“Oh, do you think if you tried that spell on a person—”
“No!” He stepped back nervously.
I felt gratified that I could make him squirm, but I tried not to smile. “Let’s just explore the library, shall we?”
The truth was, I couldn’t have ha-di-ed anyone. As soon as
I stepped forward, I felt so faint that I almost collapsed.
Carter caught me as I stumbled. “You okay?”
“Fine,” I managed, though I didn’t feel fine. “I’m tired”—my stomach rumbled—“and famished.”
“You just ate a huge breakfast.”
It was true, but I felt as if I hadn’t had food in weeks.
“Never mind,” I told him. “I’ll manage.”
Carter studied me skeptically. “Those hieroglyphs you created were golden. Dad and Amos both used blue. Why?”
“Maybe everyone has his own color,” I suggested. “Maybe you’ll get hot pink.”
“Very funny.”
“Come on, pink wizard,” I said. “Inside we go.”
The library was so amazing, I almost forgot my dizziness. It was bigger than I’d imagined, a round chamber sunk deep into solid rock, like a giant well. This didn’t make sense, as the mansion was sitting on top of a warehouse, but then again nothing else about the place was exactly normal.
From the platform where we stood, a staircase descended three stories to the bottom floor. The walls, floor, and domed ceiling were all decorated with multicolored pictures of people, gods, and monsters. I’d seen such illustrations in Dad’s books (yes, all right, sometimes when I was in the Piccadilly bookshop I’d wander into the Egypt section and sneak a look at Dad’s books, just to feel some connection to him, not because I wanted to read them) but the pictures in the books had always been faded and smudged. These in the library looked newly painted, making the entire room a work of art.
“It’s beautiful,” I said.
A blue starry sky glittered on the ceiling, but it wasn’t a solid field of blue. Rather, the sky was painted in a strange swirling pattern. I realized it was shaped like a woman. She lay curled on her side—her body, arms, and legs dark blue and dotted with stars. Below, the library floor was done in a similar way, the green-and-brown earth shaped into a man’s body, dotted with forests and hills and cities. A river snaked across his chest.
The library had no books. Not even bookshelves. Instead, the walls were honeycombed with round cubbyholes, each one holding a sort of plastic cylinder.
At each of the four compass points, a ceramic statue stood on a pedestal. The statues were half-size humans wearing kilts and sandals, with glossy black wedge-shaped haircuts and black eyeliner around their eyes.
[Carter says the eyeliner stuff is called kohl, as if it matters.]
At any rate, one statue held a stylus and scroll. Another held a box. Another held a short, hooked staff. The last was empty-handed.
“Sadie.” Carter pointed to the center of the room. Sitting on a long stone table was Dad’s workbag.
Carter started down the stairs, but I grabbed his arm. “Hang on. What about traps?”
He frowned. “Traps?”
“Didn’t Egyptian tombs have traps?”
“Well...sometimes. But this isn’t a tomb. Besides, more often they had curses, like the burning curse, the donkey curse—”
“Oh, lovely. That sounds so much better.”
He trotted down the steps, which made me feel quite ridiculous, as I’m usually the one to forge ahead. But I supposed if someone had to get cursed with a burning skin rash or attacked by a magical donkey, it was better Carter than me.
We made it to the middle of the room with no excitement. Carter opened the bag. Still no traps or curses. He brought out the strange box Dad had used in the British Museum.