Chapter II

Katya

The job was simple: break into the Brooklyn Museum, borrow a certain Egyptian artifact, and leave without getting caught.

It wasn't a robbery since we were in fact borrowing the artifact. But we probably looked suspicious: five kids in black ninja clothes on the roof of the museum. Oh, and a baboon, also dressed like a ninja.

The first thing we did was send our trainees Jaz and Walt to open the side window, while Khufu, Sadie, Carter, and I examined the big glass dome in the middle of the roof, which was supposed to be our exit strategy.

It wasn't looking too good.

It was well after dark, and the museum was supposed to be closed, but the music coming from the bright ballroom carried through the air and told us we would have to make some changes to our plan.

Despite the rule that magicians were supposed to wear linen, I wore black jeans, and a black shirt. As long as I wasn't wearing leather, I was okay, since we weren't supposed to wear animals products.

Carter was shivering in his shoes, of course, the cold didn't bother me, being a daughter of Khione. Sadie was humming along to something on her iPod as she undid the locks on the dome.

"You said the museum would be empty," Carter complained.

Sadie didn't hear him until he pulled out her earbuds and repeated himself.

"Well, it was supposed to be empty." She'll deny this, but after living in the States for the last year and three months, she had lost her British accent, but she still said things like 'bloody' in front of things when she was angry. "The Web site said it closed at five How was I supposed to know there'd be a wedding?"

Khufu tapped on the glass. Even in his black clothes, it was hard for him to blend into the shadows with his golden fur, not to mention his rainbow-colored nose and rear.

"Agh!" He grunted.

Because he was a baboon that could've been anything from There's food down there to Hey, lets go home where I can get drunk on Jell-O!

"Khufu's right," Sadie interrupted. "We'll have a hard time sneaking out through the party. Perhaps if we pretend we're a maintenance crew-"

"Sure," I said. "Five kids with a three ton statue coming through. Just going to float it up through the roof."

Sadie rolled her eyes, I stuck out my tongue, and Carter groaned in exasperation. Sadie pulled out her wand-a curved length of ivory carved with pictures of monsters-and pointed at the base of the dome. A golden hieroglyph blazed, and the padlock popped open.

"Well, if we're not going to use this as an exit," she said, "why am I opening it? Couldn't we come out the way we're going in-through the side window?"

"I told you," Carter said. The statue is huge. It won't fit through the side window. Plus, the traps-"

Sadie raised her eyebrows, "Perhaps if someone had given us more notice that we needed to steal this statue-"

"Hey, guys, forget about it." I could tell where this conversation was going, and it wouldn't help if they argued on the roof all night. Sadie was right, though, Carter hadn't given us much time. After weeks of asking Horus for help, he'd finally gotten a tip from the god: Oh, by the way, that artifact you wanted? The one that holds the key to saving the planet? It's been sitting down the street in the Brooklyn Museum for the last thirty years. But! There's, more, tomorrow it leaves for Europe. You have five days to figure out how to use it, or we're all doomed.

I was so glad I didn't have any connection to the gods (I had my mother, but she has never used the mental connection) Gods only talk when they're ready, they have not sense of mortal time. Carter told me about that, and about how he still has some of Horus' antisocial habits-like the occasional urge to hunt small furry rodents or challenge people to a duel 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."

Carter frowned. "A diversion?"
"Like a homicidal baboon," I smirked.

"Exactly!" Sadie exclaimed. "See, Carter? Katya understands me."

The protection spells around the museum were tricky, since we didn't know anything about them, like what they did, or who cast them. If we knew that, they would be a lot easier to break. There were some pretty nasty curses on the doors and windows. We couldn't open a portal inside the museum, or send one of our retrieval shabti to bring us the artifact we need.

We'd have to get in and out the hard way; and if we made a mistake, there was no telling what sort of curse we'd unleash: monsters guardians, plagues, fires, exploding donkeys. (Seriously though, they smell worse than the stables at Triple G Ranch.)

I just wanted to go home, take an ice cold shower, maybe or probably IM Percy, then watch She's the Man.

"So we push on and improvise?" Sadie asked.

I looked down at the wedding party, hoping we weren't about to ruin the couple's special night. "Guess so," Carter said.

