by P. J. Hoover
Henry nodded but didn’t speak. I think the whole meet-the-dad comment had him freaked out.
“Sure,” I said.
“Great. Bye.” Without another word, Blair whirled around and skipped away, blond curls bouncing as she went.
“Your girlfriend’s creepy,” I said to Henry, once I was sure she was out of earshot. Or at least I thought she was out of earshot. But the second the words were out of my mouth, she stopped skipping. She didn’t turn back toward us, but my skin prickled. How could she possibly have heard me? She was fifty feet away. I didn’t say another word, but Henry and I both waited. Finally she started skipping again and vanished from sight.
“She’s not my girlfriend,” Henry said. “And she’s not creepy. She’s super-interesting. And very smart. We have a lot in common.”
“She doesn’t blink,” I said. “Haven’t you noticed?”
“That’s a medical condition,” Henry said. “It just means she has a reduced amount of dopamine.”
“So you have noticed,” I said. “It’s weird.”
“You’re just jealous that she’s not paying attention to you,” Henry said.
“Hardly.” But even as I said it, I couldn’t help but wonder. Was that it? Could I possibly be jealous?
I shook my head. No. That was silly. I was not jealous because Blair Drake liked Henry and not me.
Or was I?
My phone buzzed, which saved me from having to think about it anymore. It was a text from Brandon asking when Henry and I were going to be at his house. I couldn’t really tell him about the grave-robbing thing, so I texted back and told him that we couldn’t make it. That something had come up.
bummer, Brandon texted back.
I’m not sure what possessed me, but I typed, maybe another time, and hit send before I could stop myself.
Was I really making plans with other people? It was so un-Tut-like, and yet part of me deep inside loved the idea of hanging out with other kids. Having fun. Not worrying about things like saving the world.
Henry and I stopped to get a funnel cake, because, well, funnel cake. The line was huge; all sorts of people were at the carnival. Most of the picnic tables were taken by families with strollers and balloons with scary clowns on them. But at one of the tables there was a single person I recognized.
Well, he wasn’t technically a person. He was a god.
Thoth stood next to a picnic table, skateboard propped up next to it. He had a spray paint can poised in his hand and he studied the top of the table. It was already covered with a bunch of bright colors. As Henry and I walked over, the colors separated out into a giant grid.
“Give me a word,” Thoth said, not even looking up.
“Graveyard,” I said without even thinking about it. With the night I had ahead of me, it was most on my mind.
“Monster,” Henry said.
He must’ve still been thinking about Humbaba.
Thoth nodded and kept painting. “Those are good ones. I’ll take them.”
“Stop doing that,” I said. This power Thoth had to draw words out of people … well, it just left me feeling like I’d given away a deep secret.
Thoth switched out the paint. “Stop doing it? No way, Boy King. It’s how I get words. People give me words. I give them words in return. It keeps the universe in balance.”
I highly doubted that the fate of the universe rested on Thoth giving and receiving words, but there was no reason to pick a fight with an Egyptian god if I didn’t have to.
“So what word do you have for me?” I asked.
Thoth clipped the paint can back into his belt and then clasped me on my shoulders with his giant paint-covered hands. “I got the perfect word for you, Boy King.”
Henry laughed.
“Also, can we please stop saying ‘Boy King’?” I said.
Thoth seemed to consider this. “We as in … you and who? Henry? Sure. You guys don’t have to say ‘Boy King.’”
It’s not what I meant at all, and Thoth knew it.
“So what’s my word?” I asked again.
“Bob,” Thoth said.
“Bob? What kind of word is that?”
He flicked his hands upward, and drops of paint flew off, splashing across my face. Paint. Monster drool. Colonel Cody was going to insist on lye soap to get me clean.
“It’s a palindrome,” Henry said. “You know the longest palindrome sentence?”
I knew he’d tell me if I didn’t stop him. “But what’s it supposed to mean?”
“It’s your word,” Thoth said. “First word I think of when I look at you. Just like you give me the first word that comes to your mind.” He turned to Henry. “What about you? Do you want your word?”
