by P. J. Hoover
“Your message was from Gil,” I said.
“Is that your question?” Thoth asked.
I shook my head. “I’m trying to find him. Do you know where he is?”
“Maybe,” Thoth said, super-slowly.
“Where?” I asked.
“Yeah, see, that’s where the problem comes in,” Thoth said. “I know where everyone is, at any time. I can’t see them, but I know. It’s just what I do. It comes with the job. Someone needs a message delivered, and I deliver it to them.”
“So what’s the problem, then?” I asked. It seemed simple enough to me. He could tell us exactly where Gil was. No more searching required.
“I don’t tell,” Thoth said.
“What do you mean, you don’t tell? That’s ridiculous.”
“No, it’s not so ridiculous,” Thoth said. He pulled a can of paint from his belt and uncapped it. Before I could stop him, he started spraying something on the center of my coffee table.
“Great Master, he’s a god. What should we do?” Colonel Cody said. From the side of the table, he clasped and unclasped his hands furiously, like he could hardly hold himself still.
I put up a hand. “It’s okay.” The coffee table could always be replaced. “Is there a reason why you’re vandalizing my townhouse?”
“No reason,” Thoth said, but he continued to paint.
“So why, then, can’t you tell me where Gil is?” It was a simple, straightforward question.
Thoth didn’t even look at me as he answered. He changed out one can for the next, and continued on with whatever he was painting.
“See, here’s the thing, Boy King. Let’s say this past year when the Cult of Set was after you—you remember how fun that was, running from them?”
“Of course I remember,” I said. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Well, let’s say that your crazy uncle had asked me where you were so he could pinpoint your location and kill you.”
“Yeah,” I said, and even as the word came out, I saw where Thoth was going with this whole thing.
“If I’d just told him, would that have made you happy?”
“It’s not the same thing,” I said. “Gil needs help. He could be in danger. You have to tell me where he is.”
Thoth clipped the paint can back onto his belt, and then took his finger and smeared a line through some of the wet paint in a few curls.
“It’s exactly the same thing,” Thoth said. “I can’t choose sides. I deliver messages, I give words, but I don’t give away secrets. If I did, nobody would ever trust me again.”
I clenched my hands because there had to be some way to get past Thoth’s logic. But as much as I tried, I couldn’t think of anything.
Once Thoth finished smearing the line through the paint, he stood up.
“Okay, fine,” I said. “I get that you can’t tell me where Gil is, even though I think it’s stupid. But can you at least tell me where a certain place is?”
“Sure,” Thoth said. Then without another word, he walked to the front door of my townhouse and left. I ran after him, but he was already gone.
“Ugh,” I said. I slammed the door after him, making a bunch of stuff on my walls shake. I hadn’t even had a chance to ask him to deliver a message for me.
“Great Master, we formally request permission to repaint your coffee table,” Colonel Cody said.
I waved my hands. “Whatever.” Why did the gods have to be so infuriating? They were all the same. Full of tricks and games and caught up in making both mortal and immortal lives miserable.
“Very good,” Colonel Cody said.
“Wait, Tut.”
I looked back into the family room. Henry stood over the coffee table, staring down at Thoth’s painting.
“What?”
“I’ve seen this before.”
I joined him and studied the painting, too. There on the coffee table was a smeared letter B, done up in all sorts of cool colors. It looked really familiar.
“You remember from yesterday, right?” Henry said. “When we first met Thoth.”
I thought back. We’d been near Georgetown, under the bridge. Near the old Bayou club. Painted on the door of the closed-down club had been this same letter B. To the right of the image was a small group of eight eyeballs. The same eyeball symbol from the paper vinyl record I’d found in Gil’s trunk.
“Great Amun, the gods are annoying,” I said.
Horus hissed from the top of the futon.
“I mean, not you, Horus,” I said. I’d nearly forgotten what had happened when we’d walked into the townhouse to begin with. “You aren’t annoying at all.”
