Desjardins returned his attention to the shimmering curtain of light. “A new age…” he mused. “An age of darkness…”
My ba swirled into the currents of the Duat, racing back to my sleeping form.
“Sadie?” a voice said.
I sat up in bed, my heart pounding. Gray morning light filled the windows. Sitting at the foot of my bed was…
“Uncle Amos?” I stammered.
He smiled. “Happy birthday, my dear. I’m sorry if I scared you. You didn’t answer your door. I was concerned.”
He looked back to full health and as fashionably dressed as ever. He wore wire-rimmed glasses, a porkpie hat, and a black wool Italian suit that made him seem a bit less short and stout. His long hair was braided in cornrows decorated with pieces of glittering black stone—obsidian, perhaps. He might’ve passed for a jazz musician (which he was) or an African American Al Capone (which he wasn’t).
I started to ask, “How—?” Then my vision from the Hall of Ages—the implications of what I’d seen—sank in. “It’s all right,” Amos said. “I’ve just returned from Egypt.” I tried to swallow, my breath almost as labored as that ghastly man Vladimir’s. “So have I, Amos. And it’s not all right. They’re coming to destroy us.”
S A D I E
4. A Birthday Invitation to Armageddon
AFTER EXPLAINING MY HORRIBLE VISION, only one thing would do: a proper breakfast.
Amos looked shaken, but he insisted we wait to discuss matters until we’d assembled the entire Twenty-first Nome (as our branch of the House of Life was called). He promised to meet me on the veranda in twenty minutes.
After he’d gone, I showered and considered what to wear. Normally, I would teach Sympathetic Magic on Mondays, which would require proper magician’s linen. However, my birthday was supposed to be a day off.
Given the circumstances, I doubted Amos, Carter, and Bast would let me go to London, but I decided to think positive. I put on some ripped jeans, my combat boots, a tank top, and my leather jacket—not good for magic, but I was feeling rebellious.
I stuffed my wand and the mini-Carter figure into my magic supply bag. I was about to sling it over my shoulder when I thought—No, I’ll not be lugging this about on my birthday.
I took a deep breath and concentrated on opening a space in the Duat. I hate to admit it, but I’m rubbish at this trick. It’s simply not fair that Carter can pull things out of thin air at a moment’s notice, but I normally need five or ten minutes of absolute focus, and even then the effort makes me nauseous. Most of the time, it’s simpler just to keep my bag over my shoulder. If I went out with my mates, however, I didn’t want to be burdened with it, and I didn’t want to leave it behind completely.
At last the air shimmered as the Duat bent to my will. I tossed my bag in front of me, and it disappeared. Excellent —assuming I could figure out how to get it back again later.
I picked up the scroll we’d stolen from Bullwinkle the night before and headed downstairs.
With everyone at breakfast, the mansion was strangely silent. Five levels of balconies faced the Great Room, so normally the place was bustling with noise and activity; but I remembered how empty it had felt when Carter and I first arrived last Christmas.
The Great Room still had many of the same touches: the massive statue of Thoth in the middle, Amos’s collection of weapons and jazz instruments along the wall, the snakeskin rug in front of the garage-size fireplace. But you could tell that twenty young magicians lived here now as well. An assortment of remote controls, wands, iPads, snack food wrappers, and shabti figurines littered the coffee table. Someone with big feet —probably Julian—had left his muddy trainers on the stairs. And one of our hoodlums—I assumed Felix—had magically converted the firep
lace into an Antarctic wonderland, complete with snow and a live penguin. Felix does love penguins.
Magical mops and brooms sped about the house, trying to clean up. I had to duck to avoid getting dusted. For some reason, the dusters think my hair is a maintenance issue.
[No comments from you, Carter.]
As I expected, everyone was gathered on the veranda, which served as our dining area and albino crocodile habitat. Philip of Macedonia splashed around happily in his pool, jumping for bacon strips whenever a trainee tossed him one. The morning was cold and rainy, but the fire in the terrace’s magic braziers kept us toasty.
I grabbed a pain au chocolat and a cup of tea from the buffet table and sat down. Then I realized the others weren’t eating. They were staring at me.
At the head of the table, Amos and Bast both looked grim. Across from me, Carter hadn’t touched his plate of waffles, which was very unlike him. To my right, Jaz’s chair was empty. (Amos had told me she was still in the infirmary, no change.) To my left sat Walt, looking quite good as usual, but I did my best to ignore him.
The other trainees seemed to be in various states of shock. They were a motley assortment of all ages from all over the world. A handful were older than Carter and me—old enough for university, in fact—which was nice for chaperoning the younger ones, but always made me feel a bit uncomfortable when I tried to act as their teacher. The others were mostly between ten and fifteen. Felix was just nine. There was Julian from Boston, Alyssa from Carolina, Sean from Dublin, and Cleo from Rio de Janeiro (yes, I know, Cleo from Rio, but I’m not making it up!). The thing we all had in common: the blood of the pharaohs. All of us were descended from Egypt’s royal lines, which gave us a natural capacity for magic and hosting the power of the gods.
The only one who didn’t seem affected by the grim mood was Khufu. For reasons we never quite understood, our baboon eats only foods that end in -o. Recently he had discovered Jell-O, which he regarded as a miracle substance. I suppose the capital O made everything taste better. Now he would eat almost anything encased in gelatin—fruit, nuts, bugs, small animals. At the moment he had his face buried in a quivering red mountain of breakfast and was making rude noises as he excavated for grapes.
Everyone else watched me, as if waiting for an explanation.
“Morning,” I muttered. “Lovely day. Penguin in the fireplace, if anyone’s interested.”