Her aunt.
The words stopped her cold.
For as long as she could remember, the family had been visiting Aunt Agnes. The twins had their own rooms in the house, and the front bedroom was always set aside for their parents. Sophie and Josh knew Agnes wasn’t really related to them by blood, though she was somehow connected to their grandmother’s sister or a cousin. But they’d always called her aunt: even her mother and father called the old woman Aunt Agnes.
Who was she? What was she?
Sophie had seen the white of her aura, smelled the jasmine, heard her speak in Japanese to Niten and address him by his real name. Agnes was Tsagaglalal, who was not an Elder, but was older than the Next Generation. Even Zephaniah, the Witch of Endor, knew very little about her.
Memories suddenly bled into and out of her consciousness.
A shining crystal tower, lashed by huge waves that dissolved into steam when they struck it.
A golden mask.
The Codex.
As quickly as they had arrived, though, the memories faded, leaving her with more questions than answers. All she knew for certain was that the woman she had grown up believing to be her aunt Agnes was Tsagaglalal, She Who Watches. But the chilling questions remained: Who had she been watching? And why?
Sophie walked down the corridor toward Agnes’s bedroom. It took her a moment to recognize the voices coming from behind the closed door. Two men speaking together, slipping easily from Japanese to English and back again: Prometheus and Niten. She was so numbed by events that she wasn’t even surprised that the Master of Fire was there. Sophie knew instinctively that both men were aware that she was in the hallway. Pressing the palm of her hand flat against the white door, she was about to push, but instead she rapped gently.
“Can I come in?”
“Please do,” Prometheus said softly.
Sophie pushed open the door and stepped into the room.
Although she’d been visiting this house for more than a decade, Sophie had never seen the inside of her aunt’s bedroom. Both she and her brother had always been intensely curious about it. The door was always locked, and she remembered once trying to peer through the keyhole, only to discover that something had been hung on the back of the door, blocking the opening. Josh had even tried climbing the tree in the garden to peer through the windows, but a branch had snapped off beneath him. Luckily, Aunt Agnes’s rosebushes had broken his fall, though he was scratched from head to foot. Agnes had said nothing as she cleaned his wounds with a foul-smelling blue liquid that stank and stung, though the twins both knew that she guessed what they’d been attempting to do. The following day new lace curtains had appeared in her windows.
Sophie had always expected that it would look like something out of the Victorian Age, filled with heavy dark furniture, an ornate large-faced clock on the mantel, the wall crowded with pictures in wooden frames, and a huge four-poster bed, complete with lacy pillows, frilly bedcovers and a hideous quilt.
She was shocked to discover that it was plain almost to the point of austerity. A single bed was positioned in the center of the white-painted room. There were no pictures, only a small rough-hewn and highly polished wooden cabinet against one wall that held a small collection of ancient artifacts Sophie assumed were gifts from her parents to Agnes: spearheads, coins, trinkets, beads and a green stone pendant in the shape of a scarab beetle. The only splash of color in the room besides the scarab was a spectacular dream catcher hung in the window over the head of the bed. Within a delicate circle of turquoise, two hexagons were set one inside the other, held in place by a tracery of gold wire. Each one was beautifully worked in black onyx and gold, and in the center of the inner hexagon was an emerald-green maze. Sophie guessed that when the sun rose in the morning, the light would illuminate the dream catcher and the white room would come alive with iridescent color.
The room was in shadow now.
Niten and Prometheus stood on either side of Agnes’s narrow bed. Lying motionless on the white sheets was Nicholas Flamel.
Sophie felt her heart lurch. Her hands flew to her mouth.
“He’s not …”
Prometheus shook his huge head and the girl suddenly noticed that his red hair had turned white in the few hours since she’d last seen him. Tears magnified his green eyes, making them huge in his face. “No, he’s not. Not yet.”
