by P. J. Hoover
“No clue,” I said. I looked around the apartment until I found Captains Otis and Otto. They were master hackers. They always solved any computer issues I had. “Hey, bit heads, I got a problem for you.”
They scrambled to unplug a bunch of cords and then hurried over, carting a laptop on their heads.
“What site do you need us to hack into, Great Pharaoh?” Captain Otto said.
Captain Otis set the laptop on top of the coffee table and unlocked it by typing in twenty characters that made up the password.
“Yes, perhaps the FBI? The CIA?” Captain Otis said. “Or is it the middle school again to make a grade adjustment?”
“You have them change your grades?” Henry said.
“Only once,” I said. “But it was an honest error. I was just fixing it.”
“I don’t know, Tut,” Henry said. “You should talk to the teacher next time.”
Of all the things I may be, a cheater was not one of them. But I didn’t want to take the time to defend myself right now.
“No hacking required today,” I said to the shabtis. “Can you tell me where The Babylon Club is?”
“Directions,” Captain Otis said, shaking his head. “Such a menial task.”
Menial, maybe, but the last time I’d tried to use Google Maps on my own, the shabtis had started changing the computer password daily.
“It shall be done exactly as you ask, Great Pharaoh,” Captain Otto said, and he and Captain Otis landed on the laptop and started typing and clicking the trackpad buttons so fast, I couldn’t hope to keep up.
They started mumbling a couple minutes into the search, and when they hadn’t sent the directions directly to my phone within five minutes, I got worried.
“Did you find it?” I asked.
“One moment,” Captain Otis said, holding up a tiny pointer finger.
Another moment went by. Then another. After a solid five minutes, the two shabti hackers turned around and lowered their heads.
“It seems we have failed you, Great Pharaoh,” Captain Otto said.
“You couldn’t find it?” They’d found everything I’d ever asked, even the official middle of nowhere, which happened to be somewhere in Idaho, according to Google.
“It’s not that we didn’t find it,” Captain Otis said. “It’s that there is no such place as The Babylon Club.”
I held up the paper record. “But I have proof that it exists right here.”
“Great Master, perhaps you would care to refine your search terms,” Captain Otto said.
I shook my head. “No, that’s okay.” All this meant was that whoever was in charge of The Babylon Club kept it off the grid, the same way Captains Otis and Otto kept me off the grid.
“Tut, look. There’s a date.” Henry flipped the paper around in my fingers. “From last fall.”
He was right. It was written in silver Sharpie on the back.
“That’s almost exactly when Gil went away. And maybe…”
Henry’s eyes widened. My immortal energy had given him a sense of adventure. “Maybe if we go to this place, someone there might know where Gil is.”
“But Great Master, as we were just saying, there is no such destination as The Babylon Club,” Captain Otto said.
I folded the miniature vinyl-record paper and shoved it into my pocket. “No, it just means we need to use some new tactics to figure out where it is.”
8
WHERE HENRY LOSES AT SCRABBLE
As much as I tried—and trust me, I tried—I couldn’t talk Henry out of skipping science camp. Today it was at the Air and Space Museum. We were supposed to meet in the main planetarium, but the planetarium was closed, so we met under the Spirit of St. Louis instead. Of course, Blair was already there, along with the rest of the group. She waved frantically as we walked in, blond hair bouncing up and down, and before I could stop him, Henry hurried over to join her.
“Why’s the planetarium closed?” Brandon asked.
“It’s probably broken,” Joe said. “Right, Tut?”
“Sure,” I said, not sure why he was asking me. “That stinks.” I’d been there lots of times before, so I wasn’t sad to miss it. But it seemed like the right response.
“Hey, what are you guys doing this weekend?” Brandon asked me and Henry. “My parents said I could have people over.”
Us? Like he was suggesting he’d have Henry and me over … for a playdate?
“Um … I think we have plans.” It was so spur of the moment, I had no idea how to respond. I wasn’t used to this kind of attention. What I was used to was being invisible. But Gil’s scarab heart had changed that. And I wasn’t sure how I felt about it.
