Another few minutes and I was surrounded by piles of coppery rubble. Bast made a glowing fist and smashed the sedan into kindling.
“That wasn’t so hard,” I said. “What were we running for?”
Inside her glowing shell, Bast’s face was coated with sweat. It hadn’t occurred to me that a goddess could get tired, but her magic avatar must’ve taken a lot of effort.
“We’re not safe yet,” she warned. “Sadie, how’s it coming?”
“It’s not,” Sadie complained. “Isn’t there another way?”
Before Bast could answer, the bushes rustled with a new sound—like rain, except more slithery.
A chill ran up my back. “What...what is that?”
“No,” Bast murmured. “It can’t be. Not her.”
Then the bushes exploded. A thousand brown creepy-crawlies poured from the woods in a carpet of grossness—all pincers and stinging tails.
I wanted to yell, “Scorpions!” But my voice wouldn’t work. My legs started trembling. I hate scorpions. They’re everywhere in Egypt. Many times I’d found them in my hotel bed or shower. Once I’d even found one in my sock.
“Sadie!” Bast called urgently.
“Nothing!” Sadie moaned.
The scorpions kept coming—thousands upon thousands. Out of the woods a woman appeared, walking fearlessly through the middle of the arachnids. She wore brown robes with gold jewelry glinting around her neck and arms. Her long black hair was cut Ancient Egyptian–style with a strange crown on top. Then I realized it wasn’t a crown—she had a live, supersize scorpion nesting on her head. Millions of the little nasties swirled around her like she was the center of their storm.
“Serqet,” Bast growled.
“The scorpion goddess,” I guessed. Maybe that should’ve terrified me, but I was already pretty much at my maximum. “Can you take her?”
Bast’s expression didn’t reassure me.
“Carter, Sadie,” she said, “this is going to get ugly. Get to the museum. Find the temple. It may protect you.”
“What temple?” I asked.
“And what about you?” Sadie added.
“I’ll be fine. I’ll catch up.” But when Bast looked at me, I could tell she wasn’t sure. She was just buying us time.
“Go!” she ordered. She turned her giant green cat warrior to face the mass of scorpions.
Embarrassing truth? In the face of those scorpions, I didn’t even pretend to be brave. I grabbed Sadie’s arm and we ran.
Chapter 11. We Meet the Human Flamethrower
RIGHT, I’M TAKING THE MICROPHONE. There is no chance Carter would tell this part properly, as it’s about Zia. [Shut up, Carter. You know it’s true.]
Oh, who is Zia? Sorry, getting ahead of myself.
We raced to the entrance of the museum, and I had no idea why, except that a giant glowing cat woman had told us to. Now, you must realize I was already devastated by everything that had happened. First, I’d lost my father. Second, my loving grandparents had kicked me out of the flat. Then I’d discovered I was apparently “blood of the pharaohs,” born to a magical family, and all sorts of rubbish that sounded quite impressive but only brought me loads of trouble. And as soon as I’d found a new home—a mansion with proper breakfast and friendly pets and quite a nice room for me, by the way—Uncle Amos disappeared, my lovely new crocodile and baboon friends were tossed in a river, and the mansion was set on fire. And if that wasn’t enough, my faithful cat Muffin had decided to engage in a hopeless battle with a swarm of scorpions.
Do you call it a “swarm” for scorpions? A herd? A gaggle? Oh, never mind.
The point is I couldn’t believe I’d been asked to open a magic doorway when clearly I had no such skill, and now my brother was dragging me away. I felt like an utter failure. [And no comments from you, Carter. As I recall, you weren’t much help at the time, either.]
“We can’t just leave Bast!” I shouted. “Look!”
Carter kept running, dragging me along, but I could see quite clearly what was happening back at the obelisk. A mass of scorpions had crawled up Bast’s glowing green legs and were wriggling into the hologram like it was gelatin. Bast smashed hundreds of them with her feet and fists, but there were simply too many. Soon they were up to her waist, and her ghostly shell began to flicker. Meanwhile, the brown-robed goddess advanced slowly, and I had a feeling she would be worse than any number of scorpions.
Carter pulled me through a row of bushes and I lost sight of Bast. We burst onto Fifth Avenue, which seemed ridiculously normal after the magic battle. We ran down the sidewalk, shoved through a knot of pedestrians, and climbed the steps of the Met.
A banner above the entrance announced some sort of special Christmas event, which I suppose is why the museum was open on a holiday, but I didn’t bother reading the details. We pushed straight inside.
What did it look like? Well, it was a museum: huge entry hall, lots of columns and so on. I can’t claim I spent much time admiring the decor. I do remember it had queues for the ticket windows, because we ran right past them. There were also security guards, because they yelled at us as we dashed into the exhibits. By luck, we ended up in the Egyptian area, in front of a reconstructed tomb sort of place with narrow corridors. Carter probably could’ve told you what the structure was supposed to be, but honestly I didn’t care.
