The Alchemyst

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

P erenelle Flamel'sat in a corner of the tiny windowless room and drew her

knees up to her chest, then wrapped her arms around her shins. She rested her

chin on her knees. She could hear voices angry, bitter voices.

Perry concentrated on the sound. She allowed her aura to expand a little as

she murmured a small spell she had learned from an Inuit shaman. The shaman

used it to listen to the fish moving under the arctic ice sheets and the

bears crunching across the distant ice fields. The simple spell worked by

shutting down all other senses and concentrating exclusively on hearing.

Perry watched as the color faded from her surroundings and darkness closed in

until she went blind. She gradually lost her sense of smell and felt the

pins-and-needles tingle in her fingertips and toes as her sense of touch

dulled, then faded completely. She knew that if there were anything in her

mouth, she would no longer be able to taste it. Only her hearing remained,

but it was enhanced and supersensitive. She heard beetles crawling in the

walls behind her, heard the scritch-scratch as a mouse gnawed through wood

somewhere above her, knew that a colony of termites was munching their way

through distant floorboards. She also heard two voices, high and thin, as if

they were being picked up on a badly tuned radio, and coming from a great

distance. Perry tilted her head, homing in on the sound. She heard wind

whistling, the flap of clothing, the high crying of birds. She could tell

that the voices she was hearing were coming from the roof of the building.

They strengthened, warbled and bubbled, and then abruptly clarified: they

belonged to Dee and the Morrigan, and Perry could clearly hear the fear in

the gray man s voice and the rage in the Crow Goddess s shrill cries.

She must pay for this! She must!

She is an Elder. Untouchable by the likes of you and me, Dee said, trying

unsuccessfully to calm the Morrigan.

No one is untouchable. She has interfered where she was not wanted. My

creatures had almost overwhelmed the car when her Ghost Wind swept them

away.

Flamel, the warrior Scathach and the two humani have now disappeared, Dee s

voice echoed, and Perry frowned, concentrating hard, trying to follow every

word. She was delighted to discover that Nicholas had sought the assistance

of Scathach: she was a formidable ally. It s as if they have vanished off

the face of the earth.

They have vanished off the face of the earth, the Morrigan snapped. He s

taken them into Hekate's Shadowrealm.

Unconsciously, Perry nodded. Of course! Where else would Nicholas have gone?

The entrance to Hekate's Shadowrealm in Mill Valley was closest to San

Francisco, and while the Elder was no friend to the Flamels, she was not

allied to Dee and his Dark Elders either.

We must follow them, the Morrigan stated flatly.

Impossible, Dee said reasonably. I have neither the skills nor the powers

to penetrate Hekate's realm. There was a pause, and then he added, Nor do

you. She is a First Generation Elder, you are of the Next Generation.

But she is not the only Elder on the West Coast. The Morrigan s voice was a

snap of triumph.

What are you suggesting? Fear had touched Dee s voice with a hint of his

original English accent.

I know where Bastet sleeps.

Perenelle Flamel'sat back against the cold stone and allowed her senses to

return. Feeling came first pins and needles racing through her fingers and

toes then her sense of smell, and finally sight. Blinking, waiting for the

tiny colored spots of light to fade, Perry tried to make sense of what she

had just discovered.

The implications were terrible. The Morrigan was prepared to awaken Bastet

and attack Hekate's Shadowrealm to retrieve the pages of the Codex.

Perry shuddered. She had never met Bastet she didn't know anyone who had in

the last three centuries and had lived to tell the tale but she knew her by

reputation. One of the most powerful members of the Elder Race, Bastet had

been worshipped in Egypt since the earliest ages of man. She had the body of

a beautiful young woman with the head of a cat, and Perry had absolutely no

idea of the magical forces she controlled.

Events were moving surprisingly swiftly. Something big was happening. Many

years before, when Nicholas and Perry had first discovered the secret of

immortality, they had realized that their extra-long lives allowed them to

view the world from a different perspective. They no longer planned events

days or weeks in advance; often they would make plans decades into the

future. Perry had come to understand that the Elders, whose lives were

infinitely longer, could make plans that encompassed centuries. And that

often meant that events moved with an extraordinarily deliberate slowness.

But now the Morrigan was abroad. The last time she had walked in the World of

Men, she had been spotted in the bitter, mud-filled trenches of the Somme;

before that she had prowled the bloodstained battlefields of the American

Civil War. The Crow Goddess was drawn to death; it hung around her like a

foul stench. She was also one of the Elders who believed that humans had been

placed on this earth to serve them.

Nicholas and the twins were safe in Hekate's Shadowrealm, but for how long?

Bastet was a First Generation Elder. Her powers had to be at least equal to

Hekate's and if the Cat Goddess and the Crow Goddess, combined with Dee s

alchemical magic, attacked Hekate, would her defenses hold? Perry didn't

know.

And what of Nicholas, Scathach and the twins?

Perenelle felt tears prickle the back of her eyes, but blinked them away.

Nicholas would be six hundred and seventy-seven years old on the

twenty-eighth of September, in three months time. He was well able to take

care of himself, though his mastery of practical spells was very limited, and

he could be remarkably forgetful at times. Only the summer before, he had

forgotten how to speak English and had reverted to his native archaic French.