“You don’t have plans the whole weekend,” Brandon said. “It’s Saturday night. You and Henry should both come.”
“What about me?” Blair said. “Can I come? I mean, I have to be at my dad’s carnival during the day for some super-important charity fundraising stuff, but we could all go to the carnival. It would be amazing and awesome and fun, and totally for a great cause. And then we could head to your house after.”
Brandon looked to Joe, who looked to me like he thought I was going to save him. I pressed my lips together.
“No girls,” Joe said. “Duh.”
“Are you kidding me?” Blair said. “That is so twentieth century.”
Twentieth century or not, there was no way Blair would magically become one of the guys. But she still looked like she was going to stomp her foot in protest.
“I’ll let you know,” I said to Brandon. “I’ll text you.”
Camp finally started. I thought about Gil’s note while Camp Counselor Crystal rambled on about lunar eclipses and solar eclipses and binary star systems and stuff like that. When she started in on planets, she and Henry got into a heated debate about whether Pluto should be a planet or not. Henry started ticking off debate points on his fingers, and I knew they’d be at it for a while.
“I have to go text someone,” I whispered to Brandon while Camp Counselor Crystal listed off the differences between planets and dwarf planets. “I’ll be over there.” I pointed to the closed door of the planetarium. Blair watched me as I walked away, not blinking, even as I overheard her saying to Joe, “No way does IHOP have better funnel cakes. The funnel cakes at my dad’s carnival are the best ever.”
Funnel cakes were pretty tasty, but they weren’t what was on my mind. Neither was Pluto. I needed to figure out where this Babylon Club place was. And maybe …
I sat on the ground outside the closed-off planetarium and pulled up Tia’s number. My scarab heart clenched up, like I was nervous. But that was ridiculous. I wasn’t nervous to text Tia. I was King Tut. Ruler of Upper and Lower Egypt. Lord of the Two Lands. Reformer of Egypt.
Okay, fine, I was a little nervous. My heart skipped a few more times in my chest and then finally settled down.
have you ever heard of a place called the babylon club? I texted.
If she knew, this might be enough to get her attention. If she didn’t know, maybe it would pique her interest.
I waited, watching Henry and his continued debate on Pluto and its hopeful replanetification—his word, not mine. Blair had finally stopped pestering Joe and Brandon about the carnival and now alternated between staring at me and Henry. Behind the closed door of the planetarium came loud banging, like they were dismantling the entire thing. It had been built eons ago, so an upgrade might be in order. A sign out front read, RENOVATION IN PROGRESS. BUILDING A BRIGHTER FUTURE.
Tia never responded to my text, and Henry finally finished debating and noticed where I was. He waved me over, so I gave up on Tia and headed back to join the group.
* * *
“You like Blair,” I said to Henry after we left the museum.
“No,” Henry said. “I mean, yes. I mean, she’s really nice, I guess.”
“You do like her,” I said.
“Ugh. I don’t know,” Henry said. “Do you think I do?”
“Of course. It’s really obvious.” It didn’t take Hathor, the Egyptian goddess of love, to know that Henry thought Blair was cool.
“Well, don’t tell her,” Henry said.
I was pretty sure Blair already knew … unless she was as clueless as Henry.
“I got an idea,” I said, as we started back in the direction of my townhouse. Huge flocks of all kinds of birds swarmed overhead, like they wanted to roost somewhere but weren’t quite sure where to go.
“I got an idea, too,” Henry said.
“What?”
“We should go to Blair’s dad’s carnival,” Henry said.
Seriously? He was thinking about cotton candy? We needed to find Gil.
“We have to go to The Babylon Club. Remember?”
“After the carnival?” Henry said.
“We’re not going to a carnival right now,” I said. “What we’re going to do is have Thoth deliver a message for us to this club, the same way he brought that message from Gil to me. Then, we can follow him and see where he goes. If he delivers messages to people, he should know where everyone and everything is, right?”
