A uniformed guard came to the door and looked at the odd trio standing outside. A slender, impeccably dressed Japanese man in a black suit, a red-haired woman, also in a tailored black suit, and a wild-haired teenager. Behind them, an antique Volkswagen van was haphazardly parked at the curb.
The blond teenager had her finger on the intercom, and the incessant chiming was starting to get on the guard’s nerves. He jabbed a stubby finger at the sign pasted to the door.
NO ADMITTANCE WITHOUT APPOINTMENT.
The girl took her finger off the bell and rummaged through her pockets. She produced a tube of lip balm and wrote in greasy letters across the glass:
YCNEGREME
The guard shook his head, turned his back and stepped over to his desk in the foyer of Enoch Enterprises. Tourists. Every day, people knocked on the door, looking for directions, wondering if they could get onto the roof to take photos. No one got in. Ever.
Before he was able to sit, however, a blast of heat seared all the small hairs on the back of his neck, and he caught the fleeting impression of the heavy door sailing across the lobby and smashing into the wall before something struck him at the base of the skull and the world turned black.
“You could have just opened the door,” Aoife suggested, looking at the smoldering ruin of metal and glass. “Or even melted the lock.”
Sophie shook her hands to cool them. “Sometimes I don’t know my own strength.”
Niten shrugged out of his black suit coat and strapped two swords, a katana and the shorter wakizashi, around his waist, so that they hung over his left hip.
Aoife settled two matched short swords over her shoulders on her back, and a pair of nunchaku dangled from each hand. She wore her broad-bladed knife strapped to her leg.
And Sophie uncoiled the silver and black leather whip Perenelle had given her before they had left Prometheus’s Shadowrealm. “This is woven from snakes pulled from the Medusa’s hair,” the Sorceress had explained. “It will slice through stone and cut metal. Be careful with it.”
Two guards raced into the foyer, drawn by the noise, and stopped abruptly at the sight of the ruined door and their colleague lying in a crumpled heap on the floor. One went for his weapon, the other for his radio… and a heartbeat later they were both unconscious on the floor as well. Aoife rubbed her hands together as she slipped her nunchaku back into her belt. “This could be fun.”
There was an explosion of sparks as Niten drove his short sword through the computer server and the cables in the small office behind the front desk. “Phones and Internet are down,” he announced.
Aoife laughed delightedly. “Good. We’ve got a few minutes before someone notices the door is missing and calls the police. Let’s find your brother.”
“If he’s still here,” Niten said quietly.
“Oh, he’s here,” Sophie said. She pressed her hand to her stomach. “I can feel him. He’s…” She jabbed her finger upward. “Upstairs.”
The smoke rising off the Swords of Power had turned foul, mixing into a dark miasma that hung in the air.
“Coatlicue is coming,” Dee said quietly, standing behind Josh. “Stay focused. Stay strong. You have been Awakened. You have learned the Magic of Water and the Magic of Fire. But these are not entirely practical magics. Soon you will know the rarest magic of all, the dark art of necromancy-and then there is nothing you cannot achieve. You will learn wonders. I did.”
The column of filthy smoke almost reached the ceiling. It was the color of mud streaked with rusty red. A rancid smell seeped into the room: the distinctive stink of serpents.
“Coatlicue…”
Josh tried to concentrate, but the serpent odor sickened him and the images of the snake-headed creature had returned. He wasn’t sure where the images were coming from-from the Flamels, maybe? Were they trying to distract him? They knew he was terrified of snakes. Dee had told him that Nicholas and Perenelle had caused his migraine and had probably been trying to control his thoughts. The doctor had protected him with what he called a Warding spell, and the moment he’d activated it, all traces of the terrible headache and the stomach-churning nausea had vanished, so he’d obviously been right about the Flamels attacking Josh. But what Josh didn’t understand was why? The only reason he could come up with was that they didn’t want him to become a necromancer, and he was beginning to suspect that it was because they were afraid of what he might discover-about them, about the Elders.
Light.
And heat.
And flesh.
The mouthwatering scent of life.
The tingle of a powerful aura.
Calling to her. Calling, calling, calling.
Running and falling, crawling and walking, on limbs that had not been used in millennia, Coatlicue moved toward the light, toward freedom.
“Coatlicue…,” Josh rasped, his voice hoarse.
The smoke from the blades on the floor before him had solidified into a thick brown sheet. He thought he saw something move behind it.
He was still trying to work out what he’d do with the Magic of Necromancy… but wait, hadn’t Dee called it an art rather than a magic? What was the difference? And were there rules to necromancy? It had to be fueled by his aura, which meant that it probably followed some of the basic rules of the magics he’d already learned. So he’d have to choose very carefully before he decided to bring someone back from the dead. And how long could he keep them alive? Was there a time limit…?
“Coatlicue…”
Josh squinted. There was a definite shape moving behind the gauzy smoke.
He’d bring back Leonardo da Vinci, who was supposed to be buried in Amboise, France. And he’d love to talk to Mark Twain and Einstein and…
The brown smoke rippled; then two hands appeared and pulled it apart like a curtain.
Coatlicue emerged.
And she was beautiful.
“Where is he?” Sophie screamed, frustration and panic churning inside her.
They had fought their way up the stairs. There were no staff in the offices, only a scattering of uniformed guards, and they fell quickly to Aoife’s nunchaku and Niten’s lightning-fast fists and feet.
“We’re on the top floor,” Niten announced as he drove a foot through the plate-glass door. The lock snapped and he stepped into what was obviously Dee’s private office. He moved swiftly around the room, checking the small side corridors. “Nothing. A bathroom, a kitchen, a small private elevator. No sign that Josh has even been here.”
Aoife spun around to look at Sophie. “You said he was here. You felt him.”
The girl nodded. Her head was starting to thump with a sick headache.
“You said he was upstairs. Think. Where is he now?”
Sophie breathed deeply and concentrated on her brother. Then she frowned in confusion. “Downstairs.”
With Niten in the lead, they raced down the stairs, leaping over the bodies of the unconscious guards. “Twelfth floor,” the Japanese immortal called. Standing in the middle of the stairwell, Aoife turned to Sophie. “Where is he now?”
Sophie visualized her brother’s face… and then blinked. She raised a tentative finger and pointed to the ceiling. “But that can’t be right. It feels like he’s upstairs now.”
Niten grinned and looked at Aoife. “Secret floor,” they said in unison.