Sadie wasn't sure which was worse: Bast telling them what she had seen while spying on the First Nome, or her and Carter confessing to Bast what had happened in her absence.
"Please let me make sure that I understand this right," Bast almost purred, but there was a very dangerous edge to her voice. "You ventured back into Manhattan, after being told only to go there in emergencies-"
"It was an emergency," Sadie interjected. "We were kind of running for our lives."
"-and drug a random demigod into your duel with two House of Life magicians. A random demigod who just happened to be the son of Hades, Lord of the Greek Underworld. And after he passed out, you brought said demigod here, into your own home, and allowing him past all the protection spells that your uncle fortified this house with?"
"We didn't know he was a demigod," said Carter, sounding much too cowed. Sadie wished that her brother would show some backbone, even though she felt about how he sounded. But it was never good to let anyone see you feeling guilty. "Let alone the son of Hades. We thought he was a magician like us."
"The corpse that he summoned to fight for him didn't give you any clues?" demanded Bast.
"Why would it have?" asked Sadie, doing her best to sound flippant. "Zia told us some magicians have affinities for necromancy."
"Necromancy doesn't work like that," said Bast angrily. "Not on decomposing, unprepared corpses. And reanimation doesn't work on corpses that have brains in their heads at all! The only thing a magician might have been able to use that body for was as a medium to speak with the dead. Not as his personal bodyguard!"
Sadie shrugged. "I guess we've seen too many mummy movies. Hollywood makes it seem like we should be expecting something like in The Mummy Returns."
"Perhaps you forgot the part where those reanimations had been mummified!" returned Bast. "As in properly prepared for necromancy."
"We didn't know," said Carter. "We're sorry, Bast, but we really thought he was just a necromancer."
"Just a necromancer?" Bast's eyes flashed with a dangerous light, and Sadie had the feeling that necromancers weren't looked upon much more kindly than modern grave robbers.
"What did you want us to do?" asked Sadie, propping her feet up on the patio table and leaning back in her chair. "Pin a thank you note to his shirt and leave him there for the House of Life to take in? Yeah. Because that would be a great way to repay him."
"No worse than kidnapping him!"
"We didn't kidnap him!" protested Carter. "That was all a misunderstanding. I mean, he had a god stuck in his head and had no idea what was going on. He wasn't even awake at all the first four days, and when he woke up the first time it was only for ten minutes! No, not even that long!"
Bast looked disgusted. "And the next time he awoke he found that he was trapped in his room, and so he contacted one of his demigod friends to come to his rescue!"
"Actually, Percy's my cousin." The voice came from right behind Sadie and made her jump about five feet in the air. Her chair clattered as she turned around as quickly as she could. Bast hissed and drew her knives and Carter got to his feet as well. Standing about three feet away with their backs to the balcony's rails stood Death Boy Nico di Angelo, and his trusty sidekick Percy the Pegasus Riding Sword Freak.
"Uh, hi," said Carter sounding rather dim. "Welcome back?"
"Ugh," said Bast, "I don't know which is worse. The fact that he's Hades' spawn or that he's hosting that flea ridden dog."
Nico's face had been calm and a bit amused, but his expression quickly twisted into an enraged one and he took a step toward Bast, giving her a glare that would peel paint. "I'm not a dog," he growled in a voice that was lower that Nico's usual voice, and had a slightly different accent.
"Anubis?" Sadie asked hopefully.
Nico/Anubis turned to her and gave a polite nod, then turned to glare at Bast again and bared his teeth savagely. It was kind of funny to see wee little Nico with his lower jaw jutted forward and his teeth clenched and lips raised to show off all those pearly whites. Some of his teeth were actually quite sharp looking, but didn't do much to lend him any intimidation power. He looked no more dangerous than an angry kitten.
"Hey, whoa. Settle down you two . . . er . . . three?" Apparently Percy had some counting problems. But then, Sadie wasn't exactly sure how many people/entities should be counted in this situation either. Did Nico and Anubis count as one or two since they were sharing the same body?
Nico/Anubis blinked. Once, twice, then his expression cleared and he looked confused for a moment, like he'd forgotten how to use his face muscles. He either stumbled or his knees buckled, because he almost fell, but Percy grabbed onto the collar of his shirt and kept him upright. When the boy spoke, it was with Nico in control. "We need to see Thoth," he told the Kanes and Bast. "I need to find a way to get our souls untangled."
