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Somewhere on the ride on the reed barque pulled by Freak on her way back from her fight with Serapis, Sadie’s legs started feeling like jelly under her, that intense adrenaline-crash that always came after an intense fight. Felix was piloting Freak, which added to Sadie’s weak, wheezed giggles, slumped low against the edge of the barque, her hands shaking against the floor and her legs shaking under her. Felix was Carter’s Griffin, he always would be, but Carter was slowly learning about giving up control, learning to delegate, and part of that was letting Felix learn to drive Freak.
Though—to say that Carter had relinquished control was maybe overstating it. Even from her crash position, head between her knees, breathing out, trying to ride the adrenaline crash without being sick, she could see the numerous Post-it notes that Carter had stuck up next to Freak’s reigns. Poor boy was probably sitting in his room having separation anxiety from Freak right now.
Her suspicions were totally confirmed when Freak and the barque skidded to a stop atop Brooklyn House, and Carter clattered up, Zia close on his heels, and said—and maybe it was a good thing, because it made Sadie laugh hard enough to get over her queasy stomach—“How’s Freak? And, um,” he added, casting a guilty eye to Sadie. “I’m glad you’re OK too.”
Sadie just rolled her eyes, even as her legs slipped a little climbing down from Freak, and added, “Whatever you say, brother dear. If you’re more concerned about a griffin than your own dear sister, well…” She end with a quirked little smile at Zia, who grinned at her from over Carter’s shoulders. Sadie meant to be frustrated with Carter, and she was, but she was still a little too queasy to launch into it up there on the roof. Sadie peered over Zia’s shoulder, once, again, but she didn’t see Walt racing up the stairs after them.
There really wasn’t any reason he should be racing up the stairs, Sadie had to remind herself. She and her sort-of boyfriend had been in something of a holding pattern for the last month. Except…minus the holding. Or anything else, except lots of anvil-sized hints on both of their parts that never seemed to lead to either of them doing anything.
“C’mon,” Carter huffed, but he still went over to Freak, looking him over for any indication that Felix had been less than absolutely perfect with him. “You know I didn’t mean it like that.”
Sadie meant to retort, but right as she reached Zia, her stomach gave another awful lurch and she squeezed her eyes shut. She felt Zia grab her elbow, and Sadie’s legs were stable under her, but she was still grateful for Zia’s warm presence next to her.
“Come, Sadie,” she said in her warm, lilting accent, her warm brown hand wrapping a little more firmly around Sadie’s arm. “Let’s go to the library. I think we have a lot to discuss.”
Just then, Freak leaned down for what Sadie assumed was intended as an affectionate nip. He got a little too close, and instead, ended up taking off a solid chunk of Carter’s overgrown, curly brown-black hair. Carter had told Sadie he was trying to grow his hair long enough to dread, like their uncle Amos’s hair, but privately, Sadie thought that he was just too lazy to get a proper haircut. Amos had always been more wild than his brother, their father Doctor Julius Kane, and now that he had hosted Set, the God of evil, people respected that wildness. Carter and their father had always played it safe, dressing like the professor and junior professor that they were. Honestly, it was a miracle that Carter was wearing sneakers, right now, instead of loafers or whatever ridiculous junior professor shoes he liked to wear.
“Ve-ery nice,” Sadie called from Zia’s side. “That’s quite a fashion statement you’ve got going there.”
Carter just rolled his eyes. “Like purple streaks in blonde hair is a lot better.” He turned to Felix, who was closing one hand into a fist and opening it again, anxious to hear Carter say he had done a good job. “Felix, Freak is in great shape,” Carter added severely. And then, as if letting go this much cost him quite a lot, he offered, “Why don’t you unhitch him and get him a turkey or two?”
Felix ran giddily to Freak’s side, and Carter stalked over to Sadie and Zia, walking ever more slowly as they got closer to the door back into Brooklyn House. Just before they were about to go in, Carter looked over his shoulder and asked, “Felix, you didn’t scream Ho, ho, ho on your way back again, did you?”
