Rick Riordan - The Red Pyramid

Slice!

The sphinx dissolved into smoke.

I tried to rise but couldn’t. Sadie stumbled over. “Carter! Oh god, are you okay?”

I blinked at the other person-the one who had saved me: a tall, thin figure in a black, hooded raincoat. What had she yelled: Eat muffins? What kind of battle cry was that?

She threw off her coat, and a woman in a leopard-skin acrobatic suit grinned down at me, showing off her fangs and her lamplike yellow eyes.

“Miss me?” asked Bast.

C A R T E R

WE HUDDLED UNDER THE EAVES of a big white government building and watched the rain pour down on the Place de la Concorde. It was a miserable day to be in Paris. The winter skies were heavy and low, and the cold, wet air soaked right into my bones. There were no tourists, no foot traffic. Everyone with any sense was inside by a fire enjoying a hot drink.

To our right, the River Seine wound sluggishly through the city. Across the enormous plaza, the gardens of the Tuileries were shrouded in a soupy haze.

The Egyptian obelisk rose up lonely and dark in the middle of the square. We waited for more enemies to pop out of it, but none came. I remembered what Zia had said about artifacts needing a twelve-hour cooldown before they could be used again. I hoped she was right.

“Hold still,” Bast told me.

I winced as she pressed her hand against my chest. She whispered something in Egyptian, and the pain slowly subsided.

“Broken rib,” she announced. “Better now, but you should rest for at least a few minutes.”

“What about the magicians?”

“I wouldn’t worry about them just yet. The House will assume you teleported somewhere else.”

“Why?”

“Paris is the Fourteenth Nome-Desjardins’ headquarters. You would be insane trying to hide in his home territory.”

“Great.” I sighed.

“And your amulets do shield you,” Bast added. “I could find Sadie anywhere because of my promise to protect her. But the amulets will keep you veiled from the eyes of Set and from other magicians.”

I thought about the dark room in the First Nome with all the children looking into bowls of oil. Were they looking for us right now? The thought was creepy.

I tried to sit up and winced again.

“Stay still,” Bast ordered. “Really, Carter, you should learn to fall like a cat.”

“I’ll work on that,” I promised. “How are you even alive? Is it that ‘nine lives’ thing?”

“Oh, that’s just a silly legend. I’m immortal.”

“But the scorpions!” Sadie scrunched in closer, shivering and drawing Bast’s raincoat around her shoulders. “We saw them overwhelm you!”

Bast made a purring sound. “Dear Sadie, you do care! I must say I’ve worked for many children of the pharaohs, but you two-” She looked genuinely touched. “Well, I’m sorry if I worried you. It’s true the scorpions reduced my power to almost nothing. I held them off as long as I could. Then I had just enough energy to revert to Muffin’s form and slip into the Duat.”

“I thought you weren’t good at portals,” I said.

“Well, first off, Carter, there are many ways in and out of the Duat. It has many different regions and layers-the Abyss, the River of Night, the Land of the Dead, the Land of Demons-”

“Sounds lovely,” Sadie muttered.

“Anyway, portals are like doors. They pass through the Duat to connect one part of the mortal world to another. And yes, I’m not good at those. But I am a creature of the Duat. If I’m on my own, slipping into the nearest layer for a quick escape is relatively easy.”

“And if they’d killed you?” I asked. “I mean, killed Muffin?”

“That would’ve banished me deep into the Duat. It would’ve been rather like putting my feet in concrete and dropping me into the middle of the sea. It would’ve taken years, perhaps centuries, before I would’ve been strong enough to return to the mortal world. Fortunately, that didn’t happen. I came back straightaway, but by the time I got to the museum, the magicians had already captured you.”

“We weren’t exactly captured,” I said.

“Really, Carter? How long were you in the First Nome before they decided to kill you?”

“Um, about twenty-four hours.”

Bast whistled. “They’ve gotten friendlier! They used to blast godlings to dust in the first few minutes.”

“We’re not-wait, what did you call us?”

Sadie answered, sounding as if in a trance: “‘Godlings.’ That’s what we are, aren’t we? That’s why Zia was so frightened of us, why Desjardins wants to kill us.”

Bast patted Sadie’s knee. “You always were bright, dear.”

“Hold on,” I said. “You mean hosts for gods? That’s not possible. I think I’d know if…”

Then I thought about the voice in my head, warning me to hide when I met Iskandar. I thought about all the things I was suddenly able to do-like fight with a sword and summon a magical shell of armor. Those were not things I’d covered in home school.

“Carter,” Sadie said. “When the Rosetta Stone shattered, it let out five gods, right? Dad joined with Osiris. Amos told us that. Set…I don’t know. He got away somehow. But you and I-”

“The amulets protected us.” I clutched the Eye of Horus around my neck. “Dad said they would.”

“If we had stayed out of the room, as Dad told us to,” Sadie recalled. “But we were there, watching. We wanted to help him. We practically asked for power, Carter.”

Bast nodded. “That makes all the difference. An invitation.”

“And since then…” Sadie looked at me tentatively, almost daring me to make fun of her. “I’ve had this feeling. Like a voice inside me…”

By now the cold rain had soaked right through my clothes. If Sadie hadn’t said something, maybe I could’ve denied what was happening a little longer. But I thought about what Amos had said about our family having a long history with the gods. I thought about what Zia had told us about our lineage: “The gods choose their hosts carefully. They always prefer the blood of the pharaohs.”

“Okay,” I admitted. “I’ve been hearing a voice too. So either we’re both going crazy-”

“The amulet.” Sadie pulled it from her shirt collar and held it for Bast to see. “It’s the symbol of a goddess, isn’t it?”

I hadn’t seen her amulet in a long time. It was different from mine. It reminded me of an ankh, or maybe some kind of fancy tie.

“That is a tyet,” Bast said. “A magic knot. And yes, it is often called-”

“The Knot of Isis,” Sadie said. I didn’t see how she could know that, but she looked absolutely certain. “In the Hall of Ages, I saw an image of Isis, and then I was Isis, trying to get away from Set, and-oh, god. That’s it, isn’t it? I’m her.”

She grabbed her shirt like she physically wanted to pull the goddess away from her. All I could do was stare. My sister, with her ratty red-highlighted hair and her linen pajamas and her combat boots-how could she possibly worry about being possessed by a goddess? What goddess would want her, except maybe the goddess of chewing gum?

But then…I’d been hearing a voice inside me too. A voice that was definitely not mine. I looked at my amulet, the Eye of Horus. I thought about the myths I knew-how Horus, the son of Osiris, had to avenge his father by defeating Set. And at Luxor I’d summoned an avatar with the head of a falcon.

I was afraid to try it, but I thought: Horus?