Sadie had told me to take him along, of course, but looking at him now, I had second thoughts. Walt’s cheeks were sunken. His eyes were glassy. I was alarmed by how much worse he looked since just yesterday. I know this is horrible, but I couldn’t help thinking about Egyptian burial practices—how they’d pack a body with embalming salts to slowly dry it up from the inside. Walt looked like he’d been started on that process.
“Look, man,” I said, “Sadie asked me to keep you safe. She’s worried about you. So am I.”
He clenched his jaw. “If you plan on using a shadow for your spell, you’ll have to capture it with that figurine. You’ll need a sau, and I’m the best you’ve got.”
Unfortunately, Walt was right. Neither Sadie nor I had the skill to capture a shadow, if that was even possible. Only Walt had that kind of charm-making talent.
“All right,” I muttered. “Just…keep your head down. I don’t want my sister going nuclear on me.”
Bast poked Walt’s arm, the way a cat might nudge a bug to see if it was still alive. She sniffed his hair.
“Your aura is weak,” Bast said, “but you should be all right to travel. Try not to exert yourself. No magic unless absolutely necessary.”
Walt rolled his eyes. “Yes, Mother.”
Bast seemed to like that.
“I’ll watch the other kittens,” she promised. “Er, I mean initiates. You two be careful. I don’t have much love for Thoth, but I don’t want you caught up in his problems.”
“What problems?” I asked.
“You’ll see. Just come back to me. All this guard duty is cutting into my nap schedule!”
She shooed us toward Freak’s stable and headed back downstairs, muttering something about catnip.
We hitched up the boat. Freak squawked and buzzed his wings, anxious to go. He looked like he’d gotten a good rest. Besides, he knew that a journey meant more frozen turkeys for him.
Soon we were flying over the East River.
Our ride through the Duat seemed bumpier than usual, like airplane turbulence, except with ghostly wailing and heavy fog. I was glad I’d had a light dinner. My stomach churned.
The boat shuddered as Freak brought us out of the Duat. Below us spread a different nighttime landscape—the lights of Memphis, Tennessee, curving along the banks of the Mississippi River.
On the shoreline rose a glassy black pyramid—an abandoned sports arena that Thoth had appropriated for his home. Bursts of multicolored light peppered the air, reflections rippling across the pyramid. At first I thought Thoth was hosting a fireworks exhibition. Then I realized his pyramid was under attack.
Clambering up the sides was a gruesome assortment of demons—humanoid figures with chicken feet or paws or insect legs. Some had fur. Some had scales or shells like tortoises. Instead of heads, many had weapons or tools sprouting from their necks—hammers, swords, axes, chain saws, even a few screwdrivers.
At least a hundred demons were climbing toward the top, digging their claws into the seams of the glass. Some tried to smash their way through, but wherever they struck, the pyramid flickered with blue light, repelling their attacks. Winged demons swirled through the air, screeching and diving at a small group of defenders.
Thoth stood at the peak. He looked like a scruffy college lab assistant in a white medical coat, jeans, and T-shirt, a day-old beard, and wild Einstein hair—which doesn’t sound very intimidating, but you should see him in combat. He threw glowing hieroglyphs like grenades, causing iridescent explosions all around him. Meanwhile his assistants, a troop of baboons and long-beaked birds called ibises, engaged the enemy. The baboons slammed basketballs into the demons, sending them toppling back down the pyramid. The ibises ran between the monsters’ legs, jabbing their beaks in the most sensitive places they could find.
As we flew closer, I lowered my vision into the Duat. The scene there was even scarier. The demons were connected by red coils of energy that formed one massive translucent serpent. The monster encircled the entire pyramid. At the top, Thoth shone in his ancient form—a giant, white-kilted man with the head of an ibis, hurling bolts of energy at his enemies.
Walt whistled. “How can the mortals not notice a battle like that?”
I wasn’t sure, but I remembered some of the recent disaster news. Huge storms had been causing floods all along the Mississippi River, including here in Memphis. Hundreds of people had been displaced. Magicians might be able to see what was really happening, but any regular mortals still in the city probably thought this was just a major thunderstorm.
“I’ll help Thoth,” I said. “You stay in the boat.”
“No,” Walt said. “Bast said I should use magic only in an emergency. This qualifies.”
I knew Sadie would kill me if I let Walt get hurt. On the other hand, Walt’s tone told me he wasn’t going to back down. He can be almost as stubborn as my sister when he wants to be.
“Fine,” I said. “Hold on.”
A year ago, if I’d faced a fight like this, I would have curled into a ball and tried to hide. Even our battle at the Red Pyramid last Christmas seemed minor compared to dive-bombing an army of demons with no backup except one sick guy and a slightly dysfunctional griffin.
But a lot had happened in the past year. Now this was just another bad day in the life of the Kane family.