The Serpent's Shadow

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…”

She didn’t have to finish that thought. Last spring, the worst villains in the House of Life had formed a hit squad to destroy Brooklyn House. We’d defeated them. Amos had even given them amnesty when he became the new Chief Lector. But some refused to follow him. The rebels were still out there—gathering strength, turning other magicians against us. As if we needed more enemies.

“They’re blaming me?” I asked. “Did they contact you?”

“Worse. They broadcasted a message to you.”

The oil rippled. I saw a different face—Sarah Jacobi, leader of the rebels. She had milky skin, spiky black hair, and dark, permanently startled eyes lined with too much kohl. In her pure white robes she looked like a Halloween ghoul.

She stood in a room lined with marble columns. Behind her glowered half a dozen magicians—Jacobi’s elite killers. I recognized the blue robes and shaven head of Kwai, who’d been exiled from the North Korean nome for murdering a fellow magician. Next to him stood Petrovich, a scar-faced Ukrainian who’d once worked as an assassin for our old enemy Vlad Menshikov.

The others I couldn’t identify, but I doubted that any of them was as bad as Sarah Jacobi herself. Until Menshikov had released her, she’d been exiled in Antarctica for causing an Indian Ocean tsunami that killed more than a quarter of a million people.

“Carter Kane!” she shouted.

Because this was a broadcast, I knew it was just a magical recording, but her voice made me jump.

“The House of Life demands your surrender,” she said. “Your crimes are unforgivable. You must pay with your life.”

My stomach barely had time to drop before a series of violent images flashed across the oil. I saw the Rosetta Stone exploding in the British Museum—the incident that had unleashed Set and killed my father last Christmas. How had Jacobi gotten a visual of that? I saw the fight at Brooklyn House last spring, when Sadie and I had arrived in Ra’s sun boat to drive out Jacobi’s hit squad. The images she showed made it look like we were the aggressors—a bunch of hooligans with godly powers beating up on poor Jacobi and her friends.

“You released Set and his brethren,” Jacobi narrated. “You broke the most sacred rule of magic and cooperated with the gods. In doing so, you unbalanced Ma’at, causing the rise of Apophis.”

“That’s a lie!” I said. “Apophis was rising anyway!”

Then I remembered I was yelling at a video.

The scenes kept shifting. I saw a high-rise building on fire in the Shibuya district of Tokyo, headquarters of the 234th Nome. A flying demon with the head of a samurai sword crashed through a window and carried off a screaming magician.

I saw the home of the old Chief Lector, Michel Desjardins—a beautiful Paris townhouse on the rue des Pyramides—now in ruins. The roof had collapsed. The windows were broken. Ripped scrolls and soggy books littered the dead garden, and the hieroglyph for Chaos smoldered on the front door like a cattle brand.

“All this you have caused,” Jacobi said. “You have given the Chief Lector’s mantle to a servant of evil. You have corrupted young magicians by teaching the path of the gods. You’ve weakened the House of Life and left us at the mercy of Apophis. We will not stand for this. Any who follow you will be punished.”

The vision changed to Sphinx House in London, headquarters for the British nome. Sadie and I had visited there over the summer and managed to make peace with them after hours of negotiations. I saw Kwai storming through the library, smashing statues of the gods and raking books off the shelves. A dozen British magicians stood in chains before their conqueror, Sarah Jacobi, who held a gleaming black knife. The leader of the nome, a harmless old guy named Sir Leicester, was forced to his knees. Sarah Jacobi raised her knife. The blade fell, and the scene shifted.

Jacobi’s ghoulish face stared up at me from the surface of the oil. Her eyes were as dark as the sockets of a skull.

“The Kanes are a plague,” she said. “You must be destroyed. Surrender yourself and your family for execution. We will spare your other followers as long as they renounce the path of the gods. I do not seek the office of Chief Lector, but I must take it for the good of Egypt. When the Kanes are dead, we will be strong and united again. We will undo the damage you’ve caused and send the gods and Apophis back to the Duat. Justice comes swiftly, Carter Kane. This will be your only warning.”

