Michael Scott - The Magician

“Told you not to touch,” Josh muttered.

“I can’t understand it-why is it not open?” Flamel asked, shouting to be heard above the din. “This church is always open.” He turned and looked around. “Where is everyone? What time is it?” he asked, as a thought struck him.

“How long does it take to travel from one place to another through the leygate?” Sophie asked.

“It’s instantaneous.”

“And you’re sure we’re in Paris, France?”

“Positive.”

Sophie looked at her watch and did a quick calculation. “Paris is nine hours ahead of Ojai?” she asked.

Flamel nodded, suddenly understanding.

“It’s about four o’clock in the morning; that’s why the church is closed,” Sophie said.

“The police will be on their way,” Scatty said glumly. She reached for her nunchaku. “I hate fighting when I’m not feeling well,” she muttered.

“What do we do now?” Josh demanded, panic rising in his voice.

“I could try and blast the doors apart with wind,” Sophie suggested hesitantly. She wasn’t sure she had the energy to raise the wind again so soon. She had used her new magical powers to battle the undead in Ojai, but the effort had completely exhausted her.

“I forbid it,” Flamel shouted, his face painted in shades of crimson and shadow. He turned and pointed across rows of wooden pews toward an ornate altar picked out in a tracery of white marble. Candlelight hinted at an intricate mosaic in glittering blues and golds in the dome over the altar. “This is a national monument; I’ll not let you destroy it.”

“Where are we?” the twins asked together, looking around the building. Now that their eyes had adjusted to the gloom, they realized that the building was huge. They could distinguish columns soaring high into the shadows overhead and were able to make out the shapes of small side altars, statues in nooks and countless banks of candles.

“This,” Flamel announced proudly, “is the church of Sacre-Coeur.”

Sitting in the back of his limousine, Niccolo Machiavelli tapped coordinates into his laptop and watched a high-resolution map of Paris wink into existence on the screen. Paris was an incredibly ancient city. The first settlement went back more than two thousand years, though there had been humans living on the island in the Seine for generations before that. And like many of the earth’s oldest cities, it had been sited where groups of ley lines met.

Machiavelli hit a keystroke, which laid down a complicated pattern of ley lines over the map of the city. He was looking for a line that connected with the United States. He finally managed to reduce the number of possibilities to six. With a perfectly manicured fingernail, he traced two lines that directly linked the West Coast of America to Paris. One finished at the great cathedral of Notre Dame, the other in the more modern but equally famous Sacre-Coeur basilica in Montmartre.

But which one?

Suddenly, the Parisian night was broken by a series of howling alarms. Machiavelli hit the control for the electric window and the darkened glass whispered down. Cool night air swirled into the car. In the distance, rising high above the rooftops on the opposite side of the Place du Tertre, was Sacre-Coeur. The imposing domed building was always lit up at night in stark white light. Tonight, however, red alarm lights pulsed around the building

That one. Machiavelli’s smile was terrifying. He called up a program on the laptop and waited while the hard drive spun.

Enter password.

His fingers flew over the keyboard as he typed: Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio. No one was going to break that password. It wasn’t one of his better-known books.

A rather ordinary-looking text document appeared, written in a combination of Latin, Greek and Italian. Once, magicians had had to keep their spells and incantations in handwritten books called grimoires, but Machiavelli had always used the latest technology. He preferred to keep his spells on his hard drive. Now he just needed a little something to keep Flamel and his friends busy while he gathered his forces.

Josh’s head snapped up. “I hear police sirens.”

“There are twelve police cars headed this way,” Sophie said, her head tilted to one side, eyes closed as she listened intently.

“Twelve? How can you tell?”

Sophie looked at her twin. “I can distinguish the different locations of the sirens.”

“You can tell them apart?” he asked. He found himself wondering, yet again, at the full extent of his sister’s senses.

“Each one,” she said.

“We must not be captured by the police,” Flamel interjected sharply. “We’ve neither passports nor alibis. We’ve got to get out of here!”

“How?” the twins asked simultaneously.

Flamel shook his head. “There has to be another entrance…,” he began, and then stopped, nostrils flaring.

Josh watched uneasily as both Sophie and Scatty suddenly reacted to something he could not smell. “What…what is it?” he demanded, and then he suddenly caught the faintest whiff of something musky and rank. It was the sort of smell he’d come to associate with a zoo.

“Trouble,” Scathach said grimly, putting away her nunchaku and drawing her swords. “Big trouble.”

“W hat?” Josh demanded, looking around. The smell was stronger now, stale and bitter, and almost familiar…

“Snake,” Sophie said, breathing deeply. “It’s a snake.”

Josh felt his stomach lurch. Snake. Why did it have to be snakes? He was terrified of snakes-though he’d never admit it to anyone, especially not his sister. “Snakes…,” he began, but his voice sounded high-pitched and strangled. He coughed and tried again. “Where?” he asked, looking around desperately, imagining them everywhere, sliding out from under the pews, curling down the pillars, dropping down from the light fixtures.

Sophie shook her head and frowned. “I don’t hear any… I’m just…smelling them.” Her nostrils flared as she drew a deep breath. “No, there’s just one…”

“Oh, you’re smelling a snake, all right…but one that walks on two legs,” Scatty snapped. “You’re smelling the rank odor of Niccolo Machiavelli.”

Flamel knelt on the floor in front of the massive main doors and ran his hands over the locks. Wisps of green smoke curled from his fingers. “Machiavelli!” he spat. “Dee didn’t waste any time contacting his allies, I see.”

“You can tell who it is from the smell?” Josh asked, still surprised and a little confused.

“Every person has a distinctive magical odor,” Scatty explained, standing with her back to the Alchemyst, protecting him. “You two smell of vanilla ice cream and oranges, Nicholas smells of mint…”

“And Dee smelled of rotten eggs…,” Sophie added.

“Sulfur,” Josh said.

“Which was once known as brimstone,” Scatty said. “Very appropriate for Dr. Dee.” Her head was moving from side to side as she paid particular attention to the deep shadows behind the statues. “Well, Machiavelli smells of snakes. Appropriate too.”

“Who is he?” Josh asked. He felt as if he should know the name, almost as if he’d heard it before. “A friends of Dee’s?”

“Machiavelli is an immortal allied to the Dark Elders,” Scatty explained, “and no friend to Dee, though they are on the same side. Machiavelli is older than the Magician, infinitely more dangerous and certainly more cunning. I should have killed him when I had the chance,” she said bitterly. “For the past five hundred years he has been at the heart of European politics, the puppet master working in the shadows. The last I heard, he had been appointed the head of the DGSE, the Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure.”