The Enchantress (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel)

legend. When they found a Gold and Silver pair, they attempted to Awaken them, but none of the few who survived had ever been truly sane afterward. Until Sophie and Josh.
    “So many lives lost,” she whispered.
    “So many saved,” he said quickly. “We protected the Book from Dee. Can you imagine what he would have done if he’d found it? And ultimately, we did find the twins of legend and Awakened them successfully. We were doing the right thing, I am convinced of that.”
    “I think Dr. Dee probably says exactly the same thing to justify his actions,” Perenelle said bitterly.
    “Perenelle.” Nicholas Flamel looked deep into his wife’s green eyes. “Our journey has brought us here, to this place, in this time, where we can make a difference. Together, we can save this city and prevent the Dark Elders from destroying this Shadowrealm.”
    The Sorceress nodded and stepped away from her husband. Standing on the very edge of the pier, she stretched out her left hand, palm upward, fingers curled. Perenelle’s ice-white aura formed in a liquid puddle in the palm of her hand. Slow bubbles rose and burst, and then the liquid spilled out of her hand and dropped in long, gelatinous streamers into the sea. Nicholas reached over, and in the moment before he took his wife’s hand, his own aura flowed in a green glove over his fingers and the strong odor of mint filled the air. The auras mixed—white and green—to become a sticky emerald mass that dripped through their grip, hardening the wet fog to shards of green ice where it touched, before splashing onto the waves below.
    “Transmutation,” Nicholas said. “One of the simplest principles of alchemy.”
    “Simple for you, perhaps.” Perenelle smiled.
    “My specialty,” he agreed. “All we have to do is to change the state of water from liquid to solid.”
    Where the Flamels’ auras touched the waves, an irregular circle turned to ice. Crackling, snapping, cracking, waves hardened, caught as they rose and broke against the side of the pier in a sheet of ice.
    Nicholas helped Perenelle climb down onto the frozen circle of sea. She stamped her foot. The ice creaked but held firm. Then she jumped up and down.
    “Please don’t do that,” Nicholas whispered.
    “Come on in,” she called up, “the water’s frozen.”
    “Yes. And we need to hurry,” the Alchemyst said, climbing over the side of the pier. “It’s not going to stay that way for long. The sea salt will eat away at it.” When he dropped onto the circle of ice, it tipped and rocked. Perenelle immediately stepped over to the other side, balancing it.
    The couple stood together, side by side on the frozen patch of sea. All around them the water was still liquid. The Alchemyst rubbed his hands together, as if he was rolling a ball. The smell of mint was almost overpowering. He threw out his arm, casting his green aura in a ribbon that stretched about four feet ahead of them. The aura splashed onto the water and immediately hardened into a narrow ice bridge on the surface of the sea. Hand in hand, the Alchemyst and the Sorceress stepped onto the crackling bridge.
    When they reached the end of the bridge, Perenelle flung out her arm, and a shimmering six-foot length of white smoke formed on the surface of the sea, freezing it.
    The couple pushed on in silence, creating stretches of the ice bridge bit by bit before them. Behind them, the salt seawater quickly reclaimed the frozen pathway. This close to the water, wrapped in the ever-thickening fog, they couldn’t see anything, and they had no idea how close they were to the shore. They knew they had moved out into the bay, because the waves were higher, solidifying into beautiful S-shaped patterns. But the surrounding seas were rougher and the ice paths survived for only seconds, barely enough time to allow them to race from one to the next.
    Perenelle suddenly squeezed her husband’s hand. Without speaking, he nodded.
    Something had splashed through the water off to their left. There was a second and then a third splash. And then, faintly, like the noise from tiny distant headphones, they heard what sounded like a zoo at feeding time and realized they were close to the island.
    Nicholas threw down another path. They were just stepping onto it when a monster reared out of the fog.
    And then a second and a third.
    Nereids.
    They surged out of the fog in flashes of wild green hair, ragged teeth and flashing claws, descending on the two