Sarah Jacobi’s image dissolved in the oil, and I was alone again with Zia’s reflection.

“Yeah,” I said shakily. “For a mass murderer, she’s pretty convincing.”

Zia nodded. “Jacobi has already turned or defeated most of our allies in Europe and Asia. A lot of the recent attacks—against Paris, Tokyo, Madrid—those were Jacobi’s work, but she’s blaming them on Apophis—or Brooklyn House.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“You and I know that,” she agreed. “But the magicians are scared. Jacobi is telling them that if the Kanes are destroyed, Apophis will go back to the Duat and things will return to normal. They want to believe it. She’s telling them that following you is a death sentence. After the destruction of Dallas—”

“I get it,” I snapped.

It wasn’t fair for me to get mad at Zia, but I felt so helpless. Everything we did seemed to turn out wrong. I imagined Apophis laughing in the Underworld. Maybe that’s why he hadn’t attacked the House of Life in full force yet. He was having too much fun watching us tear each other apart.

“Why didn’t Jacobi direct her message at Amos?” I asked. “He’s the Chief Lector.”

Zia glanced away as if checking on something. I couldn’t see much of her surroundings, but she didn’t seem to be in her dorm room at the First Nome, or in the Hall of Ages. “Like Jacobi said, they consider Amos a servant of evil. They won’t talk to him.”

“Because he was possessed by Set,” I guessed. “That wasn’t his fault. He’s been healed. He’s fine.”

Zia winced.

“What?” I asked. “He is fine, isn’t he?”

“Carter, it’s—it’s complicated. Look, the main problem is Jacobi. She’s taken over Menshikov’s old base in St. Petersburg. It’s almost as much of a fortress as the First Nome. We don’t know what she’s up to or how many magicians she has. We don’t know when she’ll strike or where. But she’s going to attack soon.”

Justice comes swiftly. This will be your only warning.

Something told me Jacobi wouldn’t attack Brooklyn House again, not after she’d been humiliated last time. But if she wanted to take over the House of Life and destroy the Kanes, what else could her target be?

I locked eyes with Zia, and I realized what she was thinking.

“No,” I said. “They’d never attack the First Nome. That would be suicide. It’s survived for five thousand years.”

“Carter…we’re weaker than you realize. We were never fully staffed. Now many of our best magicians have disappeared, possibly gone over to the other side. We’ve got some old men and a few scared children left, plus Amos and me.” She spread her arms in exasperation. “And half the time I’m stuck here—”

“Wait,” I said. “Where are you?”

Somewhere to Zia’s left, a man’s voice warbled, “Hell-ooooo!”

Zia sighed. “Great. He’s up from his nap.”

An old man stuck his face in the scrying bowl. He grinned, showing exactly two teeth. His bald wrinkly head made him look like a geriatric baby. “Zebras are here!”

He opened his mouth and tried to suck the oil out of the bowl, making the whole scene ripple.

“My lord, no!” Zia pulled him back. “You can’t drink the enchanted oil. We’ve talked about this. Here, have a cookie.”

“Cookies!” he squealed. “Wheee!” The old man danced off with a tasty treat in his hands.

Zia’s senile grandfather? Nope. That was Ra, god of the sun, first divine pharaoh of Egypt and archenemy of Apophis. Last spring we’d gone on a quest to find him and revive him from his twilight sleep, trusting he would rise in all his glory and fight the Chaos snake for us.

Instead, Ra woke up senile and demented. He was excellent at gumming biscuits, drooling, and singing nonsense songs. Fighting Apophis? Not so much.

“You’re babysitting again?” I asked.

Zia shrugged. “It’s after sunrise here. Horus and Isis watch him most nights on the sun boat. But during the day…well, Ra gets upset if I don’t come to visit, and none of the other gods want to watch him. Honestly, Carter…” She lowered her voice. “I’m afraid of what they’d do if I left Ra alone with them. They’re getting tired of him.”

“Wheee!” Ra said in the background.

