staring into it, talking with Zia, I could hardly remember what she looked like without enchanted oil rippling across her face.

  By the time I reached the balcony, I was out of breath. From the surface of the oil, Zia stared up at me. Her arms were crossed; her eyes so angry, they looked like they might ignite. (The first scrying bowl Walt had made actually did ignite, but that’s another story.)

  “Carter,” she said, “I’m going to strangle you.”

  She was beautiful when she threatened to kill me. Over the summer she’d let her hair grow out so that it swept over her shoulders in a glossy black wave. She wasn’t the shabti I’d first fallen for, but her face still had a sculpted beauty—delicate nose, full red lips, dazzling amber eyes. Her skin glowed like terracotta warm from the kiln.

  “You heard about Dallas,” I guessed. “Zia, I’m sorry—”

  “Carter, everyone has heard about Dallas. Other nomes have been sending Amos ba messengers for the past hour, demanding answers. Magicians as far away as Cuba felt ripples in the Duat. Some claimed you blew up half of Texas. Some said the entire Fifty-first Nome was destroyed. Some said—some said you were dead.”

  The concern in her voice lifted my spirits a little, but it also made me feel guiltier.

  “I wanted to tell you in advance,” I said. “But by the time we realized Apophis’s target was Dallas, we had to move immediately.”

  I told her what had happened at the King Tut exhibit, including our mistakes and casualties.

  I tried to read Zia’s expression. Even after so many months, it was hard to guess what she was thinking. Just seeing her tended to short-circuit my brain. Half the time I could barely remember how to speak in complete sentences.

  Finally she muttered something in Arabic—probably a curse.

  “I’m glad you survived—but the Fifty-first destroyed…?” She shook her head in disbelief. “I knew Anne Grissom. She taught me healing magic when I was young.”

  I remembered the pretty blond lady who had played with the band, and the ruined fiddle at the edge of the explosion.

  “They were good people,” I said.

  “Some of our last allies,” Zia said. “The rebels are already blaming you for their deaths. If any more nomes desert Amos…”

  She didn’t have to finish that thought. Last spring, the worst villains in the House of Life had formed a hit squad to destroy Brooklyn House. We’d defeated them. Amos had even given them amnesty when he became the new Chief Lector. But some refused to follow him. The rebels were still out there—gathering strength, turning other magicians against us. As if we needed more enemies.

  “They’re blaming me?” I asked. “Did they contact you?”

  “Worse. They broadcasted a message to you.”

  The oil rippled. I saw a different face—Sarah Jacobi, leader of the rebels. She had milky skin, spiky black hair, and dark, permanently startled eyes lined with too much kohl. In her pure white robes she looked like a Halloween ghoul.

  She stood in a room lined with marble columns. Behind her glowered half a dozen magicians—Jacobi’s elite killers. I recognized the blue robes and shaven head of Kwai, who’d been exiled from the North Korean nome for murdering a fellow magician. Next to him stood Petrovich, a scar-faced Ukrainian who’d once worked as an assassin for our old enemy Vlad Menshikov.

  The others I couldn’t identify, but I doubted that any of them was as bad as Sarah Jacobi herself. Until Menshikov had released her, she’d been exiled in Antarctica for causing an Indian Ocean tsunami that killed more than a quarter of a million people.

  “Carter Kane!” she shouted.

  Because this was a broadcast, I knew it was just a magical recording, but her voice made me jump.

  “The House of Life demands your surrender,” she said. “Your crimes are unforgivable. You must pay with your life.”

  My stomach barely had time to drop before a series of violent images flashed across the oil. I saw the Rosetta Stone exploding in the British Museum—the incident that had unleashed Set and killed my father last Christmas. How had Jacobi gotten a visual of that? I saw the fight at Brooklyn House last spring, when Sadie and I had arrived in Ra’s sun boat to drive out Jacobi’s hit squad. The images she showed made it look like we were the aggressors—a bunch of hooligans with godly powers beating up on poor Jacobi and her friends.

  “You released Set and his brethren,” Jacobi narrated. “You broke the most sacred rule of magic and cooperated with the gods. In doing so, you unbalanced Ma’at, causing the rise of Apophis.”

  “That’s a lie!” I said. “Apophis was rising anyway!”

  Then I remembered I was yelling at a video.

  The scenes kept shifting. I saw a high-rise building on fire in the Shibuya district of Tokyo, headquarters of the 234th Nome. A flying demon with the head of a samurai sword crashed through a window and carried off a screaming magician.

  I saw the home of the old Chief Lector, Michel Desjardins—a beautiful Paris townhouse on the rue des Pyramides—now in ruins. The roof had collapsed. The windows were broken. Ripped scrolls and soggy books littered the dead garden, and the hieroglyph for Chaos smoldered on the front door like a cattle brand.

