The Enchantress (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel)

ashore less than twelve hours earlier. The bench was damp, and Nicholas bent to rub it clean with his sleeve before he would allow Perenelle to sit.
    Nicholas sat beside his wife and she leaned into him. He put his arm around her, feeling her thin and delicate bones beneath his hand. Directly ahead of them, the city of San Francisco appeared ghostlike out of the early dawn.
    “No mermaids in the water?” Perenelle asked.
    “Without Nereus to keep them here, they’ve no reason to stay.”
    “Well, at least the city is still standing,” Perenelle said in French, her voice a wispy thread. “I can see no smoke rising to the skies.”
    Nicholas looked right and then left. “And the bridges are unbroken. That’s a good sign.”
    “Prometheus and Niten did not fail us. They must have survived,” she said. “I surely hope so,” she added sincerely. “We lost so many good people tonight.”
    “They gave their lives doing what they believed was right,” he reminded her. “They gave their lives so that others might live and the world would go on. There is no greater sacrifice. And this morning the city survives, so they did not die in vain.”
    “And what of us, Nicholas? Did we always do what was right?”
    “Perhaps not,” he said softly. “But we always did what we believed was right. Is that the same thing?”
    “Of late I have found myself wondering if we should ever have looked for the twins of legend.”
    “And if we had not, then we would never have found Sophie and Josh,” Nicholas said simply. “From the moment I bought the Book of Abraham, our lives have been a journey which led us to this place and this time. It was our destiny—and no man can escape his destiny.”
    “I wonder where the twins are?” she whispered. “I would like to know . . . to know before the end. I need to know that they survived.”
    “They are safe,” he said confidently. “I have to believe that because this world goes on.”
    Perenelle nodded. “You must be right.” She rested her cheek against Nicholas’s arm. “It’s peaceful,” she said. “The island is so quiet this morning.”
    “No seagulls. The monsters either ate them or scared them away. They’ll be back.”
    The long grass rasped in the light breeze, and waves lapped against the stones in a soothing rhythm. Perenelle closed her eyes. “The sun is warm,” she murmured.
    Nicholas rested the side of his face against the top of her head. “Very warm. It’s going to be a glorious day.”
    As they sat, the sun rose slowly into the heavens, running golden along the Bay Bridge, bringing it to blazing light. The city of San Francisco came awake, the sounds of traffic faint and musical on the air.
    “You know that I have always loved you,” Nicholas said quietly.
    There was a long silence, and then Perenelle replied in a whisper, “I know that. And you know that I love you?”
    He nodded. “I have never doubted it for a moment.”
    “I would like to have been buried in Paris,” Perenelle said suddenly. “In those empty graves we prepared for ourselves all those years ago.”
    “Does it matter where we lie, so long as it is together?” Nicholas asked, closing his eyes.
    “Of course not,” she said, and closed her eyes as well.

    A shadow fell across the couple.
    They opened their eyes to find a tall blue-eyed young man standing over them. He was wrapped in a long leather hooded cloak. The sun was behind him, throwing his hooded face into shadow. A gleaming half circle of metal took the place of his left hand.
    “I wondered if you would come,” Nicholas Flamel said quietly.
    “I was there at the beginning when I sold you the Book all those years ago and started you on this great journey. It is only fitting that I should return at the end.”
    “Who are you?” the Alchemyst asked.
    The hook-handed man pulled down his hood. He crouched before Nicholas and Perenelle, took both their hands in his and looked into their faces. “You know me,” he said.
    Nicholas searched the young man’s lined and scarred face, and Perenelle reached up to run her fingers across his chin, tracing the plane of his forehead and the curve of his cheekbone. “Josh? Josh Newman?”
    “You knew me as Josh Newman . . .,” he said very gently. “But that was before this”—he held up his hook—“which is a long story.”
    “What of Sophie?”
    “A night has gone by for you. Almost seven hundred years have passed for her, but she has not aged.