“Well, of course,” she said. “We can’t do anything until sunset, anyway. Bes said so.”
“What do you mean?”
Bes tossed the sticks and moved one of his pieces to the hom
e space. “The equinox, kid. We’re close enough now—all the portals in the world will shut down except for two times: sunset and sunrise, when night and day are perfectly balanced.”
“At any rate,” Sadie said, “if we want to find Ra, we’ll have to follow his journey, which means going into the Duat at sunset and coming back out at sunrise.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
She pulled a scroll from her bag—a cylinder of papyrus much thicker than the ones we’d collected. The edges glowed like fire.
“The Book of Ra,” she said. “I put it together. You may thank me now.”
My head started to spin. I remembered what Horus had said in my vision about the scroll burning Menshikov’s face. “You mean you read it without…without any trouble?”
She shrugged. “Just the introduction: warnings, instructions, that sort of thing. I won’t read the actual spell until we find Ra, but I know where we’re going.”
“If we decide to go,” I said.
That got everyone’s attention.
“If?” Zia asked. She was so close it was painful, but I could feel the distance she was putting between us: leaning away from me, tensing her shoulders, warning me to respect her space. “Sadie told me you were quite determined.”
“I was,” I said, “until I learned what Menshikov is planning.”
I told them what I’d seen in my vision—about Menshikov’s strike force heading to Brooklyn at sunset, and his plans to track us personally through the Duat. I explained what Horus said about the dangers of waking Ra, and how I could use the crook and flail instead to fight Apophis.
“But those symbols are sacred to Ra,” Zia said.
“They belong to any pharaoh who is strong enough to wield them,” I said. “If we don’t help Amos in Brooklyn—”
“Your uncle and all your friends will be destroyed,” Bes said. “From what you’ve described, Menshikov has put together a nasty little army. Uraei—the flaming snakes—they’re very bad news. Even if Bast gets back in time to help—”
“We need to let Amos know,” Walt said. “At least warn him.”
“You have a scrying bowl?” I asked.
“Better.” He pulled out a cell phone. “What do I tell him? Are we going back?”
I wavered. How could I leave Amos and my friends alone against an evil army? Part of me was itching to take up the pharaoh’s weapons and smash our enemies. Horus’s voice was still inside me, urging me to take charge.
“Carter, you can’t go to Brooklyn.” Zia meet my eyes, and I realized the fear and panic hadn’t left her. She was holding those feelings back, but they were still bubbling under the surface. “What I saw at Red Sands…that disturbed me too much.”
I felt like she’d just stomped on my heart. “Look, I’m sorry about the avatar thing, the crook and flail. I didn’t mean to freak you out, but—”
“Carter, you didn’t disturb me. Vlad Menshikov did.”
“Oh…Right.”
She took a shaky breath. “I never trusted that man. When I graduated from initiate training, Menshikov requested I be assigned to his nome. Thankfully, Iskandar declined.”
“So…why can’t I go to Brooklyn?”
Zia examined the senet board as if it were a war map. “I believe you’re telling the truth. Menshikov is a traitor. What you described in your vision…I think Desjardins is being affected by evil magic. It’s not Ma’at’s failing that’s draining his life force.”
“It’s Menshikov,” Sadie guessed.