The Red Pyramid (Kane Chronicles #1)(97)

“You’ll be just as annoying?” I guessed.

He fixed me with those warm brown eyes. “Or perhaps you could bring me up to speed on modern courtship rituals.”

I sat there stunned until he gave me a glimpse of a smile—just enough to let me know he was teasing. Then he disappeared.

“Oh, very funny!” I yelled. The scales and the throne vanished. The linen bench unraveled and dumped me in the middle of the graveyard. Carter and Khufu appeared next to me, but I just kept yelling at the spot where Anubis had stood, calling him some choice names.

“What’s going on?” Carter demanded. “Where are we?”

“He’s horrible!” I growled. “Self-important, sarcastic, incredibly hot, insufferable—”

“Agh!” Khufu complained.

“Yeah,” Carter agreed. “Did you get the feather or not?”

I held out my hand, and there it was—a glowing white plume floating above my fingers. I closed my fist and it disappeared again.

“Whoa,” Carter said. “But what about Anubis? How did you—”

“Let’s find Bast and get out of here,” I interrupted. “We’ve got work to do.”

And I marched out of the graveyard before he could ask me more questions, because I was in no mood to tell the truth.

Chapter 29. Zia Sets a Rendezvous

[Yeah, thanks a lot, Sadie. You get to tell the part about the Land of the Dead. I get to describe Interstate 10 through Texas.]

Long story short: It took forever and was totally boring, unless your idea of fun is watching cows graze.

We left New Orleans about 1 a.m. on December twenty-eighth, the day before Set planned to destroy the world. Bast had “borrowed” an RV—a FEMA leftover from Hurricane Katrina. At first Bast suggested taking a plane, but after I told her about my dream of the magicians on the exploding flight, we agreed planes might not be a good idea. The sky goddess Nut had promised us safe air travel as far as Memphis, but I didn’t want to press our luck the closer we got to Set.

“Set is not our only problem,” Bast said. “If your vision is correct, the magicians are closing in on us. And not just any magicians—Desjardins himself.”

“And Zia,” Sadie put in, just to annoy me.

In the end, we decided it was safer to drive, even though it was slower. With luck, we’d make Phoenix just in time to challenge Set. As for the House of Life, all we could do was hope to avoid them while we did our job. Maybe once we dealt with Set, the magicians would decide we were cool. Maybe...

I kept thinking about Desjardins, wondering if he really could be a host for Set. A day ago, it had made perfect sense. Desjardins wanted to crush the Kane family. He’d hated our dad, and he hated us. He’d probably been waiting for decades, even centuries, for Iskandar to die, so he could become Chief Lector. Power, anger, arrogance, ambition: Desjardins had it all. If Set was looking for a soulmate, literally, he couldn’t do much better. And if Set could start a war between the gods and magicians by controlling the Chief Lector, the only winner would be the forces of chaos. Besides, Desjardins was an easy guy to hate. Somebody had sabotaged Amos’s house and alerted Set that Amos was coming.

But the way Desjardins saved all those people on the plane—that just didn’t seem like something the Lord of Evil would do.

Bast and Khufu took turns driving while Sadie and I dozed off and on. I didn’t know baboons could drive recreational vehicles, but Khufu did okay. When I woke up around dawn, he was navigating through early morning rush hour in Houston, baring his fangs and barking a lot, and none of the other drivers seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary.

For breakfast, Sadie, Bast, and I sat in the RV’s kitchen while the cabinets banged open and the dishes clinked and miles and miles of nothing went by outside. Bast had snagged us some snacks and drinks (and Friskies, of course) from a New Orleans all-night convenience store before we left, but nobody seemed very hungry. I could tell Bast was anxious. She’d already shredded most of the RV’s upholstery, and was now using the kitchen table as a scratching post.

As for Sadie, she kept opening and closing her hand, staring at the feather of truth as if it were a phone she wished would ring. Ever since her disappearance in the Hall of Judgment, she’d been acting all distant and quiet. Not that I’m complaining, but it wasn’t like her.

“What happened with Anubis?” I asked her for the millionth time.

She glared at me, ready to bite my head off. Then she apparently decided I wasn’t worth the effort. She fixed her eyes on the glowing feather that hovered over her palm.

“We talked,” she said carefully. “He asked me some questions.”

“What kind of questions?”

“Carter, don’t ask. Please.”

Please? Okay, that really wasn’t like Sadie.

I looked at Bast, but she wasn’t any help. She was slowly gouging the Formica to bits with her claws.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her.

She kept her eyes on the table. “In the Land of the Dead, I abandoned you. Again.”

“Anubis startled you,” I said. “It’s no big deal.”

Bast gave me the big yellow eyes, and I got the feeling I’d only made things worse.

“I made a promise to your father, Carter. In exchange for my freedom, he gave me a job even more important than fighting the Serpent: protecting Sadie—and if it ever became necessary, protecting both of you.”