The Red Pyramid (Kane Chronicles #1)(21)

“Is that why you never came round?” Sadie asked Amos. “Because Dad was banished?”

“The House forbade me to see him. I loved Julius. It hurt me to stay away from my brother, and from you children. But I could not see you—until last night, when I simply had no choice but to try to help. Julius has been obsessed with finding Osiris for years. He was consumed with grief because of what happened to your mother. When I learned that Julius was about to break the law again, to try to set things right, I had to stop him. A second offense would’ve meant a death sentence. Unfortunately, I failed. I should’ve known he was too stubborn.”

I looked down at my plate. My food had gotten cold. Muffin leaped onto the table and rubbed against my hand. When I didn’t object, she started eating my bacon.

“Last night at the museum,” I said, “the girl with the knife, the man with the forked beard—they were magicians too? From the House of Life?”

“Yes,” Amos said. “Keeping an eye on your father. You are fortunate they let you go.”

“The girl wanted to kill us,” I remembered. “But the guy with the beard said, not yet.”

“They don’t kill unless it is absolutely necessary,” Amos said. “They will wait to see if you are a threat.”

“Why would we be a threat?” Sadie demanded. “We’re children! The summoning wasn’t our idea.”

Amos pushed away his plate. “There is a reason you two were raised separately.”

“Because the Fausts took Dad to court,” I said matter-of-factly. “And Dad lost.”

“It was much more than that,” Amos said. “The House insisted you two be separated. Your father wanted to keep you both, even though he knew how dangerous it was.”

Sadie looked like she’d been smacked between the eyes. “He did?”

“Of course. But the House intervened and made sure your grandparents got custody of you, Sadie. If you and Carter were raised together, you could become very powerful. Perhaps you have already sensed changes over the past day.”

I thought about the surges of strength I’d been feeling, and the way Sadie suddenly seemed to know how to read Ancient Egyptian. Then I thought of something even further back.

“Your sixth birthday,” I told Sadie.

“The cake,” she said immediately, the memory passing between us like an electric spark.

At Sadie’s sixth birthday party, the last one we’d shared as a family, Sadie and I had a huge argument. I don’t remember what it was about. I think I wanted to blow out the candles for her. We started yelling. She grabbed my shirt. I pushed her. I remember Dad rushing toward us, trying to intervene, but before he could, Sadie’s birthday cake exploded. Icing splattered the walls, our parents, the faces of Sadie’s little six-year-old friends. Dad and Mom separated us. They sent me to my room. Later, they said we must’ve hit the cake by accident as we were fighting, but I knew we hadn’t. Something much weirder had made it explode, as if it had responded to our anger. I remembered Sadie crying with a chunk of cake on her forehead, an upside-down candle stuck to the ceiling with its wick still burning, and an adult visitor, one of my parents’ friends, his glasses speckled with white frosting.

I turned to Amos. “That was you. You were at Sadie’s party.”

“Vanilla icing,” he recalled. “Very tasty. But it was clear even then that you two would be difficult to raise in the same household.”

“And so...” I faltered. “What happens to us now?”

I didn’t want to admit it, but I couldn’t stand the thought of being separated from Sadie again. She wasn’t much, but she was all I had.

“You must be trained properly,” Amos said, “whether the House approves or not.”

“Why wouldn’t they approve?” I asked.

“I will explain everything, don’t worry. But we must start your lessons if we are to stand any chance of finding your father and putting things right. Otherwise the entire world is in danger. If we only knew where—”

“Phoenix,” I blurted out.

Amos stared at me. “What?”

“Last night I had...well, not a dream, exactly...” I felt stupid, but I told him what had happened while I slept.

Judging from Amos’s expression, the news was even worse than I thought.

“You’re sure he said ‘birthday present’?” he asked.

“Yeah, but what does that mean?”

“And a permanent host,” Amos said. “He didn’t have one yet?”

“Well, that’s what the rooster-footed guy said—”

“That was a demon,” Amos said. “A minion of chaos. And if demons are coming through to the mortal world, we don’t have much time. This is bad, very bad.”

“If you live in Phoenix,” I said.

“Carter, our enemy won’t stop in Phoenix. If he’s grown so powerful so fast...What did he say about the storm, exactly?”

“He said: ‘I will summon the greatest storm ever known.’”

Amos scowled. “The last time he said that, he created the Sahara. A storm that large could destroy North America, generating enough chaos energy to give him an almost invincible form.”