by P. J. Hoover
“Pizza delivery.”
“Did you order pizza?” I asked Henry.
“No, but it is about dinnertime,” Henry said, and pulled the door open.
I stepped in front of Henry. The pizza delivery guy was about Gil’s age and wore a velour warm-up suit that didn’t look like the uniform of any pizza place I knew. His hair was the exact same color as Seth’s, except it was feathered back and fluffy instead of greasy and disgusting. I wondered if it was a coincidence that Seth was outside watching me and now there was a pizza guy who looked just like him. The pizza guy had a nametag on with a single red block letter B and a thick gold necklace that looked like it was made of hand-dipped scorpions.
“We didn’t order pizza.” I didn’t try to mask the suspicion in my voice. The red letters on the box read TEMPLE OF PIZZA. I’d never heard of it, and I knew all the pizza places around here.
“Naw, you must be wrong. We got a call to deliver this pizza here. You gonna pay or what?”
I pulled out some cash. Maybe the shabtis had ordered pizza for me. It would be just the kind of thing Lieutenant Virgil would do, since sometimes I forgot to eat.
“Nice place you got here.” The pizza guy peered into my town house. “You live alone?”
“Of course not,” I said. “And how’d you get here?” The only vehicle out front was the red van.
He pointed off to the side. “My bike. It’s around the corner.”
I felt my chest warm, like my scarab heart was going to start glowing, but I didn’t care. Who’d this guy think he was to intrude on the home of a pharaoh? “Who are you?”
“Just the pizza guy.” He shoved the pizza box at me and ran down the steps and out to the street. He jumped into the driver’s side of the van and it peeled away. Seth grinned at me from the passenger seat.
I kicked the door shut and dropped the cardboard pizza box on the coffee table. There was no way I was trusting something Seth Cooper was involved in.
Henry didn’t have the same suspicions I did. He set his water on the coffee table next to the TEMPLE OF PIZZA box.
I realized I had no appetite. Only suspicion. But Henry must’ve been hungry.
“I wonder what kind it is,” he said, and flipped open the top.
Ten asps came pouring out.
10
WHERE I FIGHT SNAKES
“That’s not pizza!” Henry screamed as he jumped onto the futon like some kind of scaredy cat. I didn’t blame him. Asps are only the most poisonous snakes in all of Africa. And even though their poison couldn’t kill me, I jumped up beside him.
“Maybe it’s one of those specialties. Like snakes and sausage.”
Henry stared at me like I’d gone crazy. If the fear hadn’t been so clear on his face, I would’ve laughed. This was the most excitement we’d had around the town house since the shabtis had set Gil’s room on fire. They’d been trying to remove heathen spirits. They’d claimed it was an accident.
“Let your cat out,” Henry managed to say as he edged up onto the back of the futon. The snakes had made their way off the coffee table and slithered on the ground below. “He can pounce on these things and eat them for dinner.”
“You know, asp really isn’t bad,” I said. “It’s better if you drain the venom.”
“Just don’t tell me it tastes like chicken. Because I don’t care.” Henry pulled his cell phone from his pocket.
“Who are you gonna call? Asps Are Us?”
“Animal control,” Henry said. “They can get rid of these things.”
I grabbed his phone and tossed it across the room. “No way.”
“They’re gonna kill us if we don’t get rid of them,” Henry said. He was partially right. They’d kill him. For me, they’d only prove to be a hassle. My immortal powers healed me from minor inconveniences like snake poison. But if Henry called someone, I’d have to explain his dead body and ten asps to a bunch of officials. And I’d certainly have to move. Not to mention, I might have to drop out of school, which in itself was reason enough to let the snakes live. But the temptation of no school couldn’t compete with Henry’s bulging eyes.
“No authorities,” I said. “I can handle them.”
“You!” Henry sounded hysterical again. The snakes slithered away from the coffee table and started climbing the sides of the futon, curling around the wooden legs. “What can you do?”
