Horus

We sneak through the factory grounds as Sekkmet is chewing up trucks and blasting huge swathes of the parking lot to sand.

"I hate this plan," Sadie grumbles.

"Just keep her occupied for a few seconds," Carter tells her. "And don't die."

"Yeah, that's the hard bit, isn't it?"

"One..." Carter counts. "Two...three!"

Sadie bursts into the open and uses her favorite spell: "Ha-di!"

The hieroglyphs blaze over Sekhmet's head. Everything around her explodes. Trucks burst into pieces. The air shimmers with energy. The ground heaves upward, creating a crater fifty feet deep into which the lioness tumbles.

At the same time, Carter turns into a falcon and we fly towards the salsa tanks.

"RRAAAARR!" Sekhmet leaps out of the crater and breaths desert wind in Sadie's direction, but Sadie is long gone. She runs sideways, ducking behind trailers and releasing a few lengths of magical rope as she flees. The ropes dance through the air and try to tie themselves around the lioness's mouth. It's a fail, of course. But that does annoy the Destroyer.

"Show yourself!" Sekhmet bellowed. "I will feast on your flesh!"

Perched on a silo, Carter concentrates all his power and turns straight from falcon to avatar. The avatar is so heavy, its feet sink into the top of the tank.

"Sekhmet!" Carter yells.

The lioness whirls and snarls, trying to locate his voice.

"Up here, kitty!" Carter calls.

I'm never allowing him to speak from my name again.

She spots us and her ears go back. "Horus?"

"Unless you know another guy with a falcon head."

At least twenty. Her father included.

She pads back and forth uncertainly, then roars in challenge. "Why do you speak to me when I am in my raging form? You know I must destroy everything in my path, even you!"

"If you must," Carter says. "But first, you might like to feast on the blood of your enemies!"

He drives his sword into the tank and salsa gushes out in a chunky red waterfall. Carter leaps to the next tank and slices it open. This goes on until six silofuls of Magic Salsa are spewing into the parking lot.

"Ha, ha!" Sekhmet is loving it. She leaps into the red sauce torrent, rolling in it, lapping it up. "Blood. Lovely blood!"

She doesn't stop drinking until smoke starts coming out of her mouth.

"Tangy," she says, stumbling and blinking. "But my eyes hurt. What kind of blood is this? Nubian? Persian?"

"Jalapeño," Carter says. "Try some more. It gets better."

Her ears are smoking too now as she tries to drink more. Her eyes water, and she begins to stagger.

"I..." Steam curls from her mouth. "Hot...hot mouth..."

"Milk is good for that," Carter suggests. "Maybe if you were a cow."

"Trick," Sekhmet groans. "You...you tricked..."

But her eyes are too heavy. She turns in a circle and collapses, curling into a ball. Her form twitches and shimmers as her red armor melts into spots on her golden skin, until we are looking down at an enormous sleeping cow.

Carter drops off the silo and steps carefully around the sleeping goddess. She is making cow snoring sounds. She does that in her human form, too, and then denies it in the mornings. She's so peaceful and cute when she sleeps. Carter waves his hand in front of Hathor's face. When he is convinced she is out cold, he dispels his avatar. Soon, a ray of sunlight should shine upon the goddess of love and music and lay her in our bed, up in the heavens. I can't wait to wake her up before my new coronation, having returned victorious once more.

Sadie and Zia emerge from behind a trailer.

"Well," says Sadie, "that was different."

"I will never eat salsa again," Carter decides.

"You both did wonderfully," Zia says. "But your boat is burned. How do we get to Phoenix?"

"We?" Sadie says. "I don't recall inviting you."

Zia's face turns salsa red. "Surely you don't still think I led you into a trap?"

"I don't know," Sadie says. "Did you?"

I can't believe I'm hearing this.

"Sadie." Carter's voice sounds almost dangerously angry and unshakably certain. He has the potential to be a great leader one day. "Lay off. Zia summoned that pillar-of-fire thing. She sacrificed her magic to save us. And she told us how to beat the lioness. We need her."

Sadie stares at him. She glances back and forth between Zia and Carter, probably trying to judge how far she can push things.

"Fine." She crosses her arms and pouts. "But we need to find Amos first."

"No!" Zia says. "That would be a very bad idea."

"Oh, so we can trust you, but not Amos?"

Zia hesitates. "Amos would not want you to wait. He said to keep going, didn't he? If he survived Sekhmet, he will find us on the road. If not..."

Sadie huffs. "So how do we get to Phoenix? Walk?"

Carter gazes across the parking lot, where one sixteen-wheeler is still intact. "Maybe we don't have to."

He takes off the linen coat he'd borrowed from Amos's supply locker. "Zia, Amos had a way of animating his coat so it could steer his boat. Do you know the spell?"

She nods. "It's fairly simple with the right ingredients. I could do it if I had my magic."

"Can you teach me?"

She purses her lips. "The hardest part is the figurine. The first time you enchant the piece of clothing, you'd need to smash a shabti into the fabric and speak a binding charm to meld them together. It would require a clay or wax figure that has already been imbued with a spirit."

Sadie and Carter look at each other, and simultaneously say, "Doughboy!"