by P. J. Hoover
“Dude, you have to add it. I am a huge Pluto fan.” Henry had yet another Pluto shirt on. This one read, PLUTO: DWARF PLANET MY A**.
“I figured,” I said. “But it’s not a planet.”
“It should be,” he said. “I started this online petition to get it replanetified.”
“That’s not even a word.”
“It will be once the petition gets accepted. You just watch and see.” Henry grabbed a hamburger and sat on a faded green camel seat on the other side of the coffee table like he was all settled in to stay for the evening. He took a bite, but a big chunk of the meat fell onto the wood floor. And that’s when I heard the closet door rattle.
I ran over and slammed myself against it a millisecond after it started opening. Inside, I heard small scrapings at the door.
Henry stopped mid-chew and stared at the closet. “What’s in there?”
“Another cat.” I shot Horus a look of pure satisfaction. “I take turns locking them up.”
Horus glared back at me and then leapt onto the camel seat next to Henry, staring at Henry with his one good eye until Henry moved.
I opened the closet door a crack. “Do not come out,” I ordered in an almost inaudible whisper.
“But master…,” Lieutenant Roy said. “Your visitor’s food—” He looked like he was about to collapse from the strain of my town house not being immaculate. How did he even know … unless he’d left a shabti in the family room as a lookout?
“The food can wait,” I said, and then shut the door. When I turned back around, Henry was staring at me.
“Were you talking to someone?” he asked.
“Just the cat. Try not to drop anything else, okay?”
Henry nodded but didn’t take his eyes off me as I picked the food up off the floor. And then he grabbed another burger and ate it in one bite.
“So can’t we work on this project some other time?” I said. I needed to head to the Library of Congress before Gil got home.
“We’re already behind.” Henry picked up the giant King Tut book. He was just about to flip it open when Horus pounced on a bug that had crawled up Henry’s leg.
“Aaaaaahhhhhh!” Henry screamed. His jeans ripped, and he jumped like he’d been mortally wounded, dropping the book to the floor with a loud boom.
“Horus!” I yelled.
His claws were still attached to Henry’s upper leg, but Horus didn’t care. With expert precision, he peeled the scarab beetle out of its exoskeleton with his teeth and ate it. And then after a loud crunch, Horus spit the shell out on one of Henry’s duct-tape-covered gray Chucks.
The closet door cracked open. I shoved it shut and kicked it. Then I swatted Horus away from Henry’s thigh.
Henry collapsed. There was only a little bit of blood. His normally messy hair was a disaster, and his wire-rimmed glasses sat crooked on his nose.
I cringed. “Uh, sorry about that.”
“What a horrible cat,” Henry said, straightening his skewed glasses.
Horus hissed.
Henry wiped at the blood with his fingers, and his hands shook. Almost getting disemboweled by a cat can do that to you. At least he started to breathe again.
Horus jumped off the futon and headed for the fire escape.
“Wait,” I said. Horus had vital information I needed.
Horus rubbed up against a golden cat statue in the corner. I joined him, praying the shabtis wouldn’t pick that moment to show themselves.
“How do I find the scroll?” I whispered. I pretended like I was scratching behind his ears so Henry wouldn’t think I was totally crazy.
“Talk to Colonel Cody. I briefed him while you were busy entertaining your guest.” He said the word guest in the same way he would have said rodent. Or pest.
“Wait until he leaves,” I said. “I’ll get rid of him.”
Horus rubbed against a catnip toy near the windowsill. “Too late. Gil will be home any minute. And Bast is waiting.”
“Bast? Are you kidding?”
“We have a date.”
A date! Here I was worried about battles between the gods, and Horus was going on a date?
“It can’t wait?” I asked.
“It can’t wait.” When he wanted to, he could almost disguise his voice like a meow. Either that or I’d lived with a cat for too long. And then he really did meow. This meant our conversation was over.
I gave up. When it came to Bast, Horus completely lost his head.
