Hands shaking, I pull out my phone. My mother needs to know about this. She needs to know there are other gods out there, and that they know about us. This must be it, it has to be it. The threat behind everything.
“There you are,” a knife-sharp, guttural voice says, and it’s only then that I finally place the salty, swollen dryness at the back of my throat that has plagued me.
It tastes like an embalmed body smells.
“Anubis,” I whisper, and look up to see his jackal eyes glowing in the dark. “What are you doing here?” I didn’t think anything else could shock me tonight, but the sharp canines Anubis flashes in a smile prove otherwise. “Did my mother send you?”
“Isis doesn’t know I’m here.”
“If she didn’t send you, why are you—”
“Soon enough.” He reaches down and takes my phone, crushing it between his powerful, paw-like hands. “Don’t want you calling Mummy and ruining the surprise. Now, I have been in this soulless country far too long, and tonight I’ll get what I came for. Hathor was wrong—your existence isn’t entirely pointless.”
He wraps his hand around my arm, pulling me up so hard I gasp in pain.
“Isadora?”
We both turn. Tyler’s on the bridge, leaning over and squinting down at us in the dark.
“Are you okay?” she asks, her voice tentative.
Anubis squeezes harder, whispering low in my ear. “Do you know what I did to that driver? I embalmed his organs while they were still inside him. If you value your friend’s life, tell her to leave.”
I swallow hard against the panic welling up inside me. I will not let Tyler get hurt. “I’m fine.”
“Who is that?”
“My brother,” I stutter. “Half brother.”
“Oh.” She sounds dubious.
“He’s giving me a ride home. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Okay.” She hesitates. “Good job tonight.”
“Thank you.” I barely manage to push out the words, my throat so dry from Anubis’s smell.
She lingers as if torn for a few achingly long seconds, then waves and walks toward the parking lot. Anubis drags me up the wooden stairs and across the street. I’d gotten so used to being tall here; he towers over me and I feel powerless, like a child.
We circle the museum to the back door. “I know you have a key,” he says.
I don’t bother pretending like I don’t. I’m too busy trying to figure out what he wants. I’d dismissed him as a slimy lech, but I’d underestimated the cunning beneath his jackal face.
I open the door, and we walk through the now empty museum. A security guard, the one with the goatee and kind eyes, looks up from his chair by the stairs. I smile; it feels like a death mask, but does the job as I see the tension leave his shoulders.
“Forgot my purse.”
He waves us by and then we are in the pitch-black room, my room, where only a few minutes ago Ry broke my heart.
I laugh, a desperate, choking noise.
“What’s funny?” Anubis snaps, looking for a light switch.
“Guess I should have let him read his stupid poem.” Because whatever else the Greek liar is, he never made my soul clench with cold, salt-dried terror the way Anubis is. I can feel the tendrils of darkness seeping off him, clutching at me.
“Where are the lights?” he growls. His jaw snaps as he bites off the end of the sentence.
I lean down and flick them on. “You can’t take any of it. Touch anything, and an alarm will go off.” I’d briefly considered setting off an alarm myself, but I don’t want the security guard to get hurt. He doesn’t deserve it.
It’s obvious now that Anubis has been after something in this room the whole time. The break-in at Sirus’s house, the attack on the driver, the eyes I felt watching me—he was waiting for his chance to access my mother’s artifacts. I have no idea why. He’s been in our Abydos home countless times, and junk like this is all over the place.
“I don’t need to take it.” He drags me over to the largest fresco, the one of my mother and Horus with the sun god. And then he stares at it, searches it like he would devour it with his eyes.
“What are you looking for?” I try to see what he’s seeing.
A low growl sounds at the back of his throat, and his hand tightens on my skin, now stinging and cracked with dryness.
I don’t ask anything else.
Why this fresco? Why leave his base of power in Egypt to stare at this one dumb painting that tells a story everyone knows? I look from the image of my mother, to falcon-headed Horus, to prone Amun-Re. There’s nothing there!
