The Complete Kane Chronicles (25 page)

Without knocking, Khufu opened the door and waddled inside.

“After you, chicken man,” I said to Carter. (And yes, I’m sure he was regretting telling me about that particular incident. After all, I couldn’t
completely
stop teasing him. I have a reputation to maintain.)

I expected another broom closet. Instead, the office was impossibly big.

The ceiling rose at least ten meters, with one side of the office all windows, looking out over the Memphis skyline. Metal stairs led up to a loft dominated by an enormous telescope, and from somewhere up there came the sound of an electric guitar being strummed quite badly. The other walls of the office were crammed with bookshelves. Worktables overflowed with weird bits and bobs—chemistry sets, half-assembled computers, stuffed animals with electrical wires sticking out of their heads. The room smelled strongly of cooked beef, but with a smokier, tangier scent than I’d ever smelled.

Strangest of all, right in front of us, half a dozen longnecked birds—ibises—sat behind desks like receptionists, typing on laptop computers with their beaks.

Carter and I looked at each other. For once I was at a loss for words.

“Agh!”
Khufu called out.

Up in the loft, the strumming stopped. A lanky man in his twenties stood up, electric guitar in hand. He had an unruly mane of blond hair like Khufu’s, and he wore a stained white lab coat over faded jeans and a black T-shirt. At first I thought blood was trickling from the corner of his mouth. Then I realized it was some sort of meat sauce.

“Fascinating.” He broke into a wide grin. “I’ve discovered something, Khufu. This is
not
Memphis, Egypt.”

Khufu gave me a sideways look, and I could swear his expression meant,
Duh.

“I’ve also discovered a new form of magic called blues music,” the man continued. “And barbecue. Yes, you must try barbecue.”

Khufu looked unimpressed. He climbed to the top of a bookshelf, grabbed a box of Cheerios, and began to munch.

The guitar man slid down the banister with perfect balance and landed in front of us. “Isis and Horus,” he said. “I see you’ve found new bodies.”

His eyes were a dozen colors, shifting like a kaleidoscope, with hypnotic effect.

I managed to stutter, “
Um,
we’re not—”

“Oh, I see,” he said. “Trying to share the body, eh? Don’t think I’m fooled for a minute, Isis. I know you’re in charge.”

“But she’s not!” I protested. “My name is Sadie Kane. I assume you’re Thoth?”

He raised an eyebrow. “You claim not to know me? Of course I’m Thoth. Also called Djehuti. Also called—”

I stifled a laugh. “Ja-hooty?”

Thoth looked offended. “In Ancient Egyptian, it’s a perfectly fine name. The Greeks called me Thoth. Then later they confused me with their god Hermes. Even had the nerve to rename my sacred city Hermopolis, though we’re nothing alike. Believe me, if you’ve ever met Hermes—”

“Agh!”
Khufu yelled through a mouthful of Cheerios.

“You’re right,” Thoth agreed. “I’m getting off track. So you claim to be Sadie Kane. And…” He swung a finger toward Carter, who was watching the ibises type on their laptops. “I suppose you’re not Horus.”

“Carter Kane,” said Carter, still distracted by the ibises’ screens. “What
is
that?”

Thoth brightened. “Yes, they’re called computers. Marvelous, aren’t they? Apparently—”

“No, I mean what are the birds typing?” Carter squinted and read from the screen. “‘A Short Treatise on the Evolution of Yaks’?”

“My scholarly essays,” Thoth explained. “I try to keep several projects going at once. For instance, did you know this university does not offer majors in astrology or leechcraft? Shocking! I intend to change that. I’m renovating new headquarters right now down by the river. Soon Memphis will be a true center of learning!”

“That’s brilliant,” I said halfheartedly. “We need help defeating Set.”

The ibises stopped typing and stared at me.

Thoth wiped the barbecue sauce off his mouth. “You have the nerve to ask this after last time?”

“Last time?” I repeated.