My heart sank. Yet another thing to feel guilty about: I’d saddled Zia with nanny duty for a sun god. Stuck in the throne room of the gods every day, helping Amos run the First Nome every night, Zia barely had time to sleep, much less go on a date—even if I could get up the courage to ask her.

Of course, that wouldn’t matter if Apophis destroyed the world, or if Sarah Jacobi and her magical killers got to me. For a moment I wondered if Jacobi was right—if the world had gone sideways because of the Kane family, and if it would be better off without us.

I felt so helpless, I briefly considered calling on the power of Horus. I could’ve used some of the war god’s courage and confidence. But I suspected that joining my thoughts with Horus’s wouldn’t be a good idea. My emotions were jumbled enough without another voice in my head, egging me on.

“I know that expression,” Zia chided. “You can’t blame yourself, Carter. If it weren’t for you and Sadie, Apophis would have already destroyed the world. There’s still hope.”

Plan B, I thought. Unless we could figure out this mystery about shadows and how they could be used to fight Apophis, we’d be stuck with Plan B, which meant certain death for Sadie and me even if it worked. But I wasn’t going to tell Zia that. She didn’t need any more depressing news.

“You’re right,” I said. “We’ll figure out something.”

“I’ll be back at the First Nome tonight. Call me then, okay? We should talk about—”

Something rumbled behind her, like a stone slab grinding across the floor.

“Sobek’s here,” she whispered. “I hate that guy. Talk later.”

“Wait, Zia,” I said. “Talk about what?”

But the oil turned dark, and Zia was gone.

I needed to sleep. Instead, I paced my room.

The dorm rooms at Brooklyn House were amazing—comfortable beds, HD TVs, high-speed wireless Internet, and magically restocking mini-fridges. An army of enchanted brooms, mops, and dusters kept everything tidy. The closets were always full of clean, perfectly fitting clothes.

Still, my room felt like a cage. Maybe that’s because I had a baboon for a roommate. Khufu wasn’t here much (usually downstairs with Cleo or letting the ankle-biters groom his fur), but there was a baboon-shaped depression on his bed, a box of Cheerios on the nightstand, and a tire swing installed in the corner of the room. Sadie had done that last part as a joke, but Khufu loved it so much, I couldn’t take it down. The thing was, I’d gotten used to his being around. Now that he spent most of his time with the kindergartners, I missed him. He’d grown on me in an endearing, annoying way, kind of like my sister.

[Yeah, Sadie. You saw that one coming.]

Screensaver pictures floated across my laptop monitor. There was my dad at a dig site in Egypt, looking relaxed and in charge in his khaki fatigues, his sleeves rolled up on his dark muscular arms as he showed off the broken stone head of some pharaoh’s statue. Dad’s bald scalp and goatee made him look slightly devilish when he smiled.

Another picture showed Uncle Amos onstage at a jazz club, playing his saxophone. He wore round dark glasses, a blue porkpie hat, and a matching silk suit, impeccably tailored as always. His cornrows were braided with sapphires. I’d never actually seen Amos play onstage, but I liked this photo because he looked so energetic and happy—not like he did these days, with the weight of leadership on his shoulders. Unfortunately the photo also reminded me of Anne Grissom, the Texas magician with her fiddle, having so much fun earlier this evening just before she died.

The screensaver changed. I saw my mom bouncing me on her knee when I was a baby. I had this ridiculous ’fro back then, which Sadie always teases me about. In the photo, I’m wearing a blue Onesie stained with pureed yams. I’m holding my mom’s thumbs, looking startled as she bounces me up and down, like I’m thinking, Get me off of this ride! My mom is as beautiful as always, even in an old T-shirt and jeans, her hair tied back in a bandana. She smiles down at me like I’m the most wonderful thing in her life.

That photo hurt to look at, but I kept looking at it.

I remembered what Sadie had told me—that something was affecting the spirits of the dead, and we might not see our mom again unless we figured it out.

I took a deep breath. My dad, my uncle, my mom—all of them powerful magicians. All had sacrificed so much to restore the House of Life.

They were older, wiser, and stronger than me. They’d had decades to practice magic. Sadie and I had had nine months. Yet we needed to do something no magician had ever managed—defeat Apophis himself.

