The Enchantress (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel)

didn’t,” Dee muttered, nodding at Marethyu.
    “Don’t thank me. I wanted to do it.”
    Footsteps shuffled on the stairs and Dee turned as a beautiful young gray-eyed woman arrived on the platform. She ignored Dee, smiled at Marethyu and then flung a heavy hooded cloak around Abraham’s shoulders. She glared at Dee. “I wanted to do it too.”
    “This is Tsagaglalal, my wife.”
    Dee bowed slightly. “I am honored.”
    “Don’t be,” she snapped. “I would push you off this platform with the greatest of pleasure.” She eased her husband away from the edge of the platform and then moved around to stand in front of him so that he could look at her. “It is nearly time.”
    “I know. Go down. Get ready. I am almost finished with the doctor.”
    Tsagaglalal swept past Dee and disappeared below.
    “She is going to hate you for millennia.” Abraham stretched out his hand. “Give me my book, Doctor.”
    Dee hesitated.
    The right side of Abraham’s face moved in a ghastly smile. “A very foolish man would think about doing something stupid right now. Or worse—attempting to negotiate.”
    The doctor reached under his shirt. There was a soft leather bag on a cord around his neck. He tugged and the cord snapped free.
    “Josh carries the pages he tore from the Book in a similar way,” Marethyu said.
    “I know. I just discovered that. I can’t believe he had them with him all this time. They were so close; if only he’d given them to me, then everything would be so different.” Dee sighed.
    “Your life has been one of disappointments,” Marethyu said.
    “Are you being sarcastic?” Dee asked.
    “Yes.”
    “I’ve had my share of disappointments,” the Magician admitted. Reaching into the bag, he pulled out the small metal-bound book. “I spent my entire life chasing this book. Over the centuries, I came close to securing it. But from the moment I finally got it into my hands, everything changed. It should have been my greatest triumph.” He shook his head slightly. “Instead, everything started to go wrong.”
    Marethyu stepped forward and took the Book from the old man’s hands. Resting it on his hook, he opened the cover. Instantly, yellow-white fire blazed across his hook, sizzling streamers dripping onto the stones, raining sparks like fireworks. “It’s real,” he announced.
    With an almost painful effort, Abraham raised his golden hand and dropped it onto Dee’s shoulder. “Doctor, did you ever pause to wonder why you never managed to catch up with the Flamels, why they always escaped just before you arrived?”
    “Of course. I always thought they were lucky . . .,” he began. Then he shook his head. “No one is that lucky for that long, are they?”
    Marethyu closed the Book with a snap. The fire died on his hook. “You were never meant to find the Flamels and the Book. Until last week, of course, when you got the call giving you the address of the bookshop in San Francisco.”
    “And that was you?” Dee breathed, looking from Marethyu to Abraham. “I thought I was working for Isis and Osiris.”
    Death’s blue eyes crinkled. “You are, but sometimes you—and they—are working for me.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
    WHEN HE’D BEEN a very young child, Josh had suffered from a series of bizarre and terrifying nightmares.
    He’d dreamt he was standing alongside his sleeping body, looking down at it. Sometimes he was sitting on the end of the bed staring at himself, but often, he was floating close to the ceiling, looking down on his body. Never once did he feel that he was in any danger, but the confusing images had still brought him awake screaming. Sleep had always been a long time coming after one of those dreams.
    As Josh got older, the dreams almost completely disappeared. During periods of extreme stress—usually around finals—they returned, but time had robbed them of their power to frighten him. Now they were little more than strange images. Sometimes, when he drifted in that twilight zone between sleep and wakefulness, he caught the vaguest impression of the old dream, and would find himself for a single moment standing outside his body looking at himself, asleep. He was browsing the Internet one day when, by accident, he discovered there was a term for this—
an out-of-body-experience
.
    And he felt like he was having one right now.
    It was just like one of his dreams.
    He was looking at himself sitting at a table with his parents and sister. Everything was