It had taken her nearly a month to coach him back to speaking English. Before

that he had gone through a period when he had signed his checks in Greek and

Aramaic characters. Perenelle s lips curled in a smile. He spoke sixteen

languages well and another ten badly. He could read and write in twenty-two

of them though there wasn't much chance to practice his Linear B, cuneiform

or hieroglyphics these days.

She wondered what he was doing right now. He would be looking for her, of

course, but he would also need to protect the twins and the pages that Josh

had torn from the Codex. She needed to get a message to him, she had to let

him know that she was fine and to warn him about the danger they were in.

One of the earliest gifts the young woman known as Perenelle Delamere had

discovered when she was growing up was her ability to talk to the shades of

the dead. It wasn't until her seventh birthday that she realized that not

everyone could see the flickering black-and-white images she encountered

daily. On the eve of her seventh birthday, her beloved grandmother, Mamom,

died. Perenelle watched as the withered body was gently lifted from the bed

where she had spent the last ten years of her life and laid in the coffin.

The small girl had followed the funeral procession through the tiny town of

Quimper and out into the graveyard that overlooked the sea. She had watched

the little rough-hewn box as it was lowered into the earth, and then she had

returned to her home.

And Mamom was sitting up in the bed, eyes bright with their usual mischief.

The only difference was that Perenelle could no longer see her grandmother

clearly. There was no color to her everything was in black-and-white and her

image kept flickering in and out of focus.

In that instant Perenelle realized she could see ghosts. And when Mamom

turned in her direction and smiled, she knew that they could see her.

Sitting in the small windowless cell, Perenelle stretched her legs out in

front of her and pressed both hands to the cold concrete floor. Over the

years she had developed a series of defenses to protect herself from the

unwanted intrusions of the dead. If there was one thing she had learned early

on about the dead particularly the old dead it was that they were

extraordinarily rude, popping up at the most inopportune and inappropriate

moments. The dead particularly liked bathrooms it was a perfect location for

them: quiet and still, with lots of reflective surfaces. Perenelle recalled a

time she d been brushing her teeth when the ghost of an American president

had appeared in the mirror in front of her. She d almost swallowed the

toothbrush.

Perenelle had quickly come to understand that ghosts could not see certain

colors blues and greens and some tints of yellow and so she deliberately

encouraged those colors into her aura, carefully creating a shield that

rendered her invisible in the particular Shadowrealm where the shades of the

dead gathered.

Opening her eyes wide, Perenelle concentrated on her own aura. Her natural

aura was a pale ice white, which acted like a beacon for the dead, drawing

them to her. But over it, like layers of paint, she had created auras of

bright blue, emerald green, and primrose yellow. Now, one by one, Perenelle

shut off the colors yellow first, then green, then the final blue defense.

The ghosts came then, drawn to her ice white aura like moths to a flame. They

flickered into existence around her: men, women and children, wearing clothes

from across the decades. Perenelle moved her green eyes over the glistening

images, not entirely sure what she was looking for. She dismissed women and

girls in the flowing skirts of the eighteenth century and men in the boots

and gun belts of the nineteenth and concentrated on those ghosts wearing the

clothing of the twentieth century. She finally picked out an elderly man

wearing a modern-looking security guard s uniform. Gently easing the other

shades aside, she called the figure closer.

Perenelle understood that people particularly in modern, sophisticated

societies were frightened of ghosts. But she knew that there was no reason to

fear them: a ghost was nothing more than the remnants of a person s aura that

remained attached to a particular place.

Can I help you, ma am? The shade s voice was strong, with a touch of the

East Coast in it: Boston perhaps. Standing tall and straight, like an old

soldier, the ghost looked about sixty, though he could have been older.

Could you tell me where I am? Perenelle asked.

You re in the basement of the corporate headquarters of Enoch Enterprises,

just to the west of Telegraph Hill. We got Coit Tower almost directly

overhead, he added proudly.

You seem very sure.

Should be. I worked here for thirty years. wasn't always Enoch Enterprises,

of course. But places like this always need security. Never one break-in on

my watch, he informed her.

That'san achievement to be proud of, Mr .

It surely is. The ghost paused, his image flickering wildly. Miller. That

was my name. Jefferson Miller. Been a while since anyone asked for it. How

can I help you? he asked.

Well, you've been of great assistance already. At least I know I am still in

San Francisco.

The ghost continued to look at her. Did you expect not to be?

I think I may have slept earlier; I was afraid I might have been moved out

of the city, she explained.

Are you being held against your will, ma am?

I am.

Jefferson Miller drifted closer. Well, That'sjust not right. There was a

long pause while his image flickered. But I m afraid I Can't help you I m a

ghost, you see.

Perenelle nodded. I know that. She smiled. I just wasn't sure if you

knew. She knew that one of the reasons ghosts often remained attached to

certain places was because they simply did not know that they were dead.

The old security guard wheezed a laugh. I ve tried to leave but something

keeps pulling me back. Maybe I just spent too much time here when I was

alive.

Perenelle nodded again. I can help you leave, if you would like to. I can do

that for you.

Jefferson Miller nodded. I think I would like that very much. My wife,

Ethel, she passed on ten years before me. Sometimes I think I hear her voice

calling me across the Shadowrealms.

Perenelle nodded. She is trying to call you home. I can help you cut the

ties that bind you to this place.

Is there anything I can do for you in return?

Perenelle smiled. Well, there is one thing . Perhaps you could get a message

to my husband.