When Josh limped back to the house, Aunt Agnes was standing in the doorway, waiting for him. Her narrow face was fixed in a scowl and her thin lips had vanished completely. “You flung the phone on the floor and then stormed out of the house,” she snapped as he started up the steps. “I want an explanation, young man.”
“I don’t have one. Sophie was…” He hesitated. “Sophie was calling me.”
“You didn’t have to throw the phone on the floor.”
“I’m sorry.” Josh took a deep breath, determined not to say anymore. He was worried about his sister; the last thing he needed was his aunt nagging him.
“Phones cost money…”
Josh slipped past his aunt. “I’m going to finish talking to Dad.”
“He’s gone. It was a bad line-and a lot worse after you dropped the phone,” she added. “He said to tell you he’ll call back later. Your mother said neither of you is to leave the house until she talks to you. She is very unhappy with the pair of you,” Aunt Agnes added ominously.
“I’m sure she is,” Josh muttered. He crossed the hall, making his way toward the stairs.
“And where’s your sister?” Aunt Agnes demanded.
“I don’t know,” Josh said truthfully.
The old woman folded her arms and squinted up at him. “You mean she just left without even stopping in to say hello?”
“Something important must have come up,” Josh said, plastering a smile on his face, even though he felt sick inside.
“I don’t know what’s gotten into the pair of you,” Aunt Agnes was muttering. “Staying away from home for days… not even bothering to call… The young people of today have no respect…”
Josh started to climb the stairs.
“And where do you think you’re going?”
“To my room,” Josh said. He knew he needed to walk away from his aunt before he said something he was going to regret.
“Well, you can just stay there, young man. I’ve got a feeling you’re both going to be grounded for quite some time! You need to learn some respect for your elders.”
Josh tried to ignore his aunt as he continued up to his bedroom and closed the door behind him. He leaned back against the cool wood, then closed his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to calm the queasy feeling in his stomach.
Sophie was gone. She was in danger.
Aoife had his sister and he had no idea why-though he knew it couldn’t be good. Was Aoife working for the Dark Elders? Why had she taken Sophie-and then why had she run from him? Even though he was scared and exhausted, Josh couldn’t prevent a wry smile from forming on his lips. When he’d run out of the house, Aoife hadn’t appeared scared, she had looked arrogant, and when he’d asked her to return his sister, she had been quick to say no. But then something had frightened the vampire. Maybe it was the way his aura had started to form a golden armor around his body. Josh lifted his hands and looked at them. They were flesh and blood now, the skin on his palms scraped and bruised where he’d fallen, his fingernails chipped and dirty. But only a short while ago they had been encased in golden gloves. He remembered how the gold had flowed down his hands to cover the two halves of the broken walking stick, turning them to bars of metal. When he’d struck the car, they had ripped through the glass and steel with ease. But the moment he’d thrown the stick after the car, the instant it had left his hand, it had returned to wood. Josh suddenly remembered the story of the Greek king Midas. Everything he touched turned to gold. Maybe the ancient king had possessed a gold aura.
And then Josh’s smile faded. He had failed his sister. He should have kept running; he might have caught up with the car. Maybe if he’d somehow managed to focus his aura, he would have been able to do something… though he wasn’t really sure what.
He would find her, he vowed.
Dropping to his hands and knees, he pulled his backpack out from under his bed. He then stood and began opening drawers, dragging out clothes and shoving them into the bag: socks and underwear, a spare pair of jeans, a couple of T-shirts. He stripped off the grimy clothes he’d been wearing since Paris, dumped them into the wicker basket at the end of the bed and pulled out clean clothes. Before he tugged on his red 49ers Faithful T-shirt, he removed the cloth bag hanging around his neck and sat down on the edge of his bed. He opened the bag and peered inside. It held the two pages he’d torn from the Codex last week. According to the Alchemyst, they contained the Final Summoning, which Dee needed to bring back the Dark Elders.
Josh shook the pages out onto the bed beside him. Then he lined them up side by side. They were about six inches across by nine inches tall and looked as if they had been made out of pressed bark and leaf fibers.
The last time he’d really looked at the pages they had been on the floor of the ruined bookshop and both he and his sister had been dazed and confused by everything they’d just witnessed. When he’d looked at the pages then, he could have sworn that the words were moving, but now they weren’t.
Both pages were covered front and back with jagged writing. He’d seen similar carvings on ancient artifacts in his father’s office, and he believed that the writing looked a lot like Sumerian. One letter-which he thought might be the initial letter-was beautifully colored in vivid golds and reds, while the rest was in black ink that was still crisp even after countless centuries. Picking up a page, he held it to the light.
