Sure, Alex felt bad about pushing his best friend through the glimmering portal. And maybe he felt a little weird about grabbing his cousin by the hand and tugging him through. But he felt worse about tripping over Ren once he leapt through himself, and worse still when Luke fell through on top of him.
“Duh-off!” he blurted as his foot caught Ren’s leg, and he blurted something worse when Luke sandwiched him onto the hard floor. He did his best to land on his shoulder and protect the ancient Spells from the impact.
As Luke rolled free, Alex shot a look back to make sure nothing was coming through the portal after them. Had they lost them in the dim light and distance? he wondered desperately. And if so, for how long?
He turned to examine their new surroundings. They could be anywhere there was a false door, including some old tomb deep beneath the ground. As he looked around, he realized that they were in a tomb. But the mix of natural and electric light told him that this tomb was in a museum.
“Why does it look so —” Ren began.
“Familiar,” said Alex. He was sure now: the immaculately restored old stone, the little silver information plaques, the lights burning softly overhead … He turned back to the others, unable to keep the smile from his face. “We’re at the Met,” he said. “We’re home!”
They were in the big, reconstructed tomb at the entrance to the Egyptian wing, the one that always had a line snaking through it in the summer. Alex peered out of the tomb mouth and saw the back of the north-side ticket booths. Beyond that, huge banners hung down from the ceiling of the Great Hall. Sunlight streamed in the museum’s high windows. It had been twilight in Egypt, but it was still midday in New York.
“Finally,” said Ren, her voice breaking with emotion.
The three climbed to their feet, grunting and groaning as their bumps and bruises required. Alex carefully refolded the concealment spells. His head swam, and a hot, static energy tingled through his fingers as he touched the scroll beneath them, but he felt better again as soon as he pulled the linen veil tight. He removed his old backpack and stuffed the bundle deep inside, putting the old scrolls already in there on top to pin the protective linen in place.
“I’ll take that,” said Ren. “I know they make you kind of swoony.”
Alex didn’t argue — they did make him swoony. He handed over the pack, and she put it on.
Alex looked out into Room 100 of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, a place as familiar to him as the lobby of his own apartment building. The lights were low, and the room was empty. The museum was closed tight in the middle of the day. Alex edged out of the tomb mouth.
“See anything?” asked Ren, a few steps behind him.
“Hear anything?” added Luke, a few steps behind her.
“Nothing,” he said, turning back to them. They were quite a sight. Ren’s nose was running from her allergies, and tears from her watering eyes had carved tracks through the thick layer of dirt and grain dust on her cheeks. Luke looked like the “Before” picture in a laundry detergent ad.
“How did you know this portal led back to New York?” asked Ren.
“I didn’t,” Alex admitted, lowering his voice as they eased silently out of the room and toward the ticket booths. “But I figured that’s where all those mummies were headed, and this one was close by. Plus, you know, we were about to get torn into a million pieces by those wasp things.”
Ren nodded, satisfied with his deductive reasoning.
“Good call,” added Luke.
They edged past the empty ticket booths and looked out into the grand marble expanse of the museum’s entrance hall. The huge old building felt solid and familiar, but far from safe. Just up ahead, near the center of the hall, flashing red light washed in through the tall glass doors and painted the walls and floors. The friends rushed toward it.
“It looks like a war zone,” said Ren once they reached the big glass doors.
Alex could only nod. Wooden barricades and stacked sandbags lined the streets in front of the museum. The flashing lights came from two NYPD cruisers parked on Fifth Avenue, bookending two large, blocky armored personnel carriers with thick knobby tires. Alex craned his neck to look up East 82nd Street. He saw a cloud of thick gray-and-black smoke billowing up in the distance. Somewhere nearby, a fire was raging.
Silhouetted figures shifted inside the police cruisers, but there was no traffic and the normally packed sidewalks were deserted. A city of millions was on lockdown. The only sound was the rumble of the army vehicles’ idling engines purring through the safety glass. Police, military, open fires, and empty streets … He could hardly believe this was the same bustling city where he’d grown up.