“Might I say your spots look especially clean tonight,” I said. And it was true. Horus was a good-looking cat—an Egyptian Mau. Sleek. Spotted. Regal. Even with the missing eye.
Horus flicked his tail and jumped onto the fire escape and into the night.
Now to get rid of Henry.
“What’s Bast?” Henry asked. He’d smoothed his hair back to its normal messy state.
“Not what. Who,” I said, hoping he hadn’t heard Horus talking in return.
“Okay, who?” Henry said.
“She’s this cat Horus goes to see from time to time.” I patted the golden cat statue. “She looks like this.”
Like lots of other stuff, the statue belonged to Horus. Having an idol of a powerful goddess around couldn’t be a bad thing.
“She’s shiny,” Henry said. “So where are your parents?”
“I live with my brother. But he’s out right now.”
“Where?”
Great Amun, Henry asked a lot of questions.
I shrugged. “Getting dinner.”
Henry eyed the closet door, but it was still closed. “Just you two live here?”
I nodded at the loft, to Gil’s bedroom door, which was painted solid black with a giant red X in the middle. My door, on the other hand, was painted gold, at the insistence of Colonel Cody. He’d tried to use real metal, saying it was the only thing befitting a pharaoh, but I convinced him paint was acceptable. “Yep. That’s his room.”
“Why a red X?”
“It means ‘Do Not Enter.’ He figured it was a universal sign.”
“And do you ever go in when he’s not home?” Henry said.
“No.”
Henry gave me a you’re-full-of-complete-hooey look.
“Okay, fine. A couple times. But don’t you dare tell him.”
Gil loved his privacy. He’d lock himself in his room and listen to music or play video games for hours. He never even let the shabtis in to clean his room.
“What happened to your parents?” Henry asked.
A lump in my throat formed before I could even think about it, and my scarab heart sped up. This was another reason I didn’t want friends. They made you talk about things you’d left behind thousands of years ago. “They’re dead.”
“Dead,” Henry said. “Wow, I’m sorry.”
It was one of those awkward moments when neither person knows what to say, so Henry got up and started inspecting one of my feather fans.
“Yeah, it stinks,” I finally said. “But that’s the way things go.” I never had visitors, so I wasn’t really sure how to get rid of Henry.
Just then, a shrieking alarm sounded three times. Horus’s ward. The door opened, and in came Gil, carrying Chinese food containers.
“Why the ward…?” Gil started, but then he saw Henry. “Who’s this?”
At least Henry saved me from having to make up excuses about Horus’s ward. He’d accidentally yanked three feathers out of the fan when the alarm went off. I took the fan away from him and set it on the table for repairs. The shabtis would get to it later.
“This is Henry. We’re working on a project together,” I said, as I saw Lieutenant Roy make a dash between Henry’s feet, grab a beetle shell, and run back out of sight. I held the three errant feathers in my hand. “Henry, meet my brother, Gil Jones.”
Gil cracked a grin. “His older, smarter, and better-looking brother.” He took off his black jacket and tossed it on the floor, then dropped the Chinese food containers onto the cof
fee table next to the scrolls and King Tut book. Bits of rice spilled out everywhere. Colonel Cody would probably ask permission to dump beetle shells in Gil’s room tomorrow while he was in the shower.
I stifled a groan. “Older for sure. How about more annoying? You left that one out.”
“Right. You are more annoying.” Gil nodded at the White Castle bag. “Any left?”
“No,” I lied. There was only one burger left, and I was hoping to eat it.
Gil grabbed for the bag anyway. “How’d you find out where we lived?”
Suspicion clouded Henry’s face. “You guys act like it’s some state secret.”
“We don’t tell a lot of people,” Gil said.
“But people already know,” Henry said. “Like that new girl.”
Gil narrowed his eyes. “What girl?”
“Tia,” Henry said. “She just came to our school.”
With every word Henry spoke, concern grew on Gil’s face. It was time for Henry to go.
“Well, thanks for the food,” I said.