“I have the account here somewhere….” Thoth patted the pockets of his lab coat. He pulled out a rumpled piece of paper and read it. “No, grocery list.”

He tossed it over his shoulder. As soon as the paper hit the floor, it became a loaf of wheat bread, a jug of milk, and a six-pack of Mountain Dew.

Thoth checked his sleeves. I realized the stains on his coat were smeared words, printed in every language. The stains moved and changed, forming hieroglyphs, English letters, Demotic symbols. He brushed a stain off his lapel and seven letters fluttered to the floor, forming a word:
crawdad
. The word morphed into a slimy crustacean, like a shrimp, which wiggled its legs for only a moment before an ibis snapped it up.

“Ah, never mind,” Thoth said at last. “I’ll just tell you the short version: To avenge his father, Osiris, Horus challenged Set to a duel. The winner would become king of the gods.”

“Horus won,” Carter said.

“You do remember!”

“No, I read about it.”

“And do you remember that without my help, Isis and you both would’ve died? Oh, I tried to mediate a solution to prevent the battle. That is one of my jobs, you know: to keep balance between order and chaos. But no-o-o, Isis convinced me to help your side because Set was getting too powerful. And the battle almost destroyed the world.”

He complains too much,
Isis said inside my head.
It wasn’t so bad.

“No?” Thoth demanded, and I got the feeling he could hear her voice as well as I could. “Set stabbed out Horus’s eye.”

“Ouch.” Carter blinked.

“Yes, and I replaced it with a new eye made of moonlight. The Eye of Horus—your famous symbol. That was
me,
thank you very much. And when you cut off Isis’s head—”

“Hold up.” Carter glanced at me. “I cut off her
head
?”

I got better,
Isis assured me.

“Only because I healed you, Isis!” Thoth said. “And yes, Carter, Horus, whatever you call yourself, you were so mad, you cut off her head. You were reckless, you see—about to charge Set while you were still weak, and Isis tried to stop you. That made you so angry you took your sword— Well, the point is, you almost destroyed each other before you could defeat Set. If you start another fight with the Red Lord, beware. He will use chaos to turn you against each other.”

We’ll defeat him again,
Isis promised.
Thoth is just jealous.

“Shut up,” Thoth and I said at the same time.

He looked at me with surprise. “So, Sadie…you
are
trying to stay in control. It won’t last. You may be blood of the pharaohs, but Isis is a deceptive, power-hungry—”

“I can contain her,” I said, and I had to use all my will to keep Isis from blurting out a string of insults.

Thoth fingered the frets of his guitar. “Don’t be so sure. Isis probably told you she helped defeat Set. Did she also tell you she was the reason Set got out of control in the first place? She exiled our first king.”

“You mean Ra?” Carter said. “Didn’t he get old and decide to leave the earth?”

Thoth snorted. “He was old, yes, but he was
forced
to leave. Isis got tired of waiting for him to retire. She wanted her husband, Osiris, to become king. She also wanted more power. So one day, while Ra was napping, Isis secretly collected a bit of the sun god’s drool.”

“Eww,”
I said. “Since when does drool make you powerful?”

Thoth scowled at me accusingly. “You mixed the spit with clay to create a poisonous snake. That night, the serpent slipped into Ra’s bedroom and bit him on the ankle. No amount of magic, even mine, could heal him. He would’ve died—”

“Gods can die?” Carter asked.

“Oh, yes,” Thoth said. “Of course most of the time we rise again from the Duat—eventually. But this poison ate away at Ra’s very being. Isis, of course, acted innocent. She cried to see Ra in pain. She tried to help with her magic. Finally she told Ra there was only one way to save him: Ra must tell her his secret name.”

“Secret name?” I asked. “Like Bruce Wayne?”

“Everything in Creation has a secret name,” Thoth said. “Even gods. To know a being’s secret name is to have power over that creature. Isis promised that with Ra’s secret name, she could heal him. Ra was in so much pain, he agreed. And Isis healed him.”

“But it gave her power over him,” Carter guessed.

