Rick Riordan - The Throne of Fire

Why did I have his picture?

[Fine, Carter. I’ll admit it, if only to shut you up.]

I had a bit of a crush on Anubis. I know how ridiculous that sounds, a modern girl getting moony-eyed over a five-thousand-year-old dog-headed boy, but that’s not what I saw when I looked at his picture. I remembered Anubis as he’d appeared in New Orleans when we’d met face-to-face—a boy of about sixteen, in black leather and denim, with tousled dark hair and gorgeous sad, melted-chocolate eyes. Very much not a dog-headed boy.

Still ridiculous, I know. He was a god. We had absolutely nothing in common. I hadn’t heard from him once since our adventure with the Red Pyramid, and that shouldn’t have surprised me. Even though he’d seemed interested in me at the time and possibly even dropped some hints….No, surely I’d been imagining it.

The past seven weeks, since Walt Stone had arrived at Brooklyn House, I’d thought I might be able to get over Anubis. Of course, Walt was my trainee, and I wasn’t supposed to think of him as a possible boyfriend, but I was fairly sure there’d been a spark between us the first time we saw each other. Now, though, Walt seemed to be pulling away. He was acting so secretive, always looking so guilty and talking to Jaz.

My life was rubbish.

I pulled on my nightclothes while Adele kept singing. Were all her songs about not being noticed by boys? Suddenly I found that quite annoying.

I turned off the music and flopped into bed.

Sadly, once I fell asleep my night only got worse.

At Brooklyn House, we sleep with all sorts of magic charms to protect us against malicious dreams, invading spirits, and the occasional urge our souls might get to wander off. I even have a magic pillow to make sure my soul—or ba, if you want to get Egyptian about it—stays anchored to my body.

It isn’t a perfect system, though. Every so often I can sense some outside force tugging on my mind, trying to get my attention. Or my soul will let me know it has some other place to go, some important scene it needs to show me.

I got one of those sensations immediately when I fell asleep. Think of it as an incoming call, with my brain giving me the option to accept or decline. Most of the time, it’s best to decline, especially when my brain is reporting an unknown number.

But sometimes those calls are important. And my birthday was tomorrow. Perhaps Dad and Mum were trying to reach me from the underworld. I imagined them in the Hall of Judgment, my father sitting on his throne as the blue-skinned god Osiris, my mum in her ghostly white robes. They might be wearing paper party hats and singing “Happy Birthday” while Ammit the Devourer, their extremely tiny pet monster, jumped up and down, yapping.

Or it could be, just maybe, Anubis calling. Hi, um, thought you might want to go to a funeral or something?

Well…it was possible.

So I accepted the call. I let my spirit go where it wanted to take me, and my ba floated above my body.

If you’ve never tried ba travel, I wouldn’t recommend it—unless of course you fancy turning into a phantom chicken and rafting uncontrollably through the currents of the Duat.

The ba is usually invisible to others, which is good, as it takes the form of a giant bird with your normal head attached. Once upon a time, I’d been able to manipulate my ba ’s form into something less embarrassing, but since Isis vacated my head, I didn’t have that ability. Now when I lifted off, I was stuck in default poultry mode.

The doors of the balcony swung open. A magical breeze swept me into the night. The lights of New York blurred and faded, and I found myself in a familiar underground chamber: the Hall of Ages, in the House of Life’s main headquarters under Cairo.

The room was so long, it could’ve hosted a marathon. Down the middle was a blue carpet that glittered like a river. Between the columns on either side, curtains of light shimmered—holographic images from Egypt’s long history. The light changed color to reflect different eras, from the white glow of the Age of the Gods all the way to the crimson light of modern times.

The roof was even higher than the ballroom at the Brooklyn Museum, the vast space lit by glowing orbs of energy and floating hieroglyphic symbols. It looked as if someone had detonated a few kilos of children’s cereal in zero gravity, all the colorful sugary bits drifting and colliding in slow motion.

I floated to the end of the room, just above the dais with the pharaoh’s throne. It was an honorary seat, empty since the fall of Egypt, but on the step below it sat the Chief Lector, master of the First Nome, leader of the House of Life, and my least favorite magician: Michel Desjardins.

I hadn’t seen Monsieur Delightful since our attack on the Red Pyramid, and I was surprised how much he’d aged. He’d only become Chief Lector a few months ago, but his slick black hair and forked beard were now streaked with gray. He leaned wearily on his staff, as if the Chief Lector’s leopard-skin cape across his shoulders was as heavy as lead.

I can’t say I felt sorry for him. We hadn’t parted as friends. We’d combined forces (more or less) to defeat the god Set, but he still considered us dangerous rogue magicians. He’d warned us that if we continued studying the path of the gods (which we had) he would destroy us the next time we met. That hadn’t given us much incentive to invite him over for tea.

His face was gaunt, but his eyes still glittered evilly. He studied the bloodred images in the curtains of light as if he were waiting for something.

“Est-il allé?” he asked, which my grammar school French led me to believe meant either “Is he gone?” or possibly “Have you repaired the island?”

Fine…it was probably the first one.

For a moment I was afraid he was talking to me. Then from behind the throne, a raspy voice answered, “Yes, my lord.”

A man stepped out of the shadows. He was dressed completely in white—suit, scarf, even white reflective sunglasses. My first thought was: My god, he’s an evil ice cream vendor.

He had a pleasant smile and chubby face framed in curly gray hair. I might’ve mistaken him as harmless, even friendly —until he took off his glasses.

His eyes were ruined.

I’ll admit I’m squeamish about eyes. A video of retinal surgery? I’ll run out of the room. Even the idea of contact lenses makes me cringe.

But the man in white looked as if his eyes had been splashed with acid, then repeatedly clawed by cats. His eyelids were masses of scar tissue that didn’t close properly. His eyebrows were burned away and raked with deep grooves. The skin above his cheekbones was a mask of red welts, and the eyes themselves were such a horrible combination of blood red and milky white that I couldn’t believe he was able to see.

He inhaled, wheezing so badly, the sound made my chest hurt. Glittering against his shirt was a silver pendant with a snake-shaped amulet.

“He used the portal moments ago, my lord,” the man rasped. “Finally, he has gone.”

That voice was as horrible as his eyes. If he had been splashed with acid, some of it must have gotten into his lungs. Yet the man kept smiling, looking calm and happy in his crisp white suit as if he couldn’t wait to sell ice cream to the good little children.

He approached Desjardins, who was still staring at the curtains of light. The ice cream man followed his gaze. I did the same and realized what the Chief Lector was looking at. At the last pillar, just next to the throne, the light was changing. The reddish tint of the modern age was darkening to a deep purple, the color of bruises. On my first visit to the Hall of Ages, I’d been told that the room grew longer as the years passed, and now I could actually see it happening. The floor and walls rippled like a mirage, expanding ever so slowly, and the sliver of purple light widened.