The Throne of Fire (Kane Chronicles #2)(2)

I could’ve screamed at him for not telling me sooner, but it wouldn’t have made any difference. Gods only talk when they’re ready, and they don’t have a good sense of mortal time. I knew this because Horus had shared space in my head a few months ago. I still had some of his antisocial habits—like the occasional urge to hunt small furry rodents or challenge people to the death.

“Let’s just stick to the plan,” Sadie said. “Go in through the side window, find the statue, and float it out through the ballroom. We’ll figure out how to deal with the wedding party when we get that far. Maybe create a diversion.”

I frowned. “A diversion?”

“Carter, you worry too much,” she said. “It’ll be brilliant. Unless you have another idea?”

The problem was—I didn’t.

You’d think magic would make things easier. In fact, it usually made things more complicated. There were always a million reasons why this or that spell wouldn’t work in certain situations. Or there’d be other magic thwarting you—like the protective spells on this museum.

We weren’t sure who had cast them. Maybe one of the museum staff was an undercover magician, which wouldn’t have been uncommon. Our own dad had used his Ph.D. in Egyptology as a cover to gain access to artifacts. Plus, the Brooklyn Museum has the largest collection of Egyptian magic scrolls in the world. That’s why our uncle Amos had located his headquarters in Brooklyn. A lot of magicians might have reasons to guard or booby-trap the museum’s treasures.

Whatever the case, the doors and windows had some pretty nasty curses on them. We couldn’t open a magic portal into the exhibit, nor could we use our retrieval shabti—the magical clay statues that served us in our library—to bring us the artifact we needed.

We’d have to get in and get out the hard way; and if we made a mistake, there was no telling what sort of curse we’d unleash: monster guardians, plagues, fires, exploding donkeys (don’t laugh; they’re bad news).

The only exit that wasn’t booby-trapped was the dome at the top of the ballroom. Apparently the museum’s guardians hadn’t been worried about thieves levitating artifacts out of an opening forty feet in the air. Or maybe the dome was trapped, and it was just too well hidden for us to see.

Either way, we had to try. We only had tonight to steal—sorry, borrow—the artifact. Then we had five days to figure out how to use it. I just love deadlines.

“So we push on and improvise?” Sadie asked.

I looked down at the wedding party, hoping we weren’t about to ruin their special night. “Guess so.”

“Lovely,” Sadie said. “Khufu, stay here and keep watch. Open the dome when you see us coming up, yeah?”

“Agh!” said the baboon.

The back of my neck tingled. I had a feeling this heist was not going to be lovely.

“Come on,” I told Sadie. “Let’s see how Jaz and Walt are doing.”

We dropped to the ledge outside the third floor, which housed the Egyptian collection.

Jaz and Walt had done their work perfectly. They’d duct-taped four Sons of Horus statues around the edges of the window and painted hieroglyphs on the glass to counteract the curses and the mortal alarm system.

As Sadie and I landed next to them, they seemed to be in the middle of a serious conversation. Jaz was holding Walt’s hands. That surprised me, but it surprised Sadie even more. She made a squeaking sound like a mouse getting stepped on.

[Oh yes, you did. I was there.]

Why would Sadie care? Okay, right after New Year’s, when Sadie and I sent out our djed amulet beacon to attract kids with magic potential to our headquarters, Jaz and Walt had been the first to respond. They’d been training with us for seven weeks, longer than any of the other kids, so we’d gotten to know them pretty well.

Jaz was a cheerleader from Nashville. Her name was short for Jasmine, but don’t ever call her that unless you want to get turned into a shrub. She was pretty in a blond cheerleader kind of way—not really my type—but you couldn’t help liking her because she was nice to everyone and always ready to help. She had a talent for healing magic, too, so she was a great person to bring along in case something went wrong, which happened with Sadie and me about ninety-nine percent of the time.

Tonight she’d covered her hair in a black bandanna. Slung across her shoulder was her magician’s bag, marked with the symbol of the lion goddess Sekhmet.

She was just telling Walt, “We’ll figure it out,” when Sadie and I dropped down next to them.

Walt looked embarrassed.

He was…well, how do I describe Walt?

[No thanks, Sadie. I’m not going to describe him as hot. Wait your turn.]

Walt was fourteen, same as me, but he was tall enough to play varsity forward. He had the right build for it—lean and muscular—and the dude’s feet were huge. His skin was coffee-bean brown, a little darker than mine, and his hair was buzz cut so that it looked like a shadow on his scalp. Despite the cold, he was dressed in a black sleeveless tee and workout shorts—not standard magician clothes—but nobody argued with Walt. He’d been our first trainee to arrive—all the way from Seattle—and the guy was a natural sau—a charm maker. He wore a bunch of gold neck chains with magic amulets he’d made himself.

Anyway, I was pretty sure Sadie was jealous of Jaz and liked Walt, though she’d never admit it because she’d spent the last few months moping about another guy—actually a god—she had a crush on.