"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 that just like all of our not-so-well-thought-out-plans would end badly.

"Come on," I said. "Let's go 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, Carter, and I landed next to them, they seemed to be in the middle of deep conversation. Jaz was holding Walt's hands. That surprised me, but it surprised Sadie even more. She made a squeaking noise like a mouse getting stepped on.

I shot a worried glance back at her, I knew all about her feelings for Walt. We had many late night girl talks about Walt, and sometimes her kiss with Anubis. Locked up in my room until one in the morning, just Sadie, me, two guys named Ben and Jerry, and four seasons of Glee.

Jaz was a cheerleader from Nashville. Her name was short for Jasmine, but don't tell her that unless you want to be turned into a shrub then set on fire. She was pretty in a blonde cheerleader kind of way, and you couldn't help but like 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 to us ninety-nine percent of the time.

Tonight she'd covered her hair in a black bandana. 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 we dropped down next to them.

Walt looked embarrassed.

Walt was fourteen, Carter and my age, actually I turned fifteen in January, but close enough. He was a lot taller than my five foot three, in fact, a lot of people were taller than me, but Walt was tall enough to touch the top of the door jam. He had an athletic build-lean and muscular-and the guy'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 rainy March weather he was wearing 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 dude was a natural sau-a charm maker. He wore a bunch of gold neck chains with magic amulets he'd made himself. Sadie would've just described him as 'hot' or 'perfect'. He wasn't my type, Walt was too serious, I liked someone with a goofy sense of humor, dark hair, green eyes, brave, and someone who puts their friends first. Someone who would give up the world for who they care about

Anyway, Sadie was jealous of Jaz because she liked Walt, but she wouldn't tell him even though it was obvious to everyone that Sadie like him and he liked her, but the two of them were too oblivious to see that the other like them back, and Sadie was still moping about Anubis which kind of made everything confusing. It was a good love triangle, though.

Speaking of Anubis, I hadn't forgotten about him helping me escape from the hellhounds Luke set after me. Everything was so confusing it was easier to shut everything out and focus on what was happening now, not easy to do that with ADHD.

When we interrupted their conversation, Walt let go of Jaz's hands real quick and stepped away. Sadie's eyes moved back and forth between them, trying to figure out what was going on, and Carter and I held our breath waiting for the atomic bomb to go off.

Walt cleared his throat. "Window's ready."

"Brilliant." Sadie looked at Jaz. "What did you mean, 'We'll figure it out'?"

Sadie wasn't subtle at all, she smiled, but she said it harshly and there was this crazed look in her eyes. Jaz flapped her mouth like a fish trying to breath..

Walt answered for her: "You know. The Book of Ra. We'll figure it out."

"Yes!" Jaz said. "The Book of Ra."

I could tell they were lying, but I figured we didn't have time for drama.

"Okay," Carter said before Sadie could find a dark room and a desk lamp to shine in their eyes. "Let's start the fun."

The window opened easily. No magic explosions, alarms, or exploding donkeys, yet.

The Egyptian artifacts brought back all kinds of memories. I couldn't look at ancient anything without feeling a personal connection. That was not normal. People were supposed to feel small and distant when they saw mummies that had lived and died thousands of years ago, but I thought Yep, he probably worshiped the two gods that were in my cousins' minds two Christmases ago. They were definitely not supposed to make that connection. We walked by a sarcophagus, and I remembered how Set imprisoned my uncle Julius in a golden coffin at the British Museum. Everywhere there were pictures of Osiris, the blue-skinned god of the dead, and I thought about how Uncle Julius had sacrificed himself to become Osiris' new host. Right now, somewhere in the magic realm of the Duat, my uncle, and two of my closest friends' dad was one of the kings of the underworld. I can't even describe how weird it was seeing a five-thousand-year-old painting of a blue Egyptian god and thinking, "Yep, that's Uncle Julius and his dog Ammit that devours the souls of the wicked." Don't even get me started on my mom's side of the family.

All the artifacts seemed like family mementos: a wand just like mine and Sadie's, a picture of serpopards that had attacked Sadie and Carter at Brooklyn House the day I was united with them; my long forgotten cousins. There was a page from the Book of the Dead showing demons we'd met in person, shabti that came to life when summoned to do your bidding. Back two Christmases ago when we fought Set, Carter had fallen hard for a girl named Zia Rashid, who'd turned out to be a shabti.

