"So Dad brought you here?" I asked.
"Yeah." Carter eyed the lions as if expecting them to attack. "Dad loves blues and jazz, mostly, but he said Elvis was important because he took African American music and made it popular for white people. He helped invent rock and roll. Anyway, Dad and I were in town for a symposium or something. I don"t remember. Dad insisted I come here."
"Lucky you." And yes, perhaps I was beginning to understand that Carter"s life with Dad hadn"t been all glamour and holiday, but still I couldn"t help being a bit jealous. Not that I"d ever wanted to see Graceland, of course, but Dad had never insisted on taking me anywhere-at least until the British Museum trip when he disappeared. I hadn"t even known Dad was an Elvis fan, which was rather horrifying.
We walked up the steps. The front door swung open all by itself.
"I don"t like that," Carter said.
I turned to look behind us, and my blood went ice cold. I grabbed my brother"s arm. "Um, Carter, speaking of things we don"t like..."
Coming up the driveway were two magicians brandishing staffs and wands.
"Inside," Carter said. "Quick!"
I didn"t have much time to admire the house. There was a dining room to our left and a living roommusic room to our right, with a piano and a stained gla.s.s archway decorated with peac.o.c.ks. All the furniture was roped off. The house smelled like old people.
"Item of power," I said. "Where?"
"I don"t know," Carter snapped. "They didn"t have "items of power" listed on the tour!"
I glanced out the window. Our enemies were getting close. The bloke in front wore jeans, a black sleeveless shirt, boots, and a battered cowboy hat. He looked more like an outlaw than a magician. His friend was similarly dressed but much heftier, with tattooed arms, a bald head, and a scraggly beard. When they were ten meters away, the man with the cowboy hat lowered his staff, which morphed into a shotgun.
"Oh, please!" I yelled, and pushed Carter into the living room.
The blast shattered Elvis"s front door and set my ears ringing. We scrambled to our feet and ran deeper into the house. We pa.s.sed through an old-fashioned kitchen, then into the strangest den I"d ever seen. The back wall was made of vine-covered bricks, with a waterfall trickling down the side. The carpet was green s.h.a.g (floor and ceiling, mind you) and the furniture was carved with creepy animal shapes. Just in case all that wasn"t dreadful enough, plaster monkeys and stuffed lions had been strategically placed around the room. Despite the danger we were in, the place was so horrid, I just had to stop and marvel.
"G.o.d," I said. "Did Elvis have no taste?"
"The Jungle Room," Carter said. "He decorated it like this to annoy his dad."
"I can respect that."
Another shotgun blast roared through the house.
"Split up," Carter said.
"Bad idea!" I could hear the magicians tromping through the rooms, smashing things as they came closer.
"I"ll distract them," Carter said. "You search. The trophy room is through there."
"Carter!"
But the fool ran off to protect me. I hate it when he does that. I should have followed him, or run the other way, but I stood frozen in shock as he turned the corner with his sword raised, his body beginning to glow with a golden light...and everything went wrong.
Blam! An emerald flash brought Carter to his knees. For a heartbeat, I thought he"d been hit with the shotgun, and I had to stifle a scream. But immediately, Carter collapsed and began to shrink, clothes, sword and all-melting into a tiny sliver of green.
The lizard that used to be my brother raced toward me, climbed up my leg and into my palm, where it looked at me desperately.
From around the corner, a gruff voice said, "Split up and find the sister. She"ll be somewhere close."
"Oh, Carter," I whispered fondly to the lizard. "I will so kill you for this."
I stuffed him in my pocket and ran.
The two magicians continued to smash and crash their way through Graceland, knocking over furniture and blasting things to bits. Apparently they were not Elvis fans.
I ducked under some ropes, crept through a hallway, and found the trophy room. Amazingly, it was full of trophies. Gold records crowded the walls. Rhinestone Elvis jumpsuits glittered in four gla.s.s cases. The room was dimly lit, probably to keep the jumpsuits from blinding visitors, and music played softly from overhead speakers: Elvis warning everyone not to step on his blue suede shoes.
I scanned the room but found nothing that looked magical. The suits? I hoped Thoth did not expect me to wear one. The gold records? Lovely Frisbees, but no.
"Jerrod!" a voice called to my right. A magician was coming down the hallway. I darted toward the other exit, but a voice just outside it called back, "Yeah, I"m over here."
I was surrounded.