“But soon,” Niten whispered. He reached out and pressed his hand gently against the Alchemyst’s forehead. “Nicholas Flamel is dying. He will not survive the day.”
rm in arm, looking like any other ordinary couple enjoying a nighttime stroll, Isis and Osiris walked along the Quai de Montebello on the banks of the river Seine in Paris. To the left, lit up in warm golden spotlights, was their destination, the Cathedral of Notre Dame.
“Pretty,” Isis said, using a language that had been ancient before the pharaohs ruled Egypt.
“Very pretty.” Osiris nodded, the amber light running liquid across his shaven skull. He had taken off his black sunglasses and they were folded onto the neck of his white T-shirt. Isis still wore hers, and two miniature cathedrals were reflected in the black glass.
Although it was close to ten o’clock at night, there were still plenty of tourists milling around the famous landmark—possibly even more than normally would be. The destruction of the gargoyles earlier in the week had attracted worldwide media attention. Some reports claimed it was an act of terrorism or vandalism, others suggested it was the result of global warming and acid erosion, but most newspapers were beginning to report the story as simple stone fatigue. The gargoyles had been carved onto the building more than six hundred years previously. It was only a matter of time before some broke off.
“I like this Shadowrealm,” Isis said suddenly. “It was always my favorite. It will please me to regain control of it again.”
“Soon,” Osiris agreed. “Everything is falling into place.”
Isis squeezed her husband’s hand for emphasis. “Do you remember when we made this world?”
“We?” he teased.
“Well, you, really. But I did help,” she added.
“You did.”
“This wasn’t our first world, was it?” she asked, her perfectly smooth brow creasing in a frown as she tried to recall.
“No. Don’t you remember … we did make a couple of … well, shall we call them mistakes?”
Isis nodded. “There were some trials and errors.”
“Mostly errors. When Danu Talis fell, we didn’t know about the poisonous wild magic in the air. It took some time before we realized that it tainted everything we had created and we should have waited a few centuries before we started to build the world.” He shrugged. “But how were we to know?” He stopped, suddenly spotting the old woman with the white stick sitting on a metal bench at the edge of the pavement. She sat with her back to the cathedral, facing up the river. “How did she get here before us?” he breathed. “She was still in the catacombs with Mars Ultor when we left.”
The old woman raised her left hand and, without moving her head, beckoned them over.
“How does she know we’re here?” Isis whispered. “She can’t see us, can she?”
“Who knows what she can do,” Osiris murmured. “My lady Zephaniah,” he said loudly, approaching the bench.
“Sit with me.” Zephaniah, the Witch of Endor, turned the simple sentence into a command.
Isis and Osiris exchanged a quick look before parting to sit on either side of the old woman.
“Will your husband be joining us, madam?” Osiris asked, glancing around.
“He is busy at the moment. He is … catching up on the world,” she said with a wry smile. “It has changed somewhat since he last walked this earth.”
“And how is he?” Isis asked.
“Well, considering his ordeal, he is in remarkably good shape. Angry, of course. And when all of this …” She waved her hand vaguely in the air and the Parisian night was touched
with the scent of woodsmoke. “When all of this excitement is over, I think that he and I will have a somewhat difficult conversation. If we survive, of course.” The Witch fell silent and continued to stare straight ahead, face hidden behind her overlarge dark glasses. Both hands were resting atop her white stick, which she’d planted on the pavement directly in front of her.
“Why did you summon us?” Osiris asked slowly. “You do not speak to us for millennia; you either side with the humani or block us at every turn for centuries. And suddenly you want—no, demand—to see us.”
“Well, this is nice,” Zephaniah said, reverting to the ancient language of Danu Talis and ignoring the question. “How long has it been since we sat and chatted together?”
“We never chatted,” Osiris said with a smile that showed brilliantly white teeth. “You always commanded, demanded and ordered.”
“You treated us like children,” Isis added, a hint of anger in her voice.
“You were children. Abraham was right. You were spoiled, petulant children.” Zephaniah drew in a deep breath. “But I suppose I should have been …” She stopped, hunting for the word.
“Kinder?” Isis suggested.
“More understanding?” Osiris added.
“I was going to say firmer.” She turned her face toward the woman with the short black hair. “Some things haven’t changed, it seems.”
