The Kane: The Serpent's Shadow Part 4

"All of you, back to your places!" She clapped her hands, and the four shabti returned to their pedestals. They reverted to solid clay, though one was still wearing rubber gloves and holding a feather duster, which looked a little odd.

Cleo leaned in and studied the gold box. "There's nothing inside. Why did you bring it?"

"That's what Sadie, Bast, and I need to discuss," I said. "If you don't mind, Cleo."

"I don't mind." Cleo kept examining the cabinet. Then she realized we were all staring at her. "Oh...you mean privately. Of course."

She looked a little upset about getting kicked out, but she took Khufu's hand. "Come on, babuinozinho. We'll get you a snack."

"Agh!" Khufu said happily. He adored Cleo, possibly because of her name. For reasons none of us quite understood, Khufu loved things that ended in -O, like avocados, Oreos, and armadillos.

Once Cleo and Khufu were gone, Sadie, Bast, and I gathered around our new acquisition.

The cabinet was shaped like a miniature school locker. The exterior was gold, but it must've been a thin layer of foil covering wood, because the whole thing wasn't very heavy. The sides and top were engraved with hieroglyphs and pictures of the pharaoh and his wife. The front was fitted with latched double doors, which opened to reveal...well, not much of anything. There was a tiny pedestal marked by gold footprints, as if an Ancient Egyptian Barbie doll had once stood there.

Sadie studied the hieroglyphs along the sides of the box. "It's all about Tut and his queen, wishing them a happy afterlife, blah, blah. There's a picture of him hunting ducks. Honestly? That was his idea of paradise?"

"I like ducks," Bast said.

I moved the little doors back and forth on their hinges. "Somehow I don't think the ducks are important. Whatever was inside here, it's gone now. Maybe grave robbers took it, or-"

Bast chuckled. "Grave robbers took it. Sure."

I frowned at her. "What's so funny?"

She grinned at me, then Sadie, before apparently realizing we didn't get the joke. "Oh...I see. You actually don't know what this is. I suppose that makes sense. Not many have survived."

"Not many what?" I asked.

"Shadow boxes."

Sadie wrinkled her nose. "Isn't that a sort of school project? Did one for English once. Deadly boring."

"I wouldn't know about school projects," Bast said haughtily. "That sounds suspiciously like work. But this is an actual shadow box-a box to hold a shadow."

Bast didn't sound like she was kidding, but it's hard to tell with cats.

"It's in there right now," she insisted. "Can't you see it? A little shadowy bit of Tut. h.e.l.lo, shadow Tut!" She wriggled her fingers at the empty box. "That's why I laughed when you said grave robbers might have stolen it. Ha! That would be a trick."

I tried to wrap my mind around this idea. "But...I've heard Dad lecture on, like, every possible Egyptian artifact. I never once heard him mention a shadow box."

"As I told you," Bast said, "not many have survived. Usually the shadow box was buried far away from the rest of the soul. Tut was quite silly to have it placed in his tomb. Perhaps one of the priests put it there against his orders, out of spite."

I was totally lost now. To my surprise, Sadie was nodding enthusiastically.

"That must've been what Anubis meant," she said. "Pay attention to what's not there. When I looked into the Duat, I saw darkness inside the box. And Uncle Vinnie said it was a clue to defeating Apophis."

I made a "Time out" T with my hands. "Back up. Sadie, where did you see Anubis? And since when do we have an uncle named Vinnie?"

She looked a little embarra.s.sed, but she described her encounter with the face in the wall, then the visions she'd had of our mom and Isis and her G.o.dly almost-boyfriend Anubis. I knew my sister's attention wandered a lot, but even I was impressed by how many mystical side trips she'd managed, just walking through a museum.

"The face in the wall could've been a trick," I said.

"Possibly...but I don't think so. The face said we would need his help, and we had only two days until something happened to him. He told me this box would show us what we needed. Anubis hinted I was on the right track, saving this cabinet. And Mum..." Sadie faltered. "Mum said this was the only way we'd ever see her again. Something is happening to the spirits of the dead."

Suddenly I felt like I was back in the Duat, wrapped in freezing fog. I stared at the box, but I still didn't see anything. "How do shadows tie in to Apophis and spirits of the dead?"