—
When they got into the library, Sadie was starting to feel better. The ambrosia Annabeth had given her had helped, and Khufu had sidled up beside them as she, Zia and Carter had walked to the library, handing her one of Jaz’s healing potions. Sadie wasn’t sure that Khufu hadn’t tried it first, but she couldn’t think of a way it could have started with an “O,” so she knocked it back, and then handed the bottle back to Khufu before slipping into the library ahead of Carter and Zia. Walt was sitting at the big table in the center of the library, and, before she had a chance to talk herself out of it, she slid down next to him.
Walt and Cleo were locked in a staring contest, when Sadie slipped down next to him. They were both golden brown and glowing, and Sadie had a brief flicker of that old, mostly passed, insecurity that she was too small, too pale, too blonde to belong in this world of big, strong Egyptians.
“Helllloooo,” Sadie sang, before she realized Walt and Cleo were locked in some sort of battle of the wills and she shrank back down in her seat. In the distance, over the deafening silence, she could hear Carter threatening and Zia cajoling for Khufu to stay outside of the library and keep an eye on the other initiates. When leadership involves delegating to a baboon, Sadie thought. There’s a leadership class they never taught at school.
“No!” burst out Cleo, just as Carter slammed the door, Khufu firmly on the other side. “No, you are not; these are ancient artifacts, we can’t risk them for testing.”
“But the testing won’t mean anything if we don’t use real Egyptian artifacts, Cleo, and you know that!”
They went back to glaring at each other, and Sadie felt like she had missed a step. Or…several steps. “Everything ok here?” she asked instead.
“Everything’s fine,” Zia noted with finality, passing behind Sadie and sitting down next to her. Zia shot meaningful glances between Walt and Cleo. “Right?” she added, with a warning in her voice.
Inviting Zia to stay at Brooklyn House had been a moment of genius, Sadie thought.
“So, what happened while you were chasing that artifact, Sadie?” asked Walt. “You didn’t come back with it, and you look like a disaster, so I assume something happened?”
“Ah,” Sadie responded. “Yes. It did. And,” she added, wheeling on Carter, “I have a bone to pick with you, brother dear. Did you by any chance meet a boy named Percy Jackson recently?”
The mottled look of embarrassment and defensiveness on Carter’s face was answer enough, and Sadie was about to push him further, but just then, Walt rested his big, warm palm on her knee. It was a perfectly chaste, comfortable gesture, but she could feel the warmth of his palm radiating through her jeans, and for a moment, she couldn’t really remember why she was supposed to be angry about anything at all.
It was chaste, yes, but it was also more than they’ve done since they came back from the First Nome, a month ago. After that dance on the roof, the wind whipping around her ankles and Walt’s breath hot against her neck, they had spent the last several weeks dancing around each other, awkward and stilted. It wasn’t like her, to want something and not push the issue, but your boyfriend—friend—god of the dead—whatever—coming back from the dead, merged with the only other boy you’d ever had a crush on was not something that happened every day. Besides, Sadie told herself, she had been busy. Between rebuilding Brooklyn House, designing lessons for all the new initiates flooding in, magically installing new dormitories for them, listening to Carter wax poetic about Zia for hours—well, she was booked solid.
Though she could probably have done without that last one.
Sadie had thought maybe she and Walt were going to talk when he had followed her into the library earlier than morning.
“Sadie,” he had rasped. “I, um, I wanted to…”
Of course, the effect had been ruined, because at that moment, Carter and Zia had burst in giggling, and some stone artifact that looked like part of a statute sparked to life and peeled out of the library.
“It’s ok!” Sadie had wailed, leaping over a chair. “You lot stay here! I’ll fetch it!”
But now, hours later, she was sweat-soaked and clammy—but starting to feel like herself again—and Walt’s hand wasn’t uncertain at all as it rested, gentle and stable, against her knee. She meant to get angry at Carter, to read him the riot act about the things you tell the person you’re running Brooklyn House with, but Walt’s hand against her knee made her feel measured in an unusual and unexpected ways, so instead she just huffed, “Carter, I’m not sure I’ve mentioned this recently, but your new name is punching bag,” before launching into as succinct a description as possible of her afternoon—chasing Serapis through a ravaged neighborhood in Queens with a girl named, fittingly, Annabeth Chase, Setne searching for the crown of Ptolemy.