"Carter," I whispered. "Curse your lizard brain."
He fluttered nervously in my pocket but was no help.
I fumbled through my magician"s bag and grasped my wand. Should I try drawing a magic circle? No time, and I didn"t want to duel toe-to-toe with two older magicians. I had to stay mobile. I took out my rod and willed it into a full-length staff. I could set it on fire, or turn it into a lion, but what good would that do? My hands started to tremble. I wanted to crawl into a ball and hide beneath Elvis"s gold record collection.
Let me take over, Isis said. I can turn our enemies to dust.
No, I told her.
You will get us both killed.
I could feel her pressing against my will, trying to bust out. I could taste her anger with these magicians. How dare they challenge us? With a word, we could destroy them.
No, I thought again. Then I remembered something Zia had said: Use whatever you have available. The room was dimly lit...perhaps if I could make it darker.
"Darkness," I whispered. I felt a tugging sensation in my stomach, and the lights flickered off. The music stopped. The light continued to dim-even the sunlight faded from the windows until the entire room went black.
Somewhere to my left, the first magician sighed in exasperation. "Jerrod!"
"Wasn"t me, Wayne!" Jerrod insisted. "You always blame me!"
Wayne muttered something in Egyptian, still moving towards me. I needed a distraction.
I closed my eyes and imagined my surroundings. Although it was pitch-black, I could still sense Jerrod in the hallway to my left, stumbling through the darkness. I sensed Wayne on the other side of the wall to the right, only a few steps from the doorway. And I could visualize the four gla.s.s display cases with Elvis"s suits.
They"re tossing your house, I thought. Defend it!
A stronger pull in my gut, as if I were lifting a heavy weight-then the display cases blew open. I heard the shuffling of stiff cloth, like sails in the wind, and was dimly aware of four pale white shapes in motion-two heading to either door.
Wayne yelled first as the empty Elvis suits tackled him. His shotgun lit up the dark. Then to my left, Jerrod shouted in surprise. A heavy clump! told me he"d been knocked over. I decided to go in Jerrod"s direction-better an off-balance bloke than one with a shotgun. I slipped through the doorway and down a hall, leaving Jerrod scuffling behind me and yelling, "Get off! Get off!"
Take him while he"s down, Isis urged. Burn him to ashes!
Part of me knew she had a point: if I left Jerrod in one piece, he would be up in no time and after me again; but it didn"t seem right to hurt him, especially while he was being tackled by Elvis suits. I found a door and burst outside into the afternoon sunlight.
I was in the backyard of Graceland. A large fountain gurgled nearby, ringed by grave markers. One had a gla.s.s-encased flame at the top and was heaped with flowers. I took a wild guess: it must be Elvis"s.
A magician"s tomb.
Of course. We"d been searching the house, but the item of power would be at his gravesite. But what exactly was the item?
Before I could approach the grave, the door burst open. The big bald man with the straggly beard stumbled out. A tattered Elvis suit had its sleeves wrapped around his neck like it was getting a piggyback ride.
"Well, well." The magician threw off the jumpsuit. His voice confirmed for me that he was the one called Jerrod. "You"re just a little girl. You"ve caused us a lot of trouble, missy."
He lowered his staff and fired a shot of green light. I raised my wand and deflected the bolt of energy straight up. I heard a surprised coo-the cry of a pigeon-and a newly made lizard fell out of the sky at my feet.
"Sorry," I told it.
Jerrod snarled and threw down his staff. Apparently, he specialized in lizards, because the staff morphed into a komodo dragon the size of a London taxicab.
The monster charged me with unnatural speed. It opened its jaws and would"ve bitten me in half, but I just had time to wedge my staff in its mouth.
Jerrod laughed. "Nice try, girl!"
I felt the dragon"s jaws pressing on the staff. It was only a matter of seconds before the wood snapped, and then I"d be a komodo dragon"s snack. A little help, I told Isis. Carefully, very carefully, I tapped in to her strength. Doing so without letting her take over was like riding a surfboard over a tidal wave, trying desperately to stay on my feet. I felt five thousand years of experience, knowledge, and power course through me. She offered me options, and I selected the simplest. I channeled power through my staff and felt it grow hot in my hands, glowing white. The dragon hissed and gurgled as my staff elongated, forcing the creature"s jaws open wider, wider, and then: boom!
The dragon shattered into kindling and sent the splintered remains of Jerrod"s staff raining down around me.
