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“But you can’t go with us,” Bes said firmly. I thought I heard concern in his voice, even pity. “Go on, kid. It’s fine.”
Walt fished something out of his pocket. “Sadie, about your birthday…you, um, probably don’t want any more presents. It’s not a magic knife, but I made this for you.”
He poured a gold necklace into her hand. It had a small Egyptian symbol:
“That’s the basketball hoop on Ra’s head,” I said.
Walt and Sadie both frowned at me, and I realized I probably wasn’t making the moment more magical for them. “I mean it’s the symbol that surrounds Ra’s sun crown,” I said. “A never-ending loop, the symbol of eternity, right?”
Sadie swallowed as if the magic potion was still bubbling in her stomach. “Eternity?”
Walt shot me a look that clearly meant Please stop helping.
“Yeah,” he said, “um, it’s called shen. I just thought, you know, you’re looking for Ra. And good things, important things, should be eternal. So maybe it’ll bring you luck. I meant to give it to you this morning, but…I kind of lost my nerve.”
Sadie stared the talisman glittering in her palm. “Walt, I don’t—I mean, thank you, but—”
“Just remember I didn’t want to leave,” he said. “If you need help, I’ll be there for you.” He glanced at me and corrected himself: “I mean both of you, of course.”
“But now,” Bes said, “you need to go.”
“Happy birthday, Sadie,” Walt said. “And good luck.”
He got out of the car and trudged down the hill. We watched until he was just a tiny figure in the gloom. Then he vanished into the woods.
“Two farewell gifts,” Sadie muttered, “from two gorgeous guys. I hate my life.”
She latched the gold necklace around her throat and touched the shen symbol.
Bes gazed down at the trees where Walt had disap
peared. “Poor kid. Born unusual, all right. It isn’t fair.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Why were you so anxious for Walt to leave?”
The dwarf rubbed his scraggly beard. “Not my place to explain. Right now we’ve got work to do. The more time we give Menshikov to prepare his defenses, the harder this is going to get.”
I wasn’t ready to drop it, but Bes stared at me stubbornly, and I knew I wasn’t going to get any more answers from him. Nobody can look stubborn like a dwarf.
“So, Russia,” I said. “By driving up an empty staircase.”
“Exactly.” Bes floored the accelerator. The Mercedes churned grass and mud and barreled up the stairs. I was sure we’d reach the top and get nothing but a broken axle, but at the last second, a portal of swirling sand opened in front of us. Our wheels left the ground, and the black limousine flew headlong into the vortex.
We slammed into pavement on the other side, scattering a group of surprised teenagers. Sadie groaned and pried her head off the headrest.
“Can’t we go anywhere gently?” she asked.
Bes hit the wipers and scraped the sand off our windshield. Outside it was dark and snowy. Eighteenth-century stone buildings lined a frozen river lit with streetlamps. Beyond the river glowed more fairy-tale buildings: golden church domes, white palaces, and ornate mansions painted Easter-egg green and blue. I might have believed we’d traveled back in time three hundred years—except for the cars, the electric lights, and of course the teenagers with body piercings, dyed hair, and black leather clothes screaming at us in Russian and pounding on the hood of the Mercedes because we’d almost run them over.
“They can see us?” Sadie asked.
“Russians,” Bes said with a kind of grudging admiration. “Very superstitious people. They tend to see magic for what it is. We’ll have to be careful here.”
“You’ve been here before?” I asked.
He gave me a duh look, then pointed to either side of the car. We’d landed between two stone sphinxes standing on pedestals. They looked like a lot of sphinxes I’d seen—with crowned human heads on lion bodies—but I’d never seen sphinxes covered in snow.
“Are those authentic?” I asked.
