The Magician (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel #2) (4 page)

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 Niccol Machiavelli.”

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

CHAPTER FOUR

 

“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.

 

Niccol 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”, Niccol, 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.”

“Not me”, Alchemyst, “not anymore, and not for a very long time.” Machiavelli stopped and indicated the police and heavily armed black-clad French special forces gathering at the bottom of the steps. “Come now. Surrender. No harm will come to you.”

“I cannot tell you how many people have said that to me”, Nicholas said sadly. “And they were always lying”, he added.

Machiavelli’s voice hardened. “You can deal with me or with Dr. Dee. And you know the English Magician never had any patience.”

“There is one other option”, Flamel said with a shrug. His thin lips curled in a smile. “I could deal with neither of you.” He half turned, but when he looked back at Machiavelli, the expression on the Alchemyst’s face made the immortal Italian take a step back in shock. For an instant something ancient and implacable shone through Flamel’s pale eyes, which flickered a brilliant emerald green. Now it was Flamel’s voice that dropped to a whisper, still clearly audible to Machiavelli. “It would be better if you and I were never to meet again.”

Machiavelli attempted a laugh, but it came out sounding shaky. “That sounds like a threat and believe me, you are in no position to issue threats.”

“Not a threat”, Flamel said, and stepped back from the top steps. “A promise.”

The cool damp Parisian night air was abruptly touched with the rich odor of vanilla, and Niccol Machiavelli knew then that something was very wrong.

 

Standing straight, eyes closed, arms at her sides, palms facing outward, Sophie Newman took a deep breath, attempting to calm her thundering heart and allow her mind to wander. When the Witch of Endor had wrapped her like a mummy with bandages of solidified air, she had imparted thousands of years of knowledge into the girl in a matter of heartbeats. Sophie had imagined she’d felt her head swelling as her brain filled with the Witch’s memories. Since then, her skull had throbbed with a headache, the base of her neck felt stiff and tight and there was a dull ache behind her eyes. Two days ago she had been an ordinary American teenager, her head filled with normal everyday things: homework and school projects, the latest songs and videos, boys she liked, cell phone numbers and Web addresses, blogs and urls.

Now she knew things that no person should ever know.

Sophie Newman possessed the Witch of Endor’s memories; she knew all that the Witch had seen, everything she had done over millennia. It was all a jumble: a mixture of thoughts and wishes, observations, fears and desires, a confusing mess of bizarre sights, terrifying images and incomprehensible sounds. It was as if a thousand movies had been mixed up and edited together. And scattered throughout the tangle of memories were countless incidences when the Witch had actually used her special power, the Magic of Air. All Sophie had to do was find a time when the Witch had used fog.

But when and where and how to find it?

Ignoring Flamel’s voice calling down to Machiavelli, blanking out the sour smell of her brother’s fear and the jingle of Scathach’s swords, Sophie concentrated her thoughts on mist and fog.

San Francisco
was often wrapped in fog, and she’d seen the
Golden Gate
Bridge
rising out of a thick layer of cloud. And only last fall, when the family had been in St. Paul s Cathedral in Boston, they d stepped out onto

Tremont Street

to find that a damp fog had completely obscured the Common. Other memories began to intrude: mist in Glasgow; swirling damp fog in Vienna; thick foul-smelling yellow smog in London.

Sophie frowned;
she
had never been to Glasgow, Vienna or London. But the Witch had and these were the Witch of Endor’s memories.

Images, thoughts and memories like the strands of fog she was seeing in her head shifted and twisted. And then they suddenly cleared. Sophie clearly remembered standing alongside a figure dressed in the formal clothing of the nineteenth century. She could see him in her mind s eye, a man with a long nose and a high forehead topped with graying curly hair. He was sitting at a high desk, a thick sheaf of cream-colored paper before him, dipping a simple pen into a brimming inkwell. It took her a moment to realize that this was not one of her own memories, nor was it something she had seen on TV or in a movie. She was
remembering
something the Witch of Endor had done and seen. As she turned to look closely at the figure, the Witch’s memories flooded her: the man was a famous English writer and was just about to begin work on a new book. The writer glanced up and smiled at her; then his lips moved, but there was no sound. Leaning over his shoulder, she saw him write the words
Fog everywhere. Fog up the river. Fog down the river
in an elegant curling script. Outside the writer’s study window, fog, thick and opaque, rolled like smoke against the dirty glass, blotting out the background in an impenetrable blanket.

And beneath the portico of Sacre -Coeur in Paris, the air turned chill and moist, rich with the odor of vanilla ice cream. A trickle of white dribbled from each of Sophie’s outstretched fingers. The wispy streams curled down to puddle at her feet. Behind her closed eyes, she watched the writer dip his pen into the inkwell and continue.
Fog creeping fog lying fog drooping fog in the eyes and throats

Thick white fog spilled from Sophie’s fingers and spread across the stones, shifting like heavy smoke, flowing in twisting ropes and gossamer threads. Coiling and shifting, it flowed through Flamel’s legs and tumbled down the steps, growing, thickening, darkening.

Niccol watched the fog flow down the steps of Sacr -Coeur like dirty milk, watched it condense and grow as it tumbled, and knew, in that moment, that Flamel was going to elude him. By the time the fog reached him it was chest high, wet and vanilla scented. He breathed deeply, recognizing the odor of magic.

“Remarkable”, he said, but the fog flattened his voice, dulling his carefully cultivated French accent, revealing the harsher Italian beneath.