“Extreme power,” Thoth agreed. “She forced Ra to retreat into the heavens, opening the way for her beloved, Osiris, to become the new king of the gods. Set had been an important lieutenant to Ra, but he could not bear to see his brother Osiris become king. This made Set and Osiris enemies, and here we are five millennia later, still fighting that war, all because of Isis.”

“But that’s not my fault!” I said. “I would never do something like that.”

“Wouldn’t you?” Thoth asked. “Wouldn’t you do anything to save your family, even if it upset the balance of the cosmos?”

His kaleidoscope eyes locked on mine, and I felt a surge of defiance. Well, why shouldn’t I help my family? Who was this nutter in a lab coat telling me what I could and couldn’t do?

Then I realized I didn’t know who was thinking that: Isis or me. Panic started building in my chest. If I couldn’t tell my own thoughts from those of Isis, how long before I went completely mad?

“No, Thoth,” I croaked. “You have to believe me. I’m in control—me, Sadie—and I need your help. Set has our father.”

I let it spill out, then—everything from the British Museum to Carter’s vision of the red pyramid. Thoth listened without comment, but I could swear new stains developed on his lab coat as I talked, as if some of my words were being added to the mix.

“Just look at something for us,” I finished. “Carter, hand him the book.”

Carter rummaged through his bag and brought out the book we’d stolen in Paris. “You wrote this, right?” he said. “It tells how to defeat Set.”

Thoth unfolded the papyrus pages. “Oh, dear. I hate reading my old work. Look at this sentence. I’d never write it that way now.” He patted his lab coat pockets. “Red pen—does anyone have one?”

Isis chafed against my willpower, insisting that we blast some sense into Thoth.
One fireball,
she pleaded.
Just one enormous magical fireball, please?

I can’t say I wasn’t tempted, but I kept her under control.

“Look, Thoth,” I said. “Ja-hooty, whatever. Set is about to destroy North America at the very least, possibly the world. Millions of people will die. You said you care about balance. Will you help us or not?”

For a moment, the only sounds were ibis beaks tapping on keyboards.

“You
are
in trouble,” Thoth agreed. “So let me ask, why do you think your father put you in this position? Why did he release the gods?”

I almost said,
To bring back Mum.
But I didn’t believe that anymore.

“My mum saw the future,” I guessed. “Something bad was coming. I think she and Dad were trying to stop it. They thought the only way was to release the gods.”

“Even though using the power of the gods is incredibly dangerous for mortals,” Thoth pressed, “and against the law of the House of Life—a law that I convinced Iskandar to make, by the way.”

I remembered something the old Chief Lector had told me in the Hall of Ages. “Gods have great power, but only humans have creativity.” “I think my mum convinced Iskandar that the rule was wrong. Maybe he couldn’t admit it publicly, but she made him change his mind. Whatever is coming—it’s so bad, gods and mortals are going to need each other.”

“And what is coming?” Thoth asked. “The rise of Set?” His tone was coy, like a teacher trying a trick question.

“Maybe,” I said carefully, “but I don’t know.”

Up on the bookshelf, Khufu belched. He bared his fangs in a messy grin.

“You have a point, Khufu,” Thoth mused. “She does not sound like Isis. Isis would never admit she doesn’t know something.”

I had to clamp a mental hand over Isis’s mouth.

Thoth tossed the book back to Carter. “Let’s see if you act as well as you talk. I will explain the spell book, provided you prove to me that you truly have control of your gods, that you’re not simply repeating the same old patterns.”

“A test?” Carter said. “We accept.”

“Now, hang on,” I protested. Maybe being homeschooled, Carter didn’t realize that “test” is normally a bad thing.

“Wonderful,” Thoth said. “There is an item of power I require from a magician’s tomb. Bring it to me.”

“Which magician’s tomb?” I asked.

But Thoth took a piece of chalk from his lab coat and scribbled something in the air. A doorway opened in front of him.

“How did you do that?” I asked. “Bast said we can’t summon portals during the Demon Days.”