“My parents,” moaned Ren. “I hope they’re okay.”
“I’m with you on that,” said Luke solemnly. And Alex thought of his well-meaning aunt and uncle, and all that Luke had suffered to keep them safe.
“Yeah,” Alex said, “but before we find our families —”
“I know, bro,” said Luke. “What’s the plan?”
“Call Cairo,” Alex said, the red lights washing over his dirt-smeared face. “I can’t use these Spells — they knock me for a loop — but my mom can. And then she can, you know, save the world.”
“Yeah, that part sounds important,” agreed Luke.
The friends took one more look out at the war zone where they’d grown up and then headed toward the main office. “So how did you escape from all those Death Walkers back there, anyway?” Ren asked Alex.
Alex managed half a smile. “I told them Ammit was on the way.”
“They are really scared of that dude, huh?” said Luke.
“She’s a lady,” said Alex. “Sort of. But yeah: really scared.”
They walked quietly for a while and then Ren leaned in toward Alex and said a few hesitant words: “I was thinking … ”
Alex smiled at her. “That doesn’t surprise me.”
She got to the point. “The Walkers are afraid of the gods. And the gods definitely don’t seem to like the Walkers. Did you hear the way Anubis talked about them? He knew they were evil … ”
“They don’t exactly keep that a secret,” said Alex.
“Don’t you get it?” she said. “What if the gods could do something more than scare them? What if they could do what they’re scared of? They’re afraid of that ceremony, the weighing of the heart. They’re afraid of being judged. What if there was someway to, I don’t know, put them on trial?”
“That would be awesome,” said Alex. It was as if his best friend had read his mind — and then taken his thoughts a step further. The two had known each other nearly their entire lives, and their thoughts often ran along the same lines, like two trains on parallel tracks, with Ren’s maybe half a length ahead. But all tracks still led to the same question that had stopped Alex before. “But how do we get the gods to do it?” he said.
“Yeah,” Ren answered. “That’s the thing.”
A few minutes later, they were in Alex’s mom’s office. Alex had the emergency cell phone she kept in her bottom drawer pressed to his ear. His finger shook as he held it steady next to a line midway down the Hs in his mom’s address book: “Dr. Hesaan, Cairo.”
Now they had to hope that one flickering bar of service — Alex imagined one last stubbornly functional cell tower somewhere in the Bronx — would be enough to connect two crisis-crippled cities six thousand miles apart.
The phone rang: once, twice, three — “Who is this?”
The connection was weak, but the voice was familiar. Alex exhaled mightily and put the phone on speaker for the others. “Hey, Dr. Hesaan,” he said. “It’s Alex. Can I talk to my mom, or Todtman?”
“So they have telephones in the afterlife now,” said Hesaan. “Strange days … But they are both here. Just a second.”
It was Todtman who came on the line. He listened carefully to what Alex had to tell him. “New York?” he said.
“Yeah,” breathed Alex, hardly believing it himself. “Right back where it all started.”
“Where it started and where it will end,” he said at last. “You must stay where you are. We will come to you.”
Alex could only imagine how long that would take. “What if they find us first? They’re going to figure out where we went sooner or later.”
“Then let us hope it is later. We are on the way. Stay out of sight, and keep the Spells safe.”
Ren grabbed the phone from Alex’s hands and got right to her point. “I can’t stay here,” she said. “I have to go home and check on my parents. It’s not far.”
“I am sorry, Ren, but you must stay there. We will need you for this. We will need everyone. You have been away from home a long time, but the risk is too great. Peshwar and her army control most of the city by now.”
“But —” she protested.
“Please, Ren, stay safe,” pleaded Todtman. “This will all be over soon … One way or the other.”
The line went dead.
But outside the office, a stronger buzz was already growing.