the_kane_chronicles__book_one__the_red_pyramid

normal.
Carter stared at me. “How exactly—”
“Don’t know,” I admitted. “But the library’s open.”
“Think you overdid it a little? We’re going to be in so much trouble—”
“We’ll just figure out a way to zap the door back, won’t we?”
“No more zapping, please,” Carter said. “That explosion could’ve killed us.”
“Oh, do you think if you tried that spell on a person—”
“No!” He stepped back nervously.
I felt gratified that I could make him squirm, but I tried not to smile. “Let’s just explore
the library, shall we?”
The truth was, I couldn’t have ha-di-ed anyone. As soon as I stepped forward, I felt so
faint that I almost collapsed.
Carter caught me as I stumbled. “You okay?”
“Fine,” I managed, though I didn’t feel fine. “I’m tired”—my stomach rumbled—“and
famished.”
“You just ate a huge breakfast.”
It was true, but I felt as if I hadn’t had food in weeks.
“Never mind,” I told him. “I’ll manage.”
Carter studied me skeptically. “Those hieroglyphs you created were golden. Dad and
Amos both used blue. Why?”
“Maybe everyone has his own color,” I suggested. “Maybe you’ll get hot pink.”
“Very funny.”
“Come on, pink wizard,” I said. “Inside we go.”
The library was so amazing, I almost forgot my dizziness. It was bigger than I’d imagined,
a round chamber sunk deep into solid rock, like a giant well. This didn’t make sense, as
the mansion was sitting on top of a warehouse, but then again nothing else about the place
was exactly normal.
From the platform where we stood, a staircase descended three stories to the bottom floor.
The walls, floor, and domed ceiling were all decorated with multicolored pictures of
people, gods, and monsters. I’d seen such illustrations in Dad’s books (yes, all right,
sometimes when I was in the Piccadilly bookshop I’d wander into the Egypt section and
sneak a look at Dad’s books, just to feel some connection to him, not because I wanted to
read them) but the pictures in the books had always been faded and smudged. These in the
library looked newly painted, making the entire room a work of art.
“It’s beautiful,” I said.
A blue starry sky glittered on the ceiling, but it wasn’t a solid field of blue. Rather, the sky
was painted in a strange swirling pattern. I realized it was shaped like a woman. She lay