“We can trust you and Nicholas, though, right?” Sophie said.
The bell rang again, flat and piercing in the distance.
“Trust no one,” Scathach repeated, and the twins realized that she was not answering the question. She turned toward the door. “I think that’s the dinner bell.”
“Can we eat the food?” Josh asked.
“Depends,” Scatty said.
“Depends on what?” he asked in alarm.
“Depends on what it is, of course. I don’t eat the meat myself.”
“Why not?” Sophie said, wondering if there was some particular ancient creature they should avoid.
“I’m a vegetarian,” Scatty answered.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Perenelle Flamel sat in a corner of the tiny windowless room and drew her knees up to her chest, then wrapped her arms around her shins. She rested her chin on her knees. She could hear voices—angry, bitter voices.
Perry concentrated on the sound. She allowed her aura to expand a little as she murmured a small spell she had learned from an Inuit shaman. The shaman used it to listen to the fish moving under the arctic ice sheets and the bears crunching across the distant ice fields. The simple spell worked by shutting down all other senses and concentrating exclusively on hearing. Perry watched as the color faded from her surroundings and darkness closed in until she went blind. She gradually lost her sense of smell and felt the pins-and-needles tingle in her fingertips and toes as her sense of touch dulled, then faded completely. She knew that if there were anything in her mouth, she would no longer be able to taste it. Only her hearing remained, but it was enhanced and supersensitive. She heard beetles crawling in the walls behind her, heard the scritch-scratch as a mouse gnawed through wood somewhere above her, knew that a colony of termites was munching their way through distant floorboards. She also heard two voices, high and thin, as if they were being picked up on a badly tuned radio, and coming from a great distance. Perry tilted her head, homing in on the sound. She heard wind whistling, the flap of clothing, the high crying of birds. She could tell that the voices she was hearing were coming from the roof of the building. They strengthened, warbled and bubbled, and then abruptly clarified: they belonged to Dee and the Morrigan, and Perry could clearly hear the fear in the gray man’s voice and the rage in the Crow Goddess’s shrill cries.
“She must pay for this! She must!”
“She is an Elder. Untouchable by the likes of you and me,” Dee said, trying unsuccessfully to calm the Morrigan.
“No one is untouchable. She has interfered where she was not wanted. My creatures had almost overwhelmed the car when her Ghost Wind swept them away.”
“Flamel, the warrior Scathach and the two humani have now disappeared,” Dee’s voice echoed, and Perry frowned, concentrating hard, trying to follow every word. She was delighted to discover that Nicholas had sought the assistance of Scathach: she was a formidable ally. “It’s as if they have vanished off the face of the earth.”
“They have vanished off the face of the earth,” the Morrigan snapped. “He’s taken them into Hekate’s Shadowrealm.”
Unconsciously, Perry nodded. Of course! Where else would Nicholas have gone? The entrance to Hekate’s Shadowrealm in Mill Valley was closest to San Francisco, and while the Elder was no friend to the Flamels, she was not allied to Dee and his Dark Elders either.
“We must follow them,” the Morrigan stated flatly.
“Impossible,” Dee said reasonably. “I have neither the skills nor the powers to penetrate Hekate’s realm.” There was a pause, and then he added, “Nor do you. She is a First Generation Elder, you are of the Next Generation.”
“But she is not the only Elder on the West Coast.” The Morrigan’s voice was a snap of triumph.
“What are you suggesting?” Fear had touched Dee’s voice with a hint of his original English accent.
“I know where Bastet sleeps.”
Perenelle Flamel sat back against the cold stone and allowed her senses to return. Feeling came first—pins and needles racing through her fingers and toes—then her sense of smell, and finally sight. Blinking, waiting for the tiny colored spots of light to fade, Perry tried to make sense of what she had just discovered.
The implications were terrible. The Morrigan was prepared to awaken Bastet and attack Hekate’s Shadowrealm to retrieve the pages of the Codex.
