Michael Scott - The Necromancer

Sophie looked around, noting the heavy curtains covering the windows. One of the windows had been boarded up, and the rest were crisscrossed with thick metal bars.

“How did you know I was awake?” she asked, struggling upright in the hammock.

“I heard the change in your breathing,” Aoife answered simply.

Sophie maneuvered herself to the edge of her swinging perch. Dangling her legs, she looked at the figure sitting on the box. The resemblance to Scathach was startling-the same bright red hair, the same brilliant green eyes and pale skin-but there was something about the jut of her jaw that set her apart from her sister. And while Scatty had tiny laugh lines around her eyes and at the corners of her mouth, Aoife’s face was smooth.

“You are not frightened?” Aoife asked, tilting her head slightly to one side.

“No,” Sophie said with sudden realization. “Should I be?”

“Perhaps if you knew me…”

Sophie was about to say that she knew all about Aoife, but that would mean revealing that the Witch of Endor had passed on her memories, and she still didn’t want Aoife to know that. “I know your sister,” she said instead.

“I am not my sister,” Aoife said, her accent changing, revealing hints of her Celtic background.

“Who do you serve?” Sophie asked.

“Myself.”

“Elders or Dark Elders?” Sophie persisted.

Aoife’s hands moved in a dismissive gesture. “The terms are meaningless. Good or bad is a matter of perspective. I met an immortal humani once, a man called William Shakespeare, who wrote that there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

Sophie bit the inside of her cheek to keep a straight face. She wasn’t about to tell Aoife that she’d actually met the famous bard only the day before yesterday. “Why did you kidnap me?”

“Kidnap you?” Aoife’s eyes widened in surprise and then her lips curled. “I suppose I did. I just needed to talk to you without interruption.”

“We could have talked on the street.”

“I wanted to talk in private. You could have invited me in.”

Sophie shook her head. “No, I wasn’t going to do that. My brother will find you,” she added.

Aoife laughed dismissively. “I doubt that. I had a brief encounter with him-he is powerful, but unskilled.” Then, with a touch of what might have been awe in her voice, she asked, “He is Gold?”

“And I’m Silver,” Sophie said proudly.

“The twins of legend.” Aoife sneered disbelievingly.

“You don’t believe that?”

“Do you know how many twins of legend there have been?”

“I know that there’ve been others…,” Sophie said cautiously.

“Many others. And do you know where they are now?”

Sophie started to shake her head, though she knew the answer.

“These gold and silver auras are not gifts. They are a curse,” Aoife snapped. “They will destroy you and everyone around you. I have seen entire cities laid to waste to kill just one twin.”

“The Alchemyst said that the Dark Elders-”

“I have told you: there are no Dark Elders,” Aoife snapped. “There are just Elders, neither good nor bad. Just a race of beings we now call Elders. Some encourage the humani, others despise them: that is the only difference between them. And even those guardians of humanity often change their allegiances. Do you think my sister was always the champion of the new humani race?”

The question shocked Sophie into silence. She wanted to refute the suggestion, but the Witch’s insidious memories trickled into her consciousness and she caught hints and glimpses of the truth-the real truth-about Scathach and why she was called the Shadow.

“I need you to tell me…,” Aoife began.

“Are you going to hurt me?” Sophie asked suddenly.

The question caught Aoife by surprise. “Of course not.”

“Good.” Sophie slipped out of the hammock and dropped to the floor. She swayed slightly. “I need something to eat,” she interrupted. “I’m starving. Do you have any crackers or fruit?”

Aoife blinked. She flowed to her feet and stood in front of the girl. “Well, no, actually. I don’t eat. Not food… not as you would recognize it, anyway.”

“I need some food. Real food. No meat,” she added quickly, her stomach rebelling even at the thought. “And no onions either.”

“What’s wrong with onions?” Aoife asked.

“I don’t like the taste.”

The houseboat was moored in the bay at Sausalito. It was a long rectangular wooden box-like the upper story of a house set directly onto the water. It had been painted and repainted green-each time with a different shade of the color-but the sea air and time had stripped the surface and the paint now hung in long peeling sheets, revealing the mottled wood beneath. There was no engine, and it was clear that the houseboat hadn’t moved from its moorings in years.

Sophie and Aoife sat on the deck in two white plastic chairs. Sophie had already eaten two bananas, an orange and a pear and was now slowly munching her way through a pound of grapes, flicking the seeds into the water.

“I am not your enemy,” Aoife began. “Nor am I your friend,” she added hastily. “I just want to know what has happened to my sister.”

“Why do you care?” Sophie asked curiously, glancing sidelong at the red-haired woman. Although Aoife’s eyes were hidden behind dark glasses, the girl could feel them drill into her. “I thought you haven’t spoken in centuries.”

“She is still my sister. She is… family. She is my responsibility.”

Sophie nodded. She understood that. She’d always felt she had a responsibility to look after her brother-even though he was perfectly capable of looking after himself. “How much do you know about what’s happened in the past few days?” she asked.

“Nothing,” Aoife said, surprising her. “I felt Scathach go and I came here immediately.”

“Where were you?”

“In the Gobi Desert.”

Sophie squeezed a seed between her fingers and watched it arc into the water. “But that’s in Mongolia, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Scatty only disappeared yesterday. You must have used leygates to get here.”

Aoife nodded. “I used a little trick your friend Saint-Germain taught me a long time ago: he showed me how to see the gold and silver leygate spires. I used the gates to leap from Mongolia to the Ise Shine in Japan, to Uluru in Australia, then Easter Island and finally on to Mount Tamalpais.” She leaned forward and tapped Sophie on the knee. “I hate leygates.”

“Scatty said they make her seasick.”

Aoife sat back and nodded. “Aye, that’s just how they make me feel.”

Sophie twisted around to where the Japanese man who had driven the limo was scraping paint from the wall of the houseboat. “Did he come with you from Japan?”

“Who? Niten? No, he lives here in San Francisco. He is an immortal human and we are old friends,” she added with a hint of a genuine smile. “This is his houseboat.”

“Looks like he hasn’t been here for a while.”

“Niten travels,” Aoife said simply. “He wanders the Shadowrealms.”

Sophie looked again at the Asian man. She had initially assumed he was in his late teens or early twenties, but now she could make out the faint lines around his eyes, and she noticed that his wrists and knuckles were thick: the sure signs of a martial artist. He was stripping old paint from the wood with smooth, fluid movements.

“Tell me what happened to my sister.”

Sophie turned back to Aoife and put down the grapes. “All I can tell you is what Nicholas told me and Josh yesterday, and he heard it from Saint-Germain. Scathach and Joan of Arc were preparing to jump from Paris to Mount Tamalpais to attempt to rescue Perenelle, who was trapped on Alcatraz…”