The Serpent's Shadow

the other attacks like this one…the serpent’s minions didn’t leave any survivors.”

JD stared at the phone’s screen, then glanced back at his wife, Anne, who was fiddling her way through a two-step.

“Fine,” JD said. “I hope your team is top-notch.”

“They’re amazing,” I promised. “Come on, we’ll introduce you.”

Our crack squad of magicians was busy raiding the gift shop.

Felix had summoned three penguins, which were waddling around wearing paper King Tut masks. Our baboon friend, Khufu, sat atop a bookshelf reading The History of the Pharaohs, which would’ve been quite impressive except he was holding the book upside down. Walt—oh, dear Walt, why?—had opened the jewelry cabinet and was examining charm bracelets and necklaces as if they might be magical. Alyssa levitated clay pots with her earth elemental magic, juggling twenty or thirty at a time in a figure eight.

Carter cleared his throat.

Walt froze, his hands full of gold jewelry. Khufu scrambled down the bookshelf, knocking off most of the books. Alyssa’s pottery crashed to the floor. Felix tried to shoo his penguins behind the till. (He does have rather strong feelings about the usefulness of penguins. I’m afraid I can’t explain it.)

JD Grissom drummed his fingers against his Lone Star belt buckle. “This is your amazing team?”

“Yes!” I tried for a winning smile. “Sorry about the mess. I’ll just, um…”

I pulled my wand from my belt and spoke a word of power: “Hi-nehm!”

I’d got better at such spells. Most of the time, I could now channel power from my patron goddess Isis without passing out. And I hadn’t exploded once.

The hieroglyph for Join together glowed briefly in the air:

Broken bits of pottery flew back together and mended themselves. Books returned to the shelf. The King Tut masks flew off the penguins, revealing them to be—gasp—penguins.

Our friends looked rather embarrassed.

“Sorry,” Walt mumbled, putting the jewelry back in the case. “We got bored.”

I couldn’t stay mad at Walt. He was tall and athletic, built like a basketball player, in workout pants and sleeveless tee that showed off his sculpted arms. His skin was the color of hot cocoa, his face every bit as regal and handsome as the statues of his pharaoh ancestors.

Did I fancy him? Well, it’s complicated. More on that later.

JD Grissom looked over our team.

“Nice to meet you all.” He managed to contain his enthusiasm. “Come with me.”

The museum’s main foyer was a vast white room with empty café tables, a stage, and a ceiling high enough for a pet giraffe. On one side, stairs led up to a balcony with a row of offices. On the other side, glass walls looked out at the nighttime skyline of Dallas.

JD pointed up at the balcony, where two men in black linen robes were patrolling. “You see? Guards are everywhere.”

The men had their staffs and wands ready. They glanced down at us, and I noticed their eyes were glowing. Hieroglyphs were painted on their cheekbones like war paint.

Alyssa whispered to me: “What’s up with their eyes?”

“Surveillance magic,” I guessed. “The symbols allow the guards to see into the Duat.”

Alyssa bit her lip. Since her patron was the earth god Geb, she liked solid things, such as stone and clay. She didn’t like heights or deep water. She definitely didn’t like the idea of the Duat—the magical realm that coexisted with ours.

Once, when I’d described the Duat as an ocean under our feet with layers and layers of magical dimensions going down forever, I thought Alyssa was going to get seasick.

Ten-year-old Felix, on the other hand, had no such qualms. “Cool!” he said. “I want glowing eyes.”

He traced his finger across his cheeks, leaving shiny purple blobs in the shape of Antarctica.

Alyssa laughed. “Can you see into the Duat now?”

“No,” he admitted. “But I can see my penguins much better.”

“We should hurry,” Carter reminded us. “Apophis usually strikes when the moon is at the top of its transit. Which is—”

“Agh!” Khufu held up all ten fingers. Leave it to a baboon to have perfect astronomical sense.

“In ten minutes,” I said. “Just brilliant.”

We approached the entrance of the King Tut exhibit, which was rather hard to miss because of the giant golden sign that read KING TUT EXHIBIT. Two magicians stood guard with full-grown leopards on leashes.

Carter looked at JD in astonishment. “How did you get complete access to the museum?”

The Texan shrugged. “My wife, Anne, is president of the board. Now, which artifact did you want to see?”

“I studied your exhibit maps,” Carter said. “Come on. I’ll show you.”

The leopards seemed quite interested in Felix’s penguins, but the guards held them back and let us pass.

Inside, the exhibit was extensive, but I doubt you care about the details. A labyrinth of rooms with sarcophagi, statues, furniture, bits of gold jewelry—blah, blah, blah. I would have passed it all by. I’ve seen enough Egyptian collections to last several lifetimes, thank you very much.

Besides, everywhere I looked, I saw reminders of bad experiences.

We passed cases of shabti figurines, no doubt enchanted to come to life when called upon. I’d killed my share of those. We passed statues of glowering monsters and gods whom I’d fought in person—the vulture Nekhbet, who’d once possessed my Gran (long story); the crocodile Sobek, who’d tried to kill my cat (longer story); and the lion goddess Sekhmet, whom we’d once vanquished with hot sauce (don’t even ask).

Most upsetting of all: a small alabaster statue of our friend Bes, the dwarf god. The carving was eons old, but I recognized that pug nose, the bushy sideburns, the potbelly, and the endearingly ugly face that looked as if it had been hit repeatedly with a frying pan. We’d only known Bes for a few days, but he’d literally sacrificed his soul to help us. Now, each time I saw him I was reminded of a debt I could never repay.

I must have lingered at his statue longer than I realized. The rest of the group had passed me and were turning into the next room, about twenty meters ahead, when a voice next to me said, “Psst!”

I looked around. I thought the statue of Bes might have spoken. Then the voice called again: “Hey, doll. Listen up. Not much time.”

In the middle of the wall, eye-level with me, a man’s face bulged from the white, textured paint as if trying to break through. He had a beak of a nose, cruel thin lips, and a high forehead. Though he was the same color as the wall, he seemed very much alive. His blank eyes managed to convey a look of impatience.

“You won’t save the scroll, doll,” he warned. “Even if you did, you’d never understand it. You need my help.”

I’d experienced many strange things since I’d begun practicing magic, so I wasn’t particularly startled. Still, I knew better than to trust any old white-spackled apparition who spoke to me, especially one who called me doll. He reminded me of a character from those silly Mafia movies the boys at Brooklyn House liked to watch in their spare time—someone’s Uncle Vinnie, perhaps.

“Who are you?” I demanded.

The man snorted. “Like you don’t know. Like there’s anybody who doesn’t know. You’ve got two days until they put me down. You want to defeat Apophis, you’d better pull some strings and get me out of here.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said.

The man didn’t sound like Set the god of evil, or the serpent Apophis, or any of the other villains I’d dealt with before, but one could never be sure. There was this thing called magic, after all.

The man jutted out his chin. “Okay, I get it. You want a show of faith. You’ll never save the scroll, but go for the golden box. That’ll give you a clue about what you need, if you’re smart enough to understand it. Day after