by Rick Riordan
“Show me where The Book of Thoth is,” I ordered Doughboy. “Quick!”
As we moved down the shelves, Doughboy grew so warm in my hands, I was afraid he would melt. He kept a running commentary on the books.
“Ah, Mastery of the Five Elements!”
“Is that the one we want?” I asked.
“No, but a good one. How to tame the five essential elements of the universe—earth, air, water, fire, and cheese!”
“Cheese?”
He scratched his wax head. “I’m pretty sure that’s the fifth, yes. But moving right along!”
We turned to the next shelf. “No,” he announced. “No. Boring. Boring. Oh, Clive Cussler! No. No.”
I was about to give up hope when he said, “There.”
I froze. “Where—here?”
“The blue book with the gold trim,” he said. “The one that’s—”
I pulled it out, and the entire room began to shake.
“—trapped,” Doughboy continued.
Sadie squawked urgently. I turned and saw her take flight. Something small and black swooped down from the ceiling. Sadie clashed with it in midair, and the black thing disappeared down her throat.
Before I could even register how gross that was, alarms blared downstairs. More black forms dropped from the ceiling and seemed to multiply in the air, swirling into a funnel cloud of fur and wings.
“There’s your answer,” Doughboy told me. “Desjardins would want to summon fruit bats. You mess with the wrong books, you trigger a plague of fruit bats. That’s the trap!”
The things were on me like I was a ripe mango—diving at my face, clawing at my arms. I clutched the book and ran to the table, but I could hardly see. “Sadie, get out of here!” I yelled.
“SAW!” she cried, which I hoped meant yes.
I found Dad’s workbag and shoved the book and Doughboy inside. The library door rattled. Voices yelled in French.
Horus, bird time! I thought desperately. And no emu, please!
I ran for the glass doors. At the last second, I found myself flying—once again a falcon, bursting into the cold rain. I knew with the senses of a predator that I was being followed by approximately four thousand angry fruit bats.
But falcons are wicked fast. Once outside, I raced north, hoping to draw the bats away from Sadie and Bast. I outdistanced the bats easily but let them keep close enough that they wouldn’t give up. Then, with a burst of speed, I turned in a tight circle and shot back toward Sadie and Bast in a hundred-mile-an-hour dive.
Bast looked up in surprise as I plummeted to the sidewalk, tumbling over myself as I turned back into a human. Sadie caught my arm, and only then did I realize she was back to normal as well.
“That was awful!” she announced.
“Exit strategy, quick!” I pointed at the sky, where an angry black cloud of fruit bats was getting closer and closer.
“The Louvre.” Bast grabbed our hands. “It’s got the closest portal.”
Three blocks away. We’d never make it.
Then the red door of Desjardins’ house blasted open, but we didn’t wait to see what came out of it. We ran for our lives down the rue des Pyramides.
S A D I E
19. A Picnic in the Sky
[Right, Carter. Give me the mic.]
So I’d been to the Louvre once before on holiday, but I hadn’t been chased by vicious fruit bats. I would’ve been terrified, except I was too busy being angry with Carter. I couldn’t believe the way he’d treated my bird problem. Honestly, I thought I would be a kite forever, suffocating inside a little feathery prison. And he had the nerve to make fun!
I promised myself I’d get revenge, but for the time being we had enough worries staying alive.
We raced along in the cold rain. It was all I could do to avoid slipping on the slick pavements. I glanced back and saw two figures chasing us—men with shaved heads and goatees and black raincoats. They might’ve passed for normal mortals except they each carried a glowing staff. Not a good sign.
The bats were literally at our heels. One nipped my leg. Another buzzed my hair. I had to force myself to keep running. My stomach still felt queasy from eating one of the little pests when I was a kite—and no, that had not been my idea. Totally a defensive instinct!
“Sadie,” Bast called as we ran. “You’ll have only seconds to open the portal.”
“Where is it?” I yelled.
We dashed across the rue de Rivoli into a wide plaza surrounded by the wings of the Louvre. Bast made straight for the glass pyramid at the entrance, glowing in the dusk.
