Michael Scott - The Magician

“No doubt you tried to stop them?” There was a hint of amusement in Machiavelli’s voice.

“Tried. And failed,” Dee admitted bitterly. “The girl has some knowledge but is without skill.”

“What do you want me to do?” Machiavelli asked carefully, although he already had a very good idea.

“Find Flamel and the twins,” Dee demanded. “Capture them. Kill Scathach if you can. I’m just leaving Ojai. But it’s going to take me fourteen or fifteen hours to get to Paris.”

“What happened to the leygate?” Machiavelli wondered aloud. If a leygate connected Ojai and Paris, then why didn’t Dee…?

“Destroyed by the Witch of Endor,” Dee raged, “and she nearly killed me, too. I was lucky to escape with a few cuts and scratches,” he added, and then ended the call without saying good-bye.

Niccolo Machiavelli closed his phone carefully and tapped it against his bottom lip. Somehow he doubted that Dee had been lucky-if the Witch of Endor had wanted him dead, then even the legendary Dr. Dee would not have escaped. Machiavelli turned and walked across the square to where his driver was patiently waiting with the car. If Flamel, Scathach and the American twins had come to Paris via a leygate, then there were only a few places in the city where they could have emerged. It should be relatively easy to find and capture them.

And if he could capture them tonight, then he would have plenty of time to work on them before Dee arrived.

Machiavelli smiled; he’d only need a few hours, and in that time they would tell him everything they knew. Half a millennium on this earth had taught him how to be very persuasive indeed.

J osh Newman reached out and pressed the palm of his right hand against the cold stone wall to steady himself.

What had just happened?

One moment he’d been standing in the Witch of Endor’s shop in Ojai, California. His sister, Sophie, Scathach and the man he now knew to be Nicholas Flamel had been in the mirror looking out at him. And the next thing he knew, Sophie had stepped out of the glass, taken his hand and pulled him through it. He’d squeezed his eyes shut and felt something icy touch his skin and raise the small hairs on the back of his neck. When he’d opened his eyes again, he was standing in what looked like a tiny storage room. Pots of paint, stacked ladders, broken pieces of pottery and bundled paint-spattered cloths were piled around a large, rather ordinary-looking grimy mirror fixed to the stone wall. A single low-wattage lightbulb shed a dim yellow glow over the room. “What happened?” he asked, his voice cracking. He swallowed hard and tried again. “What happened? Where are we?”

“We’re in Paris,” Nicholas Flamel said delightedly, rubbing his dusty hands against his black jeans. “The city of my birth.”

“Paris?” Josh whispered. He was going to say “Impossible,” but he was beginning to understand that that word had no meaning anymore. “How?” he asked aloud. “Sophie?” He looked to his twin sister, but she had pressed her ear against the room’s only door and was listening intently. She waved him away. He turned to Scathach, but the red-haired warrior just shook her head, both hands covering her mouth. She looked as if she was about to throw up. Josh finally turned to the legendary Alchemyst, Nicholas Flamel. “How did we get here?” he asked.

“This planet is crisscrossed with invisible lines of power sometimes called ley lines or cursus,” Flamel explained. He crossed his index fingers. “Where two or more lines intersect a gateway exists. Gates are incredibly rare now, but in ancient times the Elder Race used them to travel from one side of the world to the other in an instant-just as we did. The Witch opened the leygate in Ojai and we ended up here, in Paris.” He made it sound so matter-of-fact.

“Leygates: I hate them,” Scatty mumbled. In the gloomy light, her pale, freckled skin looked green. “You ever been seasick?” she asked.

Josh shook his head. “Never.”

Sophie looked up from her spot leaning against the door. “Liar! He gets seasick in a swimming pool.” She grinned, then pressed the side of her face back against the cool wood.

“Seasick,” Scatty mumbled. “That’s exactly what it feels like. Only worse.”

Sophie turned her head again to look at the Alchemyst. “Do you have any idea where we are in Paris?”

“Someplace old, I’m guessing,” Flamel said, joining her at the door. He put the side of his head back against the door and listened.

Sophie stepped back. “I’m not so sure,” she said hesitantly.

“Why not?” Josh asked. He glanced around the small untidy room. It certainly looked as though it was part of an old building.

Sophie shook her head. “I don’t know…it just doesn’t feel that old.” She reached out and touched the wall with the palm of her hand, then immediately jerked it back again.

“What’s wrong?” Josh whispered.

Sophie placed her hand against the wall again. “I can hear voices, songs and what sounds like organ music.”

Josh shrugged. “I can’t hear anything.” He stopped, abruptly conscious of the huge difference between himself and his twin. Sophie’s magical potential had been Awakened by Hekate, and she was now hypersensitive to sights and sounds, smells, touch and taste.

“I can.” Sophie lifted her hand from the stone wall and the sounds in her head faded.

“You’re hearing ghost sounds,” Flamel explained. “They’re just noises absorbed by the building, recorded into the very structure itself.”

“This is a church,” Sophie said decisively, then frowned. “It’s a new church…modern, late nineteenth century, early twentieth. But it’s built on a much, much older site.”

Flamel paused at the wooden door and looked over his shoulder. In the dim overhead light, his features were suddenly sharp and angular, disturbingly skull-like, his eyes completely in shadow. “There are many churches in Paris,” he said, “though there is only one, I believe, which matches that description.” He reached for the door handle.

“Hang on a second,” Josh said quickly. “Don’t you think there’ll be some sort of alarm?”

“Oh, I doubt it,” Nicholas said confidently. “Who would put an alarm on a storeroom in a church?” he asked, jerking the door open.

Immediately an alarm pealed through the air, the sound echoing and reechoing off the flagstones and walls. Red security lights strobed and flashed.

Scatty sighed and muttered something in an ancient Celtic language. “Didn’t you tell me once to wait before moving, to look before stepping and to observe everything?” she demanded.

Nicholas shook his head and sighed at the stupid mistake. “Getting old, I guess,” he said in the same language. But there was no time for apologies. “Let’s go!” he shouted over the shrieking alarm, and darted down the corridor. Sophie and Josh followed close behind, while Scatty took up the rear, moving slowly and grumbling with every step.

The door opened onto a short narrow stone corridor that led to another wooden door. Without pausing, Flamel pushed through the second door-and immediately a new alarm began to shriek. He turned left into a huge open space that smelled of old incense, floor polish and wax. Banks of lit candles shed a golden yellow light over walls and floor and, combined with the security lights, revealed a pair of enormous doors with the word EXIT above them. Flamel raced toward it, his footsteps echoing.

“Don’t touch-” Josh began, but Nicholas Flamel grasped the door handles and pulled hard.

A third alarm-much louder than the others-went off, and a red light above the door began to wink on and off.