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might try. The magician himself seemed dazed and deflated. Getting strangled at the bottom of New York Harbor will do that to you.
‘Let’s go, then,’ Carter said. ‘We have a nice reception planned.’
Back at the burnt soccer fields, Sadie and Annabeth had sketched a magical bull’s-eye on the ground. At least that’s how it looked to me. The chalk circle was about five feet in diameter and elaborately bordered with words of power in Greek and hieroglyphics. In the Duat, I could see that the circle radiated white light. It was drawn over the rift that Setne had made, like a bandage over a wound.
The girls stood on opposite sides of the circle. Sadie crossed her arms and planted her combat boots defiantly. Annabeth was still holding the Book of Thoth.
When she saw me, she kept her battle face on, but from the gleam in her eyes I could tell she was relieved.
I mean … we’d just passed our one-year dating anniversary. I figured I was a sort of long-term investment for her. She hoped I would pay dividends eventually; if I died now, she would’ve put up with all my annoying qualities for nothing.
‘You lived,’ she noted.
‘No thanks to Elvis.’ I lifted Setne by his neck. He weighed almost nothing. ‘He was pretty tough until I figured out his system.’
I threw him into the centre of the circle. The four of us surrounded him. The hieroglyphs and Greek letters burned and swirled, rising in a funnel cloud to contain our prisoner.
‘Dude is a scavenger,’ I said. ‘Not too different from a vulture. He picks through our minds, finds whatever he can relate to, and he uses that to get through our defences. Annabeth’s love of wisdom. Carter’s desire to make his dad proud. Sadie’s –’
‘My incredible modesty,’ Sadie guessed. ‘And obvious good looks.’
Carter snorted.
‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘Setne tried to offer me immortality. He tried to get a handle on my motives for turning it down once before, but –’
‘Pardon,’ Sadie interrupted. ‘Did you say you’ve turned down immortality before?’
‘You can still be a god!’ Setne croaked. ‘All of you! Together we can –’
‘I don’t want to be a god,’ I said. ‘You don’t get that, do you? You couldn’t find anything about me you could relate to, which I take as a big compliment.’
Inside my mind, Nekhbet hissed: Kill him. Destroy him utterly.
No, I said. Because that’s not me, either.
I stepped to the edge of the circle. ‘Annabeth, Carter, Sadie … you ready to put this guy away?’
‘Any time.’ Carter hefted his rope.
I crouched until I was face-to-face with Setne. His kohl-lined eyes were wide and unfocused. On his head, the crown of Ptolemy tilted sideways like an observatory telescope.
‘You were right about one thing,’ I told him. ‘There’s a lot of power in mixing Greek and Egyptian. I’m glad you introduced me to my new friends. We’re going to keep mixing it up.’
‘Percy Jackson, listen –’
‘But there’s a difference between sharing and stealing,’ I said. ‘You have something that belongs to me.’
He started to speak. I shoved my hand right in his mouth.
Sound gross? Wait, it gets worse.
Something guided me – maybe Nekhbet’s intuition, maybe my own instincts. My fingers closed around a small pointy object in the back of Setne’s throat, and I yanked it free: my ballpoint pen, Riptide.
It was like I’d pulled the plug out of a tyre. Magic spewed from Setne’s mouth: a multicoloured stream of hieroglyphic light.
GET BACK! Nekhbet screamed in my mind as Annabeth yelled the same thing aloud.
I stumbled away from the circle. Setne writhed and spun as all the magic he’d tried to absorb now came gushing out in a disgusting torrent. I’d heard about people ‘puking rainbows’, because they saw something that was just too cute.