Henry seemed to consider this. “Right, I guess. But couldn’t we just ask him?”
That was a possibility. It’s just that nothing in my life seemed to work that easily.
“We could try,” I said, as we walked up the steps to my townhouse.
No sooner were Henry and I inside than Horus launched himself at the door, slamming it behind us.
“You shouldn’t be out there,” Horus hissed at us. His good eye was wide and filled with an almost feral look. I’d seen this look before, when the new moon approached. It was when Horus went blind. And when he went blind, he went crazy. His fur, which was dirty and dull before, was matted like he’d been drenched in Sumerian monster snot.
“We’re fine,” I said, moving in front of Henry. If Horus was having some sort of freak-out, I didn’t want Henry to get caught in the middle. I still didn’t know if Henry was immortal, and having Horus try to disembowel him wasn’t how I wanted to find out.
“It’s not safe out there,” Horus said, waving his paws in front of the door. The protective wards on the townhouse snapped into place. “There are demons out there. Monsters. They’re coming for us. Coming for you, Tut.”
I had to be careful here. Horus was not himself and I didn’t want him to go crazy and start clawing my face off. My eyes flickered to Colonel Cody, but he and the shabtis held back. This was super-crazy talk. I guessed that the shabtis were beside themselves with worry, trying to decide if they should attack Horus.
“It’s perfectly safe,” I said, stepping to the side. I needed to get on the other side of Horus, because there had to be something in the family room that could help. I looked around at the piles of Gil’s stuff, but nothing seemed the least bit useful. Maybe a spell from the Book of the Dead? Or a catnip toy?
“Haven’t you seen the sun?” Horus hissed. He stood arched on the tips of all four of his paws with his tail straight up in the air.
“The sun is setting,” I said. “It’s getting dark.”
“Exactly!” Horus said. “And have you seen the birds? The grackles and pigeons and geese. They don’t know what to do.”
So there had been something off with the birds.
“Maybe they’re migrating,” I said. “Birds do that, you know.”
“Not in the summer, Tut,” Henry said.
I could have kicked Henry, drawing attention to himself like that. Horus whipped around to face Henry. I was sure Horus was going to rake him with his claws.
“How dare you—” Horus started, but that’s when the door flew open.
“Is there some kind of problem here?” Thoth said, standing in the doorway. He raised a spray paint can in either hand, like he was prepared to strike, graffiti-style.
Horus spun and leapt in Thoth’s direction. But he stopped short of attacking Thoth. Thoth stared Horus down. Silent words seemed to pass between the two of them. As the seconds ticked by, Horus’s tail lowered, and he sat down and started licking his hind leg. Finally he pounced on a nearby scarab beetle and sucked its guts out.
“Well, that was weird,” Henry said under his breath.
It summarized the encounter perfectly.
“What are you doing here?” I asked Thoth. “How’d you get in?”
Five shabtis ran over and slammed the door. Seeing as how there were now two Egyptian gods in my townhouse, it was a good idea.
“Just thought I’d visit,” Thoth said.
“But the wards…” I said, waving my hand at the door. Whatever Horus had done to protect my townhouse had not kept Thoth out.
“Wards,” Thoth said, as if the mere thought of them was laughable. “How would I ever get my job done if every single little ward I came across blocked my way?”
He had a good point.
“You guys don’t need to bow,” I said to the shabtis, who lay prostrate in rows on the floor in front of Thoth.
Colonel Cody raised his little head just enough to peek at me. “But, Great Master…”
“Really,” I said. The gods were cocky enough for five immortal lifetimes.
“You got shabtis,” Thoth said. “Do they know any words?”
This immediately got Colonel Cody to his feet. “Great God of Knowledge, we have all sorts of words. I, personally, have taken it upon myself to memorize—”
Thoth put up a hand. “Sure, you know words, but do you always know the right word?”
Colonel Cody froze. “I’m sure should the situation arise where—”
“Wonderful. It’s always nice to see shabtis with words.” He turned to Henry. “How about a game of Scrabble?”