Henry wiped his finger in the paint on the table, but it had already dried. “Is it also a palindrome?”
“Maybe,” Thoth said. “I’ll tell you after you play a game with me.”
That’s what he’d painted on the picnic table. It was a giant Senet board.
I was about to explain to Thoth that the last thing we had time to do was play a game of Senet, but Henry sat right down like it was game day at school. “I have no clue how to play,” he said.
Thoth sat across from him. “Don’t worry. I’m a great teacher.”
I’d played plenty of Senet before, back in Egypt. It was kind of like chess but much simpler and with a lot more luck. Gil and I used to play at the townhouse, too, from time to time. I probably still had a Senet board somewhere around there. But I had no intention of watching Henry and Thoth play. The game could take hours. So after finishing my funnel cake, I left them to it and wandered off.
I’ll say this: Blair was right. This was the best carnival I’d been to in years. There were jugglers around every corner and food trucks serving everything from deep-fried pickles on a stick to Frito pie. But all the grease from the funnel cake had made my stomach start to hurt, so I followed signs until I found the funhouse.
It must’ve just been closed, maybe for cleaning, because when I walked up, they were pulling the gate open to let people back in. I paid my ten dollars—way expensive; I don’t care how big of a funhouse it was—and was about to go inside, when someone walked up and said, “Are you going to pay for me, too?”
My insides went to mush. Tia stood there tapping her combat boot, hands on hips, waiting. And I realized that there was nothing I’d rather do than go in the funhouse with her, so I pulled ten more dollars from my pocket and gave it to the tall, skinny guy who was taking money.
“Thanks, Tut,” Tia said. “Maybe you can buy me a funnel cake later.”
I would totally suffer stomach distress and eat another funnel cake for the chance to hang out with her.
I thought everything was cool, I thought Tia maybe just wanted to hang out or something, but no sooner were we inside than she whipped around to face me. “What are you doing here wasting time? Aren’t you supposed to be looking for something?”
The streak in her dark hair was blue, and she wore a blue tank top to match. It matched her eyes really nicely, too.
“Looking for what?” I said. She may have been part of the conversation at The Babylon Club about Gil, but she didn’t know anything about the sun disk. At least not as far as I knew. Unless, like before, she knew way more than she was letting on.
“Something important,” Tia said, widening her eyes, waiting for me to tell her.
“Nope,” I said. I liked Tia. A lot. But I still didn’t trust her completely. I had no plans to give away all my secrets to her. What if somehow she was working with Apep? She’d been part of the Cult of Set before. Their sister, even! As much as I wanted to trust her, I knew that I couldn’t.
“Whatever, Tut,” she said. “Keep your little secrets.” And she flipped her dark hair around in a completely cute way that made my face feel really hot.
“So you like carnivals?” I asked. It was a horrible way to change the conversation. I think it also sounded really stupid. But I did
n’t want to talk about the sun disk with her because I didn’t want to get tempted to tell her.
“Yeah. I like carnivals,” she said. “Or maybe I hate carnivals and I’m just following you.”
Of course I wanted to believe that, but Tia was way too cool to ever let on that she might kind of like me. But she had to kind of like me. Didn’t she?
For as crowded as the carnival was, nobody else had come into the funhouse behind us. The ten-dollar price tag probably kept them out. It was just me and Tia. Alone. She took off ahead of me, walking along the slanting floor. I slipped ahead of her, balancing without needing to hold on once, because I was an immortal, and that’s just the cool kind of thing immortals could do.
“You’re showing off,” Tia said when she caught up to me.
“I would never show off,” I said, putting on my best shocked look.
“Are you kidding?” Tia said. “You’ve shown off every time I’ve ever talked to you.”
“That’s completely not true,” I said.
“It’s totally true.”
“Tell me one time.”
“Okay,” Tia said. “How about that time you accidentally cut yourself and then healed it?”
