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"Yeah, okay," he sighed "I’ht behind you"

Before I could chicken out, I put one boot in the river and sank up tosounds like a coing gum

A little too late, I realized how poorly prepared I was I didn’t haveI hadn’t been able to suicians had melted it down I still had my wand, but that was o on the offense, I’d be at a serious disadvantage

I pulled an old stick out of the h the shallows, trying to find anything useful We kicked over some bricks, discovered a few intact sections of walls, and brought up soht about the story Zia had told e by unearthing a demon trapped in a jar For all I knew, these were shards of that sa attacked us except mosquitoes We didn’t find any traps But every splash in the river made me think of crocodiles (and not the nice albino kind like Philip back in Brooklyn) or the big toothy tiger fish Zia had shownaroundlooked the tastiest

Out of the corner ofripples and tiny whirlpools like sothere

After an hour of searching, the sun had almost set We were supposed to , which left us almost no time to find Zia And twenty-four hours froin

We kept looking, but didn’t find anythingthan a muddy deflated soccer ball and a set of dentures [Yes, Sadie, they were eventhan Gramps’s] I stopped to swat theout of the water--a wriggly fish or a frog--and stuck it in his mouth

"Do you have to?" I asked

"What?" he said, still chewing "It’s dinnertiust and poked my stick in the water

Thunk

I struck so harder than mud brick or wood This was stone

I tracedthe bottoe dropped off to another row of stones about a foot lower: like stairs, leading down

"Bes," I called

He waded over The water came up almost to his arht disappear any minute

I showed him what I’d found

"Huh" He dunked his head underwater When he came back up, his beard was covered in ht Reminds me of the entrance to a toe?"

Off to my left, there was another splash

Bes frowned "Did you see that?"

"Yeah Ever since we got into the water You haven’t noticed?"

Bes stuck his finger in the water as if testing the temperature "We should hurry"

"Why?"

"Probably nothing" He lied even worse than et a look at this tomb Part the river"

He said that as if it were a perfectly norician," I said "I don’t kno to part a river"

Bes looked offended "Oh, coician who parted the Nile just so he could cliirl’s necklace Then there was that Israelite fellow, Mickey"

"Moses?"

"Yeah, him," Bes said "Anyway, you should totally be able to part the water We gotta hurry"

"If it’s so easy, why don’t you do it?"

"Now he gets an attitude I told you, kid, running water interferes with godly power Probably one of the reasons Iskandar hid your friend down there, if that’s where she is You can do this Just--"

He suddenly tensed "Get to the shore"

"But you said--"

"Now!"