16

WHERE I BURN DOWN THE MUSEUM

I slammed the door to our town house.

“Why you?” I demanded. I figured my best tactic to not have Gil lock me up for the rest of eternity would be to get him to change sides. To help me. Horus was still on his new moon exile, which was such an inconvenience. He could have helped me convince Gil.

The shabtis who had stayed at the town house rushed over the second I came through the door. I lifted my shirt and undid the bandages to show them my side. Colonel Cody almost collapsed with relief to see nothing but a thin, red scar.

“Why what?” Gil said.

“Why did the gods pick you to watch the knife?”

Gil paced the room. “Because I’m not a god.”

“I’m not a god, either,” Henry said. “But it’s not like I got put in charge of protecting some knife.”

“And I’m immortal,” Gil said.

“So is Tut,” Henry said. “And he didn’t have the knife, either.”

It was nice to have someone over six inches tall sticking up for me.

“That’s because Tut has too much vengeance in his heart,” Gil said.

“And you don’t?” I said. “Even after everything that happened?”

It’s not like Gil’s background and mine were that different. We both had people we cared about die because of the gods. Sure, Gil had started off as a pretty rotten king, unlike me. I’d always been a good pharaoh. But Gil had changed. And that didn’t make the gods happy. He was no longer their puppet. So a bunch of petty Sumerian gods like Enlil and Anu got upset with Gil and cursed him. And they made his best friend, Enkidu, die.

“No, I don’t carry any more vengeance,” Gil said. “I put my past behind me.”

I believed that like I believed in the existence of unicorns.

“Did you become immortal the same time Tut did?” Henry asked.

“Hardly,” Gil said. “Tut’s a baby compared to me.”

“And a heathen,” Colonel Cody added, nodding his head emphatically.

Gil gritted his teeth but went on. “After Enkidu died, I went looking for immortality. I chose not to get revenge on the gods for what they did, but I also wanted to live forever. To become their equal. It was ridiculous, the things I had to go through. I died nearly one hundred times over. But finally…”

“Finally,” I continued, “Gil ate this funny plant, and then the Sumerian god of war gave him a scarab heart.”

“What kind of plant?” Henry asked. “What did it taste like?”

Gil actually cracked a grin. “Seaweed.” He looked down at Colonel Cody. “And for the record, I’m not a heathen. I got my scarab heart from Nergal, who’s every bit as powerful as your Egyptian gods.”

I cringed, even though Horus wasn’t home to hear. Horus had his own opinions of the Sumerian gods. And the Greek gods. And the Norse gods. And … well, you get the idea.

“Of course, Great Heathen Master,” Colonel Cody said.

Have I mentioned that I love my shabtis?

“So you’ve had the knife all this time?” I asked.

“For thousands of years,” Gil said. “I hid it each time we moved, keeping it from the gods and other immortals.”

“There are no other immortals,” I said.

“Are you sure?” Gil asked. “There’s Horemheb.”

“Besides him.”

“How do you know there aren’t any more?” Gil asked. “There could be others. The gods gave me the knife to protect and keep away from all immortals.”

“And we all know how that turned out,” Henry said.

Which brought back Gil’s foul mood. Maybe Henry didn’t have my back after all.

“You should have told me,” I said.

“No, I shouldn’t have,” Gil said. “I was doing my job. And now my job is completely fouled up. This is the worst mess ever.”

I couldn’t really disagree. I didn’t have the knife. My immortal enemy did.

“We’ll get it back,” I said.

“No, Tut,” Gil said. “I’ll get it back. You’ll have no part in the knife from here on out. You never should have even known about it, not to mention tried to find it. It should have remained a thing of legend, not some prize in a scavenger hunt. Pretend it doesn’t exist. Pretend you never even heard about it.”

I crossed my arms, preparing to stare him down.

“Am I making myself clear here?” he asked. “Or do we need to go over this again? Because this is important. The knife is not to be used. Ever. Got it?”

So Gil wasn’t going to help me. That’s what I got.

“Got it,” I said.

“Good. And please listen this time, for once.” Gil climbed the stairs to the loft and stormed into his room, slamming the door behind him.

“I think he’s upset,” Henry said.

