The Kane: The Serpent's Shadow Part 6

"Probably," Horus grumbled. "Thoth isn't good for much except studying his musty old scrolls." He regarded the serpent figurine. "Funny...I just remembered something. Back in the old days, the Egyptians used the same word for statue and shadow, because they're both smaller copies of an object. They were both called a sheut."

"What are you trying to tell me?"

The pigeon ruffled its feathers. "Nothing. It just occurred to me, looking at that statue while you were talking about shadows."

An icy feeling spread between my shoulder blades.

Shadows...statues.

Last spring Sadie and I had watched as the old Chief Lector Desjardins cast an execration spell on Apophis. Even against minor demons, execration spells were dangerous. You're supposed to destroy a small statue of the target and, in doing so, utterly destroy the target itself, erasing it from the world. Make a mistake, and things start exploding-including the magician who cast it.

Down in the Underworld, Desjardins had used a makeshift figurine against Apophis. The Chief Lector had died casting the execration, and had only managed to push Apophis a little deeper into the Duat.

Sadie and I hoped that with a more powerful magic statue, both of us working together might be able to execrate Apophis completely, or at least throw him so deep into the Duat that he'd never return.

That was Plan B. But we knew such a powerful spell would tap so much energy, it would cost us our lives. Unless we found another way.

Statues as shadows, shadows as statues.

Plan C began forming in my mind-an idea so crazy, I didn't want to put it into words.

"Horus," I said carefully, "does Apophis have a shadow?"

The pigeon blinked its red eyes. "What a question! Why would you...?" He glanced down at the red statue. "Oh...Oh. That's clever, actually. Certifiably insane, but clever. You think Setne's version of the Book of Overcoming Apophis, the one Apophis was so anxious to destroy...you think it contained a secret spell for-"

"I don't know," I said. "It's worth asking Thoth. Maybe he knows something."

"Maybe," Horus said grudgingly. "But I still think a frontal a.s.sault is the way to go."

"Of course you do."

The pigeon bobbed its head. "We are strong enough, you and I. We should combine forces, Carter. Let me share your form as I once did. We could lead the armies of G.o.ds and men and defeat the serpent. Together, we'll rule the world."

The idea might have been more tempting if I hadn't been looking at a plump bird with Cheerio dust on its plumage. Letting the pigeon rule the world sounded like a bad idea.

"I'll get back to you on that," I said. "First, I should talk to Thoth."

"Bah." Horus flapped his wings. "He's still in Memphis, at that ridiculous sports stadium of his. But if you plan on seeing him, I wouldn't wait too long."

"Why not?"

"That's what I came to tell you," Horus said. "Matters are getting complicated among the G.o.ds. Apophis is dividing us, attacking us one by one, just as he's doing with you magicians. Thoth was the first to suffer."

"Suffer...how?"

The pigeon puffed up. A wisp of smoke curled from its beak. "Oh, dear. My host is self-destructing. It can't hold my spirit for much longer. Just hurry, Carter. I'm having trouble keeping the G.o.ds together, and that old man Ra isn't helping our morale. If you and I don't lead our armies soon, we may not have any armies left to lead."

"But-"

The pigeon hiccupped another wisp of smoke. "Gotta go. Good luck."

Horus flew out the window, leaving me alone with the statuette of Apophis and a few gray feathers.

I slept like a mummy. That was the good part. The bad part was that Bast let me sleep until the afternoon.

"Why didn't you wake me up?" I demanded. "I've got things to do!"

Bast spread her hands. "Sadie insisted. You had a rough night last night. She said you needed your rest. Besides, I'm a cat. I respect the sanct.i.ty of sleep."

I was still mad, but part of me knew Sadie was right. I'd expended a lot of magical energy the previous night and had gone to sleep really late. Maybe-just maybe-Sadie had my best interests at heart.

(I just caught her making faces at me, so maybe not.) I showered and dressed. By the time the other kids got back from school, I was feeling almost human again.

Yes, I said school, as in normal old school. We'd spent last spring tutoring all the initiates at Brooklyn House, but with the start of the fall semester, Bast had decided that the kids could use a dose of regular mortal life. Now they went to a nearby academy in Brooklyn during the day and learned magic in the afternoons and on weekends.

I was the only one who stayed behind. I'd always been homeschooled. The idea of dealing with lockers, schedules, textbooks, and cafeteria food on top of running the Twenty-first Nome was just too much for me.

You'd think the other kids would have complained, especially Sadie. But, in fact, attending school was working out okay for them. The girls were happy to have more friends (and less dorky boys to flirt with, they claimed). The guys could play sports with actual teams rather than one-on-one with Khufu using Egyptian statues for hoops. As for Bast, she was happy to have a quiet house so she could stretch out on the floor and snooze in the sunlight.