I looked at Bast. She dug her fingernails into the table, using it like a scratching post, the way she does when she's tense. We go through a lot of tables.

"Bast?" Sadie asked gently.

"Apophis and shadows," Bast mused. "I'd never considered..." She shook her head. "These are really questions you should ask Thoth. He's much more knowledgeable than I."

A memory surfaced. My dad had given a lecture at a university somewhere...Munich, maybe? The students had asked him about the Egyptian concept of the soul, which had multiple parts, and my dad mentioned something about shadows.

Like one hand with five fingers, he'd said. One soul with five parts.

I held up my own fingers, trying to remember. "Five parts of the soul...what are they?"

Bast stayed silent. She looked pretty uncomfortable.

"Carter?" Sadie asked. "What does that have to do-?"

"Just humor me," I said. "The first part is the ba, right? Our personality."

"Chicken form," Sadie said.

Trust Sadie to nickname part of your soul after poultry, but I knew what she meant. The ba could leave the body when we dreamed, or it could come back to the earth as a ghost after we died. When it did, it appeared as a large glowing bird with a human head.

"Yeah," I said. "Chicken form. Then there's the ka, the life force that leaves the body when it dies. Then there's the ib, the heart-"

"The record of good and bad deeds," Sadie agreed. "That's the bit they weigh on the scales of justice in the afterlife."

"And fourth..." I hesitated.

"The ren," Sadie supplied. "Your secret name."

I was too embarra.s.sed to look at her. Last spring she'd saved my life by speaking my secret name, which had basically given her access to my most private thoughts and darkest emotions. Since then she'd been pretty cool about it, but still...that's not the kind of leverage you want to give your little sister.

The ren was also the part of the soul that our friend Bes had given up for us in our gambling match six months ago with the moon G.o.d Khonsu. Now Bes was a hollow sh.e.l.l of a G.o.d, sitting in a wheelchair in the Underworld's divine nursing home.

"Right," I said. "But the fifth part..." I looked at Bast. "It's the shadow, isn't it?"

Sadie frowned. "The shadow? How can a shadow be part of your soul? It's just a silhouette, isn't it? A trick of the light."

Bast held her hand over the table. Her fingers cast a vague shadow over the wood. "You can never be free of your shadow-your sheut. All living beings have them."

"So do rocks, pencils, and shoes," Sadie said. "Does that mean they have souls?"

"You know better," Bast chided. "Living beings are different from rocks...well, most are, anyway. The sheut is not just a physical shadow. It's a magical projection-the silhouette of the soul."

"So this box..." I said. "When you say it holds King Tut's shadow-"

"I mean it holds one fifth of his soul," Bast confirmed. "It houses the pharaoh's sheut so it will not be lost in the afterlife."

My brain felt like it was about to explode. I knew this stuff about shadows must be important, but I didn't see how. It was like I'd been handed a puzzle piece, but it was for the wrong puzzle.

We'd failed to save the right piece-an irreplaceable scroll that might've helped us beat Apophis-and we'd failed to save an entire nome full of friendly magicians. All we had to show from our trip was an empty cabinet decorated with pictures of ducks. I wanted to knock King Tut's shadow box across the room.

"Lost shadows," I muttered. "This sounds like that Peter Pan story."

Bast's eyes glowed like paper lanterns. "What do you think inspired the story of Peter Pan's lost shadow? There have been folktales about shadows for centuries, Carter-all handed down since the days of Egypt."

"But how does that help us?" I demanded. "The Book of Overcoming Apophis would've helped us. Now it's gone!"

Okay, I sounded angry. I was angry.

Remembering my dad's lectures made me want to be a kid again, traveling the world with him. We'd been through some weird stuff together, but I'd always felt safe and protected. He'd always known what to do. Now all I had left from those days was my suitcase, gathering dust in my closet upstairs.

It wasn't fair. But I knew what my dad would say about that: Fair means everyone gets what they need. And the only way to get what you need is to make that happen yourself.

Great, Dad. I'm facing an impossible enemy, and what I need in order to defeat him just got destroyed.

Sadie must've read my expression. "Carter, we'll figure it out," she promised. "Bast, you were about to say something earlier about Apophis and shadows."

"No, I wasn't," Bast murmured.

