“Thoth was testing us,” Carter said. “Those balls 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?”
It sounded like a solid theory to me, but Carter seemed awfully troubled. He pointed to the blasted back door of Graceland. “Is the whole house like that?”
“Worse.” I looked at the ruined Elvis jumpsuit under Jerrod’s clothes and scattered rhinestones. Maybe Elvis had no taste, but I still felt bad about trashing the King’s palace. If the place had been important to Dad...Suddenly an idea perked me up. “What was it Amos said, when he repaired that saucer?”
Carter frowned. “This is a whole house, Sadie. Not a saucer.”
“Got it,” I said. “Hi-nehm!”
A gold hieroglyphic symbol flickered to life in my palm.
I held it up and blew it towards the house. The entire outline of Graceland began to glow. The pieces of the door flew back into place and mended themselves. The tattered bits of Elvis clothing disappeared.
“Wow,” Carter said. “Do you think the inside is fixed too?”
“I—” My vision blurred, and my knees buckled. I would’ve knocked my head on the pavement if Carter hadn’t caught me.
“It’s okay,” he said. “You did a lot of magic, Sadie. That was amazing.”
“But we haven’t even found the item Thoth sent us for.”
“Yeah,” Carter said. “Maybe we have.”
He pointed to Elvis’s grave, and I saw it clearly: a memento left behind by some adoring fan—a necklace with a silver loop-topped cross, just like the one on Mum’s T-shirt in my old photograph.
“An ankh,” I said. “The Egyptian symbol for eternal life.”
Carter picked it up. There was a small papyrus scroll attached to the chain.
“What’s this?” he murmured, and unrolled the sheet. He stared at it so hard I thought he’d burn a hole in it.
“What?” I looked over his shoulder.
The painting looked quite ancient. It showed a golden, spotted cat holding a knife in one paw and chopping the head off a snake.
Beneath it, in black marker, someone had written: Keep up the fight!
“That’s vandalism, isn’t it?” I asked. “Marking up an ancient drawing like that? Rather an odd thing to leave for Elvis.”
Carter didn’t seem to hear. “I’ve seen this picture before. It’s in a lot of tombs. Don’t know why it never occurred to me...”
I studied the picture more closely. Something about it did seem rather familiar.
“You know what it means?” I asked.
“It’s the Cat of Ra, fighting the sun god’s main enemy, Apophis.”
“The snake,” I said.
“Yeah, Apophis was—”
“The embodiment of chaos,” I said, remembering what Nut had said.
Carter looked impressed, as well he should have. “Exactly. Apophis was even worse than Set. The Egyptians thought Doomsday would come when Apophis ate the sun and destroyed all of Creation.”
“But...the cat killed it,” I said hopefully.