The Serpent's Shadow (Kane Chronicles #3)(19)

Yes, I said school, as in normal old school. We’d spent last spring tutoring all the initiates at Brooklyn House, but with the start of the fall semester, Bast had decided that the kids could use a dose of regular mortal life. Now they went to a nearby academy in Brooklyn during the day and learned magic in the afternoons and on weekends.

I was the only one who stayed behind. I’d always been homeschooled. The idea of dealing with lockers, schedules, textbooks, and cafeteria food on top of running the Twenty-first Nome was just too much for me.

You’d think the other kids would have complained, especially Sadie. But, in fact, attending school was working out okay for them. The girls were happy to have more friends (and less dorky boys to flirt with, they claimed). The guys could play sports with actual teams rather than one-on-one with Khufu using Egyptian statues for hoops. As for Bast, she was happy to have a quiet house so she could stretch out on the floor and snooze in the sunlight.

At any rate, by the time the others got home, I’d done a lot of thinking about my conversations with Zia and Horus. The plan I’d formulated last night still seemed crazy, but I decided that it might be our best shot. After briefing Sadie and Bast, who (disturbingly) agreed with me, we decided it was time to tell the rest of our friends.

We gathered for dinner on the main terrace. It’s a nice place to eat, with invisible barriers that keep out the wind, and a great view of the East River and Manhattan. The food magically appeared, and it was always tasty. Still, I dreaded eating on the terrace. For nine months we’d had all our important meetings there. I’d come to associate sit-down dinners with disasters.

We filled up our plates from the buffet as our guardian albino crocodile Philip of Macedonia splashed happily in his swimming pool. Eating next to a twenty-foot-long crocodile took some getting used to, but Philip was well trained. He only ate bacon, stray waterfowl, and the occasional invading monster.

Bast sat at the head of the table with a can of Purina Fancy Feast. Sadie and I sat together at the opposite end. Khufu was off babysitting the ankle-biters, and some of our newer recruits were inside doing their homework or catching up on spell crafting, but most of our main people were present—a dozen senior initiates.

Considering how badly last night had turned out, everyone seemed in strangely good spirits. I was kind of glad they didn’t yet know about Sarah Jacobi’s video death threat. Julian kept bouncing in his chair and grinning for no particular reason. Cleo and Jaz were whispering together and giggling. Even Felix seemed to have recovered from his shock in Dallas. He was sculpting tiny shabti penguins out of his mashed potatoes and bringing them to life.

Only Walt looked glum. The big guy had nothing on his dinner plate except three carrots and a wedge of Jell-O. (Khufu insisted Jell-O had major healing properties.) Judging from the tightness around Walt’s eyes and the stiffness of his movements, I guessed his pain was even worse than last night.

I turned to Sadie. “What’s going on? Everybody seems…distracted.”

She stared at me. “I keep forgetting you don’t go to school. Carter, it’s the first dance tonight! Three other schools will be there. We can hurry up the meeting, can’t we?”

“You’re kidding,” I said. “I’m thinking about plans for Doomsday, and you’re worried about being late to a dance?”

“I’ve mentioned it to you a dozen times,” she insisted. “Besides, we need something to boost our spirits. Now, tell everyone your plan. Some of us still have to decide what to wear.”

I wanted to argue, but the others were looking at me expectantly.

I cleared my throat. “Okay. I know there’s a dance, but—”

“At seven,” Jaz said. “You are coming, right?”

She smiled at me. Was she…flirting?

(Sadie just called me dense. Hey, I had other things on my mind.)

“Uh…so anyway,” I stammered. “We need to talk about what happened in Dallas, and what happens next.”

That killed the mood. The smiles faded. My friends listened as I reviewed our mission to the Fifty-first Nome, the destruction of the Book of Overcoming Apophis, and the retrieval of the shadow box. I told them about Sarah Jacobi’s demand for my surrender, and the turmoil among the gods that Horus had mentioned.

Sadie stepped in. She explained her weird encounter with the face in the wall, two gods, and our ghost mother. She shared her gut feeling that our best chance to defeat Apophis had something to do with shadows.

Cleo raised her hand. “So…the rebel magicians have a death warrant out for you. The gods can’t help us. Apophis could arise at any time, and the last scroll that might’ve helped us to defeat him has been destroyed. But we shouldn’t worry, because we have an empty box and a vague hunch about shadows.”

“Why, Cleo,” Bast said with admiration. “You have a catty side!”

I pressed my hands against the surface of the table. It would’ve taken very little effort to summon the strength of Horus and smash it to kindling. But I doubted that would help my reputation as a calm, collected leader.

“This is more than a vague hunch,” I said. “Look, you’ve all learned about execration spells, right?”

Our crocodile, Philip, grunted. He slapped the pool with his tail and made it rain on our dinner. Magical creatures are a little sensitive about the word execration.