Prometheus folded the cell phone and looked at Nicholas and Perenelle. The Elder had visibly aged in the past hour. His red hair was streaked with white, and he looked tired and ill.
“That was Niten,” he said very quietly, and the Flamels knew it was not good news. “Josh called Coatlicue. Sophie, Niten and Aoife arrived just as she stepped out from her Shadowrealm, but she was still trapped by some spell of Dee’s. Josh accidentally released her into this world.” His voice thickened, and the tears that rolled down his face were touched with white smoke. “Aoife sacrificed herself to drag Coatlicue back to her Shadowrealm prison. The warrior is gone. Gone forever.”
“And the twins?” Perenelle breathed.
“Sophie is safe with Niten. But when the Magician and Dare fled, Josh left with them. He went by choice. We’ve lost him to the Dark Elders.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE :ALCATRAZ
“I named this island Isla de los Alcatraces [Island of the Pelicans] because of their being so plentiful there.”-Spanish lieutenant Juan Manuel de Ayala, 1775
The locations used in The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel are all real. In the four books published so far, it is possible to trace the twins’ journey across San Francisco to Mill Valley; through the streets of Paris; from St. Pancras Station in Euston Road, England, to Stonehenge; and from Sausalito to Point Reyes and back into the heart of the city of San Francisco. There is one place that has played an important role in all four books, one location around which the rest of the story revolves: Alcatraz.
The Rock is central to this series.
Although it was officially “discovered” and named by Juan Manuel de Ayala in 1775, the indigenous Ohlone or Costanoan Indians had been gathering eggs and fishing off the island for generations. There is no evidence that there was ever a permanent settlement there, though nearby Angel Island was inhabited.
In 1853, Alcatraz became home to the first lighthouse on the West Coast. Because fog often rendered the light ineffective, the lighthouse originally had a fog bell, which would have been rung by hand. One hundred and ten years later, in 1963, the light was automated. The Fog Bell House survives to this day; the light is still operational.
Nowadays we think of Alcatraz as a former federal prison, but there are records dating to around 1861 showing that it held Civil War prisoners. The first official jailhouse was built there in 1867. It was originally a military prison, but in the aftermath of the great earthquake in 1906, it temporarily housed inmates from the mainland. Alcatraz remained a military prison until 1933, when it became a federal prison. Most of the legends surrounding the Rock and its notorious inhabitants-including Al Capone, who was incarcerated there from 1932 to 1939-date from this time. Alcatraz was a federal prison for only thirty years, before it finally closed in 1963.
Six years later, a party of eighty Native Americans representing more than twenty different tribes landed on the abandoned and decaying island and attempted to reclaim it for the native peoples. In a political statement, the group, who called themselves Indians of All Tribes, offered to purchase the island from the American government for “$24 in glass beads and red cloth.” The ironic offer was meant to convey the tribes’ conviction that the island had been stolen from them. They wanted to take back what they saw as Indian land and to establish a Center for Native American Studies and a Great Indian Training School. The Native American occupation of Alcatraz lasted nineteen months, and while it ultimately failed and the occupiers were removed, it successfully drew attention to the plight of Native Americans across the United States. Graffiti evidence of this period can be found around the buildings on the island today, most noticeably on the wall behind the large sign on the dock. Around the official United States Penitentiary sign, the words Indians Welcome and Indian Land have been daubed in red paint.
In 1972, Alcatraz became part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and every year more than a million people visit the island.
When I began to develop the idea that became the series The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel, I needed a location that fulfilled several requirements. It had to be close to a major city and yet relatively inaccessible. It had to be big enough to hold a vast army of creatures, and, of course, it had to be firmly rooted in history. Over a number of years, I looked at abandoned mining towns in California, particularly Bodie; ghost towns in the Old West; deserted homesteads along the Boston Post Road; and some of the forts on the Sante Fe Trail. Each one offered interesting possibilities, but none was quite right.
Then, finally, eight or nine years ago, I visited Alcatraz. I knew, almost from the moment I stepped off the boat, that it was perfect. And that single decision shaped everything else. Choosing the island meant that the series had to be set in San Francisco, and from that flowed all the other West Coast locations. Not only did Alcatraz become a key location, it became almost another character in the series. Here was a tiny island-only twenty-two acres-that was also rich in history. Juan Manuel de Ayala became its “voice.”
I have been back to Alcatraz countless times over the years, and every time, I discover something new. If you get a chance to visit the Rock, go at night: that’s when you’ll hear the whispers of the ghosts of Alcatraz…