Michael Scott - The Magician

T he ghosts of Alcatraz awoke Perenelle Flamel.

The woman lay unmoving on the narrow cot in the cramped icy cell deep beneath the abandoned prison and listened to them whisper and murmur in the shadows around her. There were a dozen languages she could understand, many more she could identify and a few that were completely incomprehensible.

Keeping her eyes closed, Perenelle concentrated on the languages, trying to make out the individual voices, wondering if there were any she recognized. And then a sudden thought struck her: how was she able to hear the ghosts?

Sitting outside the cell was a sphinx, a monster with a lion’s body, an eagle’s wings and the head of a beautiful woman. One of its special powers was the ability to absorb the magical energies of another living being. It had drained Perenelle’s, rendering her helpless, trapping her in this terrible prison cell.

A tiny smile curled Perenelle’s lips as she realized something: she was the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter; she had been born with the ability to hear and see ghosts. She had been doing so long before she had learned how to train and concentrate her aura. Her gift had nothing to do with magic, and therefore the sphinx had no power over it. Throughout the centuries of her long life, she had used her skill with magic to protect herself from ghosts, to coat and shield her aura with colors that rendered her invisible to the apparitions. But as the sphinx had absorbed her energies, those shields had been wiped away, revealing her to the spirit realm.

And now they were coming.

Perenelle Flamel had seen her first ghost-that of her beloved grandmother Mamom-when she was seven years old. Perenelle knew that there was nothing to fear from ghosts; they could be annoying, certainly, were often irritating and sometimes downright rude, but they possessed no physical presence. There were even a few she had learned to call friends. Over the centuries certain spirits had returned to her again and again, drawn to her because they knew she could hear, see or help them-and often, Perenelle thought, simply because they were lonely. Mamom turned up every decade or so just to check up on her.

But even though they had no presence in the real world, ghosts were not powerless.

Opening her eyes, Perenelle concentrated on the chipped stone wall directly in front of her face. The wall ran with green-tinged water that smelled of rust and salt, the two elements that had ultimately destroyed Alcatraz the prison. Dee had made a mistake, as she had known he would. If Dr. John Dee had one great failing, it was arrogance. He obviously thought that if she was imprisoned deep below Alcatraz and guarded by a sphinx, then she was powerless. He could not be more wrong.

Alcatraz was a place of ghosts.

And Perenelle Flamel would show him just how powerful she was.

Closing her eyes, relaxing, Perenelle listened to the ghosts of Alcatraz, and then slowly, her voice barely above a breathed whisper, she began to talk to them, to call them and to gather them all to her.

“I ’m OK,” Sophie murmured sleepily, “really I am.”

“You don’t look OK,” Josh muttered through gritted teeth. For the second time in as many days, Josh was carrying his sister in his arms, one arm under her back, the other beneath her legs. He moved cautiously down the steps of Sacre-Coeur, terrified he was going to drop his twin. “Flamel told us every time you use magic it will steal a little of your energy,” he added. “You look exhausted.”

“I’m fine…,” she muttered. “Let me down.” But then her eyes flickered closed once more.

The small group moved silently through the thick vanilla-scented fog, Scathach in the lead with Flamel taking up the rear. All around them they could hear the tramp of boots, the jingle of weapons, and the muted commands of the French police and special forces as they climbed the steps. Some of them came dangerously close, and twice Josh was forced to crouch low as a uniformed figure darted by.

Scathach suddenly loomed up out of the thick fog, a short, stubby finger pressed to her lips. Water droplets frosted her spiky red hair, and her white skin looked even paler than usual. She pointed to the right with her ornately carved nunchaku. The fog swirled and suddenly a gendarme was standing almost directly in front of them, close enough to touch, his dark uniform sparkling with beads of liquid. Behind him, Josh was able to make out a group of French police clustered around what looked like an old-fashioned merry-go-round. They were all staring upward, and Josh heard the word brouillard murmured again and again. He knew that they were talking about the strange fog that had suddenly descended over the church. The gendarme was holding his service pistol in his hand, the barrel pointed skyward, but his finger was lightly curled over the trigger and Josh was once again reminded just how much danger they were in-not only from Flamel’s nonhuman and inhuman enemies, but from his all-too-human foes as well.

They walked perhaps another dozen steps…and suddenly the fog stopped. One moment Josh was carrying his sister through the thick mist; then, as if he had stepped through a curtain, he was standing in front of a tiny art gallery, a cafe and a souvenir shop. He turned to look behind him and found that he was facing a solid wall of mist. The police were little more than indistinct shapes in the yellow-white fog.

Scathach and Flamel stepped out of the murk. “Allow me,” Scathach said, catching hold of Sophie and lifting her from Josh’s arms. He tried to protest-Sophie was his twin, his responsibility-but he was exhausted. The backs of his calves were cramping, and the muscles in his arms burned with the effort of carrying his sister down what had felt like countless steps.

Josh looked into Scathach’s bright green eyes. “She’s going to be OK?”

The ancient Celtic warrior opened her mouth to reply, but Nicholas Flamel shook his head, silencing her. He rested his left hand on Josh’s shoulder, but the boy shrugged it off. If Flamel noticed the gesture, he ignored it. “She just needs to sleep. The effort of raising the fog so soon after melting the tulpa has completely drained the last of her physical strength,” Flamel said.

“You asked her to create fog,” Josh said quickly, accusingly.

Nicholas spread his arms. “What else could I do?”

“I…I don’t know,” Josh admitted. “There must have been something you could do. I’ve seen you throw spears of green energy.”

“The fog allowed us to escape without harming anyone,” Flamel said.

“Except Sophie,” Josh replied bitterly.

Flamel looked at him for a long moment and then turned away. “Let’s go.” He nodded toward a side street that sloped sharply downward, and they hurried into the night, Scathach effortlessly carrying Sophie, Josh struggling to keep up. He was not going to leave his sister’s side.

“Where to?” Scathach asked.

“We need to get off the streets,” Flamel murmured. “It looks like every gendarme in the city has descended on Sacre-Coeur. I also saw special forces and plainclothes police that I guess are secret service. Once they realize we’re not in the church, they’ll probably cordon off the area and do a street-by-street search.”

Scathach smiled quickly, her long incisors briefly visible against her lips. “And let’s face it: we’re not exactly inconspicuous.”

“We need to find a place to-” Nicholas Flamel began.

The police officer who came racing around the corner looked to be no more than nineteen-tall, thin and gangly-with bright red cheeks and the fuzzy beginnings of a mustache on his upper lip. One hand was on his holster; the other was holding on to his hat. He skidded to a halt directly in front of them and managed a quick yelp of surprise as he fumbled for the gun in its holster. “Hey! Arretez!”