At any rate, by the time the others got home, I'd done a lot of thinking about my conversations with Zia and Horus. The plan I'd formulated last night still seemed crazy, but I decided that it might be our best shot. After briefing Sadie and Bast, who (disturbingly) agreed with me, we decided it was time to tell the rest of our friends.

We gathered for dinner on the main terrace. It's a nice place to eat, with invisible barriers that keep out the wind, and a great view of the East River and Manhattan. The food magically appeared, and it was always tasty. Still, I dreaded eating on the terrace. For nine months we'd had all our important meetings there. I'd come to a.s.sociate sit-down dinners with disasters.

We filled up our plates from the buffet as our guardian albino crocodile Philip of Macedonia splashed happily in his swimming pool. Eating next to a twenty-foot-long crocodile took some getting used to, but Philip was well trained. He only ate bacon, stray waterfowl, and the occasional invading monster.

Bast sat at the head of the table with a can of Purina Fancy Feast. Sadie and I sat together at the opposite end. Khufu was off babysitting the ankle-biters, and some of our newer recruits were inside doing their homework or catching up on spell crafting, but most of our main people were present-a dozen senior initiates.

Considering how badly last night had turned out, everyone seemed in strangely good spirits. I was kind of glad they didn't yet know about Sarah Jacobi's video death threat. Julian kept bouncing in his chair and grinning for no particular reason. Cleo and Jaz were whispering together and giggling. Even Felix seemed to have recovered from his shock in Dallas. He was sculpting tiny shabti penguins out of his mashed potatoes and bringing them to life.

Only Walt looked glum. The big guy had nothing on his dinner plate except three carrots and a wedge of Jell-O. (Khufu insisted Jell-O had major healing properties.) Judging from the tightness around Walt's eyes and the stiffness of his movements, I guessed his pain was even worse than last night.

I turned to Sadie. "What's going on? Everybody seems...distracted."

She stared at me. "I keep forgetting you don't go to school. Carter, it's the first dance tonight! Three other schools will be there. We can hurry up the meeting, can't we?"

"You're kidding," I said. "I'm thinking about plans for Doomsday, and you're worried about being late to a dance?"

"I've mentioned it to you a dozen times," she insisted. "Besides, we need something to boost our spirits. Now, tell everyone your plan. Some of us still have to decide what to wear."

I wanted to argue, but the others were looking at me expectantly.

I cleared my throat. "Okay. I know there's a dance, but-"

"At seven," Jaz said. "You are coming, right?"

She smiled at me. Was she...flirting?

(Sadie just called me dense. Hey, I had other things on my mind.) "Uh...so anyway," I stammered. "We need to talk about what happened in Dallas, and what happens next."

That killed the mood. The smiles faded. My friends listened as I reviewed our mission to the Fifty-first Nome, the destruction of the Book of Overcoming Apophis, and the retrieval of the shadow box. I told them about Sarah Jacobi's demand for my surrender, and the turmoil among the G.o.ds that Horus had mentioned.

Sadie stepped in. She explained her weird encounter with the face in the wall, two G.o.ds, and our ghost mother. She shared her gut feeling that our best chance to defeat Apophis had something to do with shadows.

Cleo raised her hand. "So...the rebel magicians have a death warrant out for you. The G.o.ds can't help us. Apophis could arise at any time, and the last scroll that might've helped us to defeat him has been destroyed. But we shouldn't worry, because we have an empty box and a vague hunch about shadows."

"Why, Cleo," Bast said with admiration. "You have a catty side!"

I pressed my hands against the surface of the table. It would've taken very little effort to summon the strength of Horus and smash it to kindling. But I doubted that would help my reputation as a calm, collected leader.

"This is more than a vague hunch," I said. "Look, you've all learned about execration spells, right?"

Our crocodile, Philip, grunted. He slapped the pool with his tail and made it rain on our dinner. Magical creatures are a little sensitive about the word execration.

Julian dabbed the water off his grilled cheese sandwich. "Dude, you can't execrate Apophis. He's ma.s.sive. Desjardins tried it and got killed."

"I know," I said. "With a standard execration, you destroy a statue that represents the enemy. But what if you could crank up the spell by destroying a more powerful representation-something more connected to Apophis?"

Walt sat forward, suddenly interested. "His shadow?"

Felix was so startled he dropped his spoon, crushing one of his mashed-potato penguins. "Wait, what?"

"I got the idea from Horus," I said. "He told me statues were called shadows in ancient times."

"But that was just, like, symbolic," Alyssa said. "Wasn't it?"

Bast set down her empty Fancy Feast can. She still looked nervous about the whole topic of shadows, but when I'd explained to her that it was either this or Sadie and me dying, she'd agreed to support us.

