I struggled to my feet and tried to summon my staff from the Duat. No such luck.
“What have you done?” I demanded.
“Sadie, it’s all right,” Anubis said. “Your friends are only unconscious. Shu just lowered the air pressure.”
“Shoe?” I demanded. “Shoe who?”
Anubis pressed his fingers to his temples. “Sadie…this is Shu, my great-grandfather.”
Then it struck me: Shu was one of those ridiculous godly names I’d heard before. I tried to place it. “Ah. The god of…flip-flops. No, wait. Leaky balloons. No—”
“Air!” Shu hissed. “God of the air!”
His body dissolved into a tornado of debris. When he formed again, he was in Ancient Egyptian costume—bare-chested with a white loincloth and a giant ostrich feather sprouting from his braided headband.
He changed back into RAF clothes.
“Stick with the pilot’s outfit,” I said. “The ostrich feather really doesn’t work for you.”
Shu made an unfriendly whooshing sound. “I’d prefer to be invisible, thank you very much. But you mortals have polluted the air so badly, it’s getting harder and harder. It’s dreadful what you’ve done, the last few millennia! Haven’t you people heard of ‘Spare the Air’ days? Carpooling? Hybrid engines? And don’t get me started on cows. Did you know that every cow belches and farts over a hundred gallons of methane a day? There are one and a half billion cows in the world. Do you have any idea what that does to my respiratory system?”
“Uh…”
From his jacket pocket, Shu produced an inhaler and puffed on it. “Shocking!”
I raised an eyebrow at Anubis, who looked mortally embarrassed (or perhaps immortally embarrassed).
“Shu,” he said. “We were just talking. If you’ll let us finish—”
“Oh, talking!” Shu bellowed, no doubt releasing his own share of methane. “While holding hands, and dancing, and other degenerate behavior. Don’t play innocent, boy. I’ve been a chaperone before, you know. I kept your grandparents apart for eons.”
Suddenly I remembered the story of Nut and Geb, the sky and earth. Ra had commanded Nut’s father, Shu, to keep the two lovers apart so they would never have children who might someday usurp Ra’s throne. That strategy hadn’t worked, but apparently Shu was still trying.
The air god waved his hand in disgust at the unconscious mortals, some of whom were just starting to groan and stir. “And now, Anubis, I find you in this den of iniquity, this morass of questionable behavior, this…this—”
“School?” I suggested.
“Yes!” Shu nodded so vigorously, his head disintegrated into a cloud of leaves. “You heard the decree of the gods, boy. You’ve become entirely too close to this mortal. You are hereby banned from further contact!”
“What?” I shouted. “That’s ridiculous! Who decreed this?”
Shu made a sound like a blown-out tire. Either he was laughing or giving me a windy raspberry. “The entire council, girl! Led by Lord Horus and Lady Isis!”
I felt as if I were dissolving into scraps of rubbish myself.
Isis and Horus? I couldn’t believe it. Stabbed in the back by my two supposed friends. Isis and I were going to have words about this.
I turned to Anubis, hoping he’d tell me it was a lie.
He raised his hands miserably. “Sadie, I was trying to tell you. Gods are not allowed to become directly…um, involved with mortals. That’s only possible when a god inhabits a human form, and…and as you know, I’ve never worked that way.”
I gritted my teeth. I wanted to argue that Anubis had quite a nice form, but he’d told me often that he could only manifest in dreams, or in places of death. Unlike other gods, he’d never taken a human host.
It was so bloody unfair. We hadn’t even dated properly. One kiss six months ago, and Anubis was grounded from seeing me forever?
“You can’t be serious.” I’m not sure who made me angrier—the fussy air god chaperone or Anubis himself. “You’re not really going to let them rule you like this?”
“He has no choice!” Shu cried. The effort made him cough so badly, his chest exploded into dandelion fluff. He took another blast from his inhaler. “Brooklyn ozone levels—deplorable! Now, off with you, Anubis. No more contact with this mortal. It is not proper. And as for you, girl, stay away from him! You have more important things to do.”