  “All this you have caused,” Jacobi said. “You have given the Chief Lector’s mantle to a servant of evil. You have corrupted young magicians by teaching the path of the gods. You’ve weakened the House of Life and left us at the mercy of Apophis. We will not stand for this. Any who follow you will be punished.”

  The vision changed to Sphinx House in London, headquarters for the British nome. Sadie and I had visited there over the summer and managed to make peace with them after hours of negotiations. I saw Kwai storming through the library, smashing statues of the gods and raking books off the shelves. A dozen Br
itish magicians stood in chains before their conqueror, Sarah Jacobi, who held a gleaming black knife. The leader of the nome, a harmless old guy named Sir Leicester, was forced to his knees. Sarah Jacobi raised her knife. The blade fell, and the scene shifted.

  Jacobi’s ghoulish face stared up at me from the surface of the oil. Her eyes were as dark as the sockets of a skull.

  “The Kanes are a plague,” she said. “You must be destroyed. Surrender yourself and your family for execution. We will spare your other followers as long as they renounce the path of the gods. I do not seek the office of Chief Lector, but I must take it for the good of Egypt. When the Kanes are dead, we will be strong and united again. We will undo the damage you’ve caused and send the gods and Apophis back to the Duat. Justice comes swiftly, Carter Kane. This will be your only warning.”

  Sarah Jacobi’s image dissolved in the oil, and I was alone again with Zia’s reflection.

  “Yeah,” I said shakily. “For a mass murderer, she’s pretty convincing.”

  Zia nodded. “Jacobi has already turned or defeated most of our allies in Europe and Asia. A lot of the recent attacks—against Paris, Tokyo, Madrid—those were Jacobi’s work, but she’s blaming them on Apophis—or Brooklyn House.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “You and I know that,” she agreed. “But the magicians are scared. Jacobi is telling them that if the Kanes are destroyed, Apophis will go back to the Duat and things will return to normal. They want to believe it. She’s telling them that following you is a death sentence. After the destruction of Dallas—”

  “I get it,” I snapped.

  It wasn’t fair for me to get mad at Zia, but I felt so helpless. Everything we did seemed to turn out wrong. I imagined Apophis laughing in the Underworld. Maybe that’s why he hadn’t attacked the House of Life in full force yet. He was having too much fun watching us tear each other apart.

  “Why didn’t Jacobi direct her message at Amos?” I asked. “He’s the Chief Lector.”

  Zia glanced away as if checking on something. I couldn’t see much of her surroundings, but she didn’t seem to be in her dorm room at the First Nome, or in the Hall of Ages. “Like Jacobi said, they consider Amos a servant of evil. They won’t talk to him.”

  “Because he was possessed by Set,” I guessed. “That wasn’t his fault. He’s been healed. He’s fine.”

  Zia winced.

  “What?” I asked. “He is fine, isn’t he?”

  “Carter, it’s—it’s complicated. Look, the main problem is Jacobi. She’s taken over Menshikov’s old base in St. Petersburg. It’s almost as much of a fortress as the First Nome. We don’t know what she’s up to or how many magicians she has. We don’t know when she’ll strike or where. But she’s going to attack soon.”

  Justice comes swiftly. This will be your only warning.

  Something told me Jacobi wouldn’t attack Brooklyn House again, not after she’d been humiliated last time. But if she wanted to take over the House of Life and destroy the Kanes, what else could her target be?

  I locked eyes with Zia, and I realized what she was thinking.

  “No,” I said. “They’d never attack the First Nome. That would be suicide. It’s survived for five thousand years.”

  “Carter…we’re weaker than you realize. We were never fully staffed. Now many of our best magicians have disappeared, possibly gone over to the other side. We’ve got some old men and a few scared children left, plus Amos and me.” She spread her arms in exasperation. “And half the time I’m stuck here—”

  “Wait,” I said. “Where are you?”

  Somewhere to Zia’s left, a man’s voice warbled, “Hell-ooooo!”

  Zia sighed. “Great. He’s up from his nap.”

  An old man stuck his face in the scrying bowl. He grinned, showing exactly two teeth. His bald wrinkly head made him look like a geriatric baby. “Zebras are here!”

  He opened his mouth and tried to suck the oil out of the bowl, making the whole scene ripple.

  “My lord, no!” Zia pulled him back. “You can’t drink the enchanted oil. We’ve talked about this. Here, have a cookie.”

  “Cookies!” he squealed. “Wheee!” The old man danced off with a tasty treat in his hands.

  Zia’s senile grandfather? Nope. That was Ra, god of the sun, first divine pharaoh of Egypt and archenemy of Apophis. Last spring we’d gone on a quest to find him and revive him from his twilight sleep, trusting he would rise in all his glory and fight the Chaos snake for us.

  Instead, Ra woke up senile and demented. He was excellent at gumming biscuits, drooling, and singing nonsense songs. Fighting Apophis? Not so much.

  “You’re babysitting again?” I asked.