“You can’t be serious,” I said. “That isn’t a real pyramid.”
“Of course it’s real,” Bast said. “The shape gives a pyramid its power. It is a ramp to the heavens.”
The bats were all around us now—biting our arms, flying around our feet. As their numbers increased, it got harder to see or move.
Carter reached for his sword, then apparently remembered it wasn’t there anymore. He’d lost it at Luxor. He swore and rummaged around in his workbag.
“Don’t slow down!” Bast warned.
Carter pulled out his wand. In total frustration, he threw it at a bat. I thought this a pointless gesture, but the wand glowed white-hot and thumped the bat solidly on the head, knocking it out of the air. The wand ricocheted through the swarm, thumping six, seven, eight of the little monsters before returning to Carter’s hand.
“Not bad,” I said. “Keep it up!”
We arrived at the base of the pyramid. The plaza was thankfully empty. The last thing I wanted was my embarrassing death by fruit bats posted on YouTube.
“One minute until sundown,” Bast warned. “Our last chance for summoning is now.”
She unsheathed her knives and started slicing bats out of the air, trying to keep them away from me. Carter’s wand flew wildly, knocking fruit bats every which way. I faced the pyramid and tried to think of a portal, the way I’d done at Luxor, but it was almost impossible to concentrate.
Where do you wish to go? Isis said in my mind.
God, I don’t care! America!
I realized I was crying. I hated to, but shock and fear were starting to overwhelm me. Where did I want to go? Home, of course! Back to my flat in London—back to my own room, my grandparents, my mates at school and my old life. But I couldn’t. I had to think about my father and our mission. We had to get to Set.
America, I thought. Now!
My burst of emotion must’ve had some effect. The pyramid trembled. Its glass walls shimmered and the top of the structure began to glow.
A swirling sand vortex appeared, all right. Only one problem: it was hovering above the very top of the pyramid.
“Climb!” Bast said. Easy for her—she was a cat.
“The side is too steep!” Carter objected.
He’d done a good job with the bats. Dazed heaps littered the pavement, but more still flew round us, biting every bit of exposed skin, and the magicians were closing in.
“I’ll toss you,” Bast said.
“Excuse me?” Carter protested, but she picked him up by his collar and pants and tossed him up the side of the pyramid. He skittered to the top in a very undignified manner and slipped straight through the portal.
“Now you, Sadie,” Bast said. “Come on!”
Before I could move, a man’s voice yelled, “Stop!”
Stupidly, I froze. The voice was so powerful, it was hard not to.
The two magicians were approaching. The taller one spoke in perfect English: “Surrender, Miss Kane, and return our master’s property.”
“Sadie, don’t listen,” Bast warned. “Come here.”
“The cat goddess deceives you,” the magician said. “She abandoned her post. She endangered us all. She will lead you to ruin.”
I could tell he meant it. He was absolutely convinced of what he said.
I turned to Bast. Her expression had changed. She looked wounded, even grief-strick
en.
“What does he mean?” I said. “What did you do wrong?”
“We have to leave,” she warned. “Or they will kill us.”
I looked at the portal. Carter was already through. That decided it. I wasn’t going to be separated from him. As annoying as he was, Carter was the only person I had left. (How is that for depressing?)
“Toss me,” I said.
Bast grabbed me. “See you in America.” Then she chucked me up the side of the pyramid.
I heard the magician roar, “Surrender!” And an explosion rattled the glass next to my head. Then I plunged into the hot vortex of sand.
I woke in a small room with industrial carpeting, gray walls, and metal-framed windows. I felt as if I were inside a high-tech refrigerator. I sat up groggily and discovered I was coated in cold, wet sand.
“Ugh,” I said. “Where are we?”
Carter and Bast stood by the window. Apparently they’d been conscious for a while, because they’d both brushed themselves off.
“You’ve got to see this view,” Carter said.
I got shakily to my feet and nearly fell down again when I saw how high we were.