I wasn’t sure. It’d been six hundred years since I had to deal with asps. And even back then, there’d only been a few. My powers from Osiris were useless. What was I going to do? Tangle them in vines? They were snakes, not rodents. If Gil was around, he could have called on the power of the sun god to destroy them. But he wasn’t here.
My scarab heart pounded as the energy from the Book of the Dead called me. It wanted me to use it. Begged to be used. And it seemed to be my only option. I jumped off the futon.
“Don’t leave me here!” Henry screamed so loud the people two town houses over probably heard. “They’re getting closer.”
“Then jump!” I yelled.
“What!”
“Get off the futon!” I said. “Or they’re going to get you.”
Henry vaulted through the air in a way that would have filled Olympic gymnasts with envy.
“Follow me,” I said.
I yanked the Book of the Dead off the bookshelf and ran for the bathroom. “Quick! Into the tub!”
Henry didn’t ask any questions. I slammed the bathroom door shut behind us, and into the tub we went. Then I flipped open the golden box that held the scrolls.
“What are you doing?” Henry stared at the papyrus scrolls.
“Give me a second.”
“No, really, Tut. This isn’t a time for project research.”
“Finally, we agree on something about the project,” I said.
“Ha, ha.”
“Just trust me, okay?”
Henry looked like he trusted me about as much as he’d trust a blind man to lead him across the street. But he was running short on options.
“Please don’t let me die,” Henry said.
I looked down at the pages. There was something about snakes in the scrolls. I could almost swear to it. I thumbed through them and, after a silent prayer to Osiris, landed on the perfect page. I guess Osiris didn’t want Henry to be killed by snakes, either.
“I don’t mean to rush you, but I hear them,” Henry said. He grabbed one of Gil’s razors and held it menacingly in one hand.
I heard the slithering, too. They’d made it under the bathroom door. “What do you think you’re going to do with that razor?” I asked as I smoothed the scroll.
“I’m going to kill them,” Henry said.
“With a safety razor?” A razor wasn’t going to save us, but a spell from the Book of the Dead would.
My choices were:
(a) Spell to get rid of a snake
(b) Spell to not get bit by a snake
(c) Spell to not get eaten by a snake.
I decided on (a).
“O Rerek-snake, take yourself off, for Geb protects me;
get up, for you have eaten a mouse, which Re detests,
and you have chewed the bones of a putrid cat.”
Except I said it in ancient Egyptian, which sounded way cooler. The power of the Book of the Dead flooded out of me and the snakes burned to a crisp—all ten of them right there on the bathroom floor.
I tried to hold on to the energy as it left me—I didn’t want to let it go—but it was too late. I only had one spell left.
“What did you just do?” Henry asked. “Are they—?”
“Dead? Yep. I knew there was something in the scrolls about snakes.”
Henry stepped out of the bathtub and over to the crisped ashes, still holding Gil’s razor. “How did you do that?”
That’s when the situation majorly tanked. The bathroom door flew open and fifty shabtis poured in. Colonel Cody threw himself to the ground, even as the others began cleaning
up the ashes.
“Great Master—”
“Shhhhh!” I tried to quiet him.
Colonel Cody stopped mid-sentence. I jumped out of the tub in an effort to shove the shabtis out of the bathroom. Henry looked like … well, like he’d just seen fifty miniature men march into the bathroom and start lying prostrate before me.
“I can explain.”
Henry let out something halfway between a laugh and a snort. “You can explain why you have little men running around your town house?”
“Would you believe they’re automatons?” I said.
Ten of the shabtis had little brooms and ten had little dustpans. They swept the piles of ashes into stacks, and each stack was being dumped into the toilet and flushed. Lieutenant Roy directed the whole thing.
“Great Pharaoh, if you would let me explain—” Colonel Cody began again.
I cringed, praying maybe Henry hadn’t heard.
“Pharaoh?” Henry took off his glasses and blinked rapidly, like maybe bad eyesight could explain the whole thing.