"Why are you so nervous about this?" I asked. "Do G.o.ds have shadows? Does Apophis? If so, how do they work?"

Bast gouged some hieroglyphs in the table with her fingernails. I was pretty sure the message read: DANGER.

"Honestly, children...this is a question for Thoth. Yes, G.o.ds have shadows. Of course we do. But-but it's not something we're supposed to talk about."

I'd rarely seen Bast look so agitated. I wasn't sure why. This was a G.o.ddess who'd fought Apophis face-to-face, claw to fang, in a magical prison for thousands of years. Why was she scared of shadows?

"Bast," I said, "if we can't figure out a better solution, we'll have to go with Plan B."

The G.o.ddess winced. Sadie stared dejectedly at the table. Plan B was something only Sadie, Bast, Walt, and I had discussed. Our other initiates didn't know about it. We hadn't even told our Uncle Amos. It was that scary.

"I-I would hate that," Bast said. "But, Carter, I really don't know the answers. And if you start asking about shadows, you'll be delving into very dangerous-"

There was a knock on the library doors. Cleo and Khufu appeared at the top of the stairs.

"Sorry to disturb," Cleo said. "Carter, Khufu just came down from your room. He seems anxious to talk with you."

"Agh!" Khufu insisted.

Bast translated from baboon-speak. "He says there's a call for you on the scrying bowl, Carter. A private call."

As if I weren't stressed enough already. Only one person would be sending me a scrying vision, and if she was contacting me so late at night, it had to be bad news.

"Meeting adjourned," I told the others. "See you in the morning."

C A R T E R.

4. I Consult the Pigeon of War.

I WAS IN LOVE WITH A BIRDBATH.

Most guys checked their phone for texts, or obsessed over what girls were saying about them online. Me, I couldn't stay away from the scrying bowl.

It was just a bronze saucer on a stone pedestal, sitting on the balcony outside my bedroom. But whenever I was in my room, I found myself stealing glances at it, resisting the urge to rush outside and check for a glimpse of Zia.

The weird thing was-I couldn't even call her my girlfriend. What do you call somebody when you fall in love with her replica shabti, then rescue the real person only to find she doesn't share your feelings? And Sadie thinks her relationships are complicated.

Over the past six months, since Zia had gone to help my uncle at the First Nome, the bowl had been our only contact. I'd spent so many hours staring into it, talking with Zia, I could hardly remember what she looked like without enchanted oil rippling across her face.

By the time I reached the balcony, I was out of breath. From the surface of the oil, Zia stared up at me. Her arms were crossed; her eyes so angry, they looked like they might ignite. (The first scrying bowl Walt had made actually did ignite, but that's another story.) "Carter," she said, "I'm going to strangle you."

She was beautiful when she threatened to kill me. Over the summer she'd let her hair grow out so that it swept over her shoulders in a glossy black wave. She wasn't the shabti I'd first fallen for, but her face still had a sculpted beauty-delicate nose, full red lips, dazzling amber eyes. Her skin glowed like terracotta warm from the kiln.

"You heard about Dallas," I guessed. "Zia, I'm sorry-"

"Carter, everyone has heard about Dallas. Other nomes have been sending Amos ba messengers for the past hour, demanding answers. Magicians as far away as Cuba felt ripples in the Duat. Some claimed you blew up half of Texas. Some said the entire Fifty-first Nome was destroyed. Some said-some said you were dead."

The concern in her voice lifted my spirits a little, but it also made me feel guiltier.

"I wanted to tell you in advance," I said. "But by the time we realized Apophis's target was Dallas, we had to move immediately."

I told her what had happened at the King Tut exhibit, including our mistakes and casualties.

I tried to read Zia's expression. Even after so many months, it was hard to guess what she was thinking. Just seeing her tended to short-circuit my brain. Half the time I could barely remember how to speak in complete sentences.

Finally she muttered something in Arabic-probably a curse.

"I'm glad you survived-but the Fifty-first destroyed...?" She shook her head in disbelief. "I knew Anne Grissom. She taught me healing magic when I was young."

I remembered the pretty blond lady who had played with the band, and the ruined fiddle at the edge of the explosion.

"They were good people," I said.

"Some of our last allies," Zia said. "The rebels are already blaming you for their deaths. If any more nomes desert Amos..."