An entire city spread out below us—I mean far below, well over a hundred meters. I could almost believe we were still in Paris, because a river curved off to our left, and the land was mostly flat. There were white government buildings clustered around networks of parks and circular roads, all spread out under a winter sky. But the light was wrong. It was still afternoon here, so we must’ve traveled west. And as my eyes made their way to the other end of a long rectangular green space, I found myself staring at a mansion that looked oddly familiar.
“Is that...the White House?”
Carter nodded. “You got us to America, all right. Washington, D.C.”
“But we’re sky high!”
Bast chuckled. “You didn’t specify any particular American city, did you?”
“Well...no.”
“So you got the default portal for the U.S.—the largest single source of Egyptian power in North America.”
I stared at her uncomprehendingly.
“The biggest obelisk ever constructed,” she said. “The Washington Monument.”
I had another moment of vertigo and moved away from the window. Carter grabbed my shoulder and helped me sit down.
“You should rest,” he said. “You passed out for...how long, Bast?”
“Two hours and thirty-two minutes,” she said. “I’m sorry, Sadie. Opening more than one portal a day is extremely taxing, even with Isis helping.”
Carter frowned. “But we need her to do it again, right? It’s not sunset here yet. We can still use portals. Let’s open one and get to Arizona. That’s where Set is.”
Bast pursed her lips. “Sadie can’t summon another portal. It would overextend her powers. I don’t have the talent. And you, Carter...well, your abilities lie elsewhere. No offense.”
“Oh, no,” he grumbled. “I’m sure you’ll call me next time you need to boomerang some fruit bats.”
“Besides,” Bast said, “when a portal is used, it needs time to cool down. No one will be able to use the Washington Monument—”
“For another twelve hours.” Carter cursed. “I forgot about that.”
Bast nodded. “And by then, the Demon Days will have begun.”
“So we need another way to Arizona,” Carter said.
I suppose he didn’t mean to make me feel guilty, but I did. I hadn’t thought things through, and now we were stuck in Washington.
I glanced at Bast out the corner of my eye. I wanted to ask her what the men at the Louvre had meant about her leading us to ruin, but I was afraid to. I wanted to believe she was on our side. Perhaps if I gave her a chance, she’d volunteer the information.
“At least those magicians can’t follow us,” I prompted.
Bast hesitated. “Not through the portal, no. But there are other magicians in America. And worse...Set’s minions.”
My heart climbed into my throat. The House of Life was scary enough, but when I remembered Set, and what his minions had done to Amos’s house...
“What about Thoth’s spellbook?” I said. “Did we at least find a way to fight Set?”
Carter pointed to the corner of the room. Spread out on Bast’s raincoat was Dad’s magic toolbox and the blue book we’d stolen from Desjardins.
“Maybe you can make sense of it,” Carter said. “Bast and I couldn’t read it. Even Doughboy was stumped.”
I picked up the book, which was actually a scroll folded into sections. The papyrus was so brittle, I was afraid to touch it. Hieroglyphs and illustrations crowded the page, but I couldn’t make sense of them. My ability to read the language seemed to be switched off.
Isis? I asked. A little help?
Her voice was silent. Maybe I’d worn her out. Or maybe she was cross with me for not letting her take over my body, the way Horus had asked Carter to do. Selfish of me, I know.
I closed the book in frustration. “All that work for nothing.”
“Now, now,” Bast said. “It’s not so bad.”
“Right,” I said. “We’re stuck in Washington, D.C. We have two days to make it to Arizona and stop a god we don’t know how to stop. And if we can’t, we’ll never see our dad or Amos again, and the world might end.”
“That’s the spirit!” Bast said brightly. “Now, let’s have a picnic.”
She snapped her fingers. The air shimmered, and a pile of Friskies cans and two jugs of milk appeared on the carpet.
“Um,” Carter said, “can you conjure any people food?”
Bast blinked. “Well, no accounting for taste.”
The air shimmered again. A plate of grilled cheese sandwiches and crisps appeared, along with a six-pack of Coke.
