The Enchantress (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel)

Talis, he could parade them as symbols of his power. But they were all armed and in full armor—and had been bred to be loyal only to him.
    Bastet’s rages were like a summer storm: furious and dramatic but quick to pass. When the door opened a little while later, the Elder was calm and composed, her fur neatly combed, dressed from head to foot in a black and red leather robe and a black cloak lined with crimson.
    “That looks rather like my armor . . .,” Anubis began, and then stopped.
    “Why do you think I chose it?” She linked her arm with his, and together they walked down the long corridor lined with enormous slabs of polished crystal. Their reflections, broken and distorted, kept pace with them, and each mirror showed the Elder couple against a different moving background.
    “Now, tell me everything you can about this couple in gold and silver.”
    “I’ve told you all I know,” Anubis answered. “My spies informed me that Isis and Osiris had arrived and I went out on the balcony to take a look at the craft. I really want it, it is fabulous,” he added.
    “Anubis . . .,” Bastet warned.
    “And that’s when I spotted the twins.”
    “You don’t know they’re twins,” she snapped. “Stop saying that.”
    “I know you think I’m stupid . . .,” Anubis began. He saw the look on his mother’s face and hurried on. “I saw a young man and woman who looked humani to me, in expensive- and ancient-looking gold and silver armor.”
    “Who was wearing what?” she asked.
    “The boy was in gold and the girl in silver, of course.”
    “Describe them.”
    “I just have—a boy and a girl.”
    “Hair color, eyes,” Bastet said, and her grip tightened painfully on his arm.
    “Their hair was blond. I didn’t see their eyes; I was too far away. I did note that the boy was taller than the girl. It’s hard to tell humani ages, but they were fifteen or sixteen summers, perhaps.”
    “How do you know they were humani?”
    “Because there are no Elder children,” he reminded her, and then braced himself, preparing for her grip on his arm to tighten again in response to his disrespect.
    “What are Isis and Osiris up to?” she asked, almost as if speaking to herself. “The gold and silver armor is a deliberate insult. A reminder that our family did not always rule the council.”
    “I thought you said Isis and Osiris would support my claim,” he said.
    “Well, who else were they going to support?”
    “Unless they have their own candidates,” Anubis suggested.
    Bastet started to shake her head, then stopped. “You know, you might not be as stupid as you look.”
    Anubis said nothing, not sure that was a compliment.
    At the end of the corridor, a pair of black-armored anpu snapped to attention and hauled opened two massive white quartz crystal doors. Trapped within the glass, a tentacled creature lazily opened a single eye, then closed it again.
    Bastet and Anubis stepped through the doorway and out into a golden-sanded courtyard. It had once housed a spectacular garden, but Bastet in her rages had ripped up the flowers and rare blooms so often that Anubis had instructed the gardeners to plant only cacti and spiny succulents, plants she would not be so keen to tear from the ground. A carriage was waiting, an enormous shimmering globe carved from a single pearl Anubis had brought back from a watery Shadowrealm. A pair of albino saber-toothed cats, their incisors curled up like elephant tusks, were harnessed to the carriage. They were a new hybrid Anubis was breeding.
    Anubis opened the door and held out his hand. Bastet ignored it and stepped into the carriage unaided.
    “Maybe they are the twins of legend,” Anubis suggested innocently as he climbed in after his mother.
    “Don’t be ridiculous!” she snapped. “Where would Isis and Osiris find twins? Your father and I wiped out that bloodline a thousand years ago.”
    Shocked, Anubis spun to look his mother in the face just as the tigers surged forward, jerking him back in his seat. They needed no driver; the big cats had been programmed to find their way to the Pyramid of the Sun. “I never knew that,” he said.
    “Few do. And I don’t want you repeating it.” She turned her head, resting her chin on her left claw. Her pupils shrank to pinpoints at the slanting evening sunlight streaming through the translucent walls of the pearl coach. She sat quietly, the razor claws on her other hand absently tearing through the