Shad Hadid and the Alchemists of Alexandria Read online

  Dedication

  For Mom and Dad,

  who sacrificed everything so that I might dream.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Praise

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  There was no such thing as magic.

  But if there was, it would be the cakes on display through the bakery window. Freshly baked namoura cakes, to be exact. Soft on the inside, crisp on the outside, and sugary sweet all over.

  A rosewater scent wafted from an open window and I sidestepped over to ogle a tray of baklava. Lucky for me, the only Arabic bakery in Maine, Halwa Heaven, was just a block from Portland Middle School. My last class had finally gotten out, and holy cannoli, was I glad to be done with pre-algebra.

  I leaned in closer, licking my lips. Inside, rows and rows of pastries were stacked on top of each other, all fresh and ready to be eaten. I needed a taste. Something brushed against my shoulder and I sprang around, suddenly aware of the drool rolling down my chin. I quickly wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.

  It was an old lady holding a cane. “Sorry, young man,” she said, offering a wrinkly smile and reaching for the door handle.

  I hurried forward to help her. I held the door open long enough for her to get inside and, just when I was ready to close it behind her, the baker appeared.

  Clad in a white jacket with his belly falling over an apron, he shot me a disapproving stare. I was jealous of that belly. Sure, I had some pudge, but nothing like his. One day, I’d eat enough sweets to earn a sumo stomach too.

  “How many times must I tell you not to stand outside my bakery?” he asked, emphasizing his k’s in a thick accent. My teta did the same thing. Unlike her, though, the baker curled his lips into a deep frown and said, “You are bad for business.”

  I ignored him like I always did and stepped back over to the open window, continuing to stare inside. The baker’s assistants hurried back and forth, helping the woman and the other customers with their orders of mouthwatering baklava, crispy knafeh, and everything in between. I remembered my family shop in Lebanon, all the customers asking for help in Arabic, and my baba’s hospitality. How he would welcome all types of people, if only for a sip of tea to warm the belly. It sure used to warm mine.

  Watching the happenings in the bakery felt like stepping into a time machine, except with loads of sugar. But just as the heavenly smell of pies began to drift out, the baker slammed the window shut in my face.

  I stuck my tongue out. One day, my bakery would be right next to his, only bigger and with ten times the sweets. Closing my eyes, I pictured the baker’s white hat atop my curly black hair, his spotless jacket buttoned up to my neck.

  The only problem with my plan was that I had no money and still lived with my grandmother. She only spoke a little English and liked it when I called her Teta instead of Grandma. Teta was too old to teach me about recipes and ingredients from Baba’s shop. She was too old for a lot of things.

  “Figs, I need to cook dinner!” I said, realizing that Teta would be waiting on me. “Oh, I’m such a bahle.”

  I’d turned to head home when, out of nowhere, a wet blob smacked the back of my neck. It stung as I reached around, wondering if a pigeon had just used my head for its toilet seat. My fingers ran across something gooey. A closer look revealed a yellowish slime.

  “An egg?” My stomach felt woozy as I flicked away the goo.

  Laughter came from across the street. My throat burned at the sight of Sarah Decker, our middle school’s nastiest bully. Two boys and a girl, each as tall and imposing as her, stood there too. All of them were in my sixth-grade class, and they were laughing.

  Laughing at me.

  Teta had always told me that demons were real, and Sarah was definitely one of them, or at least a distant cousin. Exhibit A: a carton in her hand with a single egg missing, the one that she’d just launched at me. Exhibit B: her signature devilish gap-toothed grin, pasted on her face right now.

  Maybe that was why I hadn’t felt guilty about yesterday, when I stuffed her backpack with used paper towels from the bathroom trash. Since she’d come with three of the biggest, most frightening twelve-year-olds at Portland Middle School, she’d probably taken my prank the wrong way. Well, since I’d meant to annoy her, I guess she took it the right way.

  In my defense, she started it . . . two years ago. We were friends before then, but her parents didn’t like that I wasn’t born in America. When she told me, I said her parents were a couple of moldy eggplants. Then she shoved me into a locker. But I, Shad Hadid, never do two things: rely on anyone else, or let a bully mess with me and get away with it. Thus, our rivalry was born.

  Sarah pulled another egg from the carton and turned to her friends. “Did everyone see that throw? Perfect angle, just the right velocity . . . and score!”

  Sarah is a science and math whiz, which makes her different from the other bullies, especially since she is smart enough to turn basically anything into a lean-mean-wedgie-machine. Her friends, on the other hand, aren’t so smart.

  “What’s a velo-city?” asked Anthony Clarke, captain of the wrestling team.

  Meanwhile, Catherine Lee reached for an egg only to have her hand slapped away by Sarah. “Let me have a try,” said Catherine. “It’s not like he can run—he’s slower than a camel! They have those where you’re from, right, Shad?”

  Camel? The insult made my skin crawl. “You fig-heads have it all geographically wrong,” I shouted. “There aren’t any camels in Lebanon. I don’t pay attention in school, and even I know that!”