“And some things have, Zephaniah,” Isis said. “You’ve gotten old, whereas we are still young and vibrant.”
“Old?” The Witch smiled. “Looks can be deceptive.” For the merest instant, almost too fast to see, a transformation flickered across the Witch of Endor’s entire body, her skin suddenly white, then black, yellow, green and brown. The woman sitting on the seat became tall, short, broad, incredibly thin, old, then young, then middle-aged. “I am—as I have always been—many things. Whereas you two,” she added, voice hardening, “have always been upstarts.”
“And you were always a tyrant who—” Isis began.
“Enough,” Osiris snapped. “All of that is in the past. A long time in the past.”
The Witch nodded. “A long time in the past. And what’s done is done and cannot be undone.” Her swollen knuckles tightened on the head of her white cane. “Except you are trying to undo the past.”
Isis opened her mouth to speak, but Osiris shook his head.
“Don’t try to deny it,” Zephaniah said. “I’ve known about your plan for millennia.” She reached up and touched the dark glasses, moving them down her nose, then turned to look at each of them in turn. The Witch of Endor had no eyes; nestled in the empty sockets were two ovals of mirrored glass. “Oh, the things I’ve seen,” she said. “The myriad futures, the possible pasts, the incalculable presents.”
“What do you want, Zephaniah?” Isis asked coldly.
Once again the Witch ignored the question. “At first I was opposed to your plan and did everything in my power to thwart it. I wanted this Shadowrealm left in peace. So I chose not to get involved when your agents fought with the Next Generation. I deliberately didn’t retaliate when your people started earthquakes or raised floods because I knew that in the end, it would all balance out. You would win some battles, your enemies would win some and the old order would remain.”
“As it did for millennia,” Osiris said.
The Witch nodded in agreement. “Until you found Dr. John Dee.”
“A wonderful agent. Cunning, knowledgeable, ambitious, curious and so very, very powerful,” Isis said immediately.
“And now completely out of control. And all of those attributes—his cunning, knowledge, ambition, curiosity and power—are turned against you.”
“We have taken steps to neutralize him,” Isis said confidently. “He will not escape.”
“He has escaped thus far,” Zephaniah answered. “You should have acted the moment you learned that he intended to raise the Archon Coatlicue.”
Isis started to shake her head, but Osiris said, “You are right, of course. We should have. There was some talk of having Machiavelli neutralize him.”
“Now his actions threaten not only this world, but every Shadowrealm.” Zephaniah stood up suddenly and Isis and Osiris came to their feet alongside her. “Walk with me,” she said.
Folding her white cane and tucking it into her pocket, she slipped an arm through each of theirs. “Don’t be frightened,” she said lightly, patting Osiris’s strongly muscled arm.
“You do not frighten me, old woman,” Isis snapped.
“Well, I should, dearie. I really should. Walk me toward the cathedral and let me tell you about a future I saw, a future in which Coatlicue roamed free, a future in which the Archon rampaged through the Shadowrealms, leaving nothing but cinders in her wake. A future in which we were no more. There were no more Elders, none of the Next Generation, either. And when we were all gone, she started on the humani. Oh, and both of you were amongst the first to die—and you died horribly,” she added.
“And where was Dee in this future of yours?” Osiris asked.
“Safe,” Zephaniah said. “He had sealed this world off from the Shadowrealms, using the Swords of Power to destroy the doorways to Xibalba. He ruled the Shadowrealm as an emperor.”
“And Dare, the killer, was she by his side?” Isis asked.
“In this future, she was dead. Betrayed by Dee, fed to the Archon.”
“And is this a possible future or a probable future?” Osiris asked carefully.
“Neither. Events have moved on. The strands of time have already shifted and twisted into a new pattern. Dee has a new plan, something on a much grander scale.” The Witch pulled the couple to a halt. “Wait a moment.”
The trio stopped before the great Gothic cathedral and Zephaniah raised her head, almost as if she could see the building. “Hmm, this is where they fought.…” Her face moved left and right as she sniffed the air. “You can still smell the magic.”
