The Enchantress (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel)

who threatened me.”
    “You can have your world,” Osiris said quickly, reaching out to rest his hand on his wife’s shoulder.
    “Which world?”
    “Any world you wish,” he said, a broken smile fixed on his face. “We will need someone to act as a replacement for Dee.”
    Virginia Dare stepped daintily over the ancient wheezing man. “I will do that. Temporarily, at least,” she added.
    “Temporarily?” Osiris smiled.
    “Until I get my world.”
    “You will have it.”
    “Then we are done and I will never see you again, nor will you ever bother me.”
    “You have our word.”
    Isis and Osiris turned to the twins and held out their hands again, yet neither Sophie nor Josh made any attempt to take them. “Come now,” Isis said, a touch of impatience in her voice, making her sound like the Sara Newman they knew. “We need to go. There is much to do.”
    Neither twin moved.
    “We need some answers,” Josh said defiantly. “You can’t just expect us to—”
    “We will answer all your questions, I promise you,” Isis interrupted. She turned away and the warmth in her voice disappeared. “We must go now.”
    Virginia Dare was about to step past the twins, when she stopped and looked at Josh. “If Isis and Osiris are your parents . . . what does that make you?” she asked. She glanced over her shoulder at Dee, then turned away to walk toward the crystal ship.
    Sophie looked at her brother. “Josh . . .,” she started.
    “I have no idea what’s going on, Sis,” he said, answering her unspoken question.
    A dry, rasping cough drew their attention back to Dee. Although the sun was blazing in the sky and the air was warm, the ancient man had curled up in a ball and was shivering violently, arms wrapped around his body for warmth. They could hear his teeth rattle in his head. Without a word, Sophie pulled off her red hooded fleece and handed it to her brother. He looked at it for a moment, then nodded and stepped forward to kneel down beside Dee. Gently he draped the fleece over the Magician, tucking it in around his shoulders. The Magician nodded his thanks, his white eyes wet with emotion, and clutched the fleece to himself tightly.
    “I’m sorry,” Josh said. He knew what Dee was, knew what he was capable of, but no one deserved to die like this. He looked over his shoulder. Isis and Osiris were climbing into the vimana. “You can’t just leave him like this,” he called.
    “Why? Would you rather I kill him, Josh?” Osiris asked with a laugh. “Is that what you want? Dee, is that what you want? I can kill you now.”
    “No,” Josh and Dee said simultaneously.
    “His four hundred and eighty years are catching up with him, that’s all. He will die of natural causes soon.”
    “It’s cruel,” Sophie said.
    “To be honest, considering the trouble he’s caused us over the past few days, I think I’m being rather merciful.”
    Josh turned back to Dee. The old man’s withered lips moved, his breath coming in great heaving gasps. “Go.” A clawlike hand wrapped around Josh’s wrist. “And when in doubt, Josh,” he whispered, “follow your heart. Words can be false, images and sounds can be manipulated. But this . . .” He tapped Josh’s chest. “This is always true.” He touched the boy’s chest again, and the sound of paper crackling under his red 49ers Faithful T-shirt was clearly audible. “Oh no, no, no.” The Magician’s face fell. “Tell me that’s not the missing pages from the Codex,” he whispered, voice cracking.
    Josh nodded. “It is.”
    Dee erupted in what began as a laugh, but the effort sent a wracking cough through his body and he folded in on himself, struggling to catch his breath. “You had them all along,” he murmured.
    Josh nodded again. “Right from the beginning.”
    Shaking with silent laugher, Dee closed his eyes and lay back on the silken grass. “What an apprentice you would have made,” he breathed.
    Josh watched the dying immortal until, finally, Osiris interrupted. “Josh,” he said firmly. “Leave him. We must go now—we have a world to save.”
    “Which world?” Sophie and Josh asked simultaneously,
    “All of them,” Isis and Osiris replied together.

CHAPTER THREE
    THE SCREAMS WERE piercing.
    A flock of parrots, green-bodied and red-faced Cherry-Headed Conures, swooped low over the Embarcadero in San Francisco. They buzzed past the three men and the woman standing at the wooden rail by the water’s edge. The