I closed my fingers around the hilt of my sword and pulled it outa heavy khopesh with a blade curved like a question mark.Im Carter Kanepart-time high school freshman, part-time magician, full-time worrier about all the Egyptian gods and monsters who are constantly trying to kill me.Just a lot of thembut that kind of goes with the territory, since Im a magician in the House of Life.Were like the police for Ancient Egyptian supernatural forces, making sure they dont cause too much havoc in the modern world.
Anyway, on this particular day I was tracking down a rogue monster on Long Island. Our scryers had been sensing magical disturbances in the area for several weeks. Then the local news started reporting that a large creature had been sighted in the ponds and marshes near the Montauk Highwaya creature that was eating the wildlife and scaring the locals. ![]() Normally my sister, Sadie, or some of our other initiates from Brooklyn House wouldve come with me. But they were all at the First Nome, in Egypt, for a weeklong training session on controlling cheese demons (yes, theyre a real thing; believe me, you dont want to know), so I was on my own. I hitched our flying reed boat to Freak, my pet griffin, and we spent the morning buzzing around the South Shore looking for signs of trouble. If youre wondering why I didnt just ride on Freaks back, imagine two hummingbird-like wings beating faster and more powerfully than helicopter blades. Unless you want to get shredded, its really better to ride in the boat. After a couple of hours on patrol, he shrieked, FREEEAAAK and banked hard to the left, circling over a green marshy inlet between two subdivisions. Down there I asked. Freak shivered and squawked, whipping his barbed tail nervously. I couldnt see much below usjust a brown river glittering in the hot summer air, winding through swamp grass and clumps of gnarled trees until it emptied into Moriches Bay. The area looked a bit like the Nile Delta back in Egypt, except here the wetlands were surrounded on both sides by residential neighborhoods with row after row of gray-roofed houses. Just to the north, a line of cars inched along the Montauk Highwayvacationers escaping the crowds in the city to enjoy the crowds in the Hamptons. If there really was a carnivorous swamp monster below us, I wondered how long it would be before it developed a taste for humans. If that happenedwell, it was surrounded by an all-you-can-eat buffet. As soon as I stepped out of the boat, Freak screeched and zoomed into the sky, the boat trailing behind him. So do fireworks, clowns, and the smell of Sadies weird British Ribena drink. Cant blame him on that last one. Sadie grew up in London and developed some pretty strange tastes. I would have to take care of this monster problem, and then whistle for Freak to pick me up once I was done. I opened my backpack and checked my supplies: some enchanted rope, my curved ivory wand, a lump of wax for making a magical shabti figurine, my calligraphy set, and a healing potion my friend Jaz had brewed for me a while back. She knew that I got hurt a lot. There was just one more thing I needed. Over the last few months, Id gotten better at storing emergency provisions in the shadow realmextra weapons, clean clothes, Fruit by the Foot, and chilled six-packs of root beerbut sticking my hand into a magical dimension still felt weird, like pushing through layers of cold, heavy curtains.
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