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

Besides, everywhere I looked, I saw reminders of bad experiences.

We passed cases of shabti figurines, no doubt enchanted to come to life when called upon. I’d killed my share of those. We passed statues of glowering monsters and gods whom I’d fought in person—the vulture Nekhbet, who’d once possessed my Gran (long story); the crocodile Sobek, who’d tried to kill my cat (longer story); and the lion goddess Sekhmet, whom we’d once vanquished with hot sauce (don’t even ask).

Most upsetting of all: a small alabaster statue of our friend Bes, the dwarf god. The carving was eons old, but I recognized that pug nose, the bushy sideburns, the potbelly, and the endearingly ugly face that looked as if it had been hit repeatedly with a frying pan. We’d only known Bes for a few days, but he’d literally sacrificed his soul to help us. Now, each time I saw him I was reminded of a debt I could never repay.

I must have lingered at his statue longer than I realized. The rest of the group had passed me and were turning into the next room, about twenty meters ahead, when a voice next to me said, “Psst!”

I looked around. I thought the statue of Bes might have spoken. Then the voice called again: “Hey, doll. Listen up. Not much time.”

In the middle of the wall, eye-level with me, a man’s face bulged from the white, textured paint as if trying to break through. He had a beak of a nose, cruel thin lips, and a high forehead. Though he was the same color as the wall, he seemed very much alive. His blank eyes managed to convey a look of impatience.

“You won’t save the scroll, doll,” he warned. “Even if you did, you’d never understand it. You need my help.”

I’d experienced many strange things since I’d begun practicing magic, so I wasn’t particularly startled. Still, I knew better than to trust any old white-spackled apparition who spoke to me, especially one who called me doll. He reminded me of a character from those silly Mafia movies the boys at Brooklyn House liked to watch in their spare time—someone’s Uncle Vinnie, perhaps.

“Who are you?” I demanded.

The man snorted. “Like you don’t know. Like there’s anybody who doesn’t know. You’ve got two days until they put me down. You want to defeat Apophis, you’d better pull some strings and get me out of here.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said.

The man didn’t sound like Set the god of evil, or the serpent Apophis, or any of the other villains I’d dealt with before, but one could never be sure. There was this thing called magic, after all.

The man jutted out his chin. “Okay, I get it. You want a show of faith. You’ll never save the scroll, but go for the golden box. That’ll give you a clue about what you need, if you’re smart enough to understand it. Day after tomorrow at sunset, doll. Then my offer expires, ’cause that’s when I get permanently—”

He choked. His eyes widened. He strained as if a noose were tightening around his neck. He slowly melted back into the wall.

“Sadie?” Walt called from the end of the corridor. “You okay?”

I looked over. “Did you see that?”

“See what?” he asked.

Of course not, I thought. What fun would it be if other people saw my vision of Uncle Vinnie? Then I couldn’t wonder if I were going stark raving mad.

“Nothing,” I said, and I ran to catch up.

The entrance to the next room was flanked by two giant obsidian sphinxes with the bodies of lions and the heads of rams. Carter says that particular type of sphinx is called a criosphinx. [Thanks, Carter. We were all dying to know that bit of useless information.]

“Agh!” Khufu warned, holding up five fingers.

“Five minutes left,” Carter translated.

“Give me a moment,” JD said. “This room has the heaviest protective spells. I’ll need to modify them to let you through.”

“Uh,” I said nervously, “but the spells will still keep out enemies, like giant Chaos snakes, I hope?”

JD gave me an exasperated look, which I tend to get a lot.

“I do know a thing or two about protective magic,” he promised. “Trust me.” He raised his wand and began to chant.

Carter pulled me aside. “You okay?”

I must have looked shaken from my encounter with Uncle Vinnie. “I’m fine,” I said. “Saw something back there. Probably just one of Apophis’s tricks, but…”

My eyes drifted to the other end of the corridor. Walt was staring at a golden throne in a glass case. He leaned forward with one hand on the glass as if he might be sick.

“Hold that thought,” I told Carter.

I moved to Walt’s side. Light from the exhibit bathed his face, turning his features reddish brown like the hills of Egypt.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Tutankhamen died in that chair,” he said.

I read the display card. It didn’t say anything about Tut dying in the chair, but Walt sounded very sure. Perhaps he could sense the family curse. King Tut was Walt’s great-times-a-billion granduncle, and the same genetic poison that killed Tut at nineteen was now coursing through Walt’s bloodstream, getting stronger the more he practiced magic. Yet Walt refused to slow down. Looking at the throne of his ancestor, he must have felt as if he were reading his own obituary.