Jerrod had only a moment to look stunned before I threw my wand and whapped him solidly on the forehead. His eyes crossed, and he collapsed on the pavement. My wand returned to my hand.
That would"ve been a lovely happy ending...except I"d forgotten about Wayne. The cowboy-hatted magician stumbled out the door, almost tripping over his friend, but he recovered with lightning speed.
He shouted, "Wind!" and my staff flew out of my hands and into his.
He smiled cruelly. "Well fought, darlin". But elemental magic is always quickest."
He struck the ends of both staffs, his and mine, against the pavement. A wave rippled over the dirt and pavement as if the ground had become liquid, knocking me off my feet and sending my wand flying. I scrambled backwards on hands and knees, but I could hear Wayne chanting, summoning fire from the staffs.
Rope, Isis said. Every magician carries rope.
Panic had made my mind go blank, but my hand instinctively went for my magic bag. I pulled out a small bit of twine. Hardly a rope, but it triggered a memory-something Zia had done in the New York museum. I threw the twine at Wayne and yelled a word Isis suggested: "Tas!"
A golden hieroglyph burned in the air over Wayne"s head: The twine whipped toward him like an angry snake, growing longer and thicker as it flew. Wayne"s eyes widened. He stumbled back and sent jets of flame shooting from both staffs, but the rope was too quick. It lashed round his ankles and toppled him sideways, wrapping round his whole body until he was encased in a twine coc.o.o.n from chin to toes. He struggled and screamed and called me quite a few unflattering names.
I got up unsteadily. Jerrod was still out cold. I retrieved my staff, which had fallen next to Wayne. He continued straining against the twine and cursing in Egyptian, which sounded strange with an American Southern accent.
Finish him, Isis warned. He can still speak. He will not rest until he destroys you.
"Fire!" Wayne screamed. "Water! Cheese!"
Even the cheese command did not work. I reckoned his rage was throwing his magic off balance, making it impossible to focus, but I knew he would recover soon.
"Silence," I said.
Wayne"s voice abruptly stopped working. He kept screaming, but no sound came out.
"I"m not your enemy," I told him. "But I can"t have you killing me, either."
Something wriggled in my pocket, and I remembered Carter. I took him out. He looked okay, except of course for the fact he was still a lizard.
"I"ll try to change you back," I told him. "Hopefully I don"t make things worse."
He made a little croak that didn"t convey much confidence.
I closed my eyes and imagined Carter as he should be: a tall boy of fourteen, badly dressed, very human, very annoying. Carter began to feel heavy in my hands. I put him down and watched as the lizard grew into a vaguely human blob. By the count of three, my brother was lying on his stomach, his sword and pack next to him on the lawn.
He spit gra.s.s out of his mouth. "How"d you do that?"
"I don"t know," I admitted. "You just seemed...wrong."
"Thanks a lot." He got up and checked to make sure he had all his fingers. Then he saw the two magicians and his mouth fell open. "What did you do to them?"
"Just tied one up. Knocked one out. Magic."
"No, I mean..." He faltered, searching for words, then gave up and pointed.
I looked at the magicians and yelped. Wayne wasn"t moving. His eyes and mouth were open, but he wasn"t blinking or breathing. Next to him, Jerrod looked just as frozen. As we watched, their mouths began to glow as if they"d swallowed matches. Two tiny yellow orbs of fire popped out from between their lips and shot into the air, disappearing in the sunlight.
"What-what was that?" I asked. "Are they dead?"
Carter approached them cautiously and put his hand on Wayne"s neck. "It doesn"t even feel like skin. More like rock."
"No, they were human! I didn"t turn them to rock!"
Carter felt Jerrod"s forehead where I"d whacked him with my wand. "It"s cracked."
"What?"
Carter picked up his sword. Before I could even scream, he brought the hilt down on Jerrod"s face and the magician"s head cracked into shards like a flowerpot.
"They"re made of clay," Carter said. "They"re both shabti."
He kicked Wayne"s arm and I heard it crunch under the twine.
"But they were casting spells," I said. "And talking. They were real."
As we watched, the shabti crumbled to dust, leaving nothing behind but my bit of twine, two staffs, and some grungy clothes.
"Thoth was testing us," Carter said. "Those b.a.l.l.s of fire, though..." He frowned as if trying to recall something important.
"Probably the magic that animated them," I guessed. "Flying back to their master-like a recording of what they did?"