“Yum,” I said.
Carter muttered something under his breath. I suppose grilled cheese wasn’t his favorite, but he picked up a sandwich.
“We should leave soon,” he said between bites. “I mean...tourists and all.”
Bast shook her head. “The Washington Monument closes at six o’clock. The tourists are gone now. We might as well stay the night. If we must travel during the Demon Days, best to do it in daylight hours.”
We all must’ve been exhausted, because we didn’t talk again until we’d finished our food. I ate three sandwiches and drank two Cokes. Bast made the whole place smell like fish Friskies, then started licking her hand as if preparing for a cat bath.
“Could you not do that?” I asked. “It’s disturbing.”
“Oh.” She smiled. “Sorry.”
I closed my eyes and leaned against the wall. It felt good to rest, but I realized the room wasn’t actually quiet. The entire building seemed to be humming ever so slightly, sending a tremble through my skull that made my teeth buzz. I opened my eyes and sat up. I could still feel it.
“What is that?” I asked. “The wind?”
“Magic energy,” Bast said. “I told you, this is a powerful monument.”
“But it’s modern. Like the Louvre pyramid. Why is it magic?”
“The Ancient Egyptians were excellent builders, Sadie. They picked shapes—obelisks, pyramids—that were charged with symbolic magic. An obelisk represents a sunbeam frozen in stone—a life-giving ray from the original king of the gods, Ra. It doesn’t matter when the structure was built: it is still Egyptian. That’s why any obelisk can be used for opening gates to the Duat, or releasing great beings of power—”
“Or trapping them,” I said. “The way you were trapped in Cleopatra’s Needle.”
Her expression darkened. “I wasn’t actually trapped in the obelisk. My prison was a magically created abyss deep in the Duat, and the obelisk was the door your parents used to release me. But, yes. All symbols of Egypt are concentrated nodes of magic power. So an obelisk can definitely be used to imprison gods.”
An idea was nagging at the back of my mind, but I couldn’t quite pin it down. Some
thing about my mother, and Cleopatra’s Needle, and my father’s last promise in the British Museum: I’ll put things right.
Then I thought back to the Louvre, and the comment the magician had made. Bast looked so cross at the moment I was almost afraid to ask, but it was the only way I’d get an answer. “The magician said you abandoned your post. What did he mean?”
Carter frowned. “When was this?”
I told him what had happened after Bast chucked him through the portal.
Bast stacked her empty Friskies cans. She didn’t look eager to reply.
“When I was imprisoned,” she said at last, “I—I wasn’t alone. I was locked inside with a...creature of chaos.”
“Is that bad?” I asked.
Judging from Bast’s expression, the answer was yes. “Magicians often do this—lock a god up together with a monster so we have no time to try escaping our prison. For eons, I fought this monster. When your parents released me—”
“The monster got out?”
Bast hesitated a little too long for my taste.
“No. My enemy couldn’t have escaped.” She took a deep breath. “Your mother’s final act of magic sealed that gate. The enemy was still inside. But that’s what the magician meant. As far as he was concerned, my ‘post’ was battling that monster forever.”
It had the ring of truth, as if she were sharing a painful memory, but it didn’t explain the other bit the magician had said: She endangered us all. I was getting up the nerve to ask exactly what the monster had been, when Bast stood up.
“I should go scout,” she said abruptly. “I’ll be back.”
We listened to her footsteps echo down the stairwell.
“She’s hiding something,” Carter said.
“Work that out yourself, did you?” I asked.
He looked away, and immediately I felt bad.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s just...what are we going to do?”
“Rescue Dad. What else can we do?” He picked up his wand and turned it in his fingers. “Do you think he really meant to...you know, bring Mom back?”
I wanted to say yes. More than anything, I wanted to believe that was possible. But I found myself shaking my head. Something about it didn’t seem right. “Iskandar told me something about Mum,” I said. “She was a diviner. She could see the future. He said she made him rethink some old ideas.”
