Michael Scott - The Magician

“It’ll be closed, all right,” Josh agreed, a touch of excitement entering his voice, “but when we left Ojai, the place was in chaos. And don’t forget, I drove a Hummer into the fountain in Libbey Park; that had to have caught someone’s attention. I’ll bet the police and the press are there right now. And the press might answer some questions if we ask the right ones. I mean, if the Witch’s shop was damaged they’re sure to be looking for a story.”

“It might work…,” Flamel began. “I just need to know the name of the newspaper.”

“ Ojai Valley News, 646-1476,” Sophie said immediately. “I remember that much…or the Witch does,” she added, and then shuddered. There were so many memories in her head, so many thoughts and ideas…and not just the terrifying and fantastic images of people and places that should never have existed, but also ordinary mundane thoughts: phone numbers and recipes, names and addresses of people she’d never heard of, pictures from old TV shows, posters from movies. She even knew the name of every single Elvis Presley song.

But all of these were the Witch’s memories. And right now, she had to struggle to remember her own cell phone number. What would happen if the Witch’s memories grew so strong that they overwhelmed her own? She tried to focus on the faces of her parents, Richard and Sara. Hundreds of faces flickered past, images of figures carved in stone, the heads of giant statues, paintings daubed onto the sides of buildings, tiny shapes etched in shards of pottery. Sophie started to get frantic. Why couldn’t she remember her parents’ faces? Closing her eyes, she concentrated hard on the last time she had seen her mother and father. It would have been about three weeks ago, just before they had left for the dig in Utah. More faces tumbled behind Sophie’s closed eyes: images on scraps of parchment, fragments of manuscripts or cracked oil paintings; faces in faded sepia photographs, in blurred newspapers…

“Sophie?”

And then, in a flash of color, the faces of her parents popped into her head, and Sophie felt the Witch’s memories fade away and her own come back to the surface. She suddenly knew her own phone number.

“Sis?”

She opened her eyes and blinked at her brother. He was standing directly in front of her, his face close to hers, his eyes pinched with concern.

“I’m OK,” she whispered. “I was just trying to remember something.”

“What?”

She attempted a smile. “My phone number.”

“Your phone number? Why?” He stopped, and then added, “No one ever remembers their own phone number. When was the last time you called yourself?”

Hands wrapped around steaming mugs of bittersweet hot chocolate, Sophie and Josh sat opposite one another in an otherwise empty all-night cafe close to the Gare du Nord Metro station. There was only one staff member behind the counter, a surly shaven-headed assistant wearing an upside-down name tag that said ROUX.

“I need a shower,” Sophie said grimly. “I need to wash my hair and brush my teeth, and I need to change my clothes. It feels like days since my last shower.”

“I think it is days. You look terrible,” Josh agreed. He reached over and pulled loose a strand of blond hair that had stuck to his sister’s cheek.

“I feel terrible,” Sophie whispered. “Remember that time last summer when we were in Long Beach and I had all that ice cream, then ate the chili dog and the curly fries and had the extra-large root beer?”

Josh grinned. “And you finished off my buffalo wings. And my ice cream!”

Sophie smiled at the memory, but her grin quickly faded. Although the temperature that day had risen into the hundreds, she’d started shivering, icy beads of sweat running down her back as a ball of iron settled into the pit of her stomach. Luckily, she hadn’t fastened her seat belt before she’d thrown up, but the results had still been spectacularly messy, and the car had been unusable for at least a week afterward. “That’s how I feel right now: cold, shivery, aching all over.”

“Well, try not to throw up in here,” Josh murmured. “I don’t think Roux, our cheerful server, would be too impressed.”

Roux had worked in the cafe for four years, and in that time he had been robbed twice and threatened often but never hurt. The all-night cafe saw all sorts of strange and often dangerous characters come through the doors, and Roux decided that this unusual quartet certainly qualified as the first sort and maybe even both. The two teenagers were dirty and smelly and looked terrified and exhausted. The older man-maybe the kids’ grandfather, Roux thought-was not in much better shape. Only the fourth member of the group-the red-haired, green-eyed young woman wearing a black top, black trousers and chunky combat boots-looked bright and alert. He wondered what her relationship was to the others; she certainly didn’t look as if she was related to any of them, but the boy and girl were alike enough to be twins.

Roux had hesitated when the old man had produced a credit card to pay for the two hot chocolates. People usually paid cash for something so small, and he wondered if the card was stolen. “I’ve run out of euros,” the old man said with a smile. “Could you ring up twenty and give me some cash?” Roux thought he spoke French with a peculiar, old-fashioned, almost formal lilt.

“It is strictly against our policy…,” Roux began, but another look at the hard-eyed red-haired girl made him reconsider. He attempted a smile at her as he said, “Sure, I think I can do that.” If the card had been reported stolen, it wouldn’t scan in the machine anyway.

“I would be very grateful.” The man smiled. “And could you give me some coins?”

Roux rang up eight euro for the two hot chocolates and swiped the Visa for twenty euro. He was surprised that it was an American credit card; he would have sworn by his accent that the man was French. There was a delay and then the card went through, and he deducted the cost of the two drinks and handed over the change in one- and two-euro coins. Roux went back to the math textbook hidden under the counter. He’d been wrong about the group. It wasn’t the first time and wouldn’t be the last. They were probably visitors just off one of the early-morning trains; they were nothing out of the ordinary.

Well, maybe not all of them. Keeping his head down, he raised his eyes to look at the red-haired young woman. She was standing with her back to him, talking to the old man. And then she slowly and deliberately turned to look at him. She smiled, the merest curl of her lips, and Roux suddenly found his textbook very interesting.

Flamel stood at the cafe counter and looked at Scathach. “I want you to stay here,” he said softly, slipping from French into Latin. His eyes flickered to where the twins sat drinking their hot chocolate. “Watch over them. I’ll go find a phone.”

The Shadow nodded. “Be careful. If anything happens and we get separated, let’s meet back in Montmartre. Machiavelli will never expect us to double back. We’ll wait outside one of the restaurants-maybe La Maison Rose-for five minutes at the top of every hour.”

“Agreed. But if I’m not back by noon,” he continued very softly, “I want you to take the twins and leave.”

“I will not abandon you,” Scathach said evenly.

“If I don’t come back, it’s because Machiavelli has me,” the Alchemyst said seriously. “Scathach, even you would not be able to rescue me from his army.”

“I’ve faced down armies before.”

Flamel reached out and laid his hand on the Warrior’s shoulder. “The twins are our priority now. They must be protected at all cost. Continue Sophie’s training; find someone to Awaken Josh and train him. And rescue my dear Perenelle, if you can. And if I die, tell her my ghost will find her,” he added. Then, before she could say anything else, he turned and strode out into the chilly predawn air.