The Serpent's Shadow (The Kane Chronicles, Book Three) by Rick Riordan Page A

I took Leonid’s hand and raced across campus.
    My head was still spinning from my talk with Anubis. How dare Isis and Horus keep us apart when we weren’t even together! And what had Anubis wanted to tell me about Walt? Perhaps he’d wanted to end our ill-fated relationship and give his blessing for me to date Walt. (Lame.) Or perhaps he wanted to declare his undying love and fight Walt for my affections. (Highly unlikely, nor would I appreciate being fought over like a basketball.) Or perhaps—most probable—he’d wanted to break some bad news.
    Anubis had visited Walt on several occasions that I knew of. They’d both been rather tight-lipped about what was discussed, but since Anubis was the guide of the dead, I assumed he’d been preparing Walt for death. Anubis might have wanted to warn me that the time was nigh—as if I needed another reminder.
    Anubis: off-limits. Walt: at death’s door. If I lost both of the guys I liked, well…there wasn’t much point in saving the world.
    All right, that was a slight exaggeration. But only slight.
    On top of that, my mum was in trouble, and Sarah Jacobi’s rebels were planning some horrible attack on my uncle’s headquarters.
    Why, then, did I feel so… hopeful ?
    An idea started to tug at me—a tiny glimmer of possibility. It wasn’t just the prospect that we might find a way to defeat the serpent. Anubis’s words kept playing in my mind: The shadow lingers. There must be a way to retrieve a soul from oblivion.
    If a shadow could be used to bring back a mortal soul that had been destroyed, could it do the same for a god?
    I was so lost in thought, I barely noticed when we reached the fine arts building. Leonid stopped me.
    “This for portal?” He pointed to a block of carved limestone in the courtyard.
    “Yes,” I said. “Thanks.”
    Long story short: when I started at BAG, I reckoned it would be good to have an Egyptian relic close by for emergencies. So I did the logical thing: I borrowed a chunk of limestone frieze from the nearby Brooklyn Museum. Honestly, the museum had enough rocks. I didn’t think they’d miss this one.
    I’d left a facsimile in its place and asked Alyssa to present the actual Egyptian frieze to her art teacher as her class project—an attempt to simulate an ancient art form. The teacher had been duly impressed. He’d installed “Alyssa’s” artwork in the courtyard outside his classroom. The carving showed mourners at a funeral, which I thought appropriate for a school setting.
    It wasn’t a powerful or important piece of art, but all relics of Ancient Egypt have some amount of power, like magical batteries. With the right training, a magician can use them to jump-start spells that would otherwise be impossible, such as opening portals.
    I’d got rather good at this particular magic. Leonid watched my back as I began to chant.
    Most magicians wait for “auspicious moments” to open gates. They spend years memorizing a timetable of important anniversaries like the time of day each god was born, the alignment of the stars, and whatnot. I suppose I should have worried about such things, but I didn’t. Given the thousands of years of Egyptian history, there were so many auspicious moments that I simply chanted until I hit one. Of course, I had to hope my portal didn’t open during an inauspicious moment. That could have caused all sorts of nasty side effects—but what’s life without taking a few risks?
    (Carter is shaking his head and muttering. I have no idea why.)
    The air rippled in front of us. A circular doorway appeared—a swirling vortex of golden sand—and Leonid and I jumped through.
    I’d like to say my spell worked perfectly and we ended up in the First Nome. Sadly, I was a bit off the mark.
    The portal spit us out roughly a hundred meters above Cairo. I found myself free-falling through the cool night air toward the city lights below.
    I didn’t panic. I could have cast any number of spells to get out of