Michael Scott - The Magician

Scatty nodded. She knew that, of course. “What, then-?”

“That was a tulpa.”

Scatty’s bright green eyes widened in surprise. “A tulpa! Is Machiavelli that powerful, then?”

“Obviously.”

“What’s a tulpa?” Josh asked Flamel, but it was his sister who answered, and Josh was once again reminded of the huge gulf that had opened up between them the moment her powers had been Awakened.

“A creature created and animated entirely by the power of the imagination,” Sophie explained casually.

“Precisely,” Nicholas Flamel said, breathing deeply. “Machiavelli knew there would be wax in the church. So he brought it to life.”

“But surely he knew it would not be able to stop us?” Scatty asked.

Nicholas walked out from under the central arch that framed the front of the basilica and stood at the edge of the first of the two hundred and twenty-one steps that led down to the street far below. “Oh, he knew it wouldn’t stop us,” he said patiently. “He just wanted to slow us down, to keep us here until he arrived.” He pointed.

Far below, the narrow streets of Montmartre had come alive with the sounds and lights of a fleet of French police cars. Dozens of uniformed gendarmes had gathered at the bottom of the steps, with more arriving from the narrow side streets to form a cordon around the building. Surprisingly, none of them had started climbing.

Flamel, Scatty and the twins ignored the police. They were watching the tall thin white-haired man in the elegant tuxedo slowly make his way up the steps toward them. He stopped when he saw them emerge from the basilica, leaned on a low metal railing and raised his right hand in a lazy salute.

“Let me guess,” Josh said, “that must be Niccolo Machiavelli.”

“The most dangerous immortal in Europe,” the Alchemyst said grimly. “Trust me: this man makes Dee look like an amateur.”

“W elcome back to Paris, Alchemyst.”

Sophie and Josh jumped. Machiavelli was still far away to be heard so clearly. Strangely, his voice seemed to be coming from somewhere behind them, and both turned to look, but there were only two stained green metal statues over the three arches in front of the church: a woman on a horse to their right, her raised arm holding a sword, and a man holding a scepter on their left.

“I’ve been waiting for you.” The voice seemed to be coming from the statue of the man.

“It’s a cheap trick,” Scatty said dismissively, picking strips of wax off the front of her steel-toed combat boots. “It’s nothing more than ventriloquism.”

Sophie smiled sheepishly. “I thought the statue was talking,” she admitted, embarrassed.

Josh started to laugh at his sister and then immediately reconsidered. “I guess I wouldn’t be surprised if it did.”

“The good Dr. Dee sends his regards.” Machiavelli’s voice continued to hang in the air around them.

“So he survived Ojai, then,” Nicholas said conversationally, not raising his voice. Standing tall and straight, he casually put both hands behind his back and glanced sidelong at Scatty. Then the fingers of his right hand started dancing against the palm and fingers of his left.

Scatty drew the twins away from Nicholas and slowly retreated under the shadowed arches. Standing between them, she put her arms around their shoulders-both their auras crackling silver and gold with her touch-and drew their heads together.

“Machiavelli. The master of lies.” Scatty’s whisper was the merest breath against their ears. “He must not hear us.”

“I cannot say I am pleased to see you, Signor Machiavelli. Or is it Monsieur Machiavelli in this age?” the Alchemyst said quietly, leaning against the balustrade, looking down the white steps to where Machiavelli was still small in the distance.

“This century, I am French,” Machiavelli replied, his voice clearly audible. “I love Paris. It is my favorite city in Europe-after Florence, of course.”

While Nicholas talked to Machiavelli, he kept his hands behind his back, out of sight of the other immortal. His fingers were moving in an intricate series of taps and beats.

“Is he working a spell?” Sophie breathed, watching his hands.

“No, he’s talking to me,” Scatty said.

“How?” Josh whispered. “Magic? Telepathy?”

“ASL: American Sign Language.”

The twins glanced quickly at one another. “American Sign Language?” Josh asked. “He knows sign language? How?”

“You seem to keep forgetting that he’s lived a long time,” Scathach said with a grin that showed her vampire teeth. “And he did help create French sign language in the eighteenth century,” she added casually.

“What’s he saying?” Sophie asked impatiently. Nowhere in the witch’s memory could she find the knowledge necessary to translate the older man’s gestures.

Scathach frowned, her lips moving as she spelled out a word. “Sophie… brouillard… fog,” she translated. She shook her head. “Sophie, he’s asking you for fog. That doesn’t make sense.”

“It does to me,” Sophie said as a dozen images of fog, clouds and smoke flashed through her brain.

Niccolo Machiavelli paused on the steps and drew in a deep breath. “My people have the entire area surrounded,” he said, moving slowly toward the Alchemyst. He was slightly out of breath and his heart was hammering; he really needed to get back to the gym.

Creating the wax tulpa had exhausted him. He had never made one so big before, and never from the back of a car roaring through Montmartre’s narrow and winding streets. It wasn’t an elegant solution, but all he had needed to do was to keep Flamel and his companions trapped in the church until he got there, and he had succeeded. Now the church was surrounded, more gendarmes were en route and he had called in all available agents. As the head of the DGSE, his powers were almost limitless, and he’d issued an order to impose a press blackout. He prided himself on having complete control of his emotions, but he had to admit that right now he was feeling quite excited: soon he would have Nicholas Flamel, Scathach and the children in custody. He would have triumphed where Dee had failed.

Later he would have someone in his department leak a story to the press that thieves had been apprehended breaking into the national monument. Close to dawn-just in time for the early-morning news-a second report would be leaked, revealing how the desperate prisoners had overpowered their guards and escaped on their way to the police station. They would never be seen again.

“I have you now, Nicholas Flamel.”

Flamel came to stand at the edge of the steps and pushed his hands into the back pockets of his worn black jeans. “I believe the last time you made that statement, you were just about to break into my tomb.”

Machiavelli stopped in shock. “How do you know that?”

More than three hundred years ago, in the dead of night, Machiavelli had cracked open Nicholas and Perenelle’s tomb, looking for proof that the Alchemyst and his wife were indeed dead and trying to determine whether they had been buried with the Book of Abraham the Mage. The Italian hadn’t been entirely surprised to find that both coffins were filled with stones.

“Perry and I were right there behind you, standing in the shadows, close enough to touch you when you lifted the top off our tomb. I knew someone would come…I just never imagined it would be you. I’ll admit I was disappointed, Niccolo,” he added.

The white-haired man continued up the steps to Sacre-Coeur. “You always thought I was a better person than I was, Nicholas.”

“I believe there is good in everyone,” Flamel whispered, “even you.”