"Maybe not," the cat G.o.ddess said. "I'm no expert on execration, mind you. Nasty business. But it's possible that a statue used for execration was originally meant to represent the target's shadow, which is an important part of the soul."

"So," Sadie said, "we could cast an execration spell on Apophis, but instead of destroying a statue, we could destroy his actual shadow. Brilliant, eh?"

"That's nuts," Julian said. "How do you destroy a shadow?"

Walt shooed a mashed-potato penguin away from his Jell-O. "It's not nuts. Sympathetic magic is all about using a small copy to manipulate the actual target. It's possible the whole tradition of making little statues to represent people and G.o.ds-maybe at one time those statues actually contained the target's sheut. There are lots of stories about the souls of the G.o.ds inhabiting statues. If a shadow was trapped in a statue, you might be able to destroy it."

"Could you make a statue like that?" Alyssa asked. "Something that could bind the shadow of...of Apophis himself?"

"Maybe." Walt glanced at me. Most of the folks at the table didn't know we'd already made a statue of Apophis that might work for that purpose. "Even if I could, we'd need to find the shadow. Then we'd need some pretty advanced magic to capture it and destroy it."

"Find a shadow?" Felix smiled nervously, like he hoped we were joking. "Wouldn't it be right under him? And how do you capture it? Step on it? Shine a light on it?"

"It'll be more complicated than that," I said. "This ancient magician Setne, the guy who wrote his own version of the Book of Overcoming Apophis, I think he must have created a spell to catch and destroy shadows. That's why Apophis was so anxious to burn the evidence. That's his secret weakness."

"But the scroll is gone," Cleo said.

"There's still someone we can ask," Walt said. "Thoth. If anyone knows the answers, he will."

The tension around the table seemed to ease. At least we'd given our initiates something to hope for, even if it was a long shot. I was grateful we had Walt on our side. His charm-making ability might be our only hope of binding a shadow to the statue, and his vote of confidence carried weight with the other kids.

"We need to visit Thoth right away," I said. "Tonight."

"Yes," Sadie agreed. "Right after the dance."

I glared at her. "You aren't serious."

"Oh, yes, brother dear." She smiled mischievously, and for a second I was afraid she might invoke my secret name and force me to obey. "We're attending the dance tonight. And you're coming with us."

S A D I E.

5. A Dance with Death.

CHEERS, CARTER. At least you have the sense to hand me the microphone for important things.

Honestly, he drones on and on about his plans for the Apocalypse, but he makes no plans at all for the school dance. My brother's priorities are severely skewed.

I don't think I was being selfish wanting to go to the dance. Of course we had serious business to deal with. That's exactly why I insisted on partying first. Our initiates needed a morale boost. They needed a chance to be normal kids, to have friends and lives outside Brooklyn House-something worth fighting for. Even armies in the field fight better when they take breaks for entertainment. I'm sure some general somewhere has said that.

By sunset, I was ready to lead my troops into battle. I'd picked out quite a nice black strapless dress and put black lowlights in my blond hair, with just a touch of dark makeup for that risen-from-the-grave look. I wore simple flats for dancing (despite what Carter says, I do not wear combat boots all the time; just ninety percent of the time), the silver tyet amulet from my mother's jewelry box, and the pendant Walt had given me for my last birthday with the Egyptian symbol of eternity, shen.

Walt had an identical amulet among his own collection of talismans, which provided us a magic line of communication, and even the ability to summon the other person to our side in emergencies.

Unfortunately, the shen amulets didn't mean we were dating exclusively. Or even dating at all. If Walt had asked me, I think I would've been fine with it. Walt was so kind and gorgeous-perfect, really, in his own way. Perhaps if he'd a.s.serted himself a bit more, I would've fallen for him and been able to let go of that other boy, the G.o.dly one.

But Walt was dying. He had this silly idea that it would be unfair to me if we started a relationship under those circ.u.mstances. As if that would stop me. So we were stuck in this maddening limbo-flirting, talking for hours, a few times even sharing a kiss when we let our guard down-but eventually Walt would always pull away and shut me out.

Why couldn't things be simple?

I bring this up because I literally ran into Walt as I was coming down the stairs.

"Oh!" I said. Then I noticed he was still wearing his old muscle shirt, jeans, and no shoes. "You're not ready yet?"

"I'm not going," he announced.

My mouth fell open. "What? Why?"

"Sadie...you and Carter will need me when you visit Thoth. If I'm going to make it, I have to rest."

"But..." I forced myself to stop. It wasn't right for me to pressure him. I didn't need magic to see that he really was in great pain.

Centuries of magical healing knowledge at our disposal, yet nothing we tried seemed to help Walt. I ask you: What's the point of being a magician if you can't wave your wand and make the people you care about feel better?

"Right," I said. "I-I was just hoping..."