“I programmed them to say that.” But even as I said it, two of the shabtis bumped into Henry’s gray Chucks and tried to push them out of the way to get at a few stray ashes.
“Come on, Tut,” Henry said. “They’re not automatons.”
“Sure they are,” I said. “They’re the latest models—”
But I never got the chance to finish. Horus jumped into the bathroom and hissed. “It stinks of Set in here.”
On a positive note, this got Henry’s attention away from the shabtis. On a negative note, well …
“Your cat talks?”
I glared at Horus. “He’s not supposed to.”
“Don’t tell me he’s an automaton also. And don’t treat me like an idiot.”
I decided retreat might be my best defense, so I moved out of the bathroom and into the kitchen. Henry and Horus followed. Using the spell from the Book of the Dead had left me thirstier than a humpless camel. I yanked open the fridge, pulled out a soda, and downed it in one gulp. When I went back into the family room, Horus paced from side to side, bending down to check under doors and in heating vents. He even yanked open the incinerator chute and sniffed inside. Then he whipped around and faced me.
“What in the name of Anubis happened here, Tut?” Horus said. “My protective spells should have kept Set out.”
“Set? Spells?” Henry said, but both Horus and I ignored him.
“We got bad pizza,” I said.
“That’s an understatement.” Henry sat on the futon, still holding his glasses. Out of habit, I made a pathetic attempt with my identity spells to make him forget everything he’d seen. I didn’t expect it to work. This was beyond the limit of my powers. We’d crossed a point of no return.
“You used the Book of the Dead,” Horus said like an accusation.
The departure of the energy Horus had given me left a giant hole inside me. And it wasn’t coming back.
“It was the only thing I could think of,” I said. “There were ten snakes, all coming at us.”
“The spells are for Horemheb,” Horus said. “And Set.”
“Who do you think sent the snakes in the first place?” I said. “Maybe if you hadn’t been avoiding Henry, you could have helped out.”
Henry didn’t even flinch at the “avoiding” comment. He ran his fingers through his shaggy blond hair and scanned the room with his blurry vision, like he expected the answers to all his questions to be written on the walls. The shabtis ran around, cleaning up whatever mess they could, and since the literal cat was out of the bag, I didn’t bother to order them back to the closet. It was only two sodas later that Henry finally put his glasses on and spoke.
“Okay, this is going to sound like the stupidest thing I’ve ever said, but you’re the real King Tut, aren’t you?”
It was far from the stupidest thing Henry had ever said.
Horus narrowed his good eye at me and waited for my response.
“You’ve heard of me?” I asked.
Henry pressed his fingers to the sides of his forehead. “No. I mean yes. I mean I’ve heard of the pharaoh who died three thousand years ago, but it doesn’t make any sense. How can you be that same person? Unless I’m going crazy.” He grabbed hold of my arm. “Please tell me I’m not going crazy.”
“You’re not going crazy,” I said. “I never died. There was this little immortality thing, and here I am, fourteen forever.”
“So you’re stuck in eighth grade?”
I groaned. “Only when Gil convinces me to go.”
Henry gave a look that was half-skeptical, half-envious. “Which is how often?”
“Maybe every five years or so,” I said.
Henry looked over at Horus. “And you’re—”
Horus yawned like the fact that my identity being revealed was just another piece of the tedium he had to deal with on a daily basis. “Horus. Egyptian god. Son of Osiris. And yes, I did rip off Set’s—”
“Enough, Horus,” I said, cutting him off. Henry didn’t need all the gory details of Egyptian mythology quarrels.
“So you have a talking god cat,” Henry said. “That’s pretty cool. What about the weird little clay guys? What are they?”
“Shabtis. They were placed in my tomb to serve me in the afterworld.”
Henry leaned down to get a closer look at Major Rex. “He’s green. And he has Egyptian writing all over him.”
I nodded. “It’s why they serve me. The spells written on them give me control over them.”
“No way. That is awesome!” Henry said, poking at Major Rex with his index finger.