Falling in love for the first time had been hard enough on him, I knew. But when the girl you like turns out to be ceramic and cracks to pieces in your arms, you get an excuse for having a little post-traumatic stress. But when I went back to Brooklyn House after being trapped in the Land of Demons for two weeks, there was a Z like shape in his mashed potatoes and he had thought it was a sign from her, that was a sign for Sadie and I that this obsession wasn't a lot worse than we thought. Even Percy and Rachel, who hadn't even met Zia knew how much she meant to Carter, and they just thought she had moved back to Cairo after living in Brooklyn for the semester.

We made our way through the first room, passing under a big Egyptian-style zodiac mural on the ceiling. I could hear the celebration going on in the grand ballroom down the hallway to our right. Music and laughter echoed through the building.

In the second Egyptian room, we stopped in front of a stone frieze the size of a garage door. Chiseled into the rock was a picture of a monster trampling some humans.

"Is that a griffin?" Jaz asked.
Carter nodded. "The Egyptian version, yeah."

The animal had a lion's body and the head of a falcon, but its wings weren't like most griffin pictures you see. Instead of bird wings, the monster's wings ran across the top of its back-long horizontal, and bristly like a pair of upside-down steel brushes. If the monster could've flown with those things at all, I figured they moved like a butterfly's wings. The frieze had once been painted. I could make out flecks of red and gold on the creatures hide; but even without color, the griffin looked eerily lifelike. Its beady eyes seemed to follow me. It seemed like it could come alive at any moment.

"Griffins were protectors," Carter said. "They guarded treasures and stuff."
"Fab," Sadie said, which sounded odd coming out of her mouth, actually the word sounds weird no matter who says it. "So you mean they attack… oh, thieves, for instance, breaking into museums and stealing artifacts?"

I felt myself pale. Sadie pretty much confirmed my thoughts.

"It's just a frieze," Carter said. But I didn't feel any better. Egyptian magic was all about turning words and pictures into reality.

"There," Walt pointed across the room, "That's it, right?"

We made a wide arc around the griffin and walked over to a statue in the center of the room.
The god stood about eight feet tall. He was carved from black stone and dressed in typical Egyptian style: bare-chested, with a kilt and sandals. He had the face of the ram and horns that had partially broken off over the centuries. On his head was a frisbee shaped crown-a sun disk, braided with serpents. In front of him stood a much smaller human figure. The god was holding his hands over the little dude's head, as though he was giving him a blessing.

I looked at the hieroglyph inscription. I was fluent in Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, and Ancient Greek. Super helpful in modern America. Really, it's just great, because I'm failing English and I have to read this stupid book that I don't have a Egyptian or Greek copy.

"KNM," I read. "That'd be pronounced Khnum."

"Rhymes with ka-boom?" Sadie joked.

"Yeah," Carter agreed. "This is the statue we need. Horus told me it holds the secret to finding the Book of Ra."

Unfortunately, Horus hadn't been very specific. Now that we'd found the statue, I had absolutely no idea how it was supposed to help us.

"Who's this guy in front?" Walt asked. "A child?"

Jaz snapped her fingers. "No, I remember this! Khnum made humans on a potter's wheel. That's what he's doing here, I bet-forming a human out of clay."

She looked at us for confirmation. I nodded, the story coming back to me, and slightly embarrassed that I'd forgotten, since I was their teacher. Sure, I wasn't Carter, but I was still supposed to remember what I'd taught them.

"Yeah, good," Carter said. "Man out of clay. Exactly."

Sadie frowned up at Khnum's ram head. "Looks a bit like that old cartoon… Bullwinkle, is it? Could be the moose god?"

"He's not the moose god," Carter rolled his eyes.

"But if we're looking for the Book of Ra," she said, "and Ra's the sun god, then why are we searching for a moose?"

"Khnum was one aspect of the sun god," Carter said. "Ra had three different personalities. He was Khepri the scarab god in the morning; Ra during the day; and Khnum, the ram-headed god, at sunset, when he went into the underworld."