Perry shuddered. She had never met Bastet—she didn’t know anyone who had in the last three centuries and had lived to tell the tale—but she knew her by reputation. One of the most powerful members of the Elder Race, Bastet had been worshipped in Egypt since the earliest ages of man. She had the body of a beautiful young woman with the head of a cat, and Perry had absolutely no idea of the magical forces she controlled.
Events were moving surprisingly swiftly. Something big was happening. Many years before, when Nicholas and Perry had first discovered the secret of immortality, they had realized that their extra-long lives allowed them to view the world from a different perspective. They no longer planned events days or weeks in advance; often they would make plans decades into the future. Perry had come to understand that the Elders, whose lives were infinitely longer, could make plans that encompassed centuries. And that often meant that events moved with an extraordinarily deliberate slowness.
But now the Morrigan was abroad. The last time she had walked in the World of Men, she had been spotted in the bitter, mud-filled trenches of the Somme; before that she had prowled the bloodstained battlefields of the American Civil War. The Crow Goddess was drawn to death; it hung around her like a foul stench. She was also one of the Elders who believed that humans had been placed on this earth to serve them.
Nicholas and the twins were safe in Hekate’s Shadowrealm, but for how long? Bastet was a First Generation Elder. Her powers had to be at least equal to Hekate’s…and if the Cat Goddess and the Crow Goddess, combined with Dee’s alchemical magic, attacked Hekate, would her defenses hold? Perry didn’t know.
And what of Nicholas, Scathach and the twins?
Perenelle felt tears prickle the back of her eyes, but blinked them away. Nicholas would be six hundred and seventy-seven years old on the twenty-eighth of September, in three months’ time. He was well able to take care of himself, though his mastery of practical spells was very limited, and he could be remarkably forgetful at times. Only the summer before, he had forgotten how to speak English and had reverted to his native archaic French. It had taken her nearly a month to coach him back to speaking English. Before that he had gone through a period when he had signed his checks in Greek and Aramaic characters. Perenelle’s lips curled in a smile. He spoke sixteen languages well and another ten badly. He could read and write in twenty-two of them—though there wasn’t much chance to practice his Linear B, cuneiform or hieroglyphics these days.
She wondered what he was doing right now. He would be looking for her, of course, but he would also need to protect the twins and the pages that Josh had torn from the Codex. She needed to get a message to him, she had to let him know that she was fine and to warn him about the danger they were in.
One of the earliest gifts the young woman known as Perenelle Delamere had discovered when she was growing up was her ability to talk to the shades of the dead. It wasn’t until her seventh birthday that she realized that not everyone could see the flickering black-and-white images she encountered daily. On the eve of her seventh birthday, her beloved grandmother, Mamom, died. Perenelle watched as the withered body was gently lifted from the bed where she had spent the last ten years of her life and laid in the coffin. The small girl had followed the funeral procession through the tiny town of Quimper and out into the graveyard that overlooked the sea. She had watched the little rough-hewn box as it was lowered into the earth, and then she had returned to her home.
And Mamom was sitting up in the bed, eyes bright with their usual mischief. The only difference was that Perenelle could no longer see her grandmother clearly
. There was no color to her—everything was in black-and-white—and her image kept flickering in and out of focus.
In that instant Perenelle realized she could see ghosts. And when Mamom turned in her direction and smiled, she knew that they could see her.
Sitting in the small windowless cell, Perenelle stretched her legs out in front of her and pressed both hands to the cold concrete floor. Over the years she had developed a series of defenses to protect herself from the unwanted intrusions of the dead. If there was one thing she had learned early on about the dead—particularly the old dead—it was that they were extraordinarily rude, popping up at the most inopportune and inappropriate moments. The dead particularly liked bathrooms—it was a perfect location for them: quiet and still, with lots of reflective surfaces. Perenelle recalled a time she’d been brushing her teeth when the ghost of an American president had appeared in the mirror in front of her. She’d almost swallowed the toothbrush.
