joined them. For that you need an Elder or one of the handful of Next
Generation who could do it. He smiled, showing his misshapen teeth. don't
worry, Nicholas will find someone to Awaken you.
Is there anyone here, in Paris, who could do it?
Saint-Germain took a moment to consider. Machiavelli would know someone, I m
sure. He knows everything. But I don't. He turned to Sophie, bowing
slightly. I understand you were lucky enough to be Awakened by the legendary
Hekate and then trained in the Magic of Air by my old teacher, the Witch of
Endor. He shook his head. How is the old witch? She never liked me, he
added.
Still doesn t, Sophie said quickly, then blushed. I m sorry. I don't know
why I said that.
The Count laughed. Oh, Sophie, you didn't say it well, not really. The Witch
did. It s going to take some time for you to sort through her memories. I got
a call from her this morning. She told me how she imbued you not only with
the Magic of Air, but with her entire body of knowledge. The mummy technique
hasn t been used in living memory; it is incredibly dangerous.
Sophie glanced quickly at her brother. He was watching Saint-Germain
carefully, listening to every word. She noted the tension in his neck and jaw
from how he was squeezing his mouth shut.
You should have rested for at least twenty-four hours to allow your
conscious and subconscious time to sort through the sudden influx of alien
memories, thoughts and ideas.
There wasn't time, Sophie muttered.
Well, there is now. Eat up; then I ll show you to your rooms. Sleep as long
as you like. You re completely safe. No one even knows you re here.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
pressed the phone to his ear and leaned back in the black leather chair,
swiveling to look through the tall window. In the distance, across the
slanted tile rooftops, he could make out the tip of the Eiffel Tower. The
fireworks had finally stopped, but a pall of rainbow-colored clouds still
hung in the air. don't worry, Doctor, we have the house under observation.
Saint-Germain, Scathach and the twins are inside. There are no other
occupants.
Machiavelli held the phone away from his ear as static rippled and crackled.
Dee s jet was just taking off from a small private airfield north of L.A. It
would stop in New York to refuel, then fly transatlantic to Shannon in
Ireland and refuel again before continuing on to Paris. The crackling faded
and Dee s voice, strong and clear, came through the phone.
And the Alchemyst?
Lost in Paris. My men had him on the ground at gunpoint, but he somehow
coated them in sugar and then unleashed every ant in the city onto them. They
panicked; he escaped.
Transmutation, Dee remarked. Water is composed of two parts hydrogen and
one part oxygen: sucrose has the same ratio. He changed the water into sugar;
it s a parlor trick I would have expected more of him.
Machiavelli ran his hand across his short snow white hair. I though it was
rather clever myself, he said mildly. He hospitalized six police officers.
He will return to the twins, Dee snapped. He needs them. He s been waiting
all his life to find them.
We ve all been waiting, Machiavelli reminded the Magician quietly. And
right now, we know where they are, which means we know where Flamel will go.
Do nothing until I get there, Dee commanded.
And have you any idea when that might Machiavelli began, but the line was
dead. He was unsure whether Dee had hung up or the call had dropped. Knowing
Dee, he guessed he d hung up; that was his usual style. The tall, elegant man
tapped the phone against his thin lips before replacing the handset. He had
no intention of following Dee s orders; he was going to capture Flamel and
the twins before Dee s plane touched down in Paris. He would do what Dee had
failed to do for centuries, and in return, the Elders would grant him
anything he desired.
Machiavelli s cell phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out and looked at
the screen. An unusually long string of numbers scrolled across it, looking
like no other number he d ever seen before. The head of the DGSE frowned.
Only the president of France, a few highly placed cabinet ministers and his
own personal staff had this number. He hit Answer but didn't speak.
had not been used in millennia.
Niccol Machiavelli sat bolt upright in his chair. Master? he said.
The line went dead.
Machiavelli carefully placed his cell phone on the bare desk and sat back.
Holding both hands up before his face, he was unsurprised to find that they
were shaking slightly. The last time he d spoken to the Elder he called
Master had been more than a century and a half ago. This was the Elder who
had granted him immortality at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Had
Dee somehow contacted him? Machiavelli shook his head. Highly unlikely;
probably Dee had contacted his own master and asked him to make the request.
But Machiavelli s master was one of the most powerful of the Dark Elders .
That brought him back to a question that had troubled him down through the
centuries: who was Dee s master?
Every human granted immortality by an Elder was bound to that Elder. An Elder
who bestowed immortality could just as easily revoke it. Machiavelli had even
seen it happen: he d watched a healthy-looking young man wither and age in a
matter of heartbeats, eventually collapsing into a pile of crackling bones
and dusty skin.
Machiavelli s dossier of immortal humans was cross-linked to the Elder or
Dark Elder they served. There were only a very few humani like Flamel,
Perenelle and Saint-Germain who owed no loyalty to an Elder, because they had
become immortal by their own efforts.
No one knew whom Dee served. But it was obviously someone more powerful than
Machiavelli s own Dark Elder master. And that made Dee all the more