This was a lie. Horus was as annoying as every other god I’d met. He knew this. I knew this. But he only glared at me with his good eye.
“It’s The Babylon Club,” I said, pulling the piece of paper from my pocket and holding it up.
“Thoth told us where it is,” Henry said.
And we hadn’t even asked. It would be so great to actually get a straight answer out of a god, but given that that was never going to happen, I’d have to be happy with the clue that Thoth left us here.
9
WHERE WE MEET THE WORST BOUNCERS IN THE UNIVERSE
We waited until it got dark, which weirdly was way earlier than it should have been. It was summer and the sun should have been setting close to eight-thirty, but it was only seven o’clock when the sun dipped below the horizon. I wanted to ask Horus about it, but he sat out on the fire escape, watching the sky, watching the birds, hissing low under his breath. In the last few days he hadn’t even mentioned Bast, his cat god girlfriend. Something was definitely wrong.
One of the shabtis cleared his throat, so I looked down. There stood Colonel Cody, next to my gym shoe.
“Respectfully, I must disagree with this plan,” Colonel Cody said. “Your possibly immortal friend and you should not seek out the heathen.”
Henry quirked up his face, I guess trying to decide if this was an insult or not.
“Of course we should look for Gil,” Henry said. “We can’t just sit here doing nothing.”
“Yes, I see the argument,” Colonel Cody said. “But it’s bad enough that great Tutankhamun has the heathen’s heart.”
“What do you mean, bad enough?” I asked. “Is this about the incense again?”
Colonel Cody shook his head frantically. “Of course not.” But I knew it was. I was going to have to find a way to keep the shabtis from trying to cleanse me anymore. Earlier today the shabtis had begged me to let them do some sort of oatmeal scrub cleansing thing. I’d said no, but to tell you the truth, I was tempted to say yes. It sounded like the perfect way for a pharaoh to be pampered.
“We’re looking for Gil,” I said. Henry, I knew, was with me. We’d been through enough together already. And the shabtis … they’d do what I asked, even if it didn’t make them happy.
Henry and I headed out of the townhouse, three shabtis in tow. There was no way Colonel Cody was going to let me go to a heathen nightclub without him. Even though I knew exactly where we were going, Colonel Cody took charge of the whole operation, searching the streets before he would let us follow. Gil didn’t have anyone to watch out for him like the shabtis watched out for me. And with each day that went by—each hour—I was more certain he was in trouble. Serious trouble. I had to make sure he was okay.
After a couple covert detours suggested by Colonel Cody, we finally came to the place under the bridge in Georgetown where the Bayou club used to be. The whole area was pitch black and boarded up. If the painted B hadn’t still been visible above the door, I would have sworn we were in the wrong place. But this was where Thoth had told us to come.
Colonel Cody bowed low. “It would be my greatest desire to scout out the club for you ahead of time. Defeat possible foes.”
My heart hummed with the anticipation of what was ahead. I had enough energy to fight a herd of angry elephants with my bare hands. Gil
could be here, in this club.
“It’s fine,” I said to the shabti. “In fact, it’s best for you guys to wait out here.”
His face remained deadpan. “Certainly you jest, Great Pharaoh.”
I glanced around to see if anyone had heard the “Great Pharaoh” thing, but there was no one nearby except Henry. The people who’d been here watching Thoth paint yesterday were long gone. Actually, Thoth’s Sumerian graffiti was gone, too. City officials must be cracking down.
“Not kidding,” I said. “We aren’t sure what we’ll find inside.”
“Precisely why we should accompany you,” Colonel Cody said. He snapped his fingers and Majors Rex and Mack stepped forward, arms crossed over their chests. They each wore a small sword and a bow and arrows slung across their backs.
“Not this time. Just wait out here.” And then I stepped forward, around the shabtis.
Henry and I walked to the boarded-up door. There was no movement and not a single light that I could see.
“You think it’s the right place?” Henry said.
There was no doubt that the symbol above the door matched the one Thoth had painted on my coffee table.