“You dug your fingernails into me,” I said. “And it’s not showing off. I was healing myself. It’s cheaper than a Band-Aid.”
“It’s showing off,” Tia said. “And then when you took the scepter for me, you jumped, like, twenty feet into the air.”
Back during the Uncle Horemheb mess, I’d helped Tia steal the Holy Scepter of Set. It had been grasped in the hand of a giant statue of Set.
“It was the fastest way,” I said. “What was I supposed to do? Climb?”
“Most people would have,” Tia said.
“Yeah, but I’m not most people,” I said. “I’m an immortal. It’s why you needed me to get the scepter for you.” Only an immortal could steal the Scepter of Set.
“It was showing off.”
There was no way I was going to win this argument with Tia. That much was clear. But as I prepared to defend myself again, something jumped out at us from behind a doorway.
It was a life-size animatronic clown.
Tia actually shrieked. It was so un-Tia-like. And then her face, which was normally so cool and composed, grimaced.
“Ugh! I hate clowns,” she said, kicking it in the chest with her combat boot.
“You’re scared of clowns?” I laughed. “I didn’t think you were scared of anything.”
She hit me on the shoulder. “I’m not scared of clowns. I just hate them. They freak me out.”
“You are scared,” I said.
She narrowed her eyes. “Mention it again, Great Pharaoh, and I will find a way to get my revenge.”
I couldn’t imagine what worse thing she could do to me. When the Cult of Set had been chasing me, she’d nearly turned me over to her crazy brothers to be sacrificed and mummified for the good of Set. Speaking of which …
“Where are you living now?” I asked as we crept around the clown. I had no plans to admit it, but clowns freaked me out, too, what with their fake red smiles and their oversize shoes and polka-dot bow ties. Ahead of us was a mirror maze, which no matter how confusing would be way better than clowns.
Tia, maybe not even realizing it, had grabbed my hand during the clown thing. I didn’t pull away.
“At the funeral home,” she said, like it was no big deal.
“You’re living with Auntie Isis?” Holy Amun. If that was true, then there was a really good chance she could know about Ra’s sun disk.
“Sort of,” Tia said. “My brothers were out to get me, in case you didn’t notice. And after that whole thing with the Scepter of Set, I couldn’t really go back. They’re still looking for whoever took it.”
Of course, when I stole the scepter, Set got angrier than the Hulk. No god wanted his sacred objects stolen from him. But this had been exactly Tia’s mission. She was out to steal sacred objects from all the gods. It was some crazy scheme she had planned to reunite the Egyptian gods. It was never going to work. The last thing the gods wanted was to be reunited.
“So they still don’t know?” I asked, silently praying to Osiris that she wouldn’t pull her hand away from mine. I tried to pretend I was leading her through the mirror maze, making sure she wouldn’t get lost. It wasn’t far from the truth since the mirrors were everywhere and it was probably the most confusing mirror maze I’d ever been in. We turned left and right, trying to find our way out.
“They think you took it,” Tia said.
“What?”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s no big deal.”
“Um…” The last thing I needed now was the Cult of Set managing to get their act back together and coming after me again.
“They know Horus is protecting you,” Tia said. “You’re fine.”
With as strange as he’d been acting, Horus wasn’t protecting his kitty litter these days. I doubted his protective spells around my townhouse, if they were still in place, would hold out much longer.
Tia pulled her hand away from mine and pressed it forward on one of the mirrors. “Auntie N says there’s something funny about this carnival.”
“Auntie who?” I asked.
“Auntie N,” Tia said. “Nephthys. She’s taking care of the funeral homes while Auntie Isis is away.”
“Auntie Isis isn’t there?” I asked. Did Horus know that? It seemed like something he would have mentioned … if he’d been himself. Nephthys was Auntie Isis’s sister, Horus’s aunt. I almost never saw her. But here Tia was talking about her like it was just another regular thing on another regular day. How far enmeshed was Tia in this whole Egyptian gods thing anyway?