Perenelle had quickly come to understand that ghosts could not see certain colors—blues and greens and some tints of yellow—and so she deliberately encouraged those colors into her aura, carefully creating a shield that rendered her invisible in the particular Shadowrealm where the shades of the dead gathered.
Opening her eyes wide, Perenelle concentrated on her own aura. Her natural aura was a pale ice white, which acted like a beacon for the dead, drawing them to her. But over it, like layers of paint, she had created auras of bright blue, emerald green, and primrose yellow. Now, one by one, Perenelle shut off the colors—yellow first, then green, then the final blue defense.
The ghosts came then, drawn to her ice white aura like moths to a flame. They flickered into existence around her: men, women and children, wearing clothes from across the decades. Perenelle moved her green eyes over the glistening images, not entirely sure what she was looking for. She dismissed women and girls in the flowing skirts of the eighteenth century and men in the boots and gun belts of the nineteenth and concentrated on those ghosts wearing the clothing of the twentieth century. She finally picked out an elderly man wearing a modern-looking security guard’s uniform. Gently easing the other shades aside, she called the figure closer.
Perenelle understood that people—particularly in modern, sophisticated societies—were frightened of ghosts. But she knew that there was no reason to fear them: a ghost was nothing more than the remnants of a person’s aura that remained attached to a particular place.
“Can I help you, ma’am?” The shade’s voice was strong, with a touch of the East Coast in it: Boston perhaps. Standing tall and straight, like an old soldier, the ghost looked about sixty, though he could have been older.
“Could you tell me where I am?” Perenelle asked.
“You’re in the basement of the corporate headquarters of Enoch Enterprises, just to the west of Telegraph Hill. We got Coit Tower almost directly overhead,” he added proudly.
“You seem very sure.”
“Should be. I worked here for thirty years. Wasn’t always Enoch Enterprises, of course. But places like this always need security. Never one break-in on my watch,” he informed her.
“That’s an achievement to be proud of, Mr….”
“It surely is.” The ghost paused, his image flickering wildly. “Miller. That was my name. Jefferson Miller. Been a while since anyone asked for it. How can I help you?” he asked.
“Well, you’ve been of great assistance already. At least I know I am still in San Francisco.”
The ghost continued to look at her. “Did you expect not to be?”
“I think I may have slept earlier; I was afraid I might have been moved out of the city,” she explained.
“Are you being held against your will, ma’am?”
“I am.”
Jefferson Miller drifted closer. “Well, that’s just not right.” There was a long pause while his image flickered. “But I’m afraid I can’t help you—I’m a ghost, you see.”
Perenelle nodded. “I know that.” She smiled. “I just wasn’t sure if you knew.” She knew that one of the reasons ghosts often remained attached to certain places was because they simply did not know that they were dead.
The old security guard wheezed a laugh. “I’ve tried to leave…but something keeps pulling me back. Maybe I just spent too much time here when I was alive.”
Perenelle nodded again. “I can help you leave, if you would like to. I can do that for you.”
Jefferson Miller nodded. “I think I would like that very much. My wife, Ethel, she passed on ten years before me. Sometimes I think I hear her voice calling me across the Shadowrealms.”
Perenelle nodded. “She is trying to call you home. I can help you cut the ties that bind you to this place.”
“Is there anything I can do for you in return?”
Perenelle smiled. “Well, there is one thing…. Perhaps you could get a message to my husband.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Sophie and Josh followed Scathach through Hekate’s house. There were reminders everywhere that they were inside a tree: everything—floors, walls and ceilings—was wooden, and in places, little buds and shoots of green leaves dappled the walls, as if the wood was still growing.
