The Red Pyramid (Kane Chronicles #1)(130)

Suddenly I felt exhausted. The terror of what I’d been through began to sink in. We’d survived, but that was little consolation. I missed my parents. I missed them terribly. I wasn’t a goddess anymore. I was just a regular girl, alone with only my brother.

Then Amos groaned and started sitting up. Police cars and sinister-looking black vans blocked the curbs all around us. Sirens blared. A helicopter sliced through the air over the Potomac, closing fast. God only knew what the mortals thought had happened at the Washington Monument, but I didn’t want my face on the nightly news.

“Carter, we have to get out of here,” I said. “Can you summon enough magic to change Amos into something small—a mouse maybe? We can fly him out.”

He nodded, still in a daze. “But Dad...we didn’t...”

He looked around helplessly. I knew how he felt. The pyramid, the throne, the golden coffin—all of it was gone. We’d come so far to rescue our father, only to lose him. And Carter’s first girlfriend lay at his feet in a pile of pottery shards. That probably didn’t help either. (Carter protests that she wasn’t really his girlfriend. Oh, please!)

I couldn’t dwell on it, though. I had to be strong for both of us or we’d end up in prison.

“First things first,” I said. “We have to get Amos to safety.”

“Where?” Carter asked.

There was only one place I could think of.

Chapter 41. We Stop the Recording, for Now

I CAN’T BELIEVE SADIE’s GOING TO let me have the last word. Our experience together must’ve really taught her something. Ow, she just hit me. Never mind.

Anyway, I’m glad she told that last part. I think she understood it better than I did. And the whole thing about Zia not being Zia and Dad not getting rescued...that was pretty hard to deal with.

If anybody felt worse than I did, it was Amos. I had just enough magic to turn myself into a falcon and him into a hamster (hey, I was rushed!), but a few miles from the National Mall, he started struggling to change back. Sadie and I were forced to land outside a train station, where Amos turned back into a human and curled into a shivering ball. We tried to talk to him, but he could barely complete a sentence.

Finally we got him into the station. We let him sleep on a bench while Sadie and I warmed up and watched the news.

According to Channel 5, the whole city of Washington was under lockdown. There’d been reports of explosions and weird lights at the Washington Monument, but all the cameras could show us was a big square of melted snow on the mall, which kind of made for boring video. Experts came on and talked about terrorism, but eventually it became clear that there’d been no permanent damage—just a bunch of scary lights. After a while, the media started speculating about freak storm activity or a rare southern appearance of the Northern Lights. Within an hour, the authorities opened up the city.

I wished we had Bast with us, because Amos was in no shape to be our chaperone; but we managed to buy tickets for our “sick” uncle and ourselves as far as New York.

I slept on the way, the amulet of Horus clutched in my hand.

We got back to Brooklyn at sunset.

We found the mansion burned out, which we’d expected, but we had nowhere else to go. I knew we’d made the right choice when we guided Amos through the doorway and heard a familiar, “Agh! Agh!”

“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?”