We tried to lose ourselves in work. We repaired the statue of Thoth, and fixed the broken shabti in the library. I was better at grunt work—moving blocks of stone or heaving ceiling beams into place. Sadie was better at fine details, like repairing the hieroglyphic seals on the doors. Once, she really impressed me by imagining her bedroom just as it had been and speaking the joining spell, hi-nehm. Pieces of furniture flew together out of the debris, and boom!: instant repair job. Of course, Sadie passed out for twelve hours afterward, but still...pretty cool. Slowly but surely, the mansion began to feel like home.
At night I would sleep with my head on a charmed headrest, which mostly kept my ba from drifting off; but sometimes I still had strange visions—the red pyramid, the serpent in the sky, or the face of my father as he was trapped in Set’s coffin. Once I thought I heard Zia’s voice trying to tell me something from far away, but I couldn’t make out the words.
Sadie and I kept our amulets locked in a box in the library. Every morning I would sneak down to make sure they were still there. I would find them glowing, warm to the touch, and I would be tempted—very tempted—to put on the Eye of Horus. But I knew I couldn’t. The power was too addictive, too dangerous. I’d achieved a balance with Horus once, under extreme circumstances, but I knew it would be too easy to get overwhelmed if I tried it again. I had to train first, become a more powerful magician, before I would be ready to tap that much power.
One night at dinner, we had a visitor.
Amos had gone to bed early, as he usually did. Khufu was inside watching ESPN with Muffin on his lap. Sadie and I sat exhausted on the deck overlooking the river. Philip of Macedonia floated silently in his pool. Except for the hum of the city, the night was quiet.
I’m not sure how it happened, but one minute we were alone, and the next there was a guy standing at the railing. He was lean and tall, with messed-up hair and pale skin, and his clothes were all black, as if he’d mugged a priest or something. He was probably around sixteen, and even though I’d never seen his face before, I had the weirdest feeling that I knew him.
Sadie stood up so quickly she knocked over her split-pea soup—which is gross enough in the bowl, but running all over the table? Yuck.
“Anubis!” she blurted.
Anubis? I thought she was kidding, because this guy did not look anything like the slavering jackal-headed god I’d seen in the Land of the Dead. He stepped forward, and my hand crept for my wand.
“Sadie,” he said. “Carter. Would you come with me, please?”
“Sure,” Sadie said, her voice a little strangled.
“Hold on,” I said. “Where are we going?”
Anubis gestured behind him, and a door opened in the air—a pure black rectangle. “Someone wants to see you.”
Sadie took his hand and stepped through into the darkness, which left me no choice but to follow.
The Hall of Judgment had gotten a makeover. The golden scales still dominated the room, but they had been fixed. The black pillars still marched off into the gloom on all four sides. But now I could see the overlay—the strange holographic image of the real world—and it was no longer a graveyard, as Sadie had described. It was a white living room with tall ceilings and huge picture windows. Double doors led to a terrace that looked out over the ocean.
I was struck speechless. I looked at Sadie, and judging from the shock on her face, I guessed she recognized the place too: our house in Los Angeles, in the hills overlooking the Pacific—the last place we’d lived as a family.
“The Hall of Judgment is intuitive,” a familiar voice said. “It responds to strong memories.”
Only then did I notice the throne wasn’t empty anymore. Sitting there, with Ammit the Devourer curled at his feet, was our father.
I almost ran to him, but something held me back. He looked the same in many ways—the long brown coat, the rumpled suit and dusty boots, his head freshly shaven and his beard trimmed. His eyes gleamed the way they did whenever I made him proud.
But his form shimmered with a strange light. Like the room itself, I realized, he existed in two worlds. I concentrated hard, and my eyes opened to a deeper level of the Duat.
Dad was still there, but taller and stronger, dressed in the robes and jewels of an Egyptian pharaoh. His skin was a dark shade of blue like the deep ocean.
Anubis walked over and stood at his side, but Sadie and I were a little more cautious.
“Well, come on,” Dad said. “I won’t bite.”
Ammit the Devourer growled as we came close, but Dad stroked his crocodile head and shushed him. “These are my children, Ammit. Behave.”
“D-Dad?” I stammered.
Now I want to be clear: even though weeks had passed since the battle with Set, and even though I’d been busy rebuilding the mansion the whole time, I hadn’t stopped thinking about my dad for a minute. Every time I saw a picture in the library, I thought of the stories he used to tell me. I kept my clothes in a suitcase in my bedroom closet, because I couldn’t bear the idea that our life traveling together was over. I missed him so much I would sometimes turn to tell him something before I forgot that he was gone. In spite of all that, and all the emotion boiling around inside me, all I could think of to say was: “You’re blue.”
My dad’s laugh was so normal, so him, that it broke the tension. The sound echoed through the hall, and even Anubis cracked a smile.