“Oh.” The smile fell off Henry’s face. I felt kind of bad, but seriously, I was immortal, and … well … Henry wasn’t.
“It’s getting late,” I said. Not like I needed to justify myself.
“Not really,” Henry said. “What about our project?”
“Henry could come back tomorrow to work on the project,” Gil said.
What was he thinking? Was he trying to encourage people to come over more often? Maybe we should just have a party and reveal to the world that we’re immortal.
“Sounds like a plan,” Henry said. “So tomorrow, meet back here?”
I decided not to let him get too hopeful. “Tomorrow’s bad. We’ll have to do it another time.” There would be plenty of time for school projects after Horemheb was dead and gone.
“The library should be open again tomorrow. We could meet there after school,” Henry said. And then he reached for the coffee table. Right for my Book of the Dead. “Hey, what’s this?”
I yanked the scrolls out of the way just in time. Henry still had blood on his hand from where Horus had scratched him, and it almost touched the scrolls. That would have been a disaster. We hadn’t used the Book of the Dead in ages. Power licked off it. It was hungry. Anything could have happened.
“Just a side project I’m working on.” That was one way to look at the whole Horemheb thing—a side project to kill him while continuing to lead my normal, immortal life.
“It almost feels like there’s heat coming off the paper,” Henry said, holding his hand over the top of it.
“It’s just hot in here,” I said. Ancient magic did have that property. And I was going to use it. Three spells—that had to be enough.
7
WHERE I PLAY TRIVIAL PURSUIT WITH THE GODS
No sooner had the lock clicked behind Henry than the shabtis were out of the closet and cleaning. I was pretty sure Henry wasn’t carrying the bubonic plague, but the shabtis didn’t let that stop them from disinfecting everything. Lieutenant Roy led the cleanup effort, running frantically from one side of the town house to the other, making sure no spot was left untouched.
“What are the scrolls doing out?” Gil asked. “That could have been a disaster.”
I fumbled for words. How was I supposed to explain it to Gil? I couldn’t tell him about the spells. Or the knife. What I really needed was for Gil to leave me alone for once so I could sneak out to the Library of Congress.
“Nothing happened. I got the scrolls away before he touched them.” I looked down at Lieutenants Virgil and Leon, who bowed, ran off, and then returned in under a minute with a soda and a glass of ice. Gil scowled at them.
“But why were the scrolls out in the first place?” Gil sank down into his favorite chair, which only seconds before had been occupied by Henry’s backpack. The chair was older than the Constitution and had more patches than a quilt, but Gil refused to get rid of it.
It was a totally legitimate question. We never took down the Book of the Dead from the top of the bookcase. I decided to use my bad luck from earlier as an excuse. “Horus was helping me figure out a way to smite Horemheb. He thought there might be something in the Book of the Dead.”
“And what did his godliness come up with?” Gil said.
I crossed my arms and pretended to act annoyed, which was easy. I couldn’t believe Gil had known there was an immortal-killing knife in existence and had never bothered to tell me. Around my feet, the shabtis lined up in assault formation, as if they’d attack Gil at my command. I did love how they always sided with me no matter what.
“Horus came up empty, didn’t he?” Gil said.
“Yep.” The lie slipped off my tongue like soda. “Why? Are you sure you don’t know of any ways to kill Horemheb?”
I waited, wondering what Gil would say. Maybe he would fess up. We could go after the knife and Horemheb together.
“Nope,” Gil finally said.
So much for that dream.
Gil grabbed a video game controller and tossed me a second one.
I wasn’t about to spend the rest of the night playing video games with him. I chucked the controller onto the coffee table. “I’m not up for playing.”
“You’re always up for playing,” Gil said.
Maybe before I realized Gil was lying to me. How many other times had Gil lied to me and I had no idea?
“Not tonight,” I said. “Too much homework.”
It was a lame excuse.
“The shabtis do your homework,” Gil said.
“I want to do it tonight.”
“Fine. Whatever. Do your homework then.” Gil threw his controller onto the futon and stormed off to his room.
