The Serpent's Shadow

uniform. “Now, get in the car!”

I turned to grab Setne…and my heart nearly stopped. “Oh, holy Horus…” The magician was gone. I scanned the terrain in every direction, hoping he’d just inchwormed away. There was no sign of him.

Zia blasted fire at the spot where he’d been lying. Apparently, the ghost hadn’t merely become invisible, because there was no scream.

“Setne was right there!” Zia protested. “Tied up in the Ribbons of Hathor! How could he just disappear?”

Bes frowned. “Setne, eh? I hate that weasel. Have you got the serpent’s shadow?”

“Yeah,” I said, “but Setne has the Book of Thoth.”

“Can you cast the execration without it?” Bes asked.

Sadie and I exchanged looks.

“Yes,” we both said.

“Then we’ll have to worry about Setne later,” Bes said. “We don’t have much time!”

I guess if you have to travel through the Land of Demons, a limo is the way to go. Unfortunately, Bes’s new sedan was no cleaner than the one we’d left at the bottom of the Mediterranean last spring. I wondered if he pre- ordered them already littered with old Chinese-food containers, stomped-on magazines, and dirty laundry.

Sadie rode shotgun. Zia and I climbed in back. Bes slammed the accelerator and played a game of hit-the- demon.

“Five points if you can hit that bloke with the cleaver head!” Sadie screamed.

Boom! Cleaver-head went flying over the hood.

Sadie applauded. “Ten points if you can hit those two dragonfly things at once.”

Boom, boom! Two very large bugs hit the windshield.

Sadie and Bes laughed like crazy. Me, I was too busy yelling, “Crevice! Look out! Flaming geyser! Go left!”

Call me practical. I wanted to live. I grabbed Zia’s hand and tried to hang on.

As we approached the heart of the battle, I could see the gods pushing back the demons. It looked like the entire Sunny Acres Godly Retirement Community had unleashed their geriatric wrath on the forces of darkness. Tawaret the hippo goddess was in the lead, wearing her nurse’s outfit and high heels, swinging a flaming torch in one hand and a hypodermic needle in the other. She bonked one demon on the head, then injected another in the rump, causing him to pass out immediately.

Two old guys in loincloths were hobbling around, throwing fireballs into the sky and incinerating flying demons. One of the old dudes kept screaming, “My pudding!” for no apparent reason.

Heket the frog goddess leaped around the battlefield, knocking out monsters with her tongue. She seemed to have a special fondness for the demons with insect heads. A few yards away, the senile cat goddess Mekhit was smashing demons with her walker, yelling, “Meow!” and hissing.

“Should we help them?” Zia asked.

Bes chuckled. “They don’t need help. This is the most fun they’ve had in centuries. They have a purpose again! They’re going to cover our retreat while I get you to the river.”

“But we don’t have a ship anymore!” I protested.

Bes raised a furry eyebrow. “You sure about that?” He slowed the Mercedes and rolled down the window. “Hey, sweetie! You okay here?”

Tawaret turned and gave him a huge hippo smile. “We’re fine, honeycakes! Good luck!”

“I’ll be back!” he promised. He blew her a kiss, and I thought Tawaret was going to faint from happiness.

The Mercedes peeled out.

“Honeycakes?” I asked.

“Hey, kid,” Bes growled, “do I criticize your relationships?”

I didn’t have the guts to look at Zia, but she squeezed my hand. Sadie stayed quiet. Maybe she was thinking about Walt.

The Mercedes leaped one last flaming chasm and slammed to a stop on the beach of bones.

I pointed to the wreckage of the Egyptian Queen. “See? No boat.”

“Oh, yeah?” Bes asked. “Then what’s that?”

Upriver, light blazed in the darkness.

Zia inhaled sharply. “Ra,” she said. “The sun boat approaches.”

As the light got closer, I saw she was right. The gold-and-white sail gleamed. Glowing orbs flitted around the deck of a boat. The crocodile-headed god Sobek stood at the bow, knocking aside random river monsters with a big pole. And sitting in a fiery throne in the middle of the sun barque was the old god Ra.

“Halllloooooo!” he yelled across the water. “We have cooooookies!”

Sadie kissed Bes on the cheek. “You’re brilliant!”

“Hey, now,” the dwarf mumbled. “You’re gonna make Tawaret jealous. It just so happened the timing was right. If we’d missed the sun boat, we’d have been out of luck.”

That thought made me shudder.

For millennia, Ra had followed this cycle—sailing into the Duat at sunset, traveling along the River of Night until he emerged into the mortal world again at sunrise. But it was a one-way trip, and the boat kept to a tight schedule. As Ra passed through the various Houses of the Night, their gates closed until the next evening, making it easy for mortal travelers like us to get stranded. Sadie and I had experienced that once before, and it hadn’t been fun.

As the sun boat drifted toward the shore, Bes gave us a lopsided grin. “Ready, kids? I got a feeling things up in the mortal world aren’t going to be pretty.”

That was the first unsurprising thing I’d heard all day.

The glowing lights extended the boat’s gangplank, and we climbed aboard for what might be the last sunrise in history.

S A D I E

17. Brooklyn House Goes to War

I WAS SORRY TO LEAVE THE LAND OF DEMONS.

[Yes, Carter, I’m quite serious.]

After all, I’d had a rather successful visit there. I’d saved Zia and my brother from that horrid ghost Setne. I’d captured the serpent’s shadow. I’d witnessed the Charge of the Old Folks’ Brigade in all its glory, and most of all, I’d been reunited with Bes. Why wouldn’t I have fond memories of the place? I might even take a beach holiday there someday, rent a cabana on the Sea of Chaos. Why not?

The flurry of activity also distracted me from less pleasant thoughts. But once we arrived at the riverbank and I had a few moments to breathe, I started thinking about how I’d learned the spell to rescue Bes’s shadow. My elation turned to despair.

Walt—oh, Walt. What had he done?

I remembered how lifeless and cold he’d been, cradled in my arms amid the mud-brick ruins. Then suddenly he had opened his eyes and gasped.

Look, he’d said to me.

On the surface, I’d seen Walt as I’d always known him. But in the Duat…the boy god Anubis shimmered, his ghost-gray aura sustaining Walt’s life.

Still me, they had said in unison. Their double voice had made my skin tingle.

I’ll meet you at sunrise, they had promised, at the First Nome, if you’re sure you don’t hate me.