“Mortals can’t,” Thoth agreed. “But a god of magic can. If you succeed, we’ll have barbecue.”

The doorway pulled us into a black void, and Thoth’s office disappeared.

S A D I E

“WHERE ARE WE?” I ASKED.

We stood on a deserted avenue outside the gates of a large estate. We still seemed to be in Memphis—at least the trees, the weather, the afternoon light were all the same.

The estate must’ve been several acres at least. The white metal gates were done in fancy designs of silhouetted guitar players and musical notes. Beyond them, the driveway curved through the trees up to a two-story house with a white-columned portico.

“Oh, no,” Carter said. “I recognize those gates.”

“What? Why?”

“Dad brought me here once. A great magician’s tomb…Thoth has got to be kidding.”

“Carter, what are you talking about? Is someone buried here?”

He nodded. “This is Graceland. Home to the most famous musician in the world.”

“Michael Jackson lived here?”

“No, dummy,” Carter said. “Elvis Presley.”

I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or curse. “Elvis Presley. You mean white suits with rhinestones, big slick hair, Gran’s record collection—
that
Elvis?”

Carter looked around nervously. He drew his sword, even though we seemed to be totally alone. “This is where he lived and died. He’s buried in back of the mansion.”

I stared up at the house. “You’re telling me Elvis was a magician?”

“Don’t know.” Carter gripped his sword. “Thoth did say something about music being a kind of magic. But something’s not right. Why are we the only ones here? There’s usually a mob of tourists.”

“Christmas holidays?”

“But no security?”

I shrugged. “Maybe it’s like what Zia did at Luxor. Maybe Thoth cleared everyone out.”

“Maybe.” But I could tell Carter was still uneasy. He pushed the gates, and they opened easily. “Not right,” he muttered.

“No,” I agreed. “But let’s go pay our respects.”

As we walked up the drive, I couldn’t help thinking that the home of “the King” wasn’t very impressive. Compared to some of the rich and famous homes I’d seen on TV, Elvis’s place looked awfully small. It was just two stories high, with that white-columned portico and brick walls. Ridiculous plaster lions flanked the steps. Perhaps things were simpler back in Elvis’s day, or maybe he spent all his money on rhinestone suits.

We stopped at the foot of the steps.

“So Dad brought you here?” I asked.

“Yeah.” Carter eyed the lions as if expecting them to attack. “Dad loves blues and jazz, mostly, but he said Elvis was important because he took African American music and made it popular for white people. He helped invent rock and roll. Anyway, Dad and I were in town for a symposium or something. I don’t remember. Dad insisted I come here.”

“Lucky you.” And yes, perhaps I was beginning to understand that Carter’s life with Dad hadn’t been all glamour and holiday, but still I couldn’t help being a bit jealous. Not that I’d ever wanted to see Graceland, of course, but Dad had never insisted on taking me anywhere—at least until the British Museum trip when he disappeared. I hadn’t even known Dad was an Elvis fan, which was rather horrifying.

We walked up the steps. The front door swung open all by itself.

“I don’t like that,” Carter said.

I turned to look behind us, and my blood went ice cold. I grabbed my brother’s arm. “
Um,
Carter, speaking of things we don’t like…”

Coming up the driveway were two magicians brandishing staffs and wands.

“Inside,” Carter said. “Quick!”

I didn’t have much time to admire the house. There was a dining room to our left and a living room–music room to our right, with a piano and a stained glass archway decorated with peacocks. All the furniture was roped off. The house smelled like old people.

“Item of power,” I said. “Where?”

“I don’t know,” Carter snapped. “They didn’t have ‘items of power’ listed on the tour!”

I glanced out the window. Our enemies were getting close. The bloke in front wore jeans, a black sleeveless shirt, boots, and a battered cowboy hat. He looked more like an outlaw than a magician. His friend was similarly dressed but much heftier, with tattooed arms, a bald head, and a scraggly beard. When they were ten meters away, the man with the cowboy hat lowered his staff, which morphed into a shotgun.