"There's something else should probably do first, Death Boy," said Sadie. "If you haven't already."
Nico's expression grew wary. "What's that?"
"How about checking in with dear-old-dad?"
"No."
"Uh, Nico?" said Carter. "I actually think that you should contact your dad and let him know you're alright."
"And I really think you should mind your own business."
"Just about all us demigods have daddy issues," said Percy, almost apologetically.
"Actually, you checking in with your dad is our business," said Sadie, ignoring Percy's remark. "Because last we heard, he thought that you'd been kidnapped by the House of Life and he's planning on starting a war with them to get you back."
"What?"
"You heard me, Death Boy."
"My father wouldn't . . . he's not the kind of dad who . . . you don't know what you're talking about," stammered Nico.
"It's true," said Bast. "I was in the First Nome when he sent his furies as messengers. Hades somehow found out that you were in a fight with the House of Life and thinks that they kidnapped you. If you don't contact him and let him know that that's wrong then he's going to start a war with the House of Life in less than three days now."
"And if I do contact him he'll realize that I'm possessed by one of you Egyptian gods, and start a war with your pantheon," returned Nico.
"Neither of these are very good options," muttered Carter.
Sadie shot him an annoyed look. "You think?"
"That's why we want to see Thoth," Percy spoke up. "Anubis thinks that if anyone has the knowledge of how to fix Nico and Anubis, then it's Thoth."
"But since Thoth left the Du-whatever Anubis doesn't know where he is," said Nico. "But he knows that you guys do."
"Why don't we go inside and discuss this?" suggested Carter, throwing out his first intelligent comment of the night, as far as Sadie was concerned.
"You should not invite demigods into your home," hissed Bast.
"Why not?" asked Sadie. "Are they bad luck or something?"
"They've already been inside," said Carter. "Besides, they're not our enemies. If we don't all work together then there's going to be a war, and whether it's Hades versus the House of Life or Hades versus the Egyptian gods, the consequences aren't going to be good for Sadie and I."
So they went inside and sat down in the Great Room and prepared to get serious. Things got a little less serious when Nico spotted Khufu, and jumped up from his seat looking alarmed. Percy took his cue from his cousin and stood as well, and drew a weapon from somewhere. One second his hands were empty, the next he had a glowing bronze sword in them and looked ready to reenact a scene from The Clash of the Titans.
Bast stood up at once too and drew her knives, ready to fight, but Percy and Nico didn't attack. Percy stayed in his guarded stance and looked at Nico confused. Nico stared at Khufu like he'd just come face to face with the devil. "Godsdamned monkey!"
"He's not a monkey, he's a baboon," Sadie corrected him. "Shouldn't you know that with Anubis in your head and all? Anubis likes baboons."
"He does. I don't." Nico hadn't drawn a weapon but continued to glare at Khufu.
"Agh," Khufu said, taking a seat at their little council. Nico looked like he was about to have a heart attack. Then suddenly his face calmed and he sat down.
"Nico seems to have an irrational fear of baboons and monkeys," said Anubis, speaking through Nico. "So in the interest of settling this as quickly as possible, I will be taking over for now."
"Hey," protested Percy. "I can't agree to that."
"You of all people should understand the need to avoid a war involving gods," said Anubis.
"I want another war as much as I want another ice age," said Percy, "but Nico's my cousin and I can't just sit by while you trap him in his own head. That's his body. I want you to give it back to him."
Anubis was silent for a moment, then Nico spoke. "I've made a deal with Anubis. He can talk for now since he knows more about this Egypt stuff than me. But in return I want my jacket and boots back. Now."
"Fair enough." Carter went to go get Nico's stuff. He returned a minute later and Nico stood up. Sadie saw that he had been walking around without shoes and only stockings to protect his feet. She watched with some amusement as he slipped on his boots and quickly laced them up, and couldn't hold back a chuckle.
"What?" asked Nico looking annoyed.
"Nothing. Just thinking that you, me, and Anubis all have similar taste." She thumped her own combat-boot-clad feet down on the table. "Anubis wears them too."
