Michael Scott - The Magician

And then she suddenly realized what all the creatures in the cells had in common: they were monsters.

Where were the gentler spirits, the sprites and fey, the huldra and the rusalka, the elves and the inari? Dee had only gathered the hunters, the predators: the Magician was assembling an army of monsters.

A savage howling shriek ripped through the island, vibrating the very stones beneath her feet. “Sorceress!”

The sphinx had discovered Perenelle was missing.

“Where are you, Sorceress?” The fresh sea air was suddenly tainted with the stink of the sphinx.

Perenelle was turning back to close the door when she spotted movement in the shadows below. She’d looked into the sun too long, and the golden ball had left burning afterimages on her retina. She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment; then she opened them again to peer into the gloom.

The shadows were moving, flowing down the walls, gathering at the bottom of the steps.

Perenelle shook her head. These were no shadows. This was a mass of creatures, thousands, tens of thousands of them. They flowed up the stairs, slowing only as they approached the light.

Perenelle knew what they were then-spiders, deadly and poisonous-and knew why the webs were so different. She glimpsed a seething mass of wolf spiders and tarantulas, black widows and brown recluses, garden spiders and funnel webs. She knew they should not exist together…which probably meant that whatever had called them, and now controlled them, probably lurked below.

The Sorceress slammed the metal door shut and wedged a lump of masonry against the base. Then she turned and ran. But she had only taken a dozen steps before the door was ripped off its hinges by the weight of the massed spiders.

J osh wearily pushed open the door to the kitchen and stepped into the long low room. Sophie turned away from the sink and watched her brother slump into a chair, drop the stone sword onto the floor, lay his arms on the table and rest his head on them.

“How was it?” Sophie asked.

“I can barely move,” he mumbled. “My shoulders ache, my back aches, my arms ache, my head aches, I have blisters on my hands and I can barely close my fingers.” He showed her his raw palms. “I never realized just holding a sword would be so hard.”

“But did you learn anything?”

“I learned how to hold it.”

Sophie slid a plateful of toast across the table and Josh immediately straightened up, grabbed a piece and shoved it in his mouth. “At least you can still eat,” she said. Catching hold of his right hand, she turned it over to look at his palm. “Ouch!” she said in sympathy. The skin at the base of his thumb was red, bubbling up in a painful-looking water blister.

“Told you,” he said through a mouthful of toast. “I need a Band-Aid.”

“Let me try something.” Sophie quickly rubbed her hands together, then pressed the thumb of her left hand against her right wrist. Closing her eyes, she concentrated…and her little finger popped alight, burning with a cool blue flame.

Josh stopped chewing and stared.

Before he could object, Sophie ran her finger over his blistered flesh. He attempted to pull away, but she held his wrist with surprising strength. When she finally let it go, he jerked his hand back.

“What do you think you’re…,” he began, looking at his hand. Then he discovered that the blister had vanished, leaving only the faint hint of a circle on his skin.

“Francis told me that fire can heal.” Sophie held up her right hand. Wisps of gray smoke curled off her fingers; then they snapped alight. When she closed her hand into a fist, the fire extinguished.

“I thought”-Josh swallowed hard and tried again-“I didn’t know you’d even started to learn about fire.”

“Started and finished.”

“Finished?”

“All done.” She brushed her hands together; sparks flew.

Chewing his toast, Josh looked at his sister critically. When she’d first been Awakened and when she’d learned the Magic of Air, he’d seen the differences in her immediately, especially around her face and eyes. He’d even noted the new subtle shading of her eye color. He couldn’t see any changes this time. She looked the same as before…but she wasn’t. And the Fire magic distanced her even further from him. “You don’t seem any different,” he said.

“I don’t feel any different either. Except warmer,” she added. “I don’t feel cold.”

So this was his sister now, Josh thought. She looked just like any other teenager he knew. And yet…she was unlike anyone else on the planet: she could control two of the elemental magics.

Maybe that was the scariest part of all this: the immortal humans-people like Flamel and Perenelle, Joan, flamboyant Saint-Germain and even Dee: they all looked so ordinary. They were the type of people you would pass in the street and not give a second glance to. Scathach, with her red hair and grass green eyes, was always going to attract attention. But she wasn’t human.

“Did it…did it hurt?” he asked, curious.

“Not at all.” She smiled. “It was almost disappointing. Francis sort of washed my hands with fire…oh, and I got this,” she said, holding up her right arm and allowing her sleeve to fall back to reveal the design burned into her flesh.

Josh leaned forward to look closely at Sophie’s arm. “It’s a tattoo,” he said, envy clearly audible in his voice. The twins had always talked about getting tattoos together. “Mom is going to freak when she sees that.” Then he added, “Where did you get it? And why?”

“It’s not ink, it was burned on with fire,” Sophie explained, twisting her wrist to show off the design.

Josh suddenly caught her hand and pointed at the red dot surrounded by the gold circle on the underside of her wrist. “I’ve seen something like that before,” he said slowly, and frowned, trying to remember.

His twin nodded. “It took me a while, but then I remembered that Nicholas has something like it on his wrist,” Sophie said. “A circle with a cross through it.”

“That’s right.” Josh closed his eyes. He’d first noted the small tattoo on Flamel’s wrist when he’d started working for him in the bookshop, and though he’d wondered why it was in such an unusual place, he’d never asked about it. He opened his eyes again and looked at the tattoo, and he suddenly realized that Sophie was branded by magic, marked as someone who could control the elements. And he didn’t like it. “What do you need it for?”

“When I want to use fire, I press on the center of the circle and focus my aura. Saint-Germain called it a shortcut, a trigger for my power.”

“I wonder what Flamel needs a trigger for,” Josh wondered aloud.

The kettle pinged and Sophie turned back to the sink. She had asked herself the same question. “Maybe we can ask him when he wakes up.”

“Any more toast?” Josh asked. “I’m starving.”

“You’re always starving.”

“Yeah, well, the sword training made me hungry.”

Sophie stuck a fork through a slice of bread and held it out in front of her. “Watch this,” she said. She pressed on the underside of her wrist and her index finger burst into flame. Frowning hard, concentrating, she focused the wavering flame into a thin blue fire and then ran it over the bread, gently toasting it. “Do you want this done on both sides?”

Josh watched with a mixture of fascination and horror. He knew from science class that bread toasted around 310 degrees Fahrenheit.

M achiavelli was sitting in the back of his car alongside Dr. John Dee. Facing them were the three Disir. Dagon sat in the driver’s seat, eyes invisible behind his wraparound glasses. The car smelled faintly of his sour fishy odor.