“So I don’t know, but I think maybe we should start researching this bloke, Ptolemy,” Sadie finished. Walt’s hand twitched ever so slightly against her knee, but he kept holding on. Slowly, she slid one hand off the table and ghosted it gently over his.
“Actually,” Walt said quietly, his voice gravely and close to her. “That’s sort of related to what I wanted to talk to you guys about, too.”
Walt’s eyes grazed Sadie’s for a minute before he looked down at the table in front of him, almost ashamed. “I feel like…when I merged with Anubis. I had a pretty good sense of what the path of Anubis would be like. To be the eye of a god, you need absolute unity, and we…I mean. So I was prepared.” Walt looked up at Sadie again, a little more guiltily, though he didn’t move his hand. “But now, I feel like things are changing.”
“Changing?” chirped Carter, Zia and Cleo, who had apparently overcome her desire to give Walt the evil eye in her curiosity, all in unison.
“I just think I should test my powers,” he said, giving Cleo a meaningful look. “I think it’s important for me to understand the limits, especially if what I think is happening is actually happening.”
“What do you think is happening?” Carter asked aggressively. He had that slightly mad gleam in his eyes that he got sometimes, the one she had seen in her father that night at the British Museum, where he had hosted Osiris and (almost) died. That slightly mad gleam was going to get Carter in the same kind of trouble one day, Sadie was sure, but for now, it was also their single best tool in investigating everything that was happening around them.
“Well, you guys know about Ptolemy,” Walt began, carefully. He paused maybe slightly too long, because Cleo, who probably knew the most about Ptolemy, took over, chirping, “He was a scientist, and a philosopher. He created many meaningful treatises, many of which were important in other, later empires. He lived in Alexandria and all of his artifacts are priceless and irreplaceable and nothing is worth experimenting on them.”
“He also wanted the Egyptians to accept him as their pharaoh,” Walt added somberly. He was Alexander’s general, when he conquered Egypt, and he took over when Alexander died.”
“Yes!” Sadie added. “That Annabeth girl mentioned something about that too! She said that he wanted Egyptians to accept him as their pharaoh, so he sort of…mashed the Egyptian and Greek Gods together. And that was how he made Serapis!”
“He also built a temple to Anubis, and mashed him with the Greek messenger god, Hermes,” Walt continued, his voice stretching lower and more gravely. “And today isn’t the first time I’ve noticed it, but it happened again today—when someone is flying on Freak, and I want them to get back sooner, the journey takes a lot less time than it should.” He looked down at the table and smiled. “Though when it happened to Julian and Jaz, they came back a little more queasy than you did, Sadie.” Walt chanced a smile at her and she couldn’t help but letting her whole face light up too, vivid and without restraint. He wanted her to get back faster.
Also, that certainly explained why she was so queasy, getting off Freak’s barque.
“So I think we should test my powers,” Walt said meaningfully, shooting Cleo a look.
“No!” Cleo exclaimed. “There are other ways to test your powers! You don’t have to test them on irreplaceable artifacts!”
“But if Setna is merging Greek and Egyptian powers in a bid for immortality, we have to do something!” Carter cut in.
“We are bound to protect the House of Life! We can’t do that if we destroy our own artifacts!” Cleo shot back.
Zia still felt like an outsider at Brooklyn House, in many ways. She, and Carter, and Walt, they had argued about how the best way to do things was for months already, they had already taken sides with and against Cleo in preserving artifacts versus learning from them. Zia hadn’t, and Sadie had honestly worried that they would scare her with their fighting. But she needn’t have worried. Zia was different than they were, Zia had been making these choices her whole life.
“No,” Zia said, looking kingly and judicial. “Cleo, he’s right. This is more important.” She turned to Walt. “What do you want to test?”
Walt cleared his throat awkwardly. He had clearly not expected to get this far on this, today. Over Zia’s shoulder, Carter shot Sadie a triumphant little look. Look how cool my girlfriend is, he was saying. Maybe you should…
Sadie knew what he meant, and maybe their hands, right now, intertwined on her knee, was a good enough start.
—
Anubis had too many powers.
Sadie is not really complaining, having an ally who can wrap your enemies in mummy linen or pull the souls of the dead out of the ground to defend your side was nothing to sneeze at, and having a boyfriend who could will you home faster.