Nico shrugged into his jacket and checked his pockets to make sure that they hadn't nicked his money before he sat down. Then he cocked his head to one side and jumped up again.
"Now what is it, Dog?" Bast demanded.
"Trouble. Don't you hear it you mangy alley-cat?" asked Anubis.
Bast went still then jumped up as well and landed on the table. Out came her knives, while Anubis reached into Nico's pocket and pulled out his switchblade. He hit the button to release the blade and then something happened. One second it was a knife, the next it was a three-foot-long sword of wicked looking black metal. Percy had his bronze sword out again in an instant, but Sadie could have sworn that before it was a sword his weapon was an ink pen.
Sadie and Carter got up as quickly as they could. "What is it?" Sadie wanted to know.
"How did it get past the wards?" asked Carter.
"It's upstairs," said Anubis.
"In one of the guest rooms. The one you let the dog stay in, I believe," said Bast.
"I'm not a dog!"
"You're a fool is what you are. You're probably the ones who broke the wards on that window."
"And how could I have done that?"
"With your blood, you filthy mutt."
"That black blood you painted on the window melted the glass," explained Carter. "It must have melted the protections too."
"That's impossible."
"Then how else did they get in?"
They turned out to be a dozen magicians from the House of Life, led by the two magicians that Carter and Sadie had run into earlier that week in Central Park. The woman who'd wrapped Nico in the ribbons of Hathor, and thus was responsible for all their problems, seemed to be leading them. She pulled out her staff as she walked up to the balcony rail and gave Nico/Anubis a nasty smile.
"Hello again, pet," she told him.
The room seemed to darken, like the shadows were getting thicker. "What did you call me?" growled Anubis.
Instead of answering, the magician flung the ribbons of Hathor at Nico/Anubis again, probably figured if they'd worked the first time . . .
She didn't count on Nico's cousin slicing them into pocket lint before they made it anywhere near the demigodling.
"Celestial bronze," the magician noted. "Another filthy demigod."
"Aziza," said one of the other magicians, one who Sadie didn't recognize. "Which is the son of Hades?"
"Which do you think?" said the female magician, Aziza. "It's the one who looks like the walking corpse!" She pointed her staff at Nico. "Take the son of Hades alive. If the other demigod runs, don't chase him. We don't need him. But the two little heretics we'll need as the tribute Lord Hades demanded. So take them either dead or alive."
---------------------------------------------------
Percy was insulted. He almost couldn't believe he'd been discounted so easily by the House of Life magicians. He knew that it was petty and juvenile but . . . he was used to people seeing him as important, or at least as significant. The son of one of the Big Three, the one everyone thought would fulfill the last Great Prophecy . . . he wasn't quite sure why he was insulted now that people didn't want to kill him.
But he was insulted. More than that, he was pissed off. Worrying about Nico seemed to be turning into a very stressful full-time job, and everything seemed to keep getting in his way. From the parasite god that was trapped in Nico's head, to the House of Life freaks who were responsible for the mess in the first place.
He was glad to have a chance to take his frustration out on someone.
The battle began in earnest. And by in earnest, I mean with a very loud explosion as one of the magicians destroyed half the Great Room with a fireball.
"You bloody bastards!" roared Sadie. "Do you know how long it took to put this room back together last time?"
Something else flew through the air and exploded right in front of Nico, sending him flying backwards. Nico crashed onto the table and rolled off the other side. Percy moved to cover his friend. He batted another fire ball off its course with his bare hand, very glad that he'd taken that bath in the River Styx and gotten that invulnerability. If not for that, he would have been unnerved at having to fight against so many magicians.
"Are you okay?" he asked his cousin.
Nico nodded.
"Which one are you?" Percy wanted to know. He needed to know who he had fighting with him in this battle. If it was Nico he could guess better how he would act. If it was Anubis he was going to have more trouble keeping Nico out of the magicians' hands since he didn't know what the god would do or how he fought.
"Nico," his cousin said. "Percy, are our weapons going to work on these guys?"
Percy hadn't thought of that. Celestial bronze and Stygian iron were great against monsters and the supernatural, but not so much against mortals, and he wasn't sure which one the House of Life freaks classified as. "I don't know." He watched as Sadie and Carter began countering with spells. Bast disarmed one magician and dodged a handful of those troublesome ribbons.