And blinked in astonishment.
The words were moving. They slowly crawled, shifted and rearranged themselves on the page, forming words, sentences, paragraphs in countless languages. Some of the letters were almost recognizable-he saw pictographs and runes and he was able to pick out individual Greek letters, but most were completely alien.
A phrase in Latin caught his eye: magnum opus. He knew it meant “great work.” He traced the words with his index finger… and the moment his flesh touched the page, heat blossomed deep in his stomach and his finger started to smoke with a warm orange glow. He then noticed that while all the other letters around the simple phrase changed into a score of other scripts and languages, the ten letters beneath his fingertip remained fixed. The moment he lifted his hand away, the letters disappeared. Running his fingertips lightly over the pages, he watched in awe as whole sentences shifted and formed beneath his flesh. He wished his mother or father were here: they would be able to translate some of the ancient languages. There were hints of Latin and Greek scattered in the text, and he recognized a few Egyptian hieroglyphs and one of the square Mayan glyphs.
Mindful of the Flamels’ warning about using his aura, Josh carefully lifted his hand and the text flowed in chaos again. He slipped the pages back into the hand-sewn cloth bag and draped it around his neck. It felt warm against his skin. He wasn’t entirely sure what he’d just discovered, but he recalled that when Flamel had touched the page the previous week, the words hadn’t stopped moving for him. Josh flexed his fingers: it was obviously something to do with his aura. He kicked his ruined sneakers under the bed, then opened the wardrobe and pulled out the walking boots he used when he went hiking with his father, and pulled them on. Then he slung the backpack over his shoulder and pressed his ear against the bedroom door, listening intently.
He could hear his aunt in the kitchen… could hear water boiling in the kettle… the fridge door opening… the clink of a spoon against the side of a china cup… the radio tuned to NPR.
Josh jerked his head back. The kitchen was at the very rear of the house; there was no way he should be able to hear those things. And then he realized that the faintest wisp of golden smoke had gathered in his palm. Bringing his hand to his face, he wondered at the physical evidence of his aura. It looked like the dry ice he’d seen in chemistry class, except that it was a faint golden color and smelled strongly of oranges. As he watched, the foglike vapor sank back into his palm and disappeared. Josh closed his hand into a fist, squeezing hard. He’d watched his sister create a silver glove around her hand, and in the street, only a few minutes earlier, he’d seen a similar gauntlet appear over his own without even thinking about it. But what would happen if he deliberately focused on seeing his left hand encased in a gauntlet? Immediately, his skin sparked, glittering with speckles. The faintest impression of a golden glove surrounded his hand. As he watched, a studded metal gauntlet formed around his flesh, the fingers tipped with pointed golden nails. Josh made a fist again. The glove closed with the sound of metal rasping on metal.
“Josh Newman!”
Aunt Agnes’s voice on the other side of the door made him jump. He’d been concentrating so hard on creating the glove that he hadn’t heard her come up the stairs. His aura dissipated, the glove drifting away in curls of golden smoke.
Agnes pounded on the door. “Didn’t you hear me calling you?”
Josh sighed. “No,” he said truthfully.
“Well, I’ve made some tea. Come down now before it gets cold.” She paused and added, “I made some fresh muffins this morning also.”
“Great.” Josh felt his stomach rumble; Aunt Agnes made the best muffins. “I’m just getting changed. I’ll be right down.” He waited until he heard his aunt shuffle away, her flat-soled shoes rubbing the carpet. Then he looked at his hand again and smiled broadly at a sudden thought. If he was able to mold his aura without training, then that meant he had to be more powerful than his sister.
Settling his backpack over both shoulders, he inched open the door and listened with his enhanced senses. He could actually hear his aunt pouring tea from the pot into a cup, could smell the tannin of fresh black tea and the richer odor of warm pastry. His stomach rumbled again and he felt his mouth fill with saliva: he could almost taste the buttery cake. He wondered if he could stop for just one… but that would mean sitting down with Aunt Agnes, and she’d want to know all the details of the past few days. He’d be there for an hour-and he couldn’t afford to waste the time.
He padded silently down the stairs, cracked open the front door and slipped out into the cool San Francisco morning. “Sorry, Aunty,” he muttered, pulling the door silently closed behind him. She was going to be furious when she discovered he’d left. She’d probably call his parents, and he had no idea what explanation he was going to give them.
What he did know was that he was not returning to the house in Pacific Heights without his sister.