She pointed back toward the mansion. Blue flames and smoke now billowed from every window. But that wasn’t the scary part-coming down the stairs were four men carrying a large box, like an oversize coffin with long handles sticking out at both ends. The box was covered with a black shroud and looked big enough for at least two bodies. The four men wore only kilts and sandals. Their coppery skin glinted in the sun as if made of metal.
“Oh, that’s bad,” Bast said. “In the car, please.”
I decided not to ask questions. Sadie beat me to the shotgun seat so I climbed in back. The four metallic guys with the box were racing across the yard, coming straight for us at an unbelievable speed. Before I even had my seat belt on, Bast hit the gas.
We tore through the streets of Brooklyn, weaving insanely through traffic, riding over sidewalks, narrowly missing pedestrians.
Bast drove with reflexes that were…well, catlike. Any human trying to drive so fast would’ve had a dozen wrecks, but she got us safely onto the Williamsburg Bridge.
I thought for sure we must’ve lost our pursuers, but when I looked back, the four copper men with the black box were weaving in and out of traffic. They appeared to be jogging at a normal pace, but they passed cars that were doing fifty. Their bodies blurred like choppy images in an old movie, as if they were out of sync with the regular stream of time.
“What are they?” I asked. “Shabti?”
“No, carriers.” Bast glanced in the rearview mirror. “Summoned straight from the Duat. They’ll stop at nothing to find their victims, throw them in the sedan-”
“The what?” Sadie interrupted.
“The large box,” Bast said. “It’s a kind of carriage. The carriers capture you, beat you senseless, throw you in, and carry you back to their master. They never lose their prey, and they never give up.”
“But what do they want us for?”
“Trust me,” Bast growled, “you don’t want to know.”
I thought about the fiery man last night in Phoenix-how he’d fried one of his servants into a grease spot. I was pretty sure I didn’t want to meet him face-to-face again.
“Bast,” I said, “if you’re a goddess, can’t you just snap your fingers and disintegrate those guys? Or wave your hand and teleport us away?”
“Wouldn’t that be nice? But my power in this host is limited.”
“You mean Muffin?” Sadie asked. “But you’re not a cat anymore.”
“She’s still my host, Sadie, my anchor on this side of the Duat-and a very imperfect one. Your call for help allowed me to assume human shape, but that alone takes a great deal of power. Besides, even when I’m in a powerful host, Set’s magic is stronger than mine.”
“Could you please say something I actually understand?” I pleaded.
“Carter, we don’t have time for a full discussion on gods and hosts and the limits of magic! We have to get you to safety.”
Bast floored the accelerator and shot up the middle of the bridge. The four carriers with the sedan raced after us, blurring the air as they moved, but no cars swerved to avoid them. No one panicked or even looked at them.
“How can people not see them?” I said. “Don’t they notice four copper men in skirts running up the bridge with a weird black box?”
Bast shrugged. “Cats can hear many sounds you can’t. Some animals see things in the ultraviolet spectrum that are invisible to humans. Magic is similar. Did you notice the mansion when you first arrived?”
“Well…no.”
“And you are born to magic,” Bast said. “Imagine how hard it would be for a regular mortal.”
“Born to magic?” I remembered what Amos had said about our family being in the House of Life for a long time. “If magic, like, runs in the family, why haven’t I ever been able to do it before?”
Bast smiled in the mirror. “Your sister understands.”
Sadie’s ears turned red. “No, I don’t! I still can’t believe you’re a goddess. All these years, you’ve been eating crunchy treats, sleeping on my head-”
“I made a deal with your father,” Bast said. “He let me remain in the world as long as I assumed a minor form, a normal housecat, so I could protect and watch over you. It was the least I could do after-” She stopped abruptly.
A horrible thought occurred to me. My stomach fluttered, and it had nothing to do with how fast we were going. “After our mom’s death?” I guessed.
Bast stared straight ahead out the windshield.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” I said. “Dad and Mom did some kind of magic ritual at Cleopatra’s Needle. Something went wrong. Our mom died and…and they released you?”
“That’s not important right now,” Bast said. “The point is I agreed to look after Sadie. And I will.”
She was hiding something. I was sure of it, but her tone made it clear that the subject was closed.
“If you gods are so powerful and helpful,” I said, “why does the House of Life forbid magicians from summoning you?”
Bast swerved into the fast lane. “Magicians are paranoid. Your best hope is to stay with me. We’ll get as far away as possible from New York. Then we’ll get help and challenge Set.”
“What help?” Sadie asked.
Bast raised an eyebrow. “Why, we’ll summon more gods, of course.”
C A R T E R
10. Bast Goes Green
[Sadie, stop it! Yeah, I’m getting to that part.] Sorry, she keeps trying to distract me by setting fire to my-never mind. Where was I?
We barreled off the Williamsburg Bridge into Manhattan and headed north on Clinton Street.
“They’re still following,” Sadie warned.
Sure enough, the carriers were only a block behind us, weaving around cars and trampling over sidewalk displays of tourist junk.
“We’ll buy some time.” Bast growled deep in her throat-a sound so low and powerful it made my teeth buzz. She yanked the wheel and swerved right onto East Houston.
I looked back. Just as the carriers turned the corner, a horde of cats materialized all around them. Some jumped from windows. Some ran from the sidewalks and alleys. Some crawled from the storm drains. All of them converged on the carriers in a wave of fur and claws-climbing up their copper legs, scratching their backs, clinging to their faces, and weighing down the sedan box. The carriers stumbled, dropping the box. They began blindly swatting at the cats. Two cars swerved to avoid the animals and collided, blocking the entire street, and the carriers went down under the mass of angry felines. We turned onto the FDR Drive, and the scene disappeared from view.
“Nice,” I admitted.
“It won’t hold them long,” Bast said. “Now-Central Park!”
Bast ditched the Lexus at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“We’ll run from here,” she said. “It’s just behind the museum.”
When she said run, she meant it. Sadie and I had to sprint to keep up, and Bast wasn’t even breaking a sweat. She didn’t stop for little things like hot dog stands or parked cars. Anything under ten feet tall she leaped over with ease, leaving us to scramble around the obstacles as best we could.
We ran into the park on the East Drive. As soon as we turned north, the obelisk loomed above us. A little over seventy feet tall, it looked like an exact copy of the needle in London. It was tucked away on a grassy hill, so it actually felt isolated, which is hard to achieve in the center of New York. There was no one around except a couple