Then I notice Anubis’s lips are moving ever so slightly, as though he’s trying to read. I’m looking at the wrong part of the picture. The glyphs that surround the figures—the ones only I can read, because only I know how to translate my mother’s writing.
This is the story of my mother learning the most powerful god’s name, written by Isis herself. Chaos. He’s here to figure out Amun-Re’s true name. And if someone like Anubis could control the sun god . . .
“Here,” he says, jabbing his finger at the beginning of the writing. “Read it.”
“I can’t.”
“Don’t try to lie to me. You can live a long time with just your heart and lungs working, but it will hurt very, very much.” He leans in so close I can feel his breath leeching the moisture from my skin. I am actually cracking under his gaze. “You can read your mother’s writing. Read it.”
I don’t want to die. Not here, not like this. Not in a way that will leave my soul without a path back to my father.
Oh, Dad. I’m sorry.
I look up at the fresco. “It’s . . . it’s just the story. You already know it.”
“Read every word.”
Trembling, I start at the beginning. “Isis protected Horus, keeping him safe from the wrath of Set. But cunning Isis knew that hiding Horus would not be enough. She wanted the true name of Amun-Re, god of the sun, god of the gods. Only by wielding it together would Horus be ready to challenge Set for Egypt. She lured Amun-Re from the sky, where a child of—I don’t know this word.”
“Sound it out,” he says, gripping my arm so hard that I’ve lost all feeling in my hand.
“Ah-pep. Where a child of Ah-pep waited to bite him. Amun-Re, poisoned and dying, implored Isis to use her magic and save him. She would not until he had given his true name to her son.”
“Where is that? Where are you reading?”
I point to the section of text. He narrows his eyes, then leans back, a satisfied sneer curling his thin lips. “That’s all I needed.”
“What do you need that for? You know that story! Amun-Re, the snake, the name.” I stare, desperate, at what I’ve just read. He must see something I don’t, something hidden in my mother’s words.
He spins me around and marches me out of the room. I wish prayer worked, because I don’t have even that hope now.
“My stuff. You ripped up my stuff. And you took Sirus’s scrapbook.”
“I didn’t anticipate them valuing Isis’s things so highly. Imagine my disappointment when it wasn’t stored at your brother’s home. I’d hoped at the very least you had a key for your mother’s inane scrawlings, but no. I’ve had to wait all this time.”
He squeezes my arm as we leave the room. “I like you. You see what an insufferable worm your mother is. And you’ve finally given me what I’ve needed all these aching ages.” He nods pleasantly at the security guard and I stumble numbly beside him as we leave the museum.
He takes me down the stairs and into the canyon. It’s dark, darker than it should be, low clouds blotting out the stars that used to watch over me.
I refuse to die under a cloudy sky. I pretend to trip, throwing myself into a sprawling heap on the ground. Anubis’s hand on my arm nearly rips it from its socket, and my shoulder smashes painfully into the dirt as a sharp rock cuts my knee.
Anubis growls, his vocal cords shifting from hu
man to something more raw, lower.
“Sorry,” I whimper, closing my hands over the rock as I push myself back up. I stand, and before he can fix his grip, I smash the rock into the side of his head and run as fast as I can for the beginning of the canyon and the stairs.
I’m almost there when hands push me from behind. My own momentum propels me forward, the asphalt at the bottom of the stairs shredding my palms before my head slams into and bounces off the lowest step. Lights explode in my vision and I can’t see past the pain bouncing around my skull.
“Did you think you could get away from me, you stupid, mortal child?” His voice is a tortured nightmare imitation of a person. “I am a god.”
“Only in Egypt,” Ry says, and my vision clears in time to see Anubis look up, his face twisted in rage, just as a fist smashes into his jaw. He reels backward, snarling, then a hissing noise cuts through the night, and my eyes and nose burn.
Anubis’s scream turns into a high-pitched, desperate animal whine as he paws at his eyes, spinning in circles.