“Oh, please!” I yelled, and pushed Carter into the living room.

The blast shattered Elvis’s front door and set my ears ringing. We scrambled to our feet and ran deeper into the house. We passed through an old-fashioned kitchen, then into the strangest den I’d ever seen. The back wall was made of vine-covered bricks, with a waterfall trickling down the side. The carpet was green shag (floor
and
ceiling, mind you) and the furniture was carved with creepy animal shapes. Just in case all that wasn’t dreadful enough, plaster monkeys and stuffed lions had been strategically placed around the room. Despite the danger we were in, the place was so horrid, I just had to stop and marvel.

“God,” I said. “Did Elvis have
no
taste?”

“The Jungle Room,” Carter said. “He decorated it like this to annoy his dad.”

“I can respect that.”

Another shotgun blast roared through the house.

“Split up,” Carter said.

“Bad idea!” I could hear the magicians tromping through the rooms, smashing things as they came closer.

“I’ll distract them,” Carter said. “You search. The trophy room is through there.”

“Carter!”

But the fool ran off to protect me. I
hate
it when he does that. I should have followed him, or run the other way, but I stood frozen in shock as he turned the corner with his sword raised, his body beginning to glow with a golden light…and everything went wrong.

Blam!
An emerald flash brought Carter to his knees. For a heartbeat, I thought he’d been hit with the shotgun, and I had to stifle a scream. But immediately, Carter collapsed and began to shrink, clothes, sword and all—melting into a tiny sliver of green.

The lizard that used to be my brother raced toward me, climbed up my leg and into my palm, where it looked at me desperately.

From around the corner, a gruff voice said, “Split up and find the sister. She’ll be somewhere close.”

“Oh, Carter,” I whispered fondly to the lizard. “I will
so
kill you for this.”

I stuffed him in my pocket and ran.

The two magicians continued to smash and crash their way through Graceland, knocking over furniture and blasting things to bits. Apparently they were not Elvis fans.

I ducked under some ropes, crept through a hallway, and found the trophy room. Amazingly, it was full of trophies. Gold records crowded the walls. Rhinestone Elvis jumpsuits glittered in four glass cases. The room was dimly lit, probably to keep the jumpsuits from blinding visitors, and music played softly from overhead speakers: Elvis warning everyone not to step on his blue suede shoes.

I scanned the room but found nothing that looked magical. The suits? I hoped Thoth did not expect me to wear one. The gold records? Lovely Frisbees, but no.

“Jerrod!” a voice called to my right. A magician was coming down the hallway. I darted toward the other exit, but a voice just outside it called back, “Yeah, I’m over here.”

I was surrounded.

“Carter,” I whispered. “Curse your lizard brain.”

He fluttered nervously in my pocket but was no help.

I fumbled through my magician’s bag and grasped my wand. Should I try drawing a magic circle? No time, and I didn’t want to duel toe-to-toe with two older magicians. I had to stay mobile. I took out my rod and willed it into a full-length staff. I could set it on fire, or turn it into a lion, but what good would that do? My hands started to tremble. I wanted to crawl into a ball and hide beneath Elvis’s gold record collection.

Let me take over,
Isis said.
I can turn our enemies to dust.

No,
I told her.

You will get us both killed.

I could feel her pressing against my will, trying to bust out. I could taste her anger with these magicians. How dare they challenge us? With a word, we could destroy them.

No,
I thought again. Then I remembered something Zia had said:
Use whatever you have available.
The room was dimly lit…perhaps if I could make it darker.

“Darkness,” I whispered. I felt a tugging sensation in my stomach, and the lights flickered off. The music stopped. The light continued to dim—even the sunlight faded from the windows until the entire room went black.

Somewhere to my left, the first magician sighed in exasperation. “Jerrod!”

“Wasn’t me, Wayne!” Jerrod insisted. “You always blame me!”

Wayne muttered something in Egyptian, still moving towards me. I needed a distraction.