No sooner had Gil’s red X’ed door slammed shut than Colonel Cody ran over to me. He scaled the bookshelf until he was at ear level.
“Great Master,” he said. “Quickly. Before the heathen emerges. The Library of Congress.”
“Where in the Library of Congress?” I said. The place was bigger than my old palace.
“The cat—” Colonel Cody began.
“Horus,” I corrected.
“Yes, the cat, Horus—”
“He’s a god,” I said.
“Yes, the god cat Horus told us of a secret room,” Colonel Cody said. “Among the relics from the Library of Alexandria—”
“That library burned thousands of years ago,” I said. “Everything was destroyed.”
“No, Great Master,” Colonel Cody said. “Many items were saved. And among these items are scrolls created during the reign of the gods. They’re kept in a secret room, below the basements.”
That didn’t surprise me. Everything in D.C. was built on top of something else. There were basements and subbasements and secret passages below those. It was like a giant underskeleton of the city.
“We need to go now.” I looked in the direction of Gil’s room. Light flickered from under his black door. He was on his computer.
“We must bring the proper scroll.” Colonel Cody jumped down from my shoulder and onto the coffee table without making a sound. He rifled through the Book of the Dead and grabbed the scroll with spell number sixty-eight, passing it my way. I folded it and tucked it under my shirt.
“Ready?” I asked Colonel Cody.
Colonel Cody snapped his fingers and four shabti majors joined him. “Ready,” he said.
“Then we better hurry before Gil notices I’m gone.”
* * *
I dressed in black so I could blend into the night, and snuck out trailed by five of my shabtis. I hadn’t seen Colonel Cody this excited since he’d found me in Egypt back in 1922. Every other block or so, he ordered his majors to halt and drilled them on their weapons’ use. I guess a hundred years of cleaning up scarab beetle shells for an ungrateful cat wasn’t hard to top. It was past ten, so the streets were empty. Since we were way into October, the air was chilly, but all the energy running through my scarab heart was making me sweat
, so I took off my sweatshirt and gave it to some homeless guy on the corner. He was begging next to a row of restaurants. They all had giant signs taped to the door that read:
Closed due to Failed Health Inspection
I’d eaten at most of those places. It was a good thing I never got food poisoning.
We passed by the obelisk near the Convention Center. Since the one at Dupont Circle had exploded, there were only four left. I almost reached my fingers out and touched it, just for a little bit of the scarab heart energy that ran through it, but I stopped myself. Had the Cult of Set really built them? I didn’t want it to be true because they were so perfect, but as much as I hated to admit it, Horus was rarely wrong.
“We must go, Great Master,” Colonel Cody said.
He was right. I wasn’t here to recharge my scarab heart. It was pumped full of energy anyway. What I needed was to find out where the knife was. I turned my back on the obelisk and continued on until the Library of Congress came into view.
Spotlights shined on the library, illuminating the massive stone building in all its literary magnificence. Marble steps led to the front doors, but iron gates had been drawn closed for the night. I knew it was way past visiting hours, because I’d spent thousands of hours at the library. Not researching projects for school—I researched the world. I read history books to see what was fact and what was fiction. Because that was the thing about history—nothing you read could be believed. Like, for example, everything from my reign. History had me on the throne until I was nineteen. Nineteen! I’d been cheated out of five good years. The books didn’t say anything about Horemheb casting me from the throne or colluding with the Cult of Set, either. All they focused on was the gold. And the “boy king” thing. I hated that.
The shabtis could easily have picked the locks on the iron gates, but every alarm in the place would have gone off. I’d never get to the secret room that way.
Colonel Cody snapped his fingers, and shadows cloaked the five shabtis. They couldn’t turn invisible or ever change the colors they were painted, but they could bend light around themselves so normal people wouldn’t notice them. And I thought being able to grow carnivorous plants was cool.
“Shall we enter first and eliminate the security?” Colonel Cody asked. He raised his hand to snap his fingers again.