  Sarah and her friends laughed even harder. “Fig-head?” she asked. “Who says that?”

  “Someone who can actually read,” I shot back. “Unlike you.”

  All of them quieted and Sarah’s face went red, and she picked up another egg. Not good.

  “You think you’re so funny, huh?” she shouted, rushing to the other side of the street. My side. “Since you love food, how about I make an omelet out of your head!”

  She brought her arm back to throw, but I dashed down the street. Behind me, I heard the thwack of an egg breaking against the bakery glass and then the door swinging open. One of the baker’s assistants stepped outside and shouted at Sarah and her friends. She called Sarah something in Arabic that, had it come out of my mouth, would have made Teta slap me into an
other dimension.

  My Sultan of Slam wrestling backpack thudded against my butt as I raced down the block. Sarah had already crossed the street with her friends, only twenty feet away and gaining on me with each stride. I hadn’t thought past calling her a fig-head, but what was I supposed to do? They were picking on me. Saying nothing was worse than saying the wrong thing, right?

  Egg after egg started raining down. Some soared by while others painted the wall in yellow. One egg hit the sidewalk right next to me and bits of yolk splattered onto my sneakers.

  “You can’t outrun us!” said Sarah.

  She was right. While I could barely even run, Sarah could both run and throw. But I was darn good at hide-and-seek. While eggs smashed all over the pavement, I rounded the building that connected several stores to the bakery. An alley I could hide in was up ahead. Now, I hadn’t outgrown what Teta called my baby fat, and the alley was pretty narrow. Still, I sucked in my stomach and squeezed inside.

  My fear of Sarah totally outweighed my fear of tight spaces. Although my hands were trembling, legs getting noodly, I snaked out through the long alley and . . .

  “Holy cannoli,” I whispered.

  Directly ahead, where the back of the bakery should be, was a large, colorful garden. Well, more like a mini-jungle. I approached a few fruit trees: oranges, bananas, and even figs. Purple and brown and other weird-colored flowers sprang up in the corners, while moss climbed up the building’s walls.

  I used the short lead I had on Sarah to catch my breath. Between the scent of sweat and the rotting egg on my neck, the aroma of the flowers was hard to notice. I was still wobbly on my feet, and when I reached back to flick off the yolk, the alley darkened.

  I glanced up at a large black figure hovering over me as if descending from the sky. A shadow.

  I’d once convinced myself that the scarf hanging from my closet door was a ghost. I’d refused to leave my bed until Baba put it around his neck and started dancing the dabke. I wiped my eyes, sure this was some kind of similar mistake.

  Nope. The shadow was real, and it had no face or shape.

  I jerked away from what looked like a large batch of chocolate pudding that had learned to walk. It drew closer. I kicked it, but my foot passed right through.

  “You are trespassing where you do not belong,” it said with a raspy voice that sounded hollow and lifeless.

  I tried to scream, but could only muster a faint croak.

  “Who’s trespassing?” I asked, looking around, my hands shaking, knees wobbling. “Not me, I was just . . . just leaving!”

  I didn’t believe in magic, or monsters, or any of the things from the stories Teta told me growing up. But there was no denying this thing—whatever it was—was real, and terror gripped me. Breathing became harder. Each step back felt like lifting a shoe full of bricks. All I could do was keep moving away until I thudded against a wall and crumpled to the ground.

  The shadow hovered closer and closer. Sitting there, shaking, I held my legs and watched it grow as tall as a basketball hoop and wider than a billboard. It blocked out all daylight. I was done. Finished. Pooped. It raised a shadowy tentacle and I shoved my head between my knees, unable to look.

  But as the shadow brushed my cheek, a shrill cry pierced my ears.

  “Begone, necromancer!” shouted a new voice.

  Boom!

  An explosion shook the ground beneath my feet. I looked up and the shadow vanished. Sunlight poured back into the alley, onto my face, and lit up the lush, colorful garden.

  Just a second ago, that thing had cornered me. Now there was a man who wore a faded navy coat that ran down to the ankles, too-big glasses, and had wild hair that shot out in every direction. His skin was tanned like mine, giving him the look of an Arab Albert Einstein. He also wore an unusual belt beneath his coat, pouches hanging from all around it. And one veiny hand held a leash for his pet . . . salamander?

  He furrowed an eyebrow and asked, “Who in the elements are you, and what are you doing in my alley?”

  Chapter 2

  “Answer my question,” he said sharply. He adjusted his thick-rimmed glasses, the space between his bushy eyebrows creasing. “How did you find this alley? It should be hidden.”

  “Well, it’s not,” I said, my voice still shaky.

  “Don’t you lie to me,” he said. “I have Truth Dust and I am not afraid to use it.”

  Truth Dust? I had to admit I was curious, but not enough that I didn’t want to rush home after encountering a walking, talking shadow. And I could hear the video from our last school assembly repeating the words stranger danger in my head.