"Here's our chance to find out," said Nico, as Aziza and the other magician from the park moved to charge them.
"I'll take the girl," Percy said, just as Aziza shouted to her friend, "Hakim! Take the other demigod. I'll take Hades' son!"
Well, this complicates things, thought Percy. He took the first move and charged Aziza.
"Get out of my way!" the magician screamed shrilly. She whacked at Percy with her staff. He ducked under it and tried to cut her but she dodged. Out the corner of his eye he saw Nico start fighting Hakim. He didn't have time to watch for long. Aziza went on the attack, and Percy had to admit that she was good. He wasn't used to fighting someone with a staff. The closest thing he was used to were spears and they were quite different. For one thing they weren't constantly casting offensive spells at him, which he either had to dodge or deflect. Some of them got through his guard but didn't really hurt him, but some would have been troublesome if he hadn't deflected them, like the spider-web that Aziza accidentally hit one of her own men with. It stuck him to the wall like gum on a hot summer day.
This is taking too long, thought Percy. I'm spending far too long on one enemy. Nico had already taken down Hakim by smashing the hilt of his sword into Hakim's head. He had also taken down several others and didn't seem to be hurt. But Sadie was bleeding from a cut on her arm that was gushing and Carter seemed to be tiring quickly too. Bast stayed in constant motion so it was hard to tell what she was up to. Percy thought that they were winning, but then Aziza decided to light the entire room on fire.
She jumped away from him, leaping like a grasshopper and spun her staff around above her head like it was a helicopter propeller and she was trying to fly. Red light shot out of both end and spread around the perimeters of the room. "I'm through with playing around!" she shouted and stopped spinning her staff. She pointed it at the flames and then they started moving according to her will, rushing forward to spin around Nico like a cyclone of embers and brimstone. Nico looked panicked at is closed in on him and held up his arms to protect his face.
"No!" Percy shouted and looked around wildly. Water. I need water! The plumbing! He could feel it now that he was thinking about it. Water running through pipes in the walls. He called to it and it answered, swelling to bust out of its pipes and through the walls with as much pressure as a high powered fire hose.
"You'll have to do better than that!" screamed Aziza and began spinning her staff again to call up more fire.
Nico darted to Percy's side. "This is getting dangerous," he said, sticking close to Percy.
"You're right. We need to get out of here." But Percy didn't see how they could. There were still too many magicians left standing and Aziza was going crazy with her fire again.
"I think I know a way out," said Nico. "But I need you to get rid of the fire. All of it. Sadie! Carter! Get close!"
"What are you thinking, Nico?" Percy wanted to know. Nico had an odd, kind of crazy expression on his face. Like he was thinking about trying something really stupid.
"No time to explain! Cat Woman! You too! Get close!"
Their Egyptian counterparts obeyed Nico's order. As soon as Nico judged they were close enough he gave Percy a nod and Percy summoned the water again. Even before he doused all of Aziza's flames the room seemed to darken. Nico was bending the shadows, Percy realized. Then it clicked what his cousin was going to do.
"Nico, don't!" he shouted as the last of the flames hissed and fizzled into steam. "There's too many of us!"
But Nico, being Nico, ignored him, or maybe didn't even hear him. The water hissing was very loud and the steam obscured sound, muffling everything. The air around them was thick with shadows now, but Percy managed to see Nico link his right arm through Sadie's, then reach out further with it to grab ahold of both Carter's and Bast's clothes. Then Nico wrapped his left arm around Percy like he was trying to hug him. And they were flying through shadows at the speed of darkness.
The next thing Percy knew they were somewhere else. Somewhere dark but warm, even humid. In the moonlight he could see the silhouettes of gravestones in the mist and he saw that Carter, Sadie, and Bast had made it too. Nico released them and slumped against Percy who caught him and lowered him the rest of the way to the ground.
"Nico? Hey, look at me."
"Look at you?" muttered Nico. "You always have to be the center of attention, don't you Percy?"