  Zia shrugged. “It’s after sunrise here. Horus and Isis watch him most nights on the sun boat. But during the day…well, Ra gets upset if I don’t come to visit, and none of the other gods want to watch him. Honestly, Carter…” She lowered her voice. “I’m afraid of what they’d do if I left Ra alone with them. They’re getting tired of him.”

  “Wheee!” Ra said in the background.

  My heart sank. Yet another thing to feel guilty about: I’d saddled Zia with nanny duty for a sun god. Stuck in the throne room of the gods every day, helping Amos run the First Nome every night, Zia barely had time to sleep, much less go on a date—even if I could get up the courage to ask her.

  Of course, that wouldn’t matter if Apophis destroyed the world, or if Sarah Jacobi and her magical killers got to me. For a moment I wondered if Jacobi was right—if the world had gone sideways because of the Kane family, and if it would be better off without us.

  I felt so helpless, I briefly considered calling on the power of Horus. I could’ve used some of the war god’s courage and confidence. But I suspected that joining my thoughts with Horus’s wouldn’t be a good idea. My emotions were jumbled enough without another voice in my head, egging me on.

  “I know that expression,” Zia chided. “You can’t blame yourself, Carter. If it weren’t for you and Sadie, Apophis would have already destroyed the world. There’s still hope.”

  Plan B, I thought. Unless we could figure out this mystery about shadows and how they could be used to fight Apophis, we’d be stuck with Plan B, which meant certain death for Sadie and me even if it worked. But I wasn’t going to tell Zia that. She didn’t need any more depressing news.

  “You’re right,” I said. “We’ll figure out something.”

  “I’ll be back at the First Nome tonight. Call me then, okay? We should talk about—”

  Something rumbled behind her, like a stone slab grinding across the floor.

  “Sobek’s here,” she whispered. “I hate that guy. Talk later.”

  “Wait, Zia,” I said. “Talk about what?”

  But the oil turned dark, and Zia was gone.

  I needed to sleep. Instead, I paced my room.

  The dorm rooms at Brooklyn House were amazing—comfortable beds, HD TVs, high-speed wireless Internet, and magically restocking mini-fridges. An army of enchanted brooms, mops, and dusters kept everything tidy. The closets were always full of clean, perfectly fitting clothes.

  Still, my room felt like a cage. Maybe that’s because I had a baboon for a roommate. Khufu wasn’t here much (usually downstairs with Cleo or letting the ankle-biters groom his fur), but there was a baboon-shaped depression on his bed, a box of Cheerios on the nightstand, and a tire swing installed in the corner of the room. Sadie had done that last part as a joke, but Khufu loved it so much, I couldn’t take it down. The thing was, I’d gotten used to his being around. Now that he spent most of his time with the kindergartners, I missed him. He’d grown on me in an endearing, annoying way, kind of like my sister.

  [Yeah, Sadie. You saw that one coming.]

  Screensaver pictures floated across my laptop monitor. There was my dad at a dig site in Egypt, looking relaxed and in charge in his khaki fatigues, his sleeves rolled up on his dark muscular arms as he showed of
f the broken stone head of some pharaoh’s statue. Dad’s bald scalp and goatee made him look slightly devilish when he smiled.

  Another picture showed Uncle Amos onstage at a jazz club, playing his saxophone. He wore round dark glasses, a blue porkpie hat, and a matching silk suit, impeccably tailored as always. His cornrows were braided with sapphires. I’d never actually seen Amos play onstage, but I liked this photo because he looked so energetic and happy—not like he did these days, with the weight of leadership on his shoulders. Unfortunately the photo also reminded me of Anne Grissom, the Texas magician with her fiddle, having so much fun earlier this evening just before she died.

  The screensaver changed. I saw my mom bouncing me on her knee when I was a baby. I had this ridiculous ’fro back then, which Sadie always teases me about. In the photo, I’m wearing a blue Onesie stained with pureed yams. I’m holding my mom’s thumbs, looking startled as she bounces me up and down, like I’m thinking, Get me off of this ride! My mom is as beautiful as always, even in an old T-shirt and jeans, her hair tied back in a bandana. She smiles down at me like I’m the most wonderful thing in her life.

  That photo hurt to look at, but I kept looking at it.

  I remembered what Sadie had told me—that something was affecting the spirits of the dead, and we might not see our mom again unless we figured it out.

  I took a deep breath. My dad, my uncle, my mom—all of them powerful magicians. All had sacrificed so much to restore the House of Life.

  They were older, wiser, and stronger than me. They’d had decades to practice magic. Sadie and I had had nine months. Yet we needed to do something no magician had ever managed—defeat Apophis himself.

  I went to my closet and took down my old traveling case. It was just a black leather carry-on bag, like a million others you might see in an airport. For years I’d lugged it around the world as I traveled with my dad. He’d trained me to live with only the possessions I could carry.