  “This is not a public alley,” he said. “Besides, children should not be wandering into alleys alone. You ought to stay close to your friends.”

  I’m not a child. And I hate when people tell me I should be with friends. Always, they say friends this or friends that.

  “I do perfectly fine on my own,” I snapped.

  “Clearly you had that necromancer handled.” He rolled his eyes and stuck a hand into one of the several pouches hanging around his belt. He fed whatever he pulled out to the salamander.

  “That’s what you call the shadowy thing that attacked me?” I asked. “A necromancer?”

  The old man ignored me. “Go back the way you came, boy. Parents shouldn’t let their kids wander around like this.”

  The mention of my parents lit an angry fire in me. This man didn’t know that right after Baba closed our family shop and brought us to America five years ago, he and his father, my jiduh, died in a car accident. He also didn’t know that my mama had left Baba seven years ago, back when I was just four years old. Now she lived in Lebanon with my evil stepfamily and I was sure she’d forgotten I even existed. Sometimes, I tried calling her old number, but not once had she ever picked up.

  Yet all my anger simmered to fear at the thought of the monster. Necromancer. Just the name of it gave me goose bumps. And I might have demanded to know more about it if the guy didn’t have a salamander the size of my arm.

  “I’ll be out of here in a second, Gramps.”

  “Gramps? Are you calling me old?”

  “You bet your tush I am. And you better believe that—”

  A scraping sound came from the alley. I twisted around and almost screamed. It was Sarah, her mischievous grin stretched from ear to ear. She and her friends had found me, and they were squeezing their way through.

  “Hey, you’ve gotta help me with these . . . oh figs!”

  The old man and his salamander were gone. So much for adult intervention.

  “I do know how to read,” said Sarah. “You’re going to wish you’d stayed home today!”

  I couldn’t decide what was more terrifying: being cornered by that shadow monster or Sarah Decker. I needed to think fast if I didn’t want to get covered in sticky eggs. A sudden memory crossed my mind, a trick my jiduh would use to keep cats away from our shop in Lebanon.

  I reached down and grabbed a clump of dirt beneath my sneakers. From inside my backpack, I reached into my Persian Punisher wrestling lunch box for a salt packet. My fingers were shaking from the pressure. I ripped open the packet, mixed in the salt with the dirt, and spat into them both to create a mushy, stinky clump. It was disgusting and perfect and missing just one more key ingredient . . .

  Leaning in like Jiduh would when making his stink bombs, I imagined the most disgusting smell: my used school gym clothes. I whispered the words into my hand, following Jiduh’s instructions. He’d always said that thoughts were just as real as any other ingredient.

  Sarah was nearly out of the alley, her grin now devilish. But her expression changed to surprise when she saw me smiling back.

  “I’m not the one who’s cornered,” I said, aiming. “You are!”

  I chucked my stink bomb as hard as I could into the alley and it hit one of the walls right in front of Sarah. She was only a few steps away, a full foot taller than me and much scarier up close. But th
en the clump began to work its magic, because all the kids in the alley stopped.

  “What’s that smell?” asked the girl behind Sarah, scrunching up her nose.

  Her friends turned and ran back the way they’d come. Sarah gagged, but she held out the longest, giving me a frown that said we weren’t finished. Then she hurried down the other end of the alley and disappeared.

  I looked at the stinky clump, more than a little proud of myself. When I told other students that my baba once owned a shop in Lebanon, I never mentioned what kind of shop. We sold unusual ingredients. Not spices and vegetables but ground-up flowers, animal intestines, stuff like that. We also sold charms. Knickknacks that Baba said would keep away demons or help a person run faster. Of course, those were for the gullible. The only exception was the stink bombs. Those, like the bakery sweets, were as real as it got.

  Ding!

  My watch chimed. It was 4:00 p.m.—I really needed to hurry home. Teta would be waiting on me for dinner. But I couldn’t go back through the alley or I’d die from the stink. I glanced around the garden and stiffened up like a statue.

  “By the elements,” said the strange old man. He’d reappeared, standing with his giant salamander. “I saw what you did to those children. Who taught you that?”

  Scrambling back, I asked, “Where did you come from? You . . . you vanished like a ghost earlier!”

  He bent over and laughed, sounding younger now, his navy-blue coat drifting with his movements. He reached into a pouch and flung a green powder into my face. I stumbled away and sneezed. The powder went up my nose and into my mouth, tasting and smelling foul. It burned my eyes, and everything went blurry.

  Things transformed all around me. The brick wall beyond this mini-jungle wasn’t a brick wall, but the bakery. A back door hung wide open behind one of the orange trees. And the old man . . . he wasn’t so old anymore. His hair darkened from gray to black, he still wore the same coat and belt, and his belly began to grow. The salamander wasn’t a salamander anymore either, but a cat licking its butt.

  The man’s changing face was the weirdest part of it. I wiped my eyes just to be sure I was seeing clearly, but he looked exactly like . . .