The Throne of Fire

to spare the traumatized patients, or to assuage my own guilt, but I stepped between the goddesses. “We’ll fix this,” I blurted out. “Tawaret, I swear on my life. We will find a way to heal Bes.”

She looked at me, and the anger drained from her eyes until there was nothing left but pity. “Child, oh child…I know you mean well. But don’t give me false hope. I’ve lived with false hopes too long. Go—see him if you must. See what’s happened to the best dwarf in the world. Then leave us alone. Don’t promise me what can’t happen.”

She turned and hobbled on her broken shoe to the nurses’ desk. Bast lowered her head. She wore a very uncatlike expression: shame.

“I’ll wait here,” she announced.

I could tell that was her final answer, so Carter and I approached Bes by ourselves.

The dwarf god hadn’t moved. He sat in his wicker chair, his mouth slightly open, his eyes fixed on the Lake of Fire.

“Bes.” I put my hand on his arm. “Can you hear me?”

He didn’t answer, of course. He wore a bracelet on his wrist with his name written in hieroglyphs, lovingly decorated, probably by Tawaret herself.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “We’ll get your ren back. We’ll find a way to heal you. Won’t we, Carter?”

“Yeah.” He cleared his throat, and I can assure you he was not acting very macho at that moment. “Yeah, I swear it, Bes. If it’s…”

He was probably going to say if it’s the last thing we do, but he wisely decided against it. Given the impending war with Apophis, it was best not to think about how soon our lives might end.

I leaned down and kissed Bes’s forehead. I remembered how we’d met at Waterloo Station, when he’d chauffeured Liz and Emma and me to safety. I remembered how he’d scared away Nekhbet and Babi in his ridiculous Speedo. I thought about the silly chocolate Lenin head he’d bought in St. Petersburg, and how he’d pulled Walt and me to safety from the portal at Red Sands. I couldn’t think of him as small. He had an enormous, colorful, ludicrous, wonderful personality—and it seemed impossible that it was gone forever. He’d given his immortal life to buy us one extra hour.

I couldn’t help sobbing. Finally Carter had to pull me away. I don’t remember how we got back home, but I remember feeling as if we were falling rather than ascending—as if the mortal world had become a deeper and sadder place than anywhere in the Duat.

That evening I sat alone on my bed with the windows open. The first night of spring had turned surprisingly warm and pleasant. Lights glittered along the riverfront. The neighborhood bagel factory filled the air with the scent of baking bread. I was listening to my sad playlist and wondering how it was possible that my birthday had been only a few days ago.

The world had changed. The sun god had returned. Apophis was free from his cage, and although he’d been banished to some deep part of the abyss, he’d be working his way back very quickly. War was coming. We had so much work to do. Yet I was sitting here, listening to the same songs as before, staring at my poster of Anubis and feeling helplessly conflicted about something as trivial and infuriating as…yes, you guessed it. Boys.

There was a knock at the door.

“Come in,” I said without much enthusiasm. I assumed it was Carter. We often chatted at the end of the day, just to debrief. Instead, it was Walt, and suddenly I was very aware that I was wearing a ratty old T-shirt and pajama bottoms. My hair no doubt looked as horrible as Nekhbet’s. Carter’s seeing me this way wouldn’t be a problem. But Walt? Bad.

“What are you doing here?” I yelped, a bit too loudly.

He blinked, obviously surprised by my lack of hospitality. “Sorry, I’ll go.”

“No! I mean…that’s all right. You just surprised me. And —you know…we have rules about boys’ being in the girls’ rooms without, um, supervision.”

I realize that sounded terribly stodgy of me, almost Carteresque. But I was nervous.

Walt folded his arms. They were very nice arms. He was wearing his basketball jersey and running shorts, his usual collection of amulets around his neck. He looked so healthy, so athletic, it was difficult to believe he was dying of an ancient curse.

“Well, you’re the instructor,” he said. “Can you supervise me?”

No doubt I was blushing horribly. “Right. I suppose if you leave the door ajar…Er, what brings you here?”

He leaned against the closet door. With some horror, I realized it was still open, revealing my poster of Anubis.

“There’s so much going on,” Walt said. “You’ve got enough to worry about. I don’t want you worrying about me as well.”

“Too late,” I admitted.

He nodded, as if he shared my frustration. “That day in the desert, at Bahariya…would you think I’m crazy if I tell you that was the best day of my life?”

My heart fluttered, but I tried to stay calm. “Well, Egyptian public transportation, roadside bandits, smelly camels, psychotic Roman mummies, and possessed date farmers…Gosh, it was quite a day.”

“And you,” he said.

“Yes, well…I suppose I belong in that list of catastrophes.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

I was feeling like quite a bad supervisor—nervous and confused, and having very un-supervisory thoughts. My eyes strayed to the closet door. Walt noticed.

“Oh.” He pointed to Anubis. “You want me to close this?”

“Yes,” I said. “No. Possibly. I mean, it doesn’t matter. Well, not that it doesn’t matter, but—”

Walt laughed as if my discomfort didn’t bother him at all. “Sadie, look. I just wanted to say, whatever happens, I’m glad I met you. I’m glad I came to Brooklyn. Jaz is working on a cure for me. Maybe she’ll find something, but either way…it’s okay.”

“It’s not okay!” I think my anger surprised me more than it did him. “Walt, you’re dying of a bloody curse. And—and I had Menshikov right there, ready to tell me the cure, and…I failed you. Like I failed Bes. I didn’t even bring back Ra properly.”

I was furious with myself for crying, but I couldn’t help it. Walt came over and sat next to me. He didn’t try to put his arm around me, which was just as well. I was already confused enough.

“You didn’t fail me,” he said. “You didn’t fail anybody. You did what was right, and that takes sacrifice.”

“Not you,” I said. “I don’t want you to die.”

His smile made me feel as if the world had been reduced to just two people.

“Ra’s return may not have cured me,” he said, “but it still gave me new hope. You’re amazing, Sadie. One way or another, we’re going to make this work. I’m not leaving you.”

That sounded so good, so excellent, and so impossible. “How can you promise that?”

He eyes drifted to the picture of Anubis, then back to me. “Just try not to worry about me. We have to concentrate on defeating Apophis.”

“Any idea how?”

He gestured toward my bedside table, where my beaten-up old tape recorder sat—a gift from my grandparents ages ago.

“Tell people what really happened,” he said. “Don’t let Jacobi and the others spread lies about your family. I came to Brooklyn because I got your first message—the recording about the Red Pyramid, the djed amulet. You asked for help, and we answered. It’s time to ask for help again.”

“But how many magicians did we really reach the first time —twenty?”

“Hey, we did pretty well last night.” Walt held my eyes. I thought he might kiss me, but something made us both hesitate—a sense that it would only make things more uncertain, more fragile. “Send out another tape, Sadie. Just tell the truth. When you talk…” He shrugged, and then stood to leave. “Well, you’re pretty hard to ignore.”

A few moments after he left, Carter came in, a book tucked under his arm. He found me listening to my sad