“Khufu!” Sadie cried.
The baboon tackled her in a hug and climbed onto her shoulders. He picked at her hair, seeing if she’d brought him any good bugs to eat. Then he jumped off and grabbed a half-melted basketball. He grunted at me insistently, pointing to a makeshift basket he’d made out of some burned beams and a laundry basket. It was a gesture of forgiveness, I realized. He had forgiven me for sucking at his favorite game, and he was offering lessons. Looking around, I realized that he’d tried to clean up in his own baboon way, too. He’d dusted off the one surviving sofa, stacked Cheerios boxes in the fireplace, and even put a dish of water and fresh food out for Muffin, who was curled up asleep on a little pillow. In the clearest part of the living room, under an intact section of roof, Khufu had made three separate mounds of pillows and sheets-sleeping places for us.
I got a lump in my throat. Seeing the care that he’d taken getting ready for us, I couldn’t imagine a better welcome home present.
“Khufu,” I said, “you are one freaking awesome baboon.”
“Agh!” he said, pointing to the basketball.
“You want to school me?” I said. “Yeah, I deserve it. Just give us a second to…”
My smile melted when I saw Amos.
He’d drifted over to the ruined statue of Thoth. The god’s cracked ibis head lay at his feet. His hands had broken off, and his tablet and stylus lay shattered on the ground. Amos stared at the headless god-the patron of magicians-and I could guess what he was thinking. A bad omen for a homecoming.
“It’s okay,” I told him. “We’re going to make it right.”
If Amos heard me, he gave no sign. He drifted over to the couch and plopped down, putting his head in his hands.
Sadie glanced at me uneasily. Then she looked around at the blackened walls, the crumbling ceilings, the charred remains of the furniture.
“Well,” she said, trying to sound upbeat. “How about I play basketball with Khufu, and you can clean the house?”
Even with magic, it took us several weeks to put the house back in order. That was just to make it livable. It was hard without Isis and Horus helping, but we could still do magic. It just took a lot more concentration and a lot more time. Every day, I went to sleep feeling as if I’d done twelve hours of hard labor; but eventually we got the walls and ceilings repaired, and cleaned up the debris until the house no longer smelled of smoke. We even managed to fix the terrace and the pool. We brought Amos out to watch as we released the wax crocodile figurine into the water, and Philip of Macedonia sprang to life.
Amos almost smiled when he saw that. Then he sank into a chair on the terrace and stared desolately at the Manhattan skyline.
I began to wonder if he would ever be the same. He’d lost too much weight. His face looked haggard. Most days he wore his bathrobe and didn’t even bother to comb his hair.
“He was taken over by Set,” Sadie told me one morning, when I mentioned how worried I was. “Do you have any idea how violating that is? His will was broken. He doubts himself and…Well, it may be a long time…”
We tried to lose ourselves in work. We repaired the statue of Thoth, and fixed the broken shabti in the library. I was better at grunt work-moving blocks of stone or heaving ceiling beams into place. Sadie was better at fine details, like repairing the hieroglyphic seals on the doors. Once, she really impressed me by imagining her bedroom just as it had been and speaking the joining spell, hi-nehm. Pieces of furniture flew together out of the debris, and boom!: instant repair job. Of course, Sadie passed out for twelve hours afterward, but still…pretty cool. Slowly but surely, the mansion began to feel like home.
At night I would sleep with my head on a charmed headrest, which mostly kept my ba from drifting off; but sometimes I still had strange visions-the red pyramid, the serpent in the sky, or the face of my father as he was trapped in Set’s coffin. Once I thought I heard Zia’s voice trying to tell me something from far away, but I couldn’t make out the words.
Sadie and I kept our amulets locked in a box in the library. Every morning I would sneak down to make sure they were still there. I would find them glowing, warm to the touch, and I would be tempted-very tempted-to put on the Eye of Horus. But I knew I couldn’t. The power was too addictive, too dangerous. I’d achieved a balance with Horus once, under extreme circumstances, but I knew it would be too easy to get overwhelmed if I tried it again. I had to train first, become a more powerful magician, before I would be ready to tap that much power.
One night at dinner, we had a visitor.
Amos had gone to bed early, as he usually did. Khufu was inside watching ESPN with Muffin on his lap. Sadie and I sat exhausted on the deck overlooking the river. Philip of Macedonia floated silently in his pool. Except for the hum of the city, the night was quiet.
I’m not sure how it happened, but one minute we were alone, and the next there was a guy standing at the railing. He was lean and tall, with messed-up hair and pale skin, and his clothes were all black, as if he’d mugged a priest or something. He was probably around sixteen, and even though I’d never seen his face before, I had the weirdest feeling that I knew him.
Sadie stood up so quickly she knocked over her split-pea soup-which is gross enough in the bowl, but running all over the table? Yuck.
“Anubis!” she blurted.
Anubis? I thought she was kidding, because this guy did not look anything like the slavering jackal-headed god I’d seen in the Land of the Dead. He stepped forward, and my hand crept for my wand.
“Sadie,” he said. “Carter. Would you come with me, please?”
“Sure,” Sadie said, her voice a little strangled.
“Hold on,” I said. “Where are we going?”
Anubis gestured behind him, and a door opened in the air-a pure black rectangle. “Someone wants to see you.”
Sadie took his hand and stepped through into the darkness, which left me no choice but to follow.
The Hall of Judgment had gotten a makeover. The golden scales still dominated the room, but they had been fixed. The black pillars still marched off into the gloom on all four sides. But now I could see the overlay-the strange holographic image of the real world-and it was no longer a graveyard, as Sadie had described. It was a white living room with tall ceilings and huge picture windows. Double doors led to a terrace that looked out over the ocean.
I was struck speechless. I looked at Sadie, and judging from the shock on her face, I guessed she recognized the place too: our house in Los Angeles, in the hills overlooking the Pacific-the last place we’d lived as a family.
“The Hall of Judgment is intuitive,” a familiar voice said. “It responds to strong memories.”
Only then did I notice the throne wasn’t empty anymore. Sitting there, with Ammit the Devourer curled at his feet, was our father.
I almost ran to him, but something held me back. He looked the same in many ways-the long brown coat, the rumpled suit and dusty boots, his head freshly shaven and his beard trimmed. His eyes gleamed the way they did whenever I made him proud.
But his form shimmered with a strange light. Like the room itself, I realized, he existed in two worlds. I concentrated hard, and my eyes opened to a deeper level of the Duat.
Dad was still there, but taller and stronger, dressed in the robes and jewels of an Egyptian pharaoh. His skin was a dark shade of blue like the deep ocean.
Anubis walked over and stood at his side, but Sadie and I were a little more cautious.
“Well, come on,” Dad said. “I won’t bite.”
Ammit the Devourer growled as we came close, but Dad stroked his crocodile head and shushed him. “These are my children, Ammit. Behave.”
“D-Dad?” I stammered.