“It has to be.” I reached up to yank the piece of wood off the door. But my hand passed right through it.
“It’s an illusion,” Henry said. He shoved his hand in and out, testing it.
I didn’t have time for games. This was the way in. I took a deep breath and stepped through.
It was pitch black. Deathly quiet. All I could hear was something breathing, slow breaths, almost like a soft snore. My scarab heart sensors went into high gear, but I took another step forward because Henry followed me in. Whatever was ahead, I wasn’t backing away. Gil had some kind of connection to this place, and I needed to find Gil before it was too late.
I raised my finger to my lips so Henry would know to be quiet, but right then my cell phone buzzed with an incoming text message. It was the worst possible timing in the world.
Something moved in the darkness.
“Watch out!” I said, but it was too late. Whatever was hiding in the dark landed on me, knocking me flat on my stomach and squashing me underneath it. My arms were pinched behind me. The thing had come out of nowhere.
Correction. Things. I discovered there was more than one when I let the light escape from my scarab heart. I turned my head to look over at Henry. He, too, was pinned to the ground, except he was face-up and could see his attacker—which made his situation all the worse.
A giant scorpion sat on top of Henry.
“What is this thing?” Henry called.
“Push it off!” I twisted my arms around over my head, breaking the grip of the scorpion. I rolled out from under it and got the great idea to make vines grow from the ceiling, but when I tried—when I summoned the immortal god-given energy that Osiris had granted me—nothing happened.
Curse the gods. Why wouldn’t my powers return?
I went for plan B instead. I focused all my energy and concentrated. I’d managed to summon a fireball the other day. I held out my hands and waited for it to appear. Except it didn’t. And my attempts only gave our attackers a chance to regroup. They came at us again.
“Can’t you do anything?” I asked Henry. I hated that I felt so helpless. Gil giving me his scarab heart should have made me even fiercer than before, but I was nothing but a weakling. It stunk.
All the confidence I’d seen on Henry’s face in the last couple days evaporated. “I don’t know how.”
The scorpions advanced on us, clacking their pincers together. They might not be able to kill me or Henry—if he turned out to be immortal—but they could pull us apart, limb by limb. That was no way to spend eternity.
“Who dares enter The Babylon Club with no invitation?” the scorpion on the left called out. Its voice screeched like nails on a chalkboard. Chills ran under my skin and my heart glowed even brighter.
The positive side of things was that they hadn’t attacked us again. The negative side was that they looked like they were ready to at any given second. I crouched down, ready to jump out of the way.
“I do.” I pulled out my bargaining chip. Not like I was ashamed to; it just always seemed like such bragging. “Did I mention I’m King Tut?” I called, knowing they’d be dropping to their feet and bowing pretty soon.
“King who?” the scorpion said.
“King Tut. Tutankhamun. You know, from Egypt.”
The scorpions slowly shook their heads back and forth. “Never heard of him,” the scorpion on the right said. If possible, his voice was even more screeching than the first.
“Seriously? You’ve never heard of me?” For three thousand years, people have known who I was. I was the king of legends. The famous boy king. I had to work hard to keep my identity a secret. And now, when I actually wanted someone to recognize my name, they didn’t know who I was.
The scorpion on the right looked to the one on the left. He shook his head. Or her head. I wasn’t sure how to tell which.
“Nope, never heard of you, Tutty-common,” the scorpion said.
We had to get past the scorpions. I’d never hear the end of it from Colonel Cody if we didn’t. It would be years and years of “I told you so” and they’d never let me so much as go to the bathroom alone again.
“Here, you can Google it,” Henry said. He reached to pull out his phone, but the scorpions must have thought he was going for a weapon because the one on the left was on him in two seconds flat, pinning him to the ground.
“What kind of weapon is this Google you speak of?” the scorpion hissed, spraying saliva all over Henry.
“It’s not a weapon,” Henry said. “It’s a—”
“Silence!” the scorpion boomed. “We will have no part of this deception.”
