Michael Scott - The Sorceress

"I am not the first; there were others before me."

"There have always been people like you, Nicholas Flamel. People who think they know what's best, who decide what people should see and read and listen to, who ultimately try to shape how the rest of the world thinks and acts. I've spent my entire life fighting against the likes of you."

Josh leaned forward. "Are you with the Dark Elders?"

But it was Flamel who answered. His voice was scornful. "Palamedes the Saracen Knight has not taken sides in centuries. He is similar to Hekate in that respect."

"Another of your victims," Palamedes added. "You brought ruin to her world."

"If you dislike me so much," Flamel said icily, "then what are you doing here?"

"Francis asked me to help, and despite his many faults, or perhaps because of them, I consider him a friend." The taxi driver fell silent, and then his brown eyes flickered in the rearview mirror to look over Sophie and Josh. "And, of course, because of this latest set of twins," he added.

Sophie broke in and asked the question that was forming on her brother's lips. "What do you mean, the latest set?"

"You think you're the first?" Palamedes barked a laugh. "The Alchemyst and his wife have been looking for the twins of legend for centuries. They've spent the past five hundred years collecting young men and women just like you."

Sophie and Josh looked at one another, shocked. Josh lurched forward. "What happened to the others?" he demanded.

Palamedes ignored the question, so the boy rounded on Nicholas. "What happened to the others?" he repeated, his voice cracking as it rose almost to a shout. For a single heartbeat his eyes blinked gold.

The Alchemyst looked down, then slowly and deliberately peeled Josh's fingers off his arm where he had grabbed him.

"Tell me!" Josh could see the lie forming behind the immortal's eyes and shook his head. "We deserve the truth," he snapped. "Tell us."

Flamel took a deep breath. "Yes," he said finally. "There have been others, it is true, but they were not the twins of legend." Then he sat back in the seat and folded his arms across his chest. He looked from Josh to Sophie, his face an expressionless mask. "You are."

"What happened to the other twins?" Josh demanded, voice trembling with a combination of anger and fear.

The Alchemyst turned his face away and stared out the window.

"I heard they died," Palamedes said from the front seat. "Died or went mad." he flaking sign had originally said CAR PARTS, but the second R had fallen off and had never been replaced. Behind a tall concrete wall tipped with shards of broken glass and curls of razor wire, hundreds of broken rusted cars rested one atop the other in precariously balanced towers. The wall surrounding the car yard was thick with peeling posters advertising long-past concerts, year-old "just released" albums and countless indy groups. Ads had been pasted over each other to create a thick multicolored layer, then covered again in graffiti. It was almost impossible to see the DANGER-KEEP OUT and NO TRESPASSING signs.

Palamedes pulled the car up to the curb about a block away from the heavily chained entrance and turned off the engine. Wrapping both arms over the top of the steering wheel, he leaned forward and carefully took in his surroundings.

Flamel had fallen asleep, and Sophie was lost in thoughts that occasionally turned her pupils silver. Josh pushed himself out of his seat and crouched on the floor behind the glass partition. "Is that where you're taking us?" Josh asked, nodding toward the car yard.

"For the moment." Palamedes' teeth flashed in the gloomy interior of the car. "It might not look like much, but this is probably the safest place in London."

Josh looked around. The redbrick houses on either side of the narrow road were dilapidated beyond repair, and the whole area was shabby and run-down. Most of the doors and windows had been boarded over, and some had even been bricked up. Every pane of glass was broken. The rusted hulk of a burnt-out car squatted on concrete blocks by the side of the road, and nothing moved on the streets. "I'm surprised this area hasn't been redeveloped or anything."

"It will be, eventually," Palamedes said ruefully. "But the present owner is prepared to sit on the land and let it appreciate in value."

"What will happen when he sells it?" Josh asked.

Palamedes grinned. "I'll never sell it." His thick right index finger moved, pointing straight ahead. "There used to be a car factory here, and there was full employment in these streets. When the factory closed in the 1970s, the houses began to empty as people died off or moved away looking for work. I started buying up the properties then."

"How many do you own?" Josh asked, impressed.

"All of them for about a mile in every direction. A couple hundred houses."

"A couple hundred! But that must have cost you a fortune."

"I've lived on this earth since before the time of Arthur. I've made and lost several fortunes. My wealth is incalculable… the hardest part is hiding it from the taxman!"

Josh blinked in surprise; he never imagined an immortal having problems with the government. Then he realized that in these times of computers and other surveillance technology, it must be increasingly difficult to remain in hiding from the authorities. "Do people live here?" he asked. "I don't see anyone…"

"You won't. The people"-he used the word carefully-"who live in my houses only come out at night."

"Vampires," Josh murmured.

"Not vampires," Palamedes said quickly. "I have no time for the blood drinkers."

"What then?"

"Larvae and lemurs… the undead and the not-dead."

"And what are they?" Josh asked. He was guessing that larvae did not mean insect young and that lemurs were not the long-tailed primates he'd seen in zoos.

"They are…" Palamedes hesitated, then smiled. "Nocturnal spirits."

"Are they friendly?"

"They are loyal."

"So why are we waiting?" Josh asked. It was clear that Palamedes wasn't going to tell him anything else. "What are you looking for?"

"Something out of the ordinary."

"So what do we do?"

"We wait. We watch. Have a little patience." He glanced back at Josh. "By now much of the immortal world knows that the Alchemyst has discovered the legendary twins."

Josh was surprised by how direct the knight was being with him. "You didn't seem too sure about that earlier. Do you think we are?" he asked quickly. He needed to find out what Palamedes knew about the twins and, more importantly, about the Alchemyst.

But Palamedes ignored the question. "It doesn't matter if you are the legendary twins or not. What matters is that Flamel believes it. More importantly, Dee believes it also. Because of that, an extraordinary series of events has been put in motion: Bastet is abroad again, the Morrigan is back on this earth, the Disir brought the Nidhogg to Paris. Three Shadowrealms have been destroyed. That hasn't happened in millennia."

"Three? I thought it was just Hekate's realm that was destroyed." Scathach had spoken of other Shadowrealms, but Josh had no idea just how many existed.

Palamedes sighed, clearly tired of explanations. "Most of the Shadowrealms are linked or intersect with one another through a single gate. If anything happens to the Shadowrealm, the gate collapses. But the Yggdrasill, the World Tree, stretched up from Hekate's realm into Asgard and down deep into Niflheim, the World of Darkness. All three winked out of existence when Dee destroyed the tree, and I know that the gates to another half dozen have collapsed, effectively sealing off that world and its inhabitants. Dee added a few enemies to the long list of people-both human and inhuman-who hate and fear him already."

"What will happen to him?" Josh asked. Despite all he'd been told about the Magician, he found he still had a niggling admiration for him… which was more than he had for the French Alchemyst at the moment.