Sophie screamed.
She leapt up from the kitchen table clutching her hand.
Perenelle and Aoife surged to their feet on either side of her. Only Flamel and Niten remained seated.
“What’s wrong?” Perenelle demanded.
Sophie held up her right hand. Her palm was bright red. “I thought
… It felt like something burned me,” she said, blinking away tears.
Perenelle crossed to the sink and ran cold water onto a tea towel, then pressed it against Sophie’s palm. “So, it’s begun,” she said, looking into the girl’s eyes. “Prometheus is teaching your brother the Magic of Fire.”
“But it didn’t hurt when Saint-Germain taught me.”
“There are as many ways to teach magic as there are teachers,” Perenelle said.
“I should go to him…,” Sophie began.
“You cannot. This is something he has to do alone.” Perenelle drew Sophie back to the table. “Sit; there is something we must do.”
Perenelle sat down across from Nicholas at the small kitchen table. Aoife had taken the third seat, facing Sophie. Niten sat on the couch where Sophie had slept earlier. He was slowly and methodically running a cloth along the length of his katana.
In the center of the table sat a carved wooden box.
Sophie looked closely at it. She was aware of a hint of exotic spices in the air, and she recognized one of the smells as jasmine, Aunt Agnes’s favorite perfume. And when she looked at the box, she realized she’d seen the triple spiral carved into the sides and the top of the box before. She had a sudden flash of Zephaniah seeing the same triple spiral carved into the glass walls of the Nameless City.
Sophie watched as Nicholas carefully lifted the lid and reached into the box to remove an object wrapped in a bag of finely woven grass and wicker.
One by one all of their auras started to spark and crackle, darting cinders of light around the room-green and white, silver and gray, and speckles of royal blue from Niten. Perenelle’s hair rose slightly off her shoulders, static snapping through it.
Perenelle picked up the box and the lid and set them on the ground, and the Alchemyst placed the grass-wrapped object in the center of the table. He began to tug at the twisted strands of grass, crackling threads of power crawling across his fingers.
“You might have seen this before,” Perenelle said to Aoife, and then she looked at Sophie. “Maybe you, too. Well, not you, but the Witch. In fact,” she added lightly, “you may know more about it than we do.”
Nicholas peeled apart the grass knots and the covering fell away to reveal an intricately beautiful crystal skull that was almost-but not quite-human. When the Alchemyst laid his hand on it, a slow wave of mint green light pulsed through the translucent crystal. Perenelle put her hand on top of his and the skull started to glow.
“Now you,” Nicholas said, looking at Aoife.
She looked at him with an expression of absolute disgust on her face. “I am not touching that abominable thing,” she said hoarsely.
“As you wish.” He looked at Sophie. “We need the strength of your aura…”
Numb with shock, Sophie felt as if all the air had been sucked from the room. She had seen this before…
Zephaniah was in the Nameless City again.
She was trying to protect her unconscious brother from the hordes of monsters that were gathering outside. Yet it was just as dangerous inside the library; all around her, the animated clay people moved and shuffled, threatening to crush her.
She was dragging Prometheus deep into the heart of the building. Night had fallen outside, and unseen creatures roamed the deserted streets, claws clicking, flesh slithering and rasping. She could make out their rancid odor: they smelled like crocodiles.
Zephaniah discovered a room deep in the heart of the library. The unusually tall doors were locked, but a section of the glass wall close to the floor was missing. In ages past, an earthquake must have rocked the city and a section of the floor given way; the wall’s glass blocks had shifted and pulled apart, creating a wide gap.
She crawled through the opening and pulled her brother into the safety of the room just as the monsters surged into the building above. She could hear them hissing and snapping, could hear the sound of clay shattering.
When she straightened, the room instantly lit up with a soft milky glow. The walls were empty-though they must have once held countless books-and all that remained in the center of the room was a crystal skull on a plinth of polished metal.
Zephaniah watched as light flickered through the skull and it started to pulse, and she discovered that it was beating in time with her heart.
And then it spoke to her…
And its revelations were terrifying.
Sophie knew what the skull was, knew its origins and its powers.
This was Archon technology, and they had created the skulls based on even older knowledge. The Witch had spent centuries searching for artifacts just like it, and when she’d found them, she had destroyed them utterly. She had erased countless millennia of knowledge, burning vast caches of metal books; melting into slag the ancient objects and artifacts that looked like swords, spears and knives; shattering crystal balls and grinding fabulous jewels to powder. Zephaniah had spent fortunes-several fortunes-in search of the Archon skulls. They were impossible to break, impervious to blade or tool, but she had finally discovered that she could destroy them by tossing them into the mouths of active volcanoes, where they were swallowed by the molten lava. Once she had rid the world of as many magical objects as she could find, the Witch had set about killing the storytellers who kept alive the memories of the Archons and the Earthlords who had come before them.
But all that had come later.
Much later.
After the Fall of Danu Talis.
After she had realized just how dangerous the skulls truly were.
“Sophie?” Perenelle leaned forward, eyes fixed on the girl’s face. “We need your aura. Put your hand on the skull.”
Sophie shook her head, a tiny, almost imperceptible movement.
The Sorceress blinked in surprise. “Do you-or rather, does the Witch-know anything about the crystal skull?”
Sophie looked into the Sorceress’s eyes and slowly and deliberately shook her head. Instinct-or was it the Witch’s knowledge?-made her lie: “No,” she said.
Even as she was speaking, there was a pop as the lightbulb shattered and the room plunged into darkness… except for the glowing skull.