A golden hieroglyph burned in the air over Wayne’s head:

The twine whipped toward him like an angry snake, growing longer and thicker as it flew. Wayne’s eyes widened. He stumbled back and sent jets of flame shooting from both staffs, but the rope was too quick. It lashed round his ankles and toppled him sideways, wrapping round his whole body until he was encased in a twine cocoon from chin to toes. He struggled and screamed and called me quite a few unflattering names.

I got up unsteadily. Jerrod was still out cold. I retrieved my staff, which had fallen next to Wayne. He continued straining against the twine and cursing in Egyptian, which sounded strange with an American Southern accent.

Finish him, Isis warned. He can still speak. He will not rest until he destroys you.

“Fire!” Wayne screamed. “Water! Cheese!”

Even the cheese command did not work. I reckoned his rage was throwing his magic off balance, making it impossible to focus, but I knew he would recover soon.

“Silence,” I said.

Wayne’s voice abruptly stopped working. He kept screaming, but no sound came out.

“I’m not your enemy,” I told him. “But I can’t have you killing me, either.”

Something wriggled in my pocket, and I remembered Carter. I took him out. He looked okay, except of course for the fact he was still a lizard.

“I’ll try to change you back,” I told him. “Hopefully I don’t make things worse.”

He made a little croak that didn’t convey much confidence.

I closed my eyes and imagined Carter as he should be: a tall boy of fourteen, badly dressed, very human, very annoying. Carter began to feel heavy in my hands. I put him down and watched as the lizard grew into a vaguely human blob. By the count of three, my brother was lying on his stomach, his sword and pack next to him on the lawn.

He spit grass out of his mouth. “How’d you do that?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “You just seemed…wrong.”

“Thanks a lot.” He got up and checked to make sure he had all his fingers. Then he saw the two magicians and his mouth fell open. “What did you do to them?”

“Just tied one up. Knocked one out. Magic.”

“No, I mean…” He faltered, searching for words, then gave up and pointed.

I looked at the magicians and yelped. Wayne wasn’t moving. His eyes and mouth were open, but he wasn’t blinking or breathing. Next to him, Jerrod looked just as frozen. As we watched, their mouths began to glow as if they’d swallowed matches. Two tiny yellow orbs of fire popped out from between their lips and shot into the air, disappearing in the sunlight.

“What-what was that?” I asked. “Are they dead?”

Carter approached them cautiously and put his hand on Wayne’s neck. “It doesn’t even feel like skin. More like rock.”

“No, they were human! I didn’t turn them to rock!”

Carter felt Jerrod’s forehead where I’d whacked him with my wand. “It’s cracked.”

“What?”

Carter picked up his sword. Before I could even scream, he brought the hilt down on Jerrod’s face and the magician’s head cracked into shards like a flowerpot.

“They’re made of clay,” Carter said. “They’re both shabti.”

He kicked Wayne’s arm and I heard it crunch under the twine.

“But they were casting spells,” I said. “And talking. They were real.”

As we watched, the shabti crumbled to dust, leaving nothing behind but my bit of twine, two staffs, and some grungy clothes.

“Thoth was testing us,” Carter said. “Those balls of fire, though…” He frowned as if trying to recall something important.

“Probably the magic that animated them,” I guessed. “Flying back to their master-like a recording of what they did?”

It sounded like a solid theory to me, but Carter seemed awfully troubled. He pointed to the blasted back door of Graceland. “Is the whole house like that?”

“Worse.” I looked at the ruined Elvis jumpsuit under Jerrod’s clothes and scattered rhinestones. Maybe Elvis had no taste, but I still felt bad about trashing the King’s palace. If the place had been important to Dad…Suddenly an idea perked me up. “What was it Amos said, when he repaired that saucer?”

Carter frowned. “This is a whole house, Sadie. Not a saucer.”

“Got it,” I said. “Hi-nehm!”

A gold hieroglyphic symbol flickered to life in my palm.

I held it up and blew it towards the house. The entire outline of Graceland began to glow. The pieces of the door flew back into place and mended themselves. The tattered bits of Elvis clothing disappeared.

“Wow,” Carter said. “Do you think the inside is fixed too?”

“I-” My vision blurred, and my knees buckled. I would’ve knocked my head on the pavement if Carter hadn’t caught me.

“It’s okay,” he said. “You did a lot of magic, Sadie. That was amazing.”

“But we haven’t even found the item Thoth sent us for.”

“Yeah,” Carter said. “Maybe we have.”

He pointed to Elvis’s grave, and I saw it clearly: a memento left behind by some adoring fan-a necklace with a silver loop-topped cross, just like the one on Mum’s T-shirt in my old photograph.

“An ankh,” I said. “The Egyptian symbol for eternal life.”

Carter picked it up. There was a small papyrus scroll attached to the chain.

“What’s this?” he murmured, and unrolled the sheet. He stared at it so hard I thought he’d burn a hole in it.

“What?” I looked over his shoulder.

The painting looked quite ancient. It showed a golden, spotted cat holding a knife in one paw and chopping the head off a snake.

Beneath it, in black marker, someone had written: Keep up the fight!

“That’s vandalism, isn’t it?” I asked. “Marking up an ancient drawing like that? Rather an odd thing to leave for Elvis.”

Carter didn’t seem to hear. “I’ve seen this picture before. It’s in a lot of tombs. Don’t know why it never occurred to me…”

I studied the picture more closely. Something about it did seem rather familiar.

“You know what it means?” I asked.

“It’s the Cat of Ra, fighting the sun god’s main enemy, Apophis.”

“The snake,” I said.

“Yeah, Apophis was-”

“The embodiment of chaos,” I said, remembering what Nut had said.

Carter looked impressed, as well he should have. “Exactly. Apophis was even worse than Set. The Egyptians thought Doomsday would come when Apophis ate the sun and destroyed all of Creation.”

“But…the cat killed it,” I said hopefully.

“The cat had to kill it over and over again,” Carter said. “Like what Thoth said about repeating patterns. The thing is…I asked Dad one time if the cat had a name. And he said nobody knows for sure, but most people assume it’s Sekhmet, this fierce lion goddess. She was called the Eye of Ra because she did his dirty work. He saw an enemy; she killed it.”

“Fine. So?”

“So the cat doesn’t look like Sekhmet. It just occurred to me…”

I finally saw it, and a shiver went down my back. “The Cat of Ra looks exactly like Muffin. It’s Bast.”

Just then the ground rumbled. The memorial fountain began to glow, and a dark doorway opened.

“Come on,” I said. “I’ve got some questions for Thoth. And then I’m going to punch him in the beak.”

C A R T E R