Percy chuckled despite himself. "Oh ha ha. Very funny. I can't believe you managed to pull that off." He had been impressed with how far Nico's powers had progressed when Nico managed to shadow travel them both into the Kanes' balcony. A few months ago Nico hadn't been able to take even one passenger along. Now he had just taken four and gotten them . . . "Where did you bring us?"
Nico's eyes drooped and he lowered his head sleepily.
"What the bloody hell was that?" demanded Sadie, having apparently just recovered.
"Is he alright?" was Carter's first concern.
"He's fine," Percy told them. I think, he added mentally. "He's just tired. Shadow traveling takes a lot out of him."
"Well," said Bast, sounding reluctantly impressed, "that is certainly a useful trick."
"We're not in China are we?" Nico asked, looking up again.
Percy looked around. There were numerals on the gravestones for the dates and the letters were English. Some of them were even carved like tree stumps. "I don't think so. Why? Were you trying to take us to China?"
"No. I just always seem to end up there when I mess up. Percy, I'm hungry. You got anything to eat?"
Percy reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a packet of blue jelly beans. He sat Nico up so that his back was to a gravestone carved to look like a tree-stump, so he wouldn't choke, then tore the wrapper open for him when Nico fumbled it with clumsy fingers.
"I could've done it," said Nico petulantly.
"Of course you could have." Percy sat down beside him to rest for a moment. "Where were you trying to take us?"
"Ashville Cemetery, North Carolina." Nico seemed to perk up at the taste of sugar. "I think we made it too." He tapped the gravestone behind him. "There's a lot of gravestones carved like tree-stumps there. Here. In Ashville, if we are in Ashville, I mean. The cemetery, not the city itself because-"
"We get it, Nico," Percy told him.
"So we're in North Carolina?" asked Carter.
"I think so," answered Nico.
"That's good. We're a lot closer to Thoth from here than we were in New York," said Carter.
"If we start driving within the hour then we'll be there before morning," said Bast. "It would probably be best to drive instead of using a portal. The House of Life will be watching all of those now, I'll bet my life on it. They're on high alert now."
"Will they be keeping tabs on Thoth too?" asked Carter.
"Possibly. But Thoth is very powerful, and can't be easily defeated once he's rooted in a place of knowledge. Once we reach his stronghold we should be safe."
"Safe is good," muttered Nico. He finished off the pack of jellybeans and stuffed the wrapper in his pocket. Then he got to his feet using the gravestone for support.
"Whoa, hey! Where are you going?" demanded Percy.
Nico pointed. "Mausoleum. We should get inside."
"Why?"
"Because there are more people in graveyards at night than you'd think," Nico told him. "Wiccans, voodoo priests, emo-goth kids on dates, grief-stricken humans, muggers, grave robbers, murderers who want to dispose of bodies, lunatics, necrophiliacs –"
"We get the point," said Sadie. "And I'm pretty sure we could take on any of those. Except maybe the Wiccans." She turned to Bast. "Are Wiccans real? I mean do they have real magic powers?"
Percy tuned out the theological discussion that the two girls got into and focused on making sure Nico didn't take an unexpected trip smack into a gravestone. But the blue jellybeans seemed to have done the trick, and Nico seemed a lot stronger and more alert than Percy expected him to be. He walked up to the closest mausoleum without stumbling once, even though he walked rather slowly.
"How are we going to get in?" Percy started to ask, then shut up. Nico simply put his hand against the door and Percy heard the locking mechanism click. The heavy door swung open at the touch of the death god's son. It creaked eerily, like a sound effect from a horror movie, and Nico walked right in as though the mausoleum was his own home.
"Um? Hello? Shouldn't we be going and getting a car?" asked Sadie. "Not hanging out in a mausoleum?"
Nico hopped up onto the raised sarcophagus in the center of the mausoleum and laid down on top of it like it was a bed. "You can. I'm taking a nap."
Percy backed his cousin up. "Nico needs to rest. You have no idea how taxing what he just did was."
"Without my powers, it probably would have been impossible," said a voice right beside Percy. "Or it would have put him in a coma."
Riptide was at the stranger's throat in an instant. "Who are you?" Percy demanded of the black clad stranger. The newcomer was about the same age as Percy was, sixteen years old. His skin was pale and he had shaggy black hair and brown eyes. He seemed strangely familiar, though Percy knew he had never seen him before. But maybe it was just because he looked enough like Nico to be his big brother.
