the_kane_chronicles__book_one__the_red_pyramid

must’ve hit the cake by accident as we were fighting, but I knew we hadn’t. Something
much weirder had made it explode, as if it had responded to our anger. I remembered
Sadie crying with a chunk of cake on her forehead, an upside-down candle stuck to the
ceiling with its wick still burning, and an adult visitor, one of my parents’ friends, his
glasses speckled with white frosting.
I turned to Amos. “That was you. You were at Sadie’s party.”
“Vanilla icing,” he recalled. “Very tasty. But it was clear even then that you two would be
difficult to raise in the same household.”
“And so…” I faltered. “What happens to us now?”
I didn’t want to admit it, but I couldn’t stand the thought of being separated from Sadie
again. She wasn’t much, but she was all I had.
“You must be trained properly,” Amos said, “whether the House approves or not.”
“Why wouldn’t they approve?” I asked.
“I will explain everything, don’t worry. But we must start your lessons if we are to stand
any chance of finding your father and putting things right. Otherwise the entire world is in
danger. If we only knew where—”
“Phoenix,” I blurted out.
Amos stared at me. “What?”
“Last night I had…well, not a dream, exactly…” I felt stupid, but I told him what had
happened while I slept.
Judging from Amos’s expression, the news was even worse than I thought.
“You’re sure he said ‘birthday present’?” he asked.
“Yeah, but what does that mean?”
“And a permanent host,” Amos said. “He didn’t have one yet?”
“Well, that’s what the rooster-footed guy said—”
“That was a demon,” Amos said. “A minion of chaos. And if demons are coming through
to the mortal world, we don’t have much time. This is bad, very bad.”
“If you live in Phoenix,” I said.
“Carter, our enemy won’t stop in Phoenix. If he’s grown so powerful so fast…What did he
say about the storm, exactly?”
“He said: ‘I will summon the greatest storm ever known.’”
Amos scowled. “The last time he said that, he created the Sahara. A storm that large could
destroy North America, generating enough chaos energy to give him an almost invincible
form.”
“What are you talking about? Who is this guy?”
Amos waved away the question. “More important right now: why didn’t you sleep with
the headrest?”