Well, Walt wasn’t technically her boyfriend, but maybe there was something she could do about that. She was Sadie Kane, and if she could survive everything she’d survived in the last few years, she could definitely survive another few conversations with Walt, no matter how tired she was or how awkward they were.
But they’d been in the library for what felt like forever, and she’d watched Walt dust things, hold things without dusting them, only to dust them on someone else’s command, and telepathically will a sticky date palm across the table.
“It’s too hard,” he had panted, eventually. “I don’t think that kind of travel is what Hermanubis did. Or at least, it’s not what I can do.” He sniffed, long-suffering. “I think it has to be someone traveling already. And I think I need to be speeding them towards me, or away from me, to another destination.”
“I wonder if you can slow travel, too,” Carter had pondered, junior professor that he was.
Several oranges smashed against the library wall and one apoplectic Cleo later, they had determined not. “Or at least,” Walt had added ruefully. “Not with fruit-travel.”
“What about lying?” Zia said finally. “Anubis guards the Feather of Truth. Can you tell if someone is lying?”
Walt shifted uncomfortably. “Zia, that’s awfully close to reading people’s thoughts. Even if it is a power of the Path of Anubis, I’m not sure I want it.”
Sadie shifted uncomfortably on her feet too. She wanted Walt to know what she was thinking, but she wasn’t sure she was quite ready for a possibly-god, possibly-boyfriend who could read her mind all the time.
Still, it would be good to know.
“But it’s important for you to know,” Sadie insisted. “Let’s all go around the room and say something, and you can tell us if we’re lying or telling the truth.” Then, giving Carter a perfectly innocent smile, she added, “Because he forgot to tell us all about Percy Jackson, Mr. Punching Bag can go first.”
“Uh,” Carter rasped desperately. “Um. Ok. Um. I…don’t like the color orange.”
Walt gave Carter a searching look. “I dunno, man. I’m not getting any super lying vibes off of you.”
Carter shrugged. “I really don’t like the color orange. That Percy kid was wearing it. But that doesn’t really mean anything.”
There was an awkward moment of silence, until Zia suddenly said, her accent suddenly stronger, “Try me.” She swallowed, and then began, very carefully, “My village was called Al-Hamrah Makan, which means—” Zia broke off, shuddering, then swallowed again before continuing, “It means, the place of red sands.” She ended so decisively, and with such an appraising look to Walt, that Sadie almost felt like it was Zia who could tell if Walt was lying.
“Um,” Walt stammered, instead. “Um. I don’t know.”
“This is pointless!” Cleo wailed. “All we have done today is smear fruit across the library!”
“No, wait,” Walt added. “I just have…this strong feeling that it isn’t true, I don’t know. Al-Hamrah Makan doesn’t mean the place of red sands. It just means red place.”
“How do you know that?!” exclaimed Sadie. “I didn’t even know that! Have you studied Arabic?”
Walt shook his head. “I don’t know it,” he said finally. “I just…feel it.”
Sadie resisted the urge to punch him in the sternum, like she had the moment he appeared on the terrace of Brooklyn House, after the battle of the First Nome, and ask him if he felt that. She was still looking at Walt, somewhere between amazement and total frustration, but she could hear Carter and Zia jabbering excitedly to each other. At some point, Zia got so excited about Walt feeling her lie about the translation that she actually started speaking in Arabic, which just made Sadie laugh. They might all be hardwired for Ancient Egyptian, but Arabic was something they’d have to learn on their own. Even Cleo, who apparently did speak Arabic—in addition to English, Baboon and her native Brazilian Portuguese—struggled to understand Zia’s particular rural Egyptian dialect. Between Zia speaking a mile a minute, Cleo interjecting every time Zia paused for a breath, and Carter wailing could they please all speak English?, Sadie was pretty sure no one would notice—and no one did—her slipping her hand into Walt’s and whispering, “I think I’m over testing. Want to get out of here?”
“No lie detected,” smirked Walt. He willingly followed as she tugged him out of the library.
—
Brooklyn House had rules about boys being in girls’ rooms and vis versa, as Khufu was only too happy to remind her by throwing the Cheerios that were sitting in a bowl on her dresser at them the second she pulled Walt into her room. She could hear Walt giggling breathlessly behind her, and she was pretty sure she was doing some pretty embarrassing giggling of her own. She wasn’t like this, not really; she was Sadie Kane, she was the girl with purple highlights streaked in her baby fine blonde hair. She had no problem telling you exactly what she was thinking, thank you very much.