"Anubis!" Sadie was suddenly very happy to come on inside the mausoleum to stand next to the strange boy.
"Anubis?" asked Percy. He looked at Nico, who was reluctantly sitting up, then back at the stranger. "You're Anubis?"
Anubis moved Riptide away from his throat gingerly with two fingers. "I am."
"I thought you were possessing my cousin."
Anubis and Nico spoke at the same time.
"I am."
"He is."
Percy's confusion must have shown on his face.
"I have the power to inhabit any graveyard or place of mourning," Anubis explained. "I can divide my consciousness amongst quite a few places. Right now I am inhabiting this graveyard and your cousin, while continuing my duties in the Egyptian underworld."
"You know," said Nico, pointing at Anubis. Or actually pointing about a foot off from Anubis, while looking at him. "You look familiar. I've seen you somewhere before."
"Yes, Nico," Anubis said impatiently. "In the Halls of Judgment."
"No, not there. Somewhere else."
"You should have something else to eat. It will put you in a better state of mind."
"Why don't you give him a dog bone then?" Bast asked snidely.
Anubis turned toward Bast and suddenly he changed. One minute he was a normal looking dude. The next he looked like the Anubis Percy had seen in his history books: bare chested and wearing one of those Egyptian kilts, with a jackal head and a lot of gold jewelry. He growled at Bast and Percy almost swore he saw the woman's hair rise up on end.
"Hey!" Percy said quickly before things could turn violent. "Don't we have things to be discussing? Shouldn't we be planning how to stop an inter-pantheon war rather than fighting amongst ourselves?"
"Or we could be sleeping," said Nico helpfully.
Anubis morphed back to his human form and folded his arms across his chest. "Yes. We have much to discuss. That's why I came here before you like this, so that I could speak to all of you face to face, rather than through Nico. That gets confusing."
"That gets schizophrenic," Nico corrected him.
Anubis gave his human host an impatient look. "And Nico doesn't need any help causing confusion."
"Hey, give him a break," said Percy. "He's only twelve years old, he lost all his memories from the first ten years of his life, and now he's being possessed by a god of death. If he wasn't confused then I'd be worried."
"Hmph. Your loyalty to your cousin is commendable at least." Anubis looked at his host. "You're lucky. You could have ended up with an obnoxious spoiled-brat like Horus as your kinsman."
Nico seemed to be making an effort to get his head back in the game. He rubbed his eyes to fight off drowsiness and blinked several times. "What did you come here to say, Anubis?"
"I think you should tell Carter and Sadie about your heart scarab."
"What? No!" Now Nico crossed his arms over his chest, mimicking Anubis' early motion.
"Carter studied archeology under his father. Julius Kane had more knowledge about magic and the old ways than any human had had for centuries."
Nico's expression went blank and he looked at Carter and Sadie. "Which one of them is Julius?"
"Their father," said Anubis irritably. "Show them the scarab."
Nico shook his head defiantly.
"What scarab?" Carter asked.
"Somehow, between the time when Nico's soul was flayed by the ribbons of Hathor, and the time when he woke up from his four-day long coma, Nico's heart was replaced by a stone scarab."
"Impossible," said Bast. "The demigod would be dead if that happened."
"Show them, Nico," ordered Anubis.
Nico glared at him. "I don't want to. You know I don't want to. You know I wanted that kept secret –"
"And I would have respected that had we not just been given a deadline," Anubis told him. "But we have less than three days to figure out a way to separate our souls, so that you can face your father without him realizing you're possessed and deciding to start a war with us."
"We could always just let him take out the House of Life," suggested Sadie. "That's starting to sound better and better."
"What? You're joking, right?" Carter turned on his sister.
"Of course I'm joking," snapped Sadie. "I'm not a fool. I know we're going to need those idiots when we fight against Apophis. Especially since our recruiting efforts aren't going very well."
Percy wasn't crazy about Nico showing his heart scarab to Sadie and Carter. He wasn't sure if it the scarab was a weakness or some new source of strength for Nico or what, but common sense said that you didn't freely give that information to people you didn't trust. But the Kanes knew about it now, since Anubis couldn't seem to keep his muzzle shut. And he did have a point about the time limit.
