SHe'll not succeed. She is Next Generation; she has not the power.
The fish leapt again, scattering the water droplets, and the ghost s voice
drifted and whispered away, dying with each bursting bubble. Mrs. Flamel
instructed me to tell you that the Crow Goddess intends to awaken Bastet.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
grass green eyes. Get some rest, she said, repeating Flamel's advice. Stay
in your rooms, she added. You may hear strange sounds from outside just
ignore them. You are completely safe so long as you remain within these
walls.
What sort of sounds? Josh asked. His imagination was working overtime, and
he was beginning to regret all those hours he d spent playing Doom and Quake,
scaring himself silly.
Scathach took a moment to consider. Screams, maybe. Animal howls. Oh, and
laughter. She smiled. And believe me, you don't want to find out what s
laughing, she said, and added, without a trace of irony, Sleep tight.
Josh Newman waited until Scathach had rounded the end of the corridor before
turning to his sister. we've got to get out of here.
Sophie chewed her bottom lip hard enough to leave the impression of her two
front teeth in the flesh, and then nodded. I ve been thinking the same
thing.
I think we re in some pretty serious danger, Josh said urgently.
Sophie nodded again. Events had moved so fast that afternoon that she d
barely had time to catch her breath. One moment she d been working in the
coffee shop, the next they were racing across San Francisco in the company of
a man who claimed to be a six-hundred-year-old alchemyst and a girl who
looked no older than herself and yet who Flamel'swore was a
two-and-a-half-thousand-year-old female warrior. And a vampire. I keep
looking for the hidden cameras, she muttered, glancing around the room.
Cameras? Josh looked startled. He immediately picked up on his twin s
thoughts. You mean like
color flood his face: what if he d managed to make an idiot of himself in
front of the entire nation? He d never be able to show his face at school
again. He peered up into the corners of the room, looking for the cameras.
They were usually behind mirrors. There were no mirrors in the room, but Josh
knew that didn't mean anything; the new generation of cameras were so small
that they were virtually invisible. A sudden thought struck him. What about
the birds?
Sophie nodded once more. I keep coming back to the birds. Everything else
could be special effects: the Torc Allta could be trained animals and men in
prosthetic makeup, what happened in Scathach s dojo could be some sort of
effect and the rats could have been trained. But not the birds: there were
too many of them, and they ripped the car to shreds. The birds were what had
finally convinced her that she and Josh were in very real danger because if
the birds were real, then everything else was real too.
Josh dug his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and stood by the open
window. The dense foliage came right up to the window ledge, and although
there was no glass in the opening, none of the myriad bugs that flitted
through the late-evening air entered the room. He recoiled as a bright blue
snake as thick as his wrist appeared out of the canopy of leaves and
flickered a tongue that was easily six inches long in his direction. The
snake vanished as a ball of tiny buzzing lights appeared, darting smoothly
through the trees. As they shot past the window, Josh could have sworn that
the entire swarm was composed of about a dozen tiny winged women, none of
them bigger than his forefinger. The lights came from within their bodies. He
licked dry lips. Okay, let s assume that this is real all of it the magic,
the ancient races then that brings me back to my original thought: we've got
to get out of here.
Sophie walked to the window, stood behind her brother and put her arm on his
shoulder. She was older than he was by twenty-eight seconds less than half a
minute, Josh always reminded her but with their mother and father away so
much, she had assumed the role of a much older sister. Although he was
already a good two inches taller than she was, he would always be her baby
brother. I agree, she said tiredly. We should try and make a run for it.
Something in his sister s voice made Josh turn to look at her. You don't
think we ll get away, he said evenly.
Let s try, she said, not answering his question. But I m sure they ll come
after us.
Flamel'said that Dee would be able to track us. I m sure Flamel or
Scathach can do that too.
Flamel has no reason to follow us, Sophie pointed out.
But Dee does, Josh said. What happens if we go home and Dee and his people
follow us there? he wondered aloud.
Sophie frowned. I ve been thinking about that. Flamel'said that we ll be
able to see the magical aura that surrounds people.
Josh nodded.
Hekate hasn t Awakened our magical powers. She frowned again, trying to
remember exactly what Nicholas Flamel had said. Flamel'said we smelled of
wild magic.
Josh sniffed deeply. But I Can't smell anything. No fruit or oranges or
vanilla ice cream. Maybe we don't smell until that happens.
If we managed to make it back home, we could head out to Utah to Mom and
Dad. We could stay with them for the rest of the summer until all this blows
over.
That'snot a bad idea, Josh said. No one would find us in the desert. And
right now, the hot, boring, sandy desert sounds really attractive.
Sophie turned to look at the door. There s only one problem. This place is a
maze. Do you think you can find the way back to the car?
I think so. He nodded. Actually, I m sure of it.
Let s go, then. She checked her pocket for her dead cell phone. Let s get
your stuff.
The twins paused by the door of Sophie s room and peered up and down the
corridor. It was deserted and in almost total darkness except where irregular
clumps of arm-length crystals emitted a milky white light.
