“Just teasing.” He pointed at me and winked. Then he smiled, and he looked like a regular teenager, without a care in the world. Those stormy green eyes really were kind of scary. “And I’m trusting that when you call me, you won’t be luring me into some kind of ambush.” “So I’m trusting you that this isn’t some type of magical tracking device.” But it will only work once, so make it count.” I’ll know where you are, and I’ll come meet you. “Just say my name,” I told him, “and I’ll hear you. As soon as the symbol was complete it flared blue, then vanished. I drew a hieroglyph there-the Eye of Horus. “Uh…well, not exactly.” I took out my stylus and a vial of magic ink. “If this somebody, whoever threw us together…if he’s an enemy to both of us-what if we need each other to fight him? How do I contact you?” But I still couldn’t escape the feeling that we’d opened a door, meeting like this-a door that we might not be able to close. Percy didn’t seem to know what to think of that. I wondered how our giant magic crocodile, Philip of Macedonia, would feel about having a little friend. “I can take it, give it a good home.” I thought about our big pool at Brooklyn House. I didn’t realize I’d been holding my breath until I exhaled. I have some friends back at Ca-uh, back on my side who would love tinkering with a magic necklace like that but I’m going to trust you here. “I can send it somewhere safe,” I promised. He pointed at the petsuchos necklace, which was glinting just inside my backpack. I need to look into some things on, uh, my side-try to figure out who was behind this crocodile incident.” She dropped the potassium in a beaker of water, and Ka-blam! The students jumped back as a miniature explosion rattled all the vials in the lab. We weren’t meant to be anywhere close to each other.Ī long time ago, when I was just a little kid, I’d watched my mom do a science experiment with some her college students. I’d come to respect the guy, but I still sensed that we weren’t meant to be friends. I thought about the uneasy feeling I’d had in my gut earlier-the voice in my head warning me not to tell Percy anything. “Then maybe that someone wanted us to meet,” he finished. If someone-something-unleashed that monster here, knowing it would draw both of our attention-” But until we figure out what’s going on, I think it’s best we keep some distance. “You don’t want to share your secrets,” I said. You’re not nearly as annoying as I thought. Now, I wasn’t so sure.įinally Percy faced me. At the time, Sadie had told me I was hallucinating. I still couldn’t believe he was talking about pegasi as if they were real, but I remembered one time at Brooklyn House, maybe a year back, when I was certain I saw a winged horse flying over the Manhattan skyline. “Some kind of camp, judging from your shirt.” “It was eating pegasi in my…” He hesitated. He drew something in his ketchup with a french fry-not a hieroglyph. “Maybe they wanted to cause trouble that would get our attention. “I think maybe…” I studied Percy, trying to judge how much I should say. “Someone wanted to cause trouble,” I speculated. It was good, but I had trouble concentrating on it. I didn’t want to think about that, but I nodded reluctantly. “Meaning someone put it around his neck,” Percy said. Somehow that little crocodile got it around his neck.” “Any reptile that wears it turns into the next petsuchos, the Son of Sobek. “The necklace is enchanted,” I said at last. But if my world expanded tenfold again, I was afraid my brain might explode. Now I was standing at the edge of another moment like that. In a single day, my world expanded tenfold and left me reeling. I felt sort of like I had two winters ago, when my uncle Amos explained the truth about the Kane family heritage-the House of Life, the Egyptian gods, the Duat, everything. Everything we said could have serious implications-not just for the two of us, but maybe for everyone we knew. Still, I sensed we were treading on dangerous ground. Now that we’d fought together, I couldn’t help but trust him. I still had no clue where Percy came from or what he was, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to ask. “So, the necklace,” he said between bites. “Agreed,” I said, but when I glanced over at him, I wondered if he was thinking the same thing I was: that we were referring to different gods. I could pull money out of thin air, since I kept some stored in the Duat along with my other emergency supplies so in no time we had cheeseburgers and fries in front of us, and life was looking up. He dug into the pockets of his jeans and pulled out a ballpoint pen.
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