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

Fancy Feast. Sadie and I sat together at the opposite end. Khufu was off babysitting the ankle-biters, and some of our newer recruits were inside doing their homework or catching up on spell crafting, but most of our main people were present—a dozen senior initiates.
    Considering how badly last night had turned out, everyone seemed in strangely good spirits. I was kind of glad they didn’t yet know about Sarah Jacobi’s video death threat. Julian kept bouncing in his chair and grinning for no particular reason. Cleo and Jaz were whispering together and giggling. Even Felix seemed to have recovered from his shock in Dallas. He was sculpting tiny shabti penguins out of his mashed potatoes and bringing them to life.
    Only Walt looked glum. The big guy had nothing on his dinner plate except three carrots and a wedge of Jell-O. (Khufu insisted Jell-O had major healing properties.) Judging from the tightness around Walt’s eyes and the stiffness of his movements, I guessed his pain was even worse than last night.
    I turned to Sadie. “What’s going on? Everybody seems…distracted.”
    She stared at me. “I keep forgetting you don’t go to school. Carter, it’s the first dance tonight! Three other schools will be there. We can hurry up the meeting, can’t we?”
    “You’re kidding,” I said. “I’m thinking about plans for Doomsday, and you’re worried about being late to a dance?”
    “I’ve mentioned it to you a dozen times,” she insisted. “Besides, we need something to boost our spirits. Now, tell everyone your plan. Some of us still have to decide what to wear.”
    I wanted to argue, but the others were looking at me expectantly.
    I cleared my throat. “Okay. I know there’s a dance, but—”
    “At seven,” Jaz said. “You are coming, right?”
    She smiled at me. Was she…flirting?
    (Sadie just called me dense. Hey, I had other things on my mind.)
    “Uh…so anyway,” I stammered. “We need to talk about what happened in Dallas, and what happens next.”
    That killed the mood. The smiles faded. My friends listened as I reviewed our mission to the Fifty-first Nome, the destruction of the Book of Overcoming Apophis, and the retrieval of the shadow box. I told them about Sarah Jacobi’s demand for my surrender, and the turmoil among the gods that Horus had mentioned.
    Sadie stepped in. She explained her weird encounter with the face in the wall, two gods, and our ghost mother. She shared her gut feeling that our best chance to defeat Apophis had something to do with shadows.
    Cleo raised her hand. “So…the rebel magicians have a death warrant out for you. The gods can’t help us. Apophis could arise at any time, and the last scroll that might’ve helped us to defeat him has been destroyed. But we shouldn’t worry, because we have an empty box and a vague hunch about shadows.”
    “Why, Cleo,” Bast said with admiration. “You have a catty side!”
    I pressed my hands against the surface of the table. It would’ve taken very little effort to summon the strength of Horus and smash it to kindling. But I doubted that would help my reputation as a calm, collected leader.
    “This is more than a vague hunch,” I said. “Look, you’ve all learned about execration spells, right?”
    Our crocodile, Philip, grunted. He slapped the pool with his tail and made it rain on our dinner. Magical creatures are a little sensitive about the word execration .
    Julian dabbed the water off his grilled cheese sandwich. “Dude, you can’t execrate Apophis. He’s massive . Desjardins tried it and got killed.”
    “I know,” I said. “With a standard execration, you destroy a statue that represents the enemy. But what if you could crank up the spell by destroying a more powerful representation—something more connected to Apophis?”
    Walt sat forward, suddenly interested. “His shadow?”
    Felix was so startled he dropped his spoon, crushing one of his mashed-potato penguins. “Wait, what?”
    “I got