I went to my closet and took down my old traveling case. It was just a black leather carry-on bag, like a million others you might see in an airport. For years I’d lugged it around the world as I traveled with my dad. He’d trained me to live with only the possessions I could carry.

I opened the suitcase. It was empty now except for one thing: a statuette of a coiled serpent carved in red granite, engraved with hieroglyphs. The name—Apophis—was crossed out and overwritten with powerful binding spells, but still this statuette was the most dangerous object in the whole house—a representation of the enemy.

Sadie, Walt, and I had made this thing in secret (over Bast’s strong objections). We’d only trusted Walt because we needed his charm-making skills. Not even Amos would have approved such a dangerous experiment. One mistake, one miscast spell, and this statue could turn from a weapon against Apophis into a gateway allowing him free access to Brooklyn House. But we’d had to take the risk. Unless we found some other means of defeating the serpent, Sadie and I would have to use this statue for Plan B.

“Foolish idea,” said a voice from the balcony.

A pigeon was perched on the railing. There was something very un-pigeonlike about its stare. It looked fearless, almost dangerous; and I recognized that voice, which was more manly and warlike than you’d normally expect from a member of the dove family.

“Horus?” I asked.

The pigeon bobbed its head. “May I come in?”

I knew he wasn’t just asking out of courtesy. The house was heavily enchanted to keep out unwanted pests like rodents, termites, and Egyptian gods.

“I give you permission to enter,” I said formally. “Horus, in the form of a…uh…pigeon.”

“Thank you.” The pigeon hopped off the railing and waddled inside.

“Why?” I asked.

Horus ruffled his feathers. “Well, I looked for a falcon, but they’re a little scarce in New York. I wanted something with wings, so a pigeon seemed the best choice. They’ve adapted well to cities, aren’t scared of people. They’re noble birds, don’t you think?”

“Noble,” I agreed. “That’s the first word that comes to mind when I think of pigeons.”

“Indeed,” Horus said.

Apparently sarcasm didn’t exist in Ancient Egypt, because Horus never seemed to get it. He fluttered onto my bed and pecked at a few Cheerios left over from Khufu’s lunch.

“Hey,” I warned, “if you poop on my blankets—”

“Please. War gods do not poop on blankets. Well, except for that one time—”

“Forget I said anything.”

Horus hopped to the edge of my suitcase. He peered down at the statuette of Apophis. “Dangerous,” he said. “Much too dangerous, Carter.”

I hadn’t told him about Plan B, but I wasn’t surprised that he knew. Horus and I had shared minds too many times. The better I got at channeling his powers, the better we understood each other. The downside of godly magic was that I couldn’t always shut off that connection.

“It’s our emergency backup,” I said. “We’re trying to find another way.”

“By looking for that scroll,” he recalled. “The last copy of which burned up tonight in Dallas.”

I resisted the urge to spike the pigeon. “Yes. But Sadie found this shadow box. She thinks it’s some sort of clue. You wouldn’t know anything about using shadows against Apophis, would you?”

The pigeon turned its head sideways. “Not really. My understanding of magic is fairly straightforward. Hit enemies with a sword until they’re dead. If they rise again, hit them again. Repeat as necessary. It worked against Set.”

“After how many years of fighting?”

The pigeon glared at me. “What’s your point?”

I decided to avoid an argument. Horus was a war god. He loved to fight, but it had taken him years to defeat Set, the god of evil. And Set was small stuff next to Apophis—the primordial force of Chaos. Whacking Apophis with a sword wasn’t going to work.

I thought about something Bast had said earlier, in the library.

“Would Thoth know more about shadows?” I asked.

“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 assault 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 gods 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 gods. 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 gods 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 sanctity 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 associate 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 gods that Horus had mentioned.

Sadie stepped in. She explained her weird encounter with the face in the wall, two gods, 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 gods 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 massive. 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 goddess 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 gods—maybe at one time those statues actually contained the target’s sheut. There are lots of stories about the souls of the gods 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.”