He sounded sad, as if he were asking me to accept something terrible. I didn’t understand, but a profound sense of loss crept over me.
“It’s not fair,” I said.
“No, it’s not.” He squeezed my hand. “I’ll be here, waiting. I’m sorry, Sadie. I truly am...”
He started to fade.
“Wait!” I tried to hold on to his hand, but he melted into mist along with the graveyard.
I found myself back in the throne room of the gods, except it looked like it had been abandoned for centuries. The roof had fallen in, along with half of the columns. The braziers were cold and rusty. The beautiful marble floor was as cracked as a dry lakebed.
Bast stood alone next to the empty throne of Osiris. She gave me a mischievous smile, but seeing her again was almost too painful to bear.
“Oh, don’t be sad,” she chided. “Cats don’t do regret.”
“But aren’t you—aren’t you dead?”
“That all depends.” She gestured around her. “The Duat is in turmoil. The gods have gone too long without a king. If Set doesn’t take over, someone else must. The enemy is coming. Don’t let me die in vain.”
“But will you come back?” I asked, my voice breaking. “Please, I never even got to say good-bye to you. I can’t—”
“Good luck, Sadie. Keep your claws sharp.” Bast vanished, and the scenery changed again.
I stood in the Hall of Ages, in the First Nome—another empty throne—and Iskandar sat at its feet, waiting for a pharaoh who hadn’t existed for two thousand years.
“A leader, my dear,” he said. “Ma’at demands a leader.”
“It’s too much,” I said. “Too many thrones. You can’t expect Carter—”
“Not alone,” Iskandar agreed. “But this is your family’s burden. You started the process. The Kanes alone will heal us or destroy us.”
“I don’t know what you mean!”
Iskandar opened his hand, and in a flash of light, the scene changed one more time.
I was back at the Thames. It must’ve been the dead of the night, three o’clock in the morning, because the Embankment was empty. Mist obscured the lights of the city, and the air was wintry.
Two people, a man and a woman, stood bundled against the cold, holding hands in front of Cleopatra’s Needle. At first I thought they were a random couple on a date. Then, with a shock, I realized I was looking at my parents.
My dad lifted his face and scowled at the obelisk. In the dim glow of the streetlamps, his features looked like chiseled marble—like the pharaoh statues he loved to study. He did have the face of a king, I thought—proud and handsome.
“You’re sure?” he asked my mother. “Absolutely sure?”
Mum brushed her blond hair out of her face. She was even more beautiful than her pictures, but she looked worried—eyebrows furrowed, lips pressed together. Like me when I was upset, when I looked in the mirror and tried to convince myself things weren’t so bad. I wanted to call to her, to let her know I was
there, but my voice wouldn’t work.
“She told me this is where it begins,” my mother said. She pulled her black coat around her, and I caught a glimpse of her necklace—the amulet of Isis, my amulet. I stared at it, stunned, but then she pulled her collar closed, and the amulet disappeared. “If we want to defeat the enemy, we must start with the obelisk. We must find out the truth.”
My father frowned uneasily. He’d drawn a protective circle around them—blue chalk lines on the pavement. When he touched the base of the obelisk, the circle began to glow.
“I don’t like it,” he said. “Won’t you call on her help?”
“No,” my mother insisted. “I know my limits, Julius. If I tried it again...”
My heart skipped a beat. Iskandar’s words came back to me: She saw things that made her seek advice from unconventional places. I recognized the look in my mother’ eyes, and I knew: my mother had communed with Isis.
Why didn’t you tell me? I wanted to scream.