The Red Pyramid

Sadie wakes to Zia throwing a bucket of ice water over her. After drying off and dressing, she follows the other girl to the cleansing room, where Zia preps the siblings for magic by giving them water purified by Thoth and temporary tattoos on their tongues to help speak spells. From there, they go to the library, where Zia instructs Sadie and Carter to write words that they will turn into magic, adding that “the more powerful the magician, the easier it becomes to control the language” (189) and that they shouldn’t expect too much on their first tries. Carter draws the hieroglyph for sword and conjures a butter knife, and Sadie summons a pillar of fire that singes off Zia’s eyebrows.

Zia announces Sadie is ready to duel and summons a portal that takes them to Luxor, a city hundreds of miles north of Cairo. Sadie tries to summon fire again but nearly passes out. Zia explains how magic works—that it can be summoned from within but doing so takes great reserves of strength. Magic can also be stored in objects or called directly from the gods. Zia thinks Sadie and Carter might find the latter easier in Luxor because the place is sacred to their family. Sadie summons a lioness for the duel. Carter defends himself using an avatar like the one Bast had and runs the cat through. The amount of power they used means they are hosting gods without their knowledge and they are enemies of the House of Life.

An initiate of the House arrives to tell them Iskandar died in his sleep the night before. Desjardins is next in line and will order Sadie and Carter killed as soon as he’s initiated as the new lector. Feeling conflicted, Zia tells them to run and use the obelisks to get as close to Set as possible before the portals stop working for the demon days. As a parting, she warns them, “Desjardins will order me to hunt you down” (199), and Sadie and Carter run.

Carter takes over the narration and relays how he slept poorly the night before. Despite using the headdress pillow, his ba left his body to show Amos being captured by Set. Unable to sleep, he sneaks out of his room and finds Zia in a hidden room. There are pictures of her as a child with her parents before her father found a statue that unleashed a monster that killed everyone in her village except her. Carter thinks Zia comes to the room to remember them, but despite the pictures, Zia has “no memory at all” (205). Before Carter leaves, he asks Zia about the blue sphere she released when he found her. She doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and Carter leaves, disturbed at the implications.

Back in the story’s present, Sadie and Carter make it to the obelisk. A magician appears nearby and sends a horde of sphinx statues after them. Sadie manages to open a portal and pass through, but the sphinxes pounce on Carter before he can follow. With a great effort, he touches the obelisk, taking the sphinxes with him to Paris. One chases Sadie. The other rears back to strike, but someone dispels it, yelling “Mange des muffins” (211), French for “eat muffins.” It’s Bast.

Bast, Sadie, and Carter regroup and take shelter from the rain under the eaves of a nearby building. Bast held off the scorpions as long as she could before transforming back into Muffin and escaping through the Duat, and the kids bring her up to speed on what happened in the House of Life. Bast is impressed they managed to stay alive for as long as they did while hosting gods. Sadie and Carter realize the voices they’ve been hearing are Horus and Isis, and the kids panic. Bast orders them to calm down. The gods will give them power for the battle they must face because “only Horus and Isis can defeat Set and avenge the death of Osiris” (219).

Bast tells the kids what happened the night of their mother’s death. Their mother cast a shield spell to protect their father, which overpowered her and killed her. Bast offered help, but her mother refused, so she sacrificed herself to save their dad’s life. Carter and Sadie realize they must stop Set and save their father, if for no other reason than to make their mom’s sacrifice mean something. To help develop their powers faster, they can use a book written by Thoth, which they will steal from Desjardins’s mansion.

Desjardins’s mansion is an enormous, lavish building with a red front door—the color of Set. With help from the gods, Sadie and Carter transform into birds to infiltrate the house. Inside, Carter returns to human form, but Sadie stays in bird form. Carter searches for the book, but the library is overflowing with tomes. He pulls Doughboy out of his dad’s bag and orders the shabti to find the book. Doughboy finds a scroll on summoning fruit bats and an old painting before finally locating the right tome. Carter plucks the book off the shelf and sets off a trap that turns “a plague of fruit bats” (232) on him. Carter shoves the book and Doughboy in his bag, turns into a bird, and takes off just as hammering comes at the library door. Carter and Sadie, human again, rejoin Bast on the ground and run right before someone bursts out of the house.