“Come on!” Tyler says, pulling me up. My head swims and I trip on the stairs. Ry’s arm is immediately around me, and the three of us run from dry, crackling, salty death, still howling in the canyon behind us.
Chapter 16
Amun-Re sits at the head of the pantheon of gods. He is without beginning or end, having created himself out of the nothing. He is the god of the sun, the god of creation, so powerful that he is King of the Gods. His names are endless, his titles infinite, but only one name is secret. Only one name allows those who know it to claim a position next to his throne.
Only one name allows those who know it to appeal directly to his power, to use it for themselves. For whatever end.
“YOU SHOULD GO TO THE HOSPITAL,” TYLER says, her voice high and rushed with adrenaline as she bounces against the door of Ry’s truck. I’m smashed in the middle between the two of them.
“I’m fine.” It’s a lie. I am not fine. My head is a symphony of pain, a sadistic master maestro conducting an opus of excruciating, devastating perfection. I can’t remember how we got into the truck, or how long we’ve been driving. Ry’s dashboard is slowly rising and falling like it’s on ocean waves instead of street asphalt.
The bright side is that I barely feel my palms, though in the occasional illumination of the streetlights we pass they look like they had a run-in with a cheese grater. Also I keep seeing other lights that aren’t actually there.
“We should call nine-one-one,” she says.
“Wait, that’s a real number?” I ask.
“What do you mean?”
“I thought it was a movie number. Like how they always use five-five-five for phone numbers. So that people wouldn’t accidentally use the real number for calling the police.”
Tyler chokes out a laugh. “No, it’s real. And I’m not sure why we haven’t called it yet. We should report that guy!”
“Can’t arrest a god.”
Ry coughs sharply. “You’re confused.”
“Seriously!” Tyler leans forward to try and look at my eyes. I swat her away. “He was going to hurt you! He did hurt you! I really think you have a concussion.”
He was going to do something much worse than hurt me. He is going to do something much worse than hurt me. “Police can’t help. He’s probably already gone. And he is my half brother.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.” I don’t have my phone and I don’t have any numbers memorized. I have to get home so I can call my mother. Warn her. My stomach turns and threatens to rebel, and it isn’t only because of the pain and nausea I’m swimming in. If Anubis did figure it out—if, all the many gods forbid, he learned the true name of the sun god from that fresco . . . The thought of Anubis with that much power makes me want to vomit. But I’m alive. I can still fix this.
“Thank you, guys. If you hadn’t come . . . well, thank you.”
Tyler has my wrist in her hand. “Isadora, you already said that. Four times. We need to go to the hospital.”
“No! I need to get home and call my parents. How did you know to come help me?”
Her voice is patient, the same tone she uses in the Children’s Discovery Room. “Like I already explained, three times, girl-who-does-not-have-a-concussion, as soon as I realized he was the guy who was asking about you earlier, I knew something was up. I’m so glad my mom made me swear to always carry pepper spray. And that I found Ry.”
Ry, who I threatened to kill earlier tonight, and who still didn’t hesitate to help me when I needed it most. Ry, who is not who he was. Ry, whose betrayal somehow stings far deeper than Anubis’s, and I don’t know why it hurts so much. It shouldn’t hurt so much. But he’s like my parents—building a foundation and then ripping it away, changing the rules.
Oooh, I hate him and I hate this truck and I hate the hills of San Diego and the way they make me want to lean over and throw up in dear Tyler’s lap. I need to be home. Now. I need to warn my mother.
Tyler’s phone rings and she answers it, breathlessly spilling out her version of the story to Scott. When she hangs up, she tells Ry that Scott will pick her up at my house.
“I’m going to stay there tonight,” Ry answers.
“Excuse me?” I hold the side of my head like I can contain the pain if I push hard enough.
“I’m not leaving you alone.”
“First of all, you are not welcome at my house. Second of all, I have a brother and a sister-in-law there.”