I’d given up on Henry doing anything to help, so I tried again to summon Gil’s powers from inside my chest. Fire. Smoke. Heat. Nothing worked.
My phone buzzed again with another stupid text message. I was going to mummify whoever it was.
The scorpion still standing eyed my pocket warily, like he thought my cell phone was secretly a hand grenade. “Do you have an invitation?”
I mentally tried to silence the phone. It didn’t work. “Do I need one?”
The scorpion above Henry whipped its tail around, and when I saw the spike on the end, I grimaced. It reminded me of the immortal-killing knife that both Uncle Horemheb and I had been after. He’d cut me with it during a fight and nearly killed me. Thankfully, the knife wasn’t here. These scorpions were. They were right in front of me.
“Don’t let them sting you,” I said to Henry.
“You don’t say.” Henry eyed the spiky stinger that hovered in the air above him.
“Everyone who enters must have an invitation,” the scorpion in front of me said. “No invitation means death.” And then it pounced, landing on my chest.
A claw grabbed both of my hands, and the giant spike tail whipped around and aimed directly over my head.
These were definitely the guys you wanted organizing your next party. They took the RSVP thing way seriously.
A drop of the poison from the spike tail dripped onto my forehead. I tilted my head back, hoping it wouldn’t go into my eyes. This was not how I imagined the evening would go.
“Wait, Tut. I think I got this,” Henry called. As he spoke, he started to glow. Sort of like how my scarab heart glows, except the light was coming from all over him.
“You think you got this?” I repeated. I had no clue what Henry thought he would do.
But Henry obviously had some kind of plan. The glowing coming off his body brightened, and he started muttering words just like he had the other day at camp. I recognized a bunch of the words. They sounded exactly like spells from the Book of the Dead, except I didn’t remember the spell he was incanting. The light coming off him grew with each second that passed. As I watched, the scorpions started twitching and flailing around like badly progra
mmed automatons.
The claws of the scorpion holding me loosened enough for me to slip my arms out of its grip and shove the thing off me. It tumbled sideways, fell over, twitched a few times, and then lay still.
“What did you do?” I asked, hopping to my feet and brushing off my clothes.
“I paralyzed them.” Henry scratched his head. “At least that’s what I think I did.”
“Where’d you get the spell?” I asked. I didn’t remember a “How to Paralyze Scorpions” spell from the Book of the Dead.
“I don’t know,” Henry said. “I just knew it.”
“Well, it was really awesome,” I said. “You did that.” I pointed at the two scorpions who were stuck helpless on the ground. Their eyes still followed us.
“Yeah, I think you’re right,” Henry said, and he couldn’t help the stupid grin that crept onto his face.
One of the scorpions screeched, “Release us now so we may finish you off.”
If nothing else, these guys were persistent.
“Are you kidding?” I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the paper vinyl record. “We’re here for a reason.” I shoved it into their faces.
It hissed, but in a weird, not-so-scary way. “An invitation,” it said. “Why didn’t you say so?”
10
WHERE WE SPIN VINYL WITH A SUMERIAN GOD
After the paralyzing spell wore off, the scorpions started moving again, but they didn’t try to kill us. Instead, they showed us the trapdoor to the club below. I felt the walls shake when the piece of floorboard lifted, and flashing lights filled the room. We were definitely in the right place.
We weren’t five steps down the ladder when the scorpions slammed the trapdoor closed above our heads. I guess they had to go back to work—preparing to sting to death the next hapless victim who happened to stumble into The Babylon Club. But despite the scorpion bouncers, the place was packed with a dance floor and an entire balcony level filled with tables and people hanging over the railing, watching below.
“You think everyone here had an invitation?” Henry said.
I didn’t see how it was possible. There hadn’t been anyone else standing around outside. And I hadn’t spotted any dead bodies in the scorpion den. The only person who looked like he might work here was some bald guy with sunglasses who stood next to the soda machine. It had one hundred different buttons, which he pushed in all sorts of crazy patterns. He handed out sodas with both hands. So I walked over to him and pulled out the record invitation.