I don't know why, but it bothered me when our initiates or Sadie and Carter used the word underworld when they meant the Duat, but I guess the Underworld in Greek mythology was different than what they meant when they said 'underworld'. Despite seeing the logic behind my silly pet peeve, it still bugged me.

"That's confusing," Jaz said.

"Not really," Sadie said. "Carter has different personalities. He goes from zombie in the morning to slug in the afternoon to-"

"Sadie," Carter said. "Shut up."

"and party animal in the evening," I smirked deciding to finish Sadie's teasing.

"Katya," Carter warned.

Sadie laughed, "That. Was. The. Best." She barely got out those one syllable word through her giggles.

Walt scratched his chin. "I think Sadie's right. It's a moose."

"Thank you," Sadie said, the laugh still in her voice.

Walt gave her a grudging smile, but he still looked preoccupied, like something was bothering him. I caught Jaz studying him with a worried expression, and I wondered how I could threaten to cause him physical pain for being inconsiderate about Sadie's feelings without giving away what Sadie feelings for him.

"Enough with the moose," Carter said. "We've got to get this statue back to Brookly House. It holds some sort of clue-"

"But how do we find it?" Walt asked. "And you still haven't told us why we need this Book of Ra so badly."

Carter hesitated. I held my breath. And Sadie's eyes got wide like a deer in headlights. There were a lot of things we hadn't told our trainees yet, not even Walt and Jaz-like how the world might end in five days. That kind of thing can distract you from your training, and we needed them to be at their best.

"I'll explain when we get back," Carter promised. "Right now, let's figure out how to move the statue."

Jaz knitted her eyebrows. "I don't think it's going to fit in my bag,"

"Oh, such worrying," Sadie said. "Look, we'll cast a levitation spell on the statue. We create some big diversion to clear the ballroom-"

"Homicidal baboon?" I suggested.
"What?" Walt and Jaz asked.

"No!" Carter refused.
"Yes!" Sadie and I fist bumped.

"Hold up." Walt leaned forward and examined the smaller human figure. The little dude was smiling, like being fashioned out of clay was like Christmas morning. "He's wearing an amulet. A scarab."

"It's a common symbol," Carter said.

"Yeah…" Walt fingered his own collection of amulets. "But the scarab is a symbol of Ra's rebirth, right? And this statue shows Khnum creating a new life. Maybe we don't need the entire statue. Maybe the clue is-"
"Ah!" Sadie pulled out her wand. "Brilliant."

"Wait, what? Not following here." I rushed, but Sadie ignored me.

She tapped the little dude's amulet. Khnum's hands glowed. The smaller statue's head peeled open in four sections like the entire top of a missile silo, and sticking out of his neck was a yellow papyrus scroll.

"Voilà," said Sadie proudly.

She slipped her wand into her bag and grabbed the scroll just as Carter and I shouted, "It might be trapped!"
"Wait!"

Sadie never listens.

As soon as she plucked the scroll from the statue, the entire room rumbled. Cracks appeared in the glass display cases.

Sadie yelped as the scroll in her hands burst into flames. On instinct I blasted her hand with ice, of course, the flames burned brighter with no evidence I had blasted it.

"Katya! Not helping!" Sadie shrieked.

The flames didn't seem to burn Sadie or the papyrus; but when she tried to shake out the fire, ghostly white flames leaped to the nearest display case and raced around the room as if following an invisible trail of gasoline. The fire touched the windows and white hieroglyphs ignited on the glass, probably triggering a ton of of protective wards and curses. Then the ghost fire rippled across the big frieze at the entrance of the room. The stone slab shook violently. I couldn't see the carvings on the other side but I heard a raspy scream-like a really big, really angry, really dangerous parakeet.

Walt slipped his staff off his back. Sadie waved the flaming scroll as if it were stuck to her hand. "Get this thing off me! This is so not my fault!"

"Um…" Jaz pulled out her wand and I turned the snowflake necklace hanging around my neck into my Celestial Bronze sword, Páli. Páli meant struggle in Ancient Greek. "What was that sound?"

My heart sank.

"I thinks," Carter said. "Sadie just found her big diversion."

Hey, sorry I haven't updated. Something happened with my family and I spent half the day balling my eyes out. I will make it up to you, though. Since writing takes the pain away, I'll be writing a lot.