“You think?” I said, fighting to keep from running up the steps, tearing Gil’s door open, and snapping back a response.

“Maybe you should give him a little space,” Henry said. “He may just need a good nap.”

Gil needed more than a nap. Gil needed an attitude adjustment.

Henry pulled my sword with the teeth off the wall, clasping it way too hard.

“You’re holding it wrong,” I said.

He shifted it in his hands and made a swipe through the air. His glasses slid all the way down his nose from the effort. “This better?”

“You look like you’re trying to hack up firewood,” I said. “Let your body do the work.”

Henry backed up and slashed the air a few more times. I figured he was a lost cause and clicked on the television, letting the news stream through. With all the lightning and stuff last night at the cemetery, I wondered if anything had been caught on video. But all the newscaster was talking about was some Chihuahua that could walk on its front legs.

“Horus is going to freak when he gets back, isn’t he?” Henry said.

“That’s putting it mildly. It’s a good thing I’m immortal, because Horus will want to kill me.” I changed to a different channel. This one had one of those “breaking news” banners at the bottom, and the skyline of D.C. was in the background.

Henry swung the sword around until the blade pointed down at the coffee table. Ten shabtis moved out from under it and stood ready to attack Henry if I so much as raised my pinkie.

“Should we work on our project?” Henry said.

At least he had the sense to look sheepish about asking.

“Please don’t mention the project again until tomorrow,” I said. “I get a day off. I’ve earned it.”

Henry pushed his glasses up his nose. “Then fill me in on a couple details so I can work on it.”

“You can’t wait twenty-four hours?”

“I’m making such great progress,” Henry said. “But these four heads on the Canopic jars … they’re Horus’s sons, right?”

“Right,” I said, focusing more on the TV than on Henry and our project.

“And Horus is the god of what?”

“Horus is basically chief god,” I said. “Since Set killed Horus’s father, Osiris.”

“That’s who your auntie Isis was married to, right?” Henry said.

“Right.” I shuddered at the thought of Isis and her hooks and bandages.

Henry replaced the sword and grabbed another one. Instead of teeth, this one had feathers hanging all over it. The feathers fluttered when he swung it, and a couple fell off when the sword stuck in the wall.

“Oops,” Henry said, and tried to yank it out.

The sword wouldn’t budge.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. The shabtis made a ladder out of themselves, standing on one another’s shoulders, until they could reach it. With the tiniest of tugs, it came free from the wall.

Henry scowled as they handed it to him. “So Set’s not chief god?”

“Great Amun, no!” I said. “In fact, that’s the whole problem. Both he and Horus think they should rule the throne of Egypt.”

“There is no throne of Egypt,” Henry said.

“Don’t remind Horus of that,” I said. “He still has these grand dreams of restoring the Egyptian empire to the world. Set probably does, too.”

“That would be interesting,” Henry said.

But I wasn’t listening anymore.

“Can you turn up the TV?” I asked Captain Otto.

He bowed and nodded to Captain Otis, who pushed the button on the remote control a few times.

“Reports are still coming in about the fire,” the news reporter said. “But from what we know now, the modern art wing of the Smithsonian National Gallery of Art has burned. Five people are in critical condition from burns. Never before have we seen such damage at any national museum.”

“The art museum burned down?” Henry said.

“Shhhh…,” I said.

“And what of the engravings found on the site?” the anchorwoman asked.

“Yes, experts are working on the translation as we speak,” the news reporter said, “but there are what look like Egyptian hieroglyphics scratched into the marble above the entryway.”

The image flashed to the engravings being talked about. I stopped breathing.

“Those look familiar,” Henry said.

They should. We’d just seen them last week on our field trip. They were the same hieroglyphics that had been carved above the entrance to the King Tut treasures exhibit. The same ones that had been engraved above the entrance to my tomb.

DEATH SHALL COME ON SWIFT WINGS TO HIM WHO DISTURBS THE PEACE OF THE KING.

On the television, black mist curled around the hieroglyphics like a thick fog.

The curse had struck again. And this time it wasn’t just a warning. People had been seriously hurt. Incalculable amounts of art and history had burned.

I had to find a way to stop it. I had to save the world before the curse destroyed it. And the only option was killing Horemheb. I had to put an end to everything.