I closed my eyes and imagined my surroundings. Although it was pitch-black, I could still sense Jerrod in the hallway to my left, stumbling through the darkness. I sensed Wayne on the other side of the wall to the right, only a few steps from the doorway. And I could visualize the four glass display cases with Elvis’s suits.

They’re tossing your house,
I thought.
Defend it!

A stronger pull in my gut, as if I were lifting a heavy weight—then the display cases blew open. I heard the shuffling of stiff cloth, like sails in the wind, and was dimly aware of four pale white shapes in motion—two heading to either door.

Wayne yelled first as the empty Elvis suits tackled him. His shotgun lit up the dark. Then to my left, Jerrod shouted in surprise. A heavy
clump!
told me he’d been knocked over. I decided to go in Jerrod’s direction—better an off-balance bloke than one with a shotgun. I slipped through the doorway and down a hall, leaving Jerrod scuffling behind me and yelling, “Get off! Get off!”

Take him while he’s down,
Isis urged.
Burn him to ashes!

Part of me knew she had a point: if I left Jerrod in one piece, he would be up in no time and after me again; but it didn’t seem right to hurt him, especially while he was being tackled by Elvis suits. I found a door and burst outside into the afternoon sunlight.

I was in the backyard of Graceland. A large fountain gurgled nearby, ringed by grave markers. One had a glass-encased flame at the top and was heaped with flowers. I took a wild guess: it must be Elvis’s.

A magician’s tomb.

Of course. We’d been searching the house, but the item of power would be at his gravesite. But what exactly
was
the item?

Before I could approach the grave, the door burst open. The big bald man with the straggly beard stumbled out. A tattered Elvis suit had its sleeves wrapped around his neck like it was getting a piggyback ride.

“Well, well.” The magician threw off the jumpsuit. His voice confirmed for me that he was the one called Jerrod. “You’re just a little girl. You’ve caused us a lot of trouble, missy.”

He lowered his staff and fired a shot of green light. I raised my wand and deflected the bolt of energy straight up. I heard a surprised coo—the cry of a pigeon—and a newly made lizard fell out of the sky at my feet.

“Sorry,” I told it.

Jerrod snarled and threw down his staff. Apparently, he specialized in lizards, because the staff morphed into a komodo dragon the size of a London taxicab.

The monster charged me with unnatural speed. It opened its jaws and would’ve bitten me in half, but I just had time to wedge my staff in its mouth.

Jerrod laughed. “Nice try, girl!”

I felt the dragon’s jaws pressing on the staff. It was only a matter of seconds before the wood snapped, and then I’d be a komodo dragon’s snack.
A little help,
I told Isis. Carefully, very carefully, I tapped in to her strength. Doing so without letting her take over was like riding a surfboard over a tidal wave, trying desperately to stay on my feet. I felt five thousand years of experience, knowledge, and power course through me. She offered me options, and I selected the simplest. I channeled power through my staff and felt it grow hot in my hands, glowing white. The dragon hissed and gurgled as my staff elongated, forcing the creature’s jaws open wider, wider, and then:
boom!

The dragon shattered into kindling and sent the splintered remains of Jerrod’s staff raining down around me.

Jerrod had only a moment to look stunned before I threw my wand and whapped him solidly on the forehead. His eyes crossed, and he collapsed on the pavement. My wand returned to my hand.

That would’ve been a lovely happy ending…except I’d forgotten about Wayne. The cowboy-hatted magician stumbled out the door, almost tripping over his friend, but he recovered with lightning speed.

He shouted, “Wind!” and my staff flew out of my hands and into his.

He smiled cruelly. “Well fought, darlin’. But elemental magic is always quickest.”

He struck the ends of both staffs, his and mine, against the pavement. A wave rippled over the dirt and pavement as if the ground had become liquid, knocking me off my feet and sending my wand flying. I scrambled backwards on hands and knees, but I could hear Wayne chanting, summoning fire from the staffs.

Rope,
Isis said.
Every magician carries rope.