It was just: right now, Sadie didn’t really know what she was thinking. She had thought she had accepted the conflict within her about Walt and Anubis merging when she summoned ma’at in the Hall of Ages, and then again, when they danced the next night, on the terrace of Brooklyn House. She had thought she had accepted it, but she still felt like she had all of these unanswered questions that crept into her head every time they were alone together, wondering: should I really still call you Walt, even when my vision can slip so effortlessly into the Duat, see you as the boy with kohl-lined eyes, bare chested and wearing a skirt? (Unanticipated side-benefit of your boyfriend merging with the god of death: really serious improvement in your ability to lower your vision into the Duat, Sadie quipped to herself.)
She wondered: do you know the things I told Anubis? All of those whispered, secret words, before I knew you, before I saw you. She wondered: do we still have the past we shared, when you were Walt, the dying boy who fought bravely by my side, and I was Sadie, still innocent—at least a little—in the ways of war? She wondered: despite being willing to die in the fight against Apophis, was she really just the most selfish person, because Walt’s whole life changed; he died and became one with a god, and here Sadie was, wondering about the mechanics?
They had been busy, so busy, and all of her unanswered questions, the intensity of the feelings for two boys, doubling down on her, made it so easy to turn away, to dive into all of that work, to be friendly with Walt, listening to his hints and laying down half-invitations of her own before withdrawing, leaving, running away. It wasn’t something she was proud of, and she thought, right at that moment, Walt’s chesty giggle just inches away from her, Khufu pelting them with Cheerios, maybe all she had to do was ask.
Instead, as he closed the door on Khufu, Walt said, “So things are kind of…different now. After. Everything.” He looked a helpless little look at her, but he was still smiling, and his eyes were so warm and brown, so like him, and so like Anubis. Unlike Carter, he was capable of getting a hair cut, so his tightly coiled black hair was close cropped. He was also healthier looking than he had been a month ago; he had better posture, and he had put on muscle. Sadie hated to admit it, but he even looked more like Anubis, now.
“I know,” she said. “Everything is different.” She sank down on her bed and, after a long pause, she added, “I’m sorry if it seemed like I was ignoring you, recently. I wasn’t! We’ve just been so busy, and…” She trailed off with her own tentative, apologetic smile. It wasn’t really true, and it didn’t sound true, and they both knew it.
“I know,” Walt said roughly. “I wasn’t ignoring you either.” It didn’t sound true when he said it either. He sank down next to her on her bed, and sighed. “I—we merged. And the first thing I did was kill Sarah Jacobi. It took some getting used to, being mortal and a murderer and god of death, all at once.”
Walt’s words hit her like a ton of bricks, because for all she had considered it being hard, merging with a god, she had never considered how hard it must have been to go from doing no magic to using magic to kill a magician in just a few hours. “Walt, no,” Sadie insisted, taking his hand. She wove her fingers between his, and his hand shook, but he held on. “You saved me.”
“I know,” he mumbled to their intertwined fingers. “I’m not sure that makes it any better.”
“It was a war,” Sadie insisted. “You saved me. I’ll never forget that.”
Sadie felt like she had so many unanswered questions, and she wanted to ask them all, but instead she asked, in a tinier voice than she had maybe ever used before, “Is it different? Being two souls in one body.”
Her vision slipped into the Duat as he answered, and she watched him, but she also watched Anubis, jackal headed and bare chested, speaking with his and Walt’s voice blended. “It’s hard to explain,” he admitted. “I am both fully Walt and fully Anubis; both fully mortal and fully god. Death is never banished, Sadie, and I can walk the earth like the Egyptian god-kings of old.” His voice sounded grave and echoey and very, very deep. It was full of a vibrato that neither Walt nor Anubis had ever mastered on their own.
“Omph,” Sadie groans. “Talking about this is giving me a headache.”