“Come on,” I said.
We slipped inside the exhibit, which proved quite enough to lose the security guards, or perhaps they had better things to do than pursue naughty children.
When we popped out again, we sneaked around until we were sure we weren’t being followed. The Egypt wing wasn’t crowded—just a few clumps of old people and a foreign tour group with a guide explaining a sarcophagus in French. “Et voici la momie!”
Strangely, no one seemed to notice the enormous sword on Carter’s back, which surely must’ve been a security issue (and much more interesting than the exhibits). A few old people did give us odd looks, but I suspect that was because we were dressed in linen pajamas, drenched in sweat, and covered in grass and leaves. My hair was probably a nightmare as well.
I found an empty room and pulled Carter aside. The glass cases were full of shabti. A few days earlier I wouldn’t have given them a second thought. Now, I kept glancing at the statues, sure they’d come to life any minute and try to bash me on the head.
“What now?” I asked Carter. “Did you see any temple?”
“No.” He knit his eyebrows as if trying hard to remember. “I think there’s a rebuilt temple down that hall...or is that in the Brooklyn Museum? Maybe the one in Munich? Sorry, I’ve been to so many museums with Dad that they all get mixed together.”
I sighed in exasperation. “Poor boy, forced to travel the world, skip school, and spend time with Dad while I get a whole two days a year with him!”
“Hey!” Carter turned on me with surprising force. “You get a home! You get friends and a normal life and don’t wake up each morning wondering what country you’re in! You don’t—”
The glass case next to us shattered, spraying glass at our feet.
Carter looked at me, bewildered. “Did we just—”
“Like my exploding birthday cake,” I grumbled, trying not to let on how startled I was. “You need to control your temper.”
“Me?”
Alarms began to blare. Red lights pulsed through the corridor. A garbled voice came on the loudspeaker and said something about proceeding calmly to the exits. The French tour group ran past us, screaming in panic, followed by a crowd of remarkably fast old people with walkers and canes.
“Let’s finish arguing later, shall we?” I told Carter. “Come on!”
We ran down another corridor, and the sirens died as suddenly as they’d started. The blood-red lights kept pulsing in eerie silence. Then I heard it: the slithering, clacking sounds of scorpions.
“What about Bast?” My voice choked up. “Is she—”
“Don’t think about it,” Carter said, though, judging from his face, that’s exactly what he was thinking about. “Keep moving!”
Soon we were hopelessly lost. As far as I could tell, the Egyptian part of the museum was designed to be as confusing as possible, with dead ends and halls that doubled back on themselves. We passed hieroglyphic scrolls, gold jewelry, sarcophagi, statues of pharaohs, and huge chunks of limestone. Why would someone display a rock? Aren’t there enough of those in the world?
We saw no one, but the slithering sounds grew louder no matter which way we ran. Finally I rounded a corner and smacked straight into someone.
I yelped and scrambled backwards, only to stumble into Carter. We both fell on our bums in a most unflattering way. It’s a miracle Carter didn’t impale himself on his own sword.
At first I didn’t recognize the girl standing in front of us, which seems strange, looking back on it. Perhaps she was using some sort of magic aura, or perhaps I just didn’t want to believe it was her.
She looked a bit taller than me. Probably older, too, but not by much. Her black hair was trimmed along her jawline and longer in the front so that it swept over her eyes. She had caramel-colored skin and pretty, vaguely Arab features. Her eyes—lined in black kohl, Egyptian style—were a strange amber color that was either quite beautiful or a bit scary; I couldn’t decide which. She had a backpack on her shoulder, and wore sandals and loose-fitting linen clothes like ours. She looked as if she were on her way to a martial arts class. God, now that I think of it, we probably looked the same way. How embarrassing.
I slowly began to realize I’d seen her before. She was the girl with the knife from the British Museum. Before I could say anything, Carter sprang to his feet. He moved in front of me and brandished his sword as if trying to protect me. Can you believe the nerve?
“Get—get back!” he stammered.
The girl reached into her sleeve and produced a curved white piece of ivory—an Egyptian wand.
She flicked it to one side, and Carter’s sword flew out of his hands and clattered to the floor.
“Don’t embarrass yourself,” the girl said sternly. “Where is Amos?”
Carter looked too stunned to speak. The girl turned towards me. Her golden eyes were both beautiful and scary, I decided, and I didn’t like her a bit.
“Well?” she demanded.
I didn’t see why I needed to tell her a bloody thing, but an uncomfortable pressure started building in my chest, like a burp trying to get free. I heard myself say, “Amos is gone. He left this morning.”
“And the cat demon?”
“That’s my cat,” I said. “And she’s a goddess, not a demon. She saved us from the scorpions!”
Carter unfroze. He snatched up his sword and pointed it at the girl again. Full credit for persistence, I suppose.
“Who are you?” he demanded. “What do you want?”
“My name is Zia Rashid.” She tilted her head as if listening.