“You also have a concussion.” Tyler pulls one of my hands away to try and see my eyes again. She keeps muttering something about pupils. “Also, where the crap did you get this amazing bracelet? Is it real gold?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I mumble. I want to rip it off, but I can’t figure out how to undo the clasp. Another sneaky, underhanded move by Ry.
I hurt, everything hurts, and I am so hurt that he lied to me. That he always understood me even more than I thought he could, but he didn’t tell me that he understood. I don’t think he’s evil, not now that Anubis revealed himself, but still.
Ry’s the son of gods. It changes everything.
“No, seriously, that’s real gold, isn’t it? Maybe that’s why your crazy half brother was after you! This has to be worth serious money.”
“Yeah, maybe.” Gold is not really a commodity at my house. The name of the sun god, however . . .
Ry pulls to a stop in front of Sirus’s house. Scott’s car is already parked there and Tyler jumps out of the truck and runs to him, throwing her arms around his neck. My stone heart thumps forlornly in my chest as I watch them, and my traitor body longs for the comfort of another person.
I get out of the truck instead, and limp and stagger toward the dark house. This must be what it feels like to be drunk, I think, as the ground bucks and rolls around me.
“It doesn’t look like anyone’s home.”
I startle, so lost in my pain and my determination to call my mother that I didn’t notice Ry get out after me. “They’re probably in bed.”
“I’ll wait until you know for sure that they’re home and you’ve told Sirus what happened. I’m assuming that was Anubis. What did he really want?”
“It’s a family matter.” My teeth are clenched so hard my jaw aches and I can feel my pulse as a stabbing pain in my forehead. “Go home.”
“Sure you’re okay?” Tyler calls out from the curb. I wave dismissively. “Call me first thing in the morning, then. And I just Googled concussions. Don’t take ibuprofen, take Tylenol.”
Scott opens her door. “And next time you get in a fight, do it when I’m around. I’m good at the punching!”
I’m too tired to respond. I open the door; the entire house is dark. Sirus is a night owl. He should still be up. Maybe something is wrong here, too. Panicked that Anubis got to them, I take a deep breath.
It smells like Tide. I collapse against the doorframe in relief. Anubis hasn’t been here.
Ry steps forward like he’s going to come in with me.
“Please,” I say. It hurts to talk. “Thank you for tonight. Really. You saved my life. But I can’t—I can’t handle you right now. I’m confused, and I don’t know how this changes things, but it does. And until I know how it changes things, I just—I need you to be somewhere else.”
He swallows, then nods. I shut the door behind myself. I want him far away. I want him right here. I don’t know how I want him. But my mother. I need to talk to my mom.
Flipping lights on as I go, I find a note on the table. Sirus’s hasty scrawl is nearly illegible.
Isadora—tried your cell, Deena sick, going to the hospital, call me.
—S
No! I grab the phone and dial Sirus’s cell. It takes me three tries to get the numbers right, then it goes straight to voice mail, so I tell him to please call on this line because my cell is gone. My fluttery, panicked feeling intensifies. I don’t want anything to happen to Deena, or to their baby. They need to be okay. I need them to be okay, and to be a dorky, happy couple and raise a dorky, happy kid.
Please let her be okay.
My mother, fortunately, picks up on the second ring. “Who is this?” She sounds exhausted. I don’t remember the time difference, if it’s the middle of the night there or what.
“It’s Isadora.”
“What happened? Are you okay? You’re hurt!”
My voice catches. “I’m okay. But something bad happened. Anubis was here.”
“What? Why would he be there?”
I relay the story to her—all of it, including the driver who was attacked and the times I felt like I was being watched, and some of the details are out of order because I can’t quite organize my thoughts like I know I should be able to, but eventually I tell her everything. “Mom, I had to read it for him. I’m so sorry. I think—I think he figured out Amun-Re’s real name.” I hold my breath, waiting for her reaction. How bad is it going to be? How much power did I help that jackal-faced monstrosity get?