The Red Pyramid (Kane Chronicles #1)(9)

My eyes wandered across my room and fixed on my desk.

No, I thought. Not going to do it.

But I walked over and opened the drawer. I shoved aside a few old mags, my stash of sweets, a stack of maths homework I’d forgotten to hand in, and a few pictures of me and my mates Liz and Emma trying on ridiculous hats in Camden Market. And there at the bottom of it all was the picture of Mum.

Gran and Gramps have loads of pictures. They keep a shrine to Ruby in the hall cupboard—Mum’s childhood artwork, her O-level results, her graduation picture from university, her favorite jewelry. It’s quite mental. I was determined not to be like them, living in the past. I barely remembered Mum, after all, and nothing could change the fact she was dead.

But I did keep the one picture. It was of Mum and me at our house in Los Angeles, just after I was born. She stood out on the balcony, the Pacific Ocean behind her, holding a wrinkled pudgy lump of baby that would some day grow up to be yours truly. Baby me was not much to look at, but Mum was gorgeous, even in shorts and a tattered T-shirt. Her eyes were deep blue. Her blond hair was clipped back. Her skin was perfect. Quite depressing compared to mine. People always say I look like her, but I couldn’t even get the spot off my chin much less look so mature and beautiful.

[Stop smirking, Carter.]

The photo fascinated me because I hardly remembered our lives together at all. But the main reason I’d kept the photo was because of the symbol on Mum’s T-shirt: one of those life symbols—an ankh.

My dead mother wearing the symbol for life. Nothing could’ve been sadder. But she smiled at the camera as if she knew a secret. As if my dad and she were sharing a private joke.

Something tugged at the back of my mind. That stocky man in the trench coat who’d been arguing with Dad across the street—he’d said something about the Per Ankh.

Had he meant ankh as in the symbol for life, and if so, what was a per? I supposed he didn’t mean pear as in the fruit.

I had an eerie feeling that if I saw the words Per Ankh written in hieroglyphics, I would know what they meant.

I put down the picture of Mum. I picked up a pencil and turned over one of my old homework papers. I wondered what would happen if I tried to draw the words Per Ankh. Would the right design just occur to me?

As I touched pencil to paper, my bedroom door opened. “Miss Kane?”

I whirled and dropped the pencil.

A police inspector stood frowning in my doorway. “What are you doing?”

“Maths,” I said.

My ceiling was quite low, so the inspector had to stoop to come in. He wore a lint-colored suit that matched his gray hair and his ashen face. “Now then, Sadie. I’m Chief Inspector Williams. Let’s have a chat, shall we? Sit down.”

I didn’t sit, and neither did he, which must’ve annoyed him. It’s hard to look in charge when you’re hunched over like Quasimodo.

“Tell me everything, please,” he said, “from the time your father came round to get you.”

“I already told the police at the museum.”

“Again, if you don’t mind.”

So I told him everything. Why not? His left eyebrow crept higher and higher as I told him the strange bits like the glowing letters and serpent staff.

“Well, Sadie,” Inspector Williams said. “You’ve got quite an imagination.”

“I’m not lying, Inspector. And I think your eyebrow is trying to escape.”

He tried to look at his own eyebrows, then scowled. “Now, Sadie, I’m sure this is very hard on you. I understand you want to protect your father’s reputation. But he’s gone now—”

“You mean through the floor in a coffin,” I insisted. “He’s not dead.”

Inspector Williams spread his hands. “Sadie, I’m very sorry. But we must find out why he did this act of...well...”

“Act of what?”

He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Your father destroyed priceless artifacts and apparently killed himself in the process. We’d very much like to know why.”

I stared at him. “Are you saying my father’s a terrorist? Are you mad?”

“We’ve made calls to some of your father’s associates. I understand his behavior had become erratic since your mother’s death. He’d become withdrawn and obsessive in his studies, spending more and more time in Egypt—”

“He’s a bloody Egyptologist! You should be looking for him, not asking stupid questions!”

“Sadie,” he said, and I could hear in his voice that he was resisting the urge to strangle me. Strangely, I get this a lot from adults. “There are extremist groups in Egypt that object to Egyptian artifacts being kept in other countries’ museums. These people might have approached your father. Perhaps in his state, your father became an easy target for them. If you’ve heard him mention any names—”

I stormed past him to the window. I was so angry I could hardly think. I refused to believe Dad was dead. No, no, no. And a terrorist? Please. Why did adults have to be so thick? They always say “tell the truth,” and when you do, they don’t believe you. What’s the point?

I stared down at the dark street. Suddenly that cold tingly feeling got worse than ever. I focused on the dead tree where I’d met Dad earlier. Standing there now, in the dim light of a streetlamp, looking up at me, was the pudgy bloke in the black trench coat and the round glasses and the fedora—the man Dad had called Amos.