With her hand resting lightly on her brother’s shoulder, Sophie looked around. The house seemed to be composed of a series of circular rooms that flowed, almost imperceptibly, into one another. She caught glimpses as she and Josh passed them; almost all the rooms were bare, and most of them had tall red-barked trees growing through the center of the floor. One room, off to the side and much larger than the rest, had a large oval-shaped pool in the middle of the floor. Startlingly large white-flowered water lilies clustered in the center of the pool, giving it the appearance of a huge unblinking eye. Another room was filled entirely with wooden wind chimes dangling from the branches of its red tree. Each set of chimes was a different size and shape, some etched and carved with symbols, others unadorned. They hung still and quiet until Sophie looked into the room, and then they slowly, melodically began to rattle together. It sounded like distant whispers. Sophie squeezed Josh’s shoulder, trying to attract his attention, but he was staring straight ahead, forehead creased in concentration.
“Where is everyone?” Josh finally asked.
“There is only Hekate,” Scathach said. “Those of the Elder Race are solitary creatures.”
“Are there many still alive?” Sophie wondered aloud.
Scathach paused by an open door and turned to look back over her shoulder. “More than you might think. The majority of them want nothing to do with the humani and rarely venture from their individual Shadowrealms. Others, like the Dark Elders, want a return to the old ways, and work through agents like Dee to make it happen.”
“And what about you?” Josh demanded. “Do you want to return to these old ways?”
“I never thought they were that great,” she said, then added, “especially for the humani.”
They found Nicholas Flamel sitting outside on a raised wooden deck set into a branch of the tree. Growing horizontally from the tree trunk, the branch was at least ten feet across, and sloped down to plunge into the earth close to a crescent-shaped pool. Walking across the branch, Sophie glanced down and was startled to see that beneath the green weeds that curled and twisted in the pool, tiny almost-human faces peered upward, mouths and eyes open wide. On the deck, five high-backed chairs were arranged around a circular table, which was set with beautifully hand-carved wooden bowls and elegant wooden cups and goblets. Warm, rough-cut bread and thick slices of hard cheese were arranged on platters, and there were two huge bowls of fruit—apples, oranges and enormous cherries—in the center of the table. The Alchemyst was carefully slicing the skin off an emerald green apple with a triangular sliver of black stone that looked like an arrowhead. Sophie noticed that he had arranged the green skin into shapes that resembled letters.
Scatty slid into the seat beside the Alchemyst. “Is Hekate not joining us?” she asked,
picking up a piece of cut skin and chewing on it.
“I believe she is changing for dinner,” Flamel said, slicing off another curl of skin to replace the piece Scatty was chewing. He looked over at Sophie and Josh. “Sit, please. Our hostess will join us shortly and then we’ll eat. You must be exhausted,” he added.
“I am tired,” Sophie admitted. She’d become aware of the exhaustion a little earlier, and now she could barely keep her eyes open. She was also a little frightened, realizing that the tiredness was caused by the magic of the place feeding off her energy.
“When can we go home?” Josh demanded, unwilling to admit that he too was worn out. Even his bones ached. He felt as if he was coming down with a cold.
Nicholas Flamel cut a neat slice from the apple and popped it in his mouth. “I’m afraid you will not be able to return for a little while.”
“Why not?” Josh snapped.
Flamel sighed. He put down the stone arrowhead and the apple and placed his hands flat on the table. “Right now, neither Dee nor the Morrigan knows who you are. It’s only because of that, that you and your family are safe.”
“Our family?” Sophie asked. The sudden thought that her mother or father might be in danger made her feel queasy. Josh reacted with the same shock, his lips drawing into a thin white line.
“Dee will be thorough,” Flamel said. “He is protecting a millennia-old secret, and he will not stop with killing you. Everyone you know or have come in contact with will have an accident. I’d hazard a guess that even Bernice’s Coffee Cup will burn to the ground…simply because you once worked in it. Bernice might even perish in the fire.”
“But she has nothing to do with anything,” Sophie protested, horrified.
“Yes, but Dee doesn’t know that. Nor does he care. He has worked with the Dark Elders for a long time, and now he has come to regard humans as they do: as little more than beasts.”