“Major Rex,” Major Rex said, crossing his golden arms over his green chest. “Weapons specialist. First line of defense for the pharaoh.”
Henry turned his hand palm up, like he was being introduced to a dog. Luckily, I don’t think Major Rex took offense.
“Do they do your homework?” Henry asked.
“Sometimes,” I lied. It was more like all the time. Except for our stupid project. Which, now that Henry knew about them, maybe I could just get the shabtis to complete for us. It’s not like I needed to do the homework to learn anything. I’d been through eighth grade before.
“What are they made of? Are they fragile?” Henry asked. “Will they break?”
“Not so far,” I said. It had been almost a hundred years, and I hadn’t lost a single shabti.
Henry wrapped his fingers around Major Rex and lifted him up for closer examination. “I want some.”
“They won’t call you Great Pharaoh,” I said. After all, they were my shabtis.
“I could train them,” Henry said.
“I think you need to be immortal to control them,” I said.
“That’s a technicality,” Henry said. “I’m sure there’s a way around it.” He set Major Rex back down.
Major Rex returned to his position guarding me.
“So I don’t get it. Why are you here?” Henry asked.
“Why not? I live here,” I said.
“No. I mean why aren’t you back in your tomb?”
So I gave Henry the short version. The version that glossed over the facts and left out the murderous details of Horemheb killing off my entire family. This version of reality focused on a spell being cast and me living forever.
“Immortality. That’s kind of cool,” Henry said.
“It has its plus side.”
Of course, it also had its minus side. Like Horemheb. Which put a damper on my whole mood. The week had been a complete disaster. First Horemheb had declared war on me, blowing up the obelisk only seconds after I recharged. Who knew if it would ever be safe for me to recharge my scarab heart again? Second, not one, but two people now knew my true identity: Tia and Henry. For thousands of years, it had been my best-kept secret. I’d failed miserably.
I yawned without even having to pretend I was tired. Exhausted was more like it. “You know, I’m kind of beat and my brother wi
ll probably be home any minute. Do you mind if we work on our project some other time?”
Henry stood up way too fast. “My parents will probably want me home anyway.”
For Henry not to put up a fight showed just how freaked out he must be.
I yawned again. “Sounds good.” My eyes were drooping. Maybe it was using two spells from the Book of the Dead in two days. I envied Rip Van Winkle, wishing I could sleep for one hundred years.
“Don’t think you’re going to sleep, Tut,” Horus said, like he was reading my mind. “You have things to do.”
“What kinds of things?” Henry asked. He was already halfway to the door.
“Nothing. They can wait.” All I wanted to do was lie down for five minutes.
Horus jumped from his cat scratching post and landed on the ground in front of me. “They can’t wait. Horemheb and Set are getting closer. Every second you wait means a second they get closer to killing you.”
“Killing you?” Henry asked. Only seconds before, he’d looked as tired as I felt, but now his eyes were wide open.
I shook my head. “It’s nothing.”
“Really?” Henry said. “Because if there’s someone trying to kill you, which, given the fact that you just had poisonous snakes delivered to your house, makes me think maybe your god cat is telling the truth, then that seems like a pretty big deal.”
“Fine, yes,” I said. “There is someone trying to kill me. But I’ve got it under control.”
Horus sniffed the air again in disgust. “You have nothing under control, Tut. And you have one spell left. You’re turning what should have been a simple errand into a catastrophe.”
“Cut him a little slack,” Henry said.
I couldn’t believe he was sticking up for me to Horus.
“Horemheb and Set aren’t going to cut him any slack,” Horus said. “So neither am I.”
“What kind of errand is it?” Henry said. “I’ll go with you.”
“You’re not going with me.” I resigned myself to the fact that sleep wasn’t in my near future. Horus was right. I had to get the knife.
“No, that’s a great idea,” Horus said. “Henry should go. Isis loves visitors.”
“Isis?” Henry took a step backward, like Isis being real was impossible to believe. But how could it be? He was having a conversation with a talking god cat and an immortal pharaoh.