Henry looked super-happy, like Thoth had just asked him to recite the first hundred digits of pi. I guess having a god ask you to play a board game might be considered something special.
“I’m extremely good at Scrabble,” Henry said. I loved how his confidence in matters of the brain took over, even in the face of an Egyptian god.
Thoth smiled. “I’m better than you.”
“Yeah, not to brag, but I don’t think so,” Henry said.
I figured I’d let them duke it out, so I dug my Scrabble board out of the closet. It was buried under a stack of scrolls and some dirty boxers. Weird. Normally the shabtis were all over doing my laundry.
“Any reason you’re keeping my dirty clothes around?” I asked Lieutenant Roy.
He fell to the floor. “Our Great Pharaoh deserves better than this. All your clothes should be burned. You should buy new ones.” He pulled out a stick of incense and a match. I managed to grab both before he set my underwear on fire.
“Do not burn my clothes,” I said. Okay, that probably wasn’t good enough. “Do not burn anything of mine.” There. They’d have a hard time getting around that. I grabbed the Scrabble board and brought it over to the coffee table.
“Funny enough, I wanted to ask you a question,” I said to Thoth.
“Once the game is over,” Thoth said, grabbing the board.
“What do you mean, once the game is over?”
He pulled a bunch of letters from the Scrabble bag and handed it to Henry. “Once the game is over, you can ask me a question.”
“You have to finish playing just for me to ask?” I said.
“Those are the rules,” Thoth said. Then he lowered his voice and leaned toward me. “And I don’t think your cat is feeling so good.”
Yeah, that was the truth. There was definitely something wrong with Horus, but I didn’t know what.
I picked through the piles of Gil’s stuff for a while, wishing he were back. But no amount of wishing was going to make him magically appear. I ate a scone because I thought it might help me feel better. I even flipped through the scrolls of the Book of the Dead, pretending I had power over the spells in the book but knowing I didn’t. The only way I got power from the scrolls was when one of the gods gave it to me. Earlier in the
year, Horus had given me power for three spells, but the way Horus was acting now, I didn’t think he’d be giving me much of anything except a headache. Finally, when I couldn’t stand it any longer, I wandered back to the game board.
“Who’s winning? Are you guys almost done?” I asked.
The scarab beetles and Thoth’s presence seemed to have brought Horus back to normal. He sat on his scratching post so he could look directly down on the game.
Henry frowned. “Thoth. I swear he’s cheating.”
Thoth laughed and cracked his knuckles. “You seriously think I need to cheat? I played Scrabble for three days straight one time. And I won.” He looked up at me. “Could you have the shabtis get me something to eat? I’m starving here.”
“Hey,” Horus called out. “The Lord of Divine Words here wants something to eat.”
Colonel Cody looked at me, and I thought he might implode. The shabtis couldn’t stand taking orders from anyone but me. Not even Horus.
“Yeah, get him something to eat,” I said, and the shabtis ran off, returning with my plate of scones. I only managed to get one more before Thoth and Henry devoured the rest.
“I used to be really good at this game,” Henry said when it was finally over. Crumbs covered the game board, sprinkled between the letters.
“Well, he is the god of words,” I said. “You should cut yourself a little slack.”
“How was the word I gave you the other day?” Thoth said. He started putting the letters back in the bag, like they were going to play again, but I grabbed it from him. No way was I letting that happen.
“How’d you know what word we needed?” I said, handing the Scrabble board to Lieutenant Roy. He ran off to de-crumb it and put it back in the closet.
“Yeah, that was weird,” Henry said. “You painted a word, and then we needed that word, like, five minutes later.”
“You just said it yourself, Tut. I’m the god of words,” Thoth said. “It’s what I do. Words are my thing. So what’s your question, Boy King?”
I shuddered but said nothing about the “Boy King” comment. This was a god I was talking to, after all. An important god. And possibly a god who could help us. Henry, on the other hand, snorted while trying to hold in his laugh.
