Michael Scott - The Magician

Sophie held out her hand and looked hard at it.

“Visualize the glove,” Joan suggested. “See it in your imagination.”

A tiny silver thimble appeared on Sophie’s little finger, then winked out of existence.

“Well, a little more practice, maybe,” Joan admitted. She glanced sidelong at Saint-Germain and then looked at the Alchemyst. “Let me work with Sophie for a couple of hours, teach her a little more about controlling and shaping her aura, before Francis starts to teach her the Magic of Fire.”

“This Fire magic. Is it dangerous?” Josh demanded, looking around the room. He still vividly remembered what had happened to his sister when Hekate had Awakened her-she could have died. And the more he’d learned about the Witch of Endor, he’d realized Sophie could have died learning Air magic as well. When no one answered him, he turned to look at Saint-Germain. “Is it dangerous?”

“Yes,” the musician said simply. “Very.”

Josh shook his head. “Then I don’t want-”

Sophie reached out to squeeze her brother’s arm. He looked down: the hand that gripped his arm was wrapped in a chain-mail glove. “Josh, I have to do this.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I do.”

Josh looked into his sister’s face. It was set in the stubborn mask he knew so well. Finally, he turned away, saying nothing. He didn’t want his sister learning any more magic-not only was it dangerous…but it would also distance her even further from him.

Joan turned to Flamel. “And now, Nicholas, you must rest.”

The Alchemyst nodded. “I will.”

“We were expecting you back a long time ago,” Scathach said. “I was thinking I’d have to go out in search of you.”

“The butterfly led me here hours ago,” Nicholas said tiredly, voice muffled with exhaustion. “Once I knew where you were, I wanted to wait for night to fall before approaching the house, just in case it is under observation.”

“Machiavelli doesn’t even know this house exists,” Saint-Germain said confidently.

“Perenelle taught me a simple cloaking spell a long time ago, but it only works when it’s raining-it uses water droplets to refract light around the user,” Flamel explained. “I decided to wait until nightfall to increase my chances of remaining unseen.”

“What did you do for the day?” Sophie asked.

“I wandered around the city, looking for some of my old haunts.”

“Surely most are gone?” Joan said.

“Most. Not all.” Flamel reached down and lifted an object wrapped in newspaper from the floor. It made a solid thump when he dropped it on the table. “The house in Montmorency is still there.”

“I should have guessed you’d visit Montmorency,” Scathach said with a sad smile. She looked at the twins and explained, “It is the house where Nicholas and Perenelle lived in the fifteenth century. We spent some happy times there.”

“Very happy,” Flamel agreed.

“And it’s still there?” Sophie asked, amazed.

“One of the oldest houses in Paris,” Flamel said proudly.

“What else did you do?” Saint-Germain asked.

Nicholas shrugged. “Visited the Musee de Cluny. It’s not every day you get to see your own gravestone. I guess it’s comforting to know that people still remember me-the real me.”

Joan smiled. “There is a street named after you, Nicholas: the Rue Flamel. And one named in honor of Perenelle, too. But somehow, I don’t think that’s the real reason you visited the museum, is it?” She said shrewdly, “You never struck me as a sentimental man.”

The Alchemyst smiled. “Well, not the only reason,” he admitted. He reached into his jacket pocket and plucked out a narrow cylindrical tube. Everyone around the table leaned forward. Even Scatty stepped in to look at it. Unscrewing both ends, Flamel removed and unrolled a length of rustling parchment. “Nearly six hundred years ago, I hid this within my tombstone, little thinking that I would ever need to use it.” He spread the thick yellow parchment on the table. Drawn in red ink faded to the color of rust was an oval with a circle inside it, surrounded by three lines forming a rough triangle.

Josh leaned over. “I’ve seen something like that before.” He frowned. “Isn’t there something like that on the dollar bill?”

“Ignore what it looks like,” Flamel said. “It’s drawn this way to disguise its true meaning.”

“What is it?” Josh asked.

“It’s a map,” Sophie said suddenly.

“Yes, it’s a map,” Nicholas agreed. “But how did you know? The Witch of Endor never saw this…”

“No, it has nothing to do with the Witch,” Sophie smiled. She leaned across the table, her head brushing her brother’s. She pointed to the top right-hand corner of the parchment, where a tiny, barely visible cross was etched in red ink. “This definitely looks like an N, ” she said, pointing to the top of the cross, “and this is an S. ”

“North and south.” Josh nodded in quick agreement. “Genius, Soph!” He looked at Nicholas. “It’s a map.”

The Alchemyst nodded. “Very good. It’s a map of all the ley lines in Europe. Towns and cities, even borders might change beyond all recognition, but the ley lines remain the same.” He held up the square. “This is our passport out of Europe and back to America.”

“Let’s hope we get a chance to use it,” Scatty muttered.

Josh touched the edge of the newspaper-wrapped bundle that sat in the center of the table. “And what’s this?”

Nicholas furled the parchment back into the tube and slipped it into his jacket pocket. Then he began to unwrap layers of newspaper from the object on the table. “Perenelle and I were in Spain close to the end of the fourteenth century when the one-handed man revealed the first secret of the Codex,” he said, speaking to no one in particular, his French accent now pronounced.

“The first secret?” Josh asked.

“You’ve seen the text-it changes…but it changes in a strict mathematical sequence. It’s not random. The changes are linked to the movements of the stars and planets, the phases of the moon.”

“Like a calendar?” Josh said.

Flamel nodded. “Just like a calendar. Once we had learned that code sequence, we knew we could finally return to Paris. It would take us a lifetime-several lifetimes-to translate the book, but at least we had learned where to start. So I changed some stones into diamonds, and some flat pieces of shale into gold, and we started out on the long journey back to Paris. By then, of course, we had come to the attention of the Dark Elders, and Bacon, Dee’s foul predecessor, was closing in. Rather than take a direct route into France, we kept to the back roads and avoided the usual passes across the mountains, which we knew would be watched. However, winter arrived early that year-I believe the Dark Elders had something to do with it-and we found ourselves cut off in Andorra. And that is where I found this…” He touched the object on the table.

Josh looked at his sister, eyebrows raised in a silent question. Andorra? he mouthed; she was much better at geography than he was.

“One of the smallest countries in the world,” she explained in a whisper, “in the Pyrenees between Spain and France.”

Flamel unwrapped more paper. “Before I ‘died,’ I hid this object deep within the stone over the lintel of the house on the Rue de Montmorency. I never thought I would need it again.”

“Within?” Josh asked, confused. “Did you say you hid it within?”

“Within. I changed the molecular structure of the granite, pushed this into the block of stone and then returned the lintel to its original solid state. Simple transmutation: like pushing a nut into a tub of ice cream.” The final sheet of newspaper tore as he pulled it away.