The air shimmered again. A plate of grilled cheese sandwiches and crisps appeared, along with a six-pack of Coke.
“Yum,” I said.
Carter muttered something under his breath. I suppose grilled cheese wasn’t his favorite, but he picked up a sandwich.
“We should leave soon,” he said between bites. “I mean...tourists and all.”
Bast shook her head. “The Washington Monument closes at six o’clock. The tourists are gone now. We might as well stay the night. If we must travel during the Demon Days, best to do it in daylight hours.”
We all must’ve been exhausted, because we didn’t talk again until we’d finished our food. I ate three sandwiches and drank two Cokes. Bast made the whole place smell like fish Friskies, then started licking her hand as if preparing for a cat bath.
“Could you not do that?” I asked. “It’s disturbing.”
“Oh.” She smiled. “Sorry.”
I closed my eyes and leaned against the wall. It felt good to rest, but I realized the room wasn’t actually quiet. The entire building seemed to be humming ever so slightly, sending a tremble through my skull that made my teeth buzz. I opened my eyes and sat up. I could still feel it.
“What is that?” I asked. “The wind?”
“Magic energy,” Bast said. “I told you, this is a powerful monument.”
“But it’s modern. Like the Louvre pyramid. Why is it magic?”
“The Ancient Egyptians were excellent builders, Sadie. They picked shapes—obelisks, pyramids—that were charged with symbolic magic. An obelisk represents a sunbeam frozen in stone—a life-giving ray from the original king of the gods, Ra. It doesn’t matter when the structure was built: it is still Egyptian. That’s why any obelisk can be used for opening gates to the Duat, or releasing great beings of power—”
“Or trapping them,” I said. “The way you were trapped in Cleopatra’s Needle.”
Her expression darkened. “I wasn’t actually trapped in the obelisk. My prison was a magically created abyss deep in the Duat, and the obelisk was the door your parents used to release me. But, yes. All symbols of Egypt are concentrated nodes of magic power. So an obelisk can definitely be used to imprison gods.”
An idea was nagging at the back of my mind, but I couldn’t quite pin it down. Something about my mother, and Cleopatra’s Needle, and my father’s last promise in the British Museum: I’ll put things right.
Then I thought back to the Louvre, and the comment the magician had made. Bast looked so cross at the moment I was almost afraid to ask, but it was the only way I’d get an answer. “The magician said you abandoned your post. What did he mean?”
Carter frowned. “When was this?”
I told him what had happened after Bast chucked him through the portal.
Bast stacked her empty Friskies cans. She didn’t look eager to reply.
“When I was imprisoned,” she said at last, “I—I wasn’t alone. I was locked inside with a...creature of chaos.”
“Is that bad?” I asked.
Judging from Bast’s expression, the answer was yes. “Magicians often do this—lock a god up together with a monster so we have no time to try escaping our prison. For eons, I fought this monster. When your parents released me—”
“The monster got out?”
Bast hesitated a little too long for my taste.
“No. My enemy couldn’t have escaped.” She took a deep breath. “Your mother’s final act of magic sealed that gate. The enemy was still inside. But that’s what the magician meant. As far as he was concerned, my ‘post’ was battling that monster forever.”
It had the ring of truth, as if she were sharing a painful memory, but it didn’t explain the other bit the magician had said: She endangered us all. I was getting up the nerve to ask exactly what the monster had been, when Bast stood up.
“I should go scout,” she said abruptly. “I’ll be back.”
We listened to her footsteps echo down the stairwell.
“She’s hiding something,” Carter said.