“Goes with the territory,” Dad said. “I’m sorry I didn’t bring you here sooner, but things have been...” He looked at Anubis for the right word.
“Complicated,” Anubis suggested.
“Complicated. I have meant to tell you both how proud I am of you, how much the gods are in your debt—”
“Hang on,” Sadie said. She stomped right up to the throne. Ammit growled at her, but Sadie growled back, which confused the monster into silence.
“What are you?” she demanded. “My dad? Osiris? Are you even alive?”
Dad looked at Anubis. “What did I tell you about her? Fiercer than Ammit, I said.”
“You didn’t need to tell me.” Anubis’s face was grave. “I’ve learned to fear that sharp tongue.”
Sadie looked outraged. “Excuse me?”
“To answer your question,” Dad said, “I am both Osiris and Julius Kane. I am alive and dead, though the term recycled might be closer to the truth. Osiris is the god of the dead, and the god of new life. To return him to his throne—”
“You had to die,” I said. “You knew this going into it. You intentionally hosted Osiris, knowing you would die.”
I was shaking with anger. I didn’t realize how strongly I’d felt about it, but I couldn’t believe what my dad had done. “This is what you meant by ‘making things right’?”
My dad’s expression didn’t change. He was still looking at me with pride and downright joy, as if everything I did delighted him—even my shouting. It was infuriating.
“I missed you, Carter,” he said. “I can’t tell you how much. But we made the right choice. We all did. If you had saved me in the world above, we would have lost everything. For the first time in millennia, we have a chance at rebirth, and a chance to stop chaos because of you.”
“There had to be another way,” I said. “You could’ve fought as a mortal, without...without—”
“Carter, when Osiris was alive, he was a great king. But when he died—”
“He became a thousand times more powerful,” I said, remembering the story Dad used to tell me.
My father nodded. “The Duat is the foundation for the real world. If there is chaos here, it reverberates in the upper world. Helping Osiris to his throne was a first step, a thousand times more important than anything I could’ve done in the world above—except being your father. And I am still your father.”
My eyes stung. I guess I understood what he was saying, but I didn’t like it. Sadie looked even angrier than me, but she was glaring at Anubis.
“Sharp tongue?” she demanded.
Dad cleared his throat. “Children, there is another reason I made my choice, as you can probably guess.” He held out his hand, and a woman in a black dress appeared next to him. She had golden hair, intelligent blue eyes, and a face that looked familiar. She looked like Sadie.
“Mom,” I said.
She gazed back and forth from Sadie to me in amazement, as if we were the ghosts. “Julius told me how much you’d grown, but I couldn’t believe it. Carter, I bet you’re shaving—”
“Mom.”
“—and dating girls—”
“Mom!” Have you ever noticed how parents can go from the most wonderful people in the world to totally embarrassing in three seconds?
She smiled at me, and I had to fight with about twenty different feelings at once. I’d spent years dreaming of being back with my parents, together in our house in L.A. But not like this: not with the house just an afterimage, and my mom a spirit, and my dad...recycled. I felt like the world was shifting under my feet, turning into sand.
“We can’t go back, Carter,” Mom said, as if reading my mind. “But nothing is lost, even in death. Do you remember the law of conservation?”
It had been six years since we’d sat together in the living room—this living room, and she’d read me the laws of physics the way most parents read bedtime stories. But I still remembered. “Energy and matter can’t be created or destroyed.”
“Only changed,” my mother agreed. “And sometimes changed for the better.”
She took Dad’s hand, and I had to admit—blue and ghostly or not—they kind of looked happy.
“Mum.” Sadie swallowed. For once, her attention wasn’t on Anubis. “Did you really...was that—”
“Yes, my brave girl. My thoughts mixed with yours. I’m so proud of you. And thanks to Isis, I feel like I know you as well.” She leaned forward and smiled conspiratorially. “I like chocolate caramels, too, though your grandmum never approved of keeping sweets in the flat.”
Sadie broke into a relieved grin. “I know! She’s impossible!”
I got the feeling they were going to start chatting for hours, but just then the Hall of Judgment rumbled. Dad checked his watch, which made me wonder what time zone the Land of the Dead was in.
“We should wrap things up,” he said. “The others are expecting you.”
“Others?” I asked.
“A gift before you go.” Dad nodded to Mom.
She stepped forward and handed me a palm-size package of folded black linen. Sadie helped me unwrap it, and inside was a new amulet—one that looked like a column or a tree trunk or...
“Is that a spine?” Sadie demanded.
“It is called a djed,” Dad said. “My symbol—the spine of Osiris.”
“Yuck,” Sadie muttered.
Mom laughed. “It is a bit yuck, but honestly, it’s a powerful symbol. Stands for stability, strength—”