Walt actually smiled at her, on this. He lifted his free hand to tuck a stray strand of purple hair behind her ear, very carefully not skimming her cheek or ear. Sadie wished he were a little less restrained, right now. “Try not to let your vision slip in and out of the Duat. That’s really the most challenging part for me, too.” He bit down on his lip. “We are one, but we are also two. We have…distinct pasts. But Anubis and Walt, they have the same future.”
When Sadie was silent, he added, “I know this seems really…complicated. And it…is, I guess. But it also—“
“No, it makes sense,” Sadie said quickly. “It’s just—should we really call you Walt?” It wasn’t all that she meant, but the second the words were out of her mouth, it felt like the only important thing.
Walt paused too, for a moment, also introspective. “This is Walt’s body,” he said finally, though not without hesitation. “I think you should call me Walt. I can be Anubis in the Hall of Judgment, but other than that…” He shrugged, as if to say, I don’t really know either.
Sadie leaned her head into his shoulder. She disentangled their hands, and began to trace small circles against Walt’s kneecap.
“Ok,” she said finally. “That feels right. It feels right to keep calling you Walt.”
Walt’s breath was ruffling her hair, gently, against her forehead. Sadie’s chest was getting tight with anticipation and terror, she wanted to kiss him so badly, but they hadn’t really kissed since the moment before he died. Anyway, she had only had two proper kisses in her life; it wasn’t like she was an expert on the subject. In a ham-handed attempt to cut the tension, she quipped, “Is your vision slipping into the Duat really the most challenging thing for you?”
“No,” Walt admitted, but a small smile edged back onto his face. “It’s actually more complicated than that.” While Sadie thought about how to ask him what he meant by that, he continued, “I had a certain…abandon. In the last few months of my life as Walt; I thought, I’ll die soon anyway, there’s no use saving anything.” He paused, kneading his lower lip between his teeth, as if choosing his next words very carefully. “I’m much more restrained, now.”
“Restrained?” Sadie asked. She turned her head inward so that she spoke into his neck, and she was painfully aware of how close her lips were to him, of the peals of heat radiating off of him.
“Yeah,” said Walt, and it was half-playful, and half-serious. “I have a future now. I have a lot more to lose.”
Sadie can’t help but roll her eyes, because somehow all of her unanswered questions seemed to roll up into nothing, right now. She had had it right, that night on the terrace. This was a new boy right in front of her, good and thoughtful and kind, and maybe she was a fool to try to pick apart the mechanics of magic, rather than being grateful for the time she got with him.
“Yes,” she said instead, with a smirk. “Like more time with me.” Walt looked over at her sharply, but also eagerly, because this was more than the hinting they’d spent the last few weeks doing, this was something real and separate from running Brooklyn House.
This was just between them.
“Walt,” she said, very clearly, so as to not be misunderstood. “I’m going to kiss you now.”
She took the vivid, unrestrained smile that ripped across Walt’s face to mean OK.
Sadie didn’t really know what she was doing, but she leaned in, screwing her eyes shut and pressing her lips tightly against his. She wasn’t 100% sure she was doing it right, but Walt gave a catched little breath and moved both of his hands to her waist, running them gently up and down her sides. She followed suit, running her hands up and down his sides. One of her fingers just caught on the hem of his t-shirt and she grazed the thin, exposed skin, reveling in Walt’s gasp, the way he pulled her closer into him.
She’d never really done much more than exchange a few careful kisses with Walt or Anubis, always in public, always with the threat of death or separation hanging over them. Now, they kissed passionate and frenetic, and she trembled a little as Walt’s hand played tentatively against the hem of her own t-shirt, as his tongue glided against her neck.
“But we should…be responsible,” whispered Sadie, still shuddering, between panted kisses. “They’re probably done arguing now; there’s probably rotten fruit to clean up downstairs.”
“Anubis is the god of funeral rites and embalming,” Walt whispers against her neck. “I can’t stop them from getting smashed, but I can stop them from rotting.”
“Mmmhhmm,” Sadie giggled. “You’re absolutely right. Maybe we should stay here.”
Walt shifted her into his lap, though, and gave her one final kiss, long and lingering and sweet. “We can stay or we can go,” he said, tucking another stray piece of hair behind her ear. The tips of his fingers traced along her hairline, and he let his palm rest, longer than absolutely necessary, against her cheek. “We have all the time in the world.”