“No,” Carter said. “The staff—the thing that turned into a snake—it got incinerated. And the wand...is that the boomerang thing?”
“The boomerang thing?” Doughboy said. “Gods of Eternal Egypt, you’re dense. Of course that’s his wand.”
“It got shattered,” I said.
“Tell me how,” Doughboy demanded.
Carter told him the story. I wasn’t sure that was the best idea, but I supposed a ten-centimeter-tall statue couldn’t do us that much harm.
“This is wonderful!” Doughboy cried.
“Why?” I asked. “Is Dad still alive?”
“No!” Doughboy said. “He’s almost certainly dead. The five gods of the Demon Days released? Wonderful! And anyone who duels with the Red Lord—”
“Wait,” I said. “I order you to tell me what happened.”
“Ha!” Doughboy said. “I only have to tell you what I know. Making educated guesses is a completely different task. I declare my service fulfilled!”
With that, he turned back to lifeless wax.
“Wait!” I picked him up again and shook him. “Tell me your educated guesses!”
Nothing happened.
“Maybe he’s got a timer,” Carter said. “Like only once a day. Or maybe you broke him.”
“Carter, make a helpful suggestion! What do we do now?”
He looked at the four ceramic statues on their pedestals. “Maybe—”
“Other shabti?”
“Worth a shot.”
If the statues were answerers, they weren’t very good at it. We tried holding them while giving them orders, though they were quite heavy. We tried pointing at them and shouting. We tried asking nicely. They gave us no answers at all.
I grew so frustrated I wanted to ha-di them into a million pieces, but I was still so hungry and tired, I had the feeling that spell would not be good for my health.
Finally we decided to check the cubbyholes round the walls. The plastic cylinders were the kind you might find at a drive-through bank—the kind that shoot up and down the pneumatic tubes. Inside each case was a papyrus scroll. Some looked new. Some looked thousands of years old. Each canister was labeled in hieroglyphs and (fortunately) in English.
“The Book of the Heavenly Cow,” Carter read on one. “What kind of name is that? What’ve you got, The Heavenly Badger?”
“No,” I said. “The Book of Slaying Apophis.”
Muffin meowed in the corner. When I looked over, her tail was puffed up.
“What’s wrong with her?” I asked.
“Apophis was a giant snake monster,” Carter muttered. “He was bad news.”
Muffin turned and raced up the stairs, back into the Great Room. Cats. No accounting for them.
Carter opened another scroll. “Sadie, look at this.”
He’d found a papyrus that was quite long, and most of the text on it seemed to be lines of hieroglyphs.
“Can you read any of this?” Carter asked.