Nico looked at Percy as though asking his opinion. Percy frowned but nodded, hoping that would convey what he was thinking. Nico seemed to understand and nodded back before unzipping his jacket and removing it, then taking off his T-shirt.
"Hmm," said Carter as he moved closer to get a better look. "Very interesting."
"Yes. Interesting. That's me." Nico shivered slightly and rubbed the goosebumps on his arms.
"You didn't need to take off your shirt, you know," Sadie told him. "This is not a Calvin Klein ad."
"Well I wasn't going to pull it up to my collarbone and hold it there," said Nico angrily. "I saw way too many girls doing that last time I was in New Orleans and I don't want to be imitating them."
"New Orleans?" Anubis looked sharply at Nico.
"Yes. The drowned city. Big pretty graveyards. Good music. Madri Gras. And best of all, Cajun food." Nico smiled wistfully at the last item on his list. "I love Cajun food. It's the only cuisine in the world that can rival McDonalds."
"You're weird," Sadie told him.
"Focus, please," said Percy as his cousin shivered again. "Nico, put on your jacket, at least. Carter, do you know anything about that scarab?"
"The scarab itself was an Egyptian symbol of rebirth-"
"Yes, we know," said Nico. "Get to the stuff we don't know."
"The ancient Egyptians carved hundreds of thousands of them, it was that important to them. They'd put them over-"
"Over the hearts of mummies and later started replacing the hearts of mummies with them. They had a god whose entire head was a giant scarab named Khepri. They thought that the sun was a flaming ball of dung rolled across the sky by a scarab. Yes, we know all that. What else can you tell us?" Nico pulled on his jacket, obeying Percy's order, and shoved his hands into his pockets while glaring at Carter.
Carter faltered a bit under Nico's scrutiny. "Well . . . it has wings."
"No? Really?"
"Most scarabs weren't carved this elaborately. I assume you know that real scarabs don't have wings with feathers, but in Egyptian symbolism, adding wings to something associated it with the divine or with the afterlife. Most of the time, anyway. So the fact that yours has bird wings means that it's special."
"Really? Wow." Nico was glaring daggers at Carter now. Then he turned his head quickly and grinned at Percy. "You hear that, Percy? It's a special scarab. I guess that makes me special too! My freaking heart was replaced by a special stone carved to look like a glorified dung beetle when I got myself possessed by the Egyptian god of corpse desecration! Yay for me!"
"Sorry," Carter told them, shrinking away from the angry demigodling. "I did the best I could. I'm kind of new at this magic stuff too. I don't know what the significance of it replacing your heart is, or why the Egyptians suddenly started changing the embalming process."
"Don't blame this on my brother," spoke up Sadie. "This is not his fault."
Nico pulled off his jacket again, put his shirt back on, then replaced his jacket. "So where's this Thoth guy who might know what the heck is going on?"
"Thoth is currently in Memphis," Carter told them.
"Memphis, Egypt?" asked Percy warily. He really wasn't in the mood for a trip by plane, which would end with him getting shot out of the sky, and there was no way Nico was fit to shadow travel them halfway around the world
"Memphis, Tennessee," said Carter.
Percy wished that he'd paid more attention in geography classes, and that he knew how far away that was.
"Pretty close," said Nico, looking thoughtful. "I like Elmwood Cemetery. It's nice."
"You death-god types are so messed up," said Sadie, looking back and forth between Nico and Anubis. The death god and his demigod host both shrugged simultaneously without even looking at each other. Nico seemed distracted, and too late Percy realized that he'd gotten that crazy look in his eyes again.
"Nico," he started to say warningly, but then his cousin reached out and grabbed him with both hands. The shadows in the mausoleum thickened like someone had slammed the door shut, but Percy was pretty sure it was still open. The next thing Percy knew he was flying through icy darkness, and the only relative warmth he felt was Nico's cool hands on his wrists.
Then he hit the ground. Hard, like someone had tossed him out of a moving car. Thankfully the ground was grassy and soft, and he missed hitting any tombstones. Around him he heard grunts and thuds and groans of pain as Carter, Bast, and Sadie got the same rough treatment. Perhaps even rougher treatment, since it seem like this time Nico had bent the shadows around them and towed them along without direct contact. Percy hadn't even known that was possible.