“Vanilla,” Isis said.
“Orange,” Osiris added.
“And the mint of Flamel,” Zephaniah murmured, “and the stink of Dee and Machiavelli.”
A harassed-looking security guard was moving through the tourists who stopped to photograph the building’s ruined façade, trying to direct them away from the building in case any more stone came tumbling down. He marched straight up to the odd trio, who were standing far too close to the front of the building. Just as the security guard reached him, the bald man turned and smiled and the guard visibly blanched, as if he had just seen a ghost. He stumbled away and did not look back.
“Take me back to my seat,” Zephaniah commanded.
Isis and Osiris turned and walked the Witch back toward the metal bench. “You never liked Abraham the Mage, did you?” Zephaniah asked them.
“No,” Isis said quickly.
Osiris took a few moments before answering. “I think we all feared him,” he said eventually.
“I worked with him for a long time and I think I came to understand him better than most, but even I am not sure what he was. An Ancient, perhaps; maybe even an Archon. And certainly there was some Great Elder blood in him. Prometheus and I were with him when the Change started to overtake his body. I watched as he worked day and night, without stopping, to create the Codex.” She laughed, and the sound was deeply bitter and sad. “Do you know why he created the Book?”
“As a repository of the world’s knowledge?” Osiris offered.
“The book was created for a sole purpose. Abraham knew that this time would come.”
“What time?” Isis asked.
“When you abandoned Dee, when you declared him utlaga, you created a dangerous enemy. He intends to destroy us all.”
“How?” Osiris demanded. “Dee is powerful, but not that powerful.”
“He is now. He has the Codex. It is filled with all the knowledge in the world. And he has the Golden Twin to translate it for him. He has access to some of the oldest, deadliest magic in the world. Dee intends t
o go back in time and destroy the Elders on Danu Talis.” She grunted a laugh. “He’s going to ensure that we all died that day when the island sank.”
Isis started to laugh, the sound high and pure on the night air. Tourists turned to look, smiling at the sound, but her husband remained stone-faced, eyes wide with shock. Finally Isis’s laughter died away to silence. Osiris nodded. “Yes … yes, he could do that. And more importantly, he would do it.”
“How do we stop him?” Isis asked.
“So at last you decide to ask me for advice?”
“Please, Zephaniah,” Osiris begged.
The old woman reached over and patted Osiris’s hand. “Why do you think I released my husband from his curse?” Zephaniah said carefully. “Why do you think I put him under a spell in the first place? I needed to keep him safe and well for this day.”
“You knew this would happen?” Isis asked incredulously.
“I knew it might happen.” She lowered her glasses to reveal the mirrors in her face. “I gave my eyes for this.”
“Where is Mars Ultor now?” Osiris asked.
“Gone to San Francisco to kill Dr. John Dee.”
his is so not like driving a car.” Josh gritted his teeth and gripped the wheel as the small powerboat Dee had hired at the Treasure Island Marina hit another wave with enough force to rattle his teeth. He actually bounced off the hard vinyl seat.
“Faster, faster!” Virginia Dare urged, ignoring Josh’s complaint. She was sitting in the copilot’s chair beside him, her long hair streaming out behind her, speckled with water droplets. When she turned to Josh, her gray eyes bright with excitement, he was surprised—she looked so young he could almost imagine seeing her at his high school.
“No,” John Dee croaked from the back of the boat. The English Magician was leaning over the stern, pale and sweating. He’d been seasick almost from the moment Josh had gingerly maneuvered the boat from the shelter of the marina and into the choppy waters of the bay. “Slower, slower,” he said miserably.
Josh had to admit he found just the littlest bit of pleasure in having the upper hand. He looked at Virginia and they grinned; then Dare nodded toward the throttle. Josh nudged it forward and the two powerful outboard engines howled, churning the water to froth just beside Dee’s head. They heard the Magician’s strangled squawk, and when they turned to look at him again they found him glaring at them, and soaked to the skin.