“She had to go away for a little while,” Tia said. “But Auntie N is taking care of everything.”
Keeping the mummification business going strong, I was sure.
“What did she say about the carnival? Funny how?” As far as I could tell, it was a typical suburban junk-food and moneymaking way to keep kids busy for hours on end, all for the good of some charity, of course.
“Funny like…” Tia leaned forward and pressed her nose against the mirror. “Do you see something in here?”
I leaned forward, too, pressing my nose the same way she was. And instantly I knew I’d made a mistake. There was something in the mirror. Something that started coming at me the second it saw me. It was long like a snake but had the head of a bird with eyes like black diamonds. Hypnotic eyes that refused to let my eyes go. Waving around it were tentacles covered in suction cups that looked like they could suck the marrow from my bones.
“Back away!” I yelled, yanking Tia with me as I retreated from the mirror. Too late. The image of the thing reflected in every mirror around us. I slammed against one after another, hitting them with my fists, but I couldn’t find the exit. There was no way out.
“Tut?” Tia said. She clenched my arms.
Images of Gil, captured and trapped, flickered through my mind. Snakes everywhere. Darkness. Gil hurt. In trouble.
“It’s some sort of creature of Apep,” I said. “We need to find a way out.”
I slammed my elbows into the mirrors. I tried throwing fireballs. I closed my eyes, hoping that when the visual connection through the mirrors was broken, the snake-bird creature would vanish. Nothing worked.
What would Gil do in this situation? If he were here with me, we’d find a way out. We’d fight this minion of Apep together. But Gil wasn’t here. I had to do this on my own.
“I have your friend, scarab heart,” a voice hissed through the air. It was the voice of a snake, and it made my skin crawl. Like Apep himself was somehow speaking through this monster.
“Give me Gil,” I said, with as much command as I could. I’d never seen this creature before. Never even heard of anything like it.
“Gilgamesh is nearly mine,” the voice of Apep through the creature hissed. “He always has been. But now I am stronger.
No one will ever be able to defeat me again. I am invincible.”
Gil was not Apep’s. That much I would make certain of. I would die trying. And I had no intention of dying. I had to find a way to free Gil and destroy Apep, in that order. And I had to start by finding a way out of this funhouse.
“Return Gil to me now,” I said, using my pharaoh voice. Not that I thought I was going to convince Apep, Lord of Chaos, to just hand Gil over.
The bird-monster darted its head from side to side, looking everywhere at once. Its tentacles waved around, reaching for me and Tia, but we kept skipping out of the way. And then it flicked a tongue out like a snake, smelling the air around us.
“I smell what’s inside you, immortal,” the bird-monster hissed. “Come closer so I can see you. Then you will be mine.”
This had to end. If Apep captured me, too, I’d never get the sun disk. I kicked at the mirror in front of me. I jumped to the ceiling, trying to break through. But the mirrors seemed to be closing in on us, inch by inch.
“I always get what I want,” the creature said.
“Not today,” Tia said. She reached into one of the pockets of her cargo pants and pulled out, of all things, the Holy Scepter of Set. She threw it as hard as she could. It spun through the air and slammed into one of the mirrors.
All the mirrors shattered, raining glass down everywhere. Tia and I covered our heads and waited for the glass to stop falling. When I finally dared to open my eyes, there was no sign of Apep. No reflections left. The mirrors had not only shattered, they had turned to dust.
“You’re horrible to spend time with. You know that, right?” Tia said. She grabbed the scepter from the piles of dust and shoved it back into her pocket.
“You keep the scepter with you?”
Tia brushed the dust from her dark hair. She, like me, was covered in a fine layer of the powder. “Weapons of the gods are useful when you’re fighting other gods.”
“But what about Set? What if he finds you?” It was like Tia was trying to get into even more trouble than she already was.
She patted my cheek. “He thinks you have it. Remember?”
Great Amun, it was a mess of epic proportions. But I couldn’t worry about it now. If Apep had come after me because I was immortal, he could come after Henry, too. I had to warn him.