He turned to Nico who was lying beside him, still gripping his wrists tight enough to cut off circulation. Percy supposed he should have been flattered that Nico made sure to use the tried and true method of shadow traveling with him, to make sure that he didn't accidentally drop Percy somewhere along Route 66 or the Mississippi River. But he saw something right behind his cousin that made him cringe.
It was the writing on the tombstones. Percy wasn't very good at English, of course, but he was fairly good at recognizing it and distinguishing it from other languages like Italian and German. Unfortunately the writing on the graves was neither of those. It was some sort of Asian language.
"Nico," groaned Percy, "I've got some bad news. I think you just dropped us in China."
------------------------------------------------------
"China?" Nico's eyelids fluttered like butterfly wings as he struggled to open them. "Oh no . . ."
Nico looked so pathetic that Carter couldn't help but feel sorry for the kid. Then something occurred to him.
"Wait," said Carter. "We can't be in China. It's daylight there right now. Unless we lost some time somehow?"
"You're not in China."
Carter jumped as the familiar voice of his favorite death god came from right behind them.
"Anubis!" Sadie always seemed so happy to see Anubis. Carter wondered why his sister was so weird.
"Where are we then?" asked Percy, as he pried Nico's fingers from his wrists.
"Elmwood Cemetery, in Memphis, Tennessee," said Anubis. "There just happen to be quite a few Asian American graves with their native writing on the stones in this graveyard. But we're exactly where Nico was trying to go. Though I don't think taking two humans, a god, and a demigod along for the ride was a very wise move, Nico."
"I hung on tight to Percy," said Nico.
Carter guessed that must have meant something, but wasn't quite sure what. He was almost positive that he saw the corner of Anubis' eye start twitching, and guessed that there was something unpleasant, or potentially unpleasant about the matter that they weren't being told. He decided not to ask.
"So we're in Memphis. That's really good," said Bast. "I suppose having a demigodling around can be useful. Mind you it's his fault we're in this mess to begin with."
"You guys were the ones who got him involved in your fight," said Percy, helping his cousin to his feet.
"He got involved on his own," said Sadie.
Percy looked at her like she was stupid. "He's a demigod. A Greek hero. Do you think he could have stood by and let you two get killed by some magical force without doing anything? The minute you landed on him you involved him."
"We're not the ones who put a chunk of rock in his chest, or a god in his head," said Sadie. "Not that that's your fault, Anubis."
Anubis gave Sadie a rare smile then turned to Bast. "We should go see Thoth immediately. We are on a time-limit, after all."
"When you say we . . ." Sadie trailed off making it a question.
"My consciousness will be going with Nico," answered Anubis. "I cannot leave the cemetery in this manifestation."
Carter was relieved. He didn't want a continuous cat and dog battle between the two Egyptian gods that were with them. With Anubis chilling in Nico's skull it would probably be a lot more peaceful.
"Nico? Hey? Can you stand?"
Carter turned to watch Percy's attempts to help his cousin wake up, but Nico seemed to be literally asleep on his feet. His eyelids seemed like they were weighted down, but he was fighting to open them, but it was a losing battle. His knees buckled and he would have fallen if Percy wasn't holding him up.
"Nico? Well, this is great." Percy looked quite frustrated.
"He needs food more than he needs rest," Anubis told him. "Again, he's drawing on my power. What he did definitely wouldn't have been possible any other way. Get him a good meal and he'll come around. Until then expect him to act like he swallowed half a bottle of sleeping pills. Or maybe just a third a bottle. Half would kill a normal human his weight, he's so skinny."
Nico managed to pry his eyelids open at the perceived insult. "Am not!"
"Are too. Trust me. I'm the god of death. I know all the doses and weight conversions for just about every drug people try to kill themselves with."
"I bet you're real fun at parties," said Carter. He brushed some of the grass off his clothes and straightened his collar.
"We should probably be going," said Sadie. She looked at Anubis rather reluctantly. Carter had to wonder what the heck was wrong with his sister. She couldn't really have a thing for the jackal headed death god . . . could she?
Anubis nodded, gave Sadie another of his rare smiles, and then seemed to fade into the mist.