But that is another story.
Acknowledgments
This book and its companion volume would not have happened without the constant support and encouragement (and endless patience) of Beverly Horowitz and Hannah Hill at Delacorte Press/Random House.
Special thanks also to Krista Marino and Colleen Fellingham (who has kept me safe and out of trouble these many years).
Thank you, as always, to Barry Krost and Melanie Rose at Barry Krost Management, who do all the real work.
“OK—answer me this: why would anyone want to wear an overcoat in San Francisco in the middle of summer?” Sophie Newman pressed her fingers against the Bluetooth earpiece as she spoke.
On the other side of the continent, her fashion-conscious friend Elle inquired matter-of-factly, “What sort of coat?”
Wiping her hands on the cloth tucked into her apron strings, Sophie moved out from behind the counter of the empty coffee shop and stepped up to the window, watching men emerge from the car across the street. “Heavy black wool overcoats. They’re even wearing black gloves and hats. And sunglasses.” She pressed her face against the glass. “Even for this city, that’s just a little too weird.”
“Maybe they’re undertakers?” Elle suggested, her voice popping and clicking on the cell phone. Sophie could hear something loud and dismal playing in the background—Lacrimosa maybe, or Amorphis. Elle had never quite got over her Goth phase.
“Maybe,” Sophie answered, sounding unconvinced. She’d been chatting on the phone with her friend when, a few moments earlier, she’d spotted the unusual-looking car. It was long and sleek and looked as if it belonged in an old black-and-white movie. As it drove past the window, sunlight reflected off the blacked-out windows, briefly illuminating the interior of the coffee shop in warm yellow-gold light, blinding Sophie. Blinking away the black spots dancing before her eyes, she watched as the car turned at the bottom of the hill and slowly returned. Without signaling, it pulled over directly in front of The Small Book Shop, right across the street.
“Maybe they’re Mafia,” Elle suggested dramatically. “My dad knows someone in the Mafia. But he drives a Prius,” she added.
“This is most definitely not a Prius,” Sophie said, looking again at the car and the two large men standing on the street bundled up in their heavy overcoats, gloves and hats, their eyes hidden behind overlarge sunglasses.
“Maybe they’re just cold,” Elle suggested. “Doesn’t it get cool in San Francisco?”
Sophie Newman glanced at the clock and thermometer on the wall over the counter behind her. “It’s two-fifteen here…and eighty-one degrees,” she said. “Trust me, they’re not cold. They must be dying. Wait,” she said, interrupting herself, “something’s happening.”
The rear door opened and another man, even larger than the first two, climbed stiffly out of the car. As he closed the door, sunlight briefly touched his face and Sophie caught a glimpse of pale, unhealthy-looking gray-white skin. She adjusted the volume on the earpiece. “OK. You should see what just climbed out of the car. A huge guy with gray skin. Gray. That might explain it; maybe they have some type of skin condition.”
“I saw a National Geographic documentary about people who can’t go out in the sun…,” Elle began, but Sophie was no longer listening to her.
A fourth figure stepped out of the car.
He was a small, rather dapper-looking man, dressed in a neat charcoal-gray three-piece suit that looked vaguely old-fashioned but that she could tell had been tailor-made for him. His iron gray hair was pulled back from an angular face into a tight ponytail, while a neat triangular beard, mostly black but flecked with gray, concealed his mouth and chin. He moved away from the car and stepped under the striped awning that covered the trays of books outside the shop. When he picked up a brightly colored paperback and turned it over in his hands, Sophie noticed that he was wearing gray gloves. A pearl button at the wrist winked in the light.
“They’re going into the bookshop,” she said into her earpiece.
“Is Josh still working there?” Elle immediately asked.
Sophie ignored the sudden interest in her friend’s voice. The fact that her best friend liked her twin brother was just a little too weird. “Yeah. I’m going to call him to see what’s up. I’ll call you right back.” She hung up, pulled out the earpiece and absently rubbed her hot ear as she stared, fascinated, at the small man. There was something about him…something odd. Maybe he was a fashion designer, she thought, or a movie producer, or maybe he was an author—she’d noticed that some authors liked to dress up in peculiar outfits. She’d give him a few minutes to get into the shop, then she’d call her twin for a report.
Sophie was about to turn away when the gray man suddenly spun around and seemed to stare directly at her. As he stood under the awning, his face was in shadow, and yet for just the briefest instant, his eyes looked as if they were glowing.
Sophie knew—just knew—that there was no possible way for the small gray man to see her: she was standing on the opposite side of the street behind a pane of glass that was bright with reflected early-afternoon sunlight. She would be invisible in the gloom behind the glass.
And yet…
And yet in that single moment when their eyes met, Sophie felt the tiny hairs on the back of her hands and along her forearms tingle and felt a puff of cold air touch the back of her neck. She rolled her shoulders, turning her head slightly from side to side, strands of her long blond hair curling across her cheek. The contact lasted only a second before the small man looked away, but Sophie got the impression that he had looked directly at her.
In the instant before the gray man and his three overdressed companions disappeared into the bookshop, Sophie decided that she did not like him.
* * *
—
Peppermint.
And rotten eggs.
“That is just vile.” Josh Newman stood in the center of the bookstore’s cellar and breathed deeply. Where were those smells coming from? He looked around at the shelves stacked high with books and wondered if something had crawled in behind them and died. What else would account for such a foul stink? The tiny cramped cellar always smelled dry and musty, the air heavy with the odors of parched curling paper, mingled with the richer aroma of old leather bindings and dusty cobwebs. He loved the smell; he always thought it was warm and comforting, like the scents of cinnamon and spices that he associated with Christmas.
Peppermint.
Sharp and clean, the smell cut through the close cellar atmosphere. It was the odor of new toothpaste or those herbal teas his sister served in the coffee shop across the street. It sliced though the heavier smells of leather and paper, and was so strong that it made his sinuses tingle; he felt as if he was going to sneeze at any moment. He quickly pulled out his iPod earbuds. Sneezing with headphones on was not a good idea: made your ears pop.
Eggs.
Foul and stinking—he recognized the sulfurous odor of rotten eggs. It blanketed the clear odor of mint…and it was disgusting. He could feel the stench coating his tongue and lips, and his scalp began to itch as if something were crawling through it. Josh ran his fingers through his shaggy blond hair and shuddered. The drains must be backing up.
Leaving the earbuds dangling over his shoulders, he checked the book list in his hand, then looked at the shelves again: The Complete Works of Charles Dickens, twenty-seven volumes, red leather binding. Now where was he going to find that?
Josh had been working in the bookshop for nearly two months and still didn’t have the faintest idea where anything was. There was no filing system…or rather, there was a system, but it was known only to Nick and Perry Fleming, the owners of The Small Book Shop. Nick or his wife could put their hands on any book in either the shop upstairs or the cellar in a matter of minutes.
A wave of peppermint, immediately followed by rotten
eggs, filled the air again; Josh coughed and felt his eyes water. This was impossible! Stuffing the book list into one pocket of his jeans and the headphones into the other, he maneuvered his way through the piled books and stacks of boxes, heading for the stairs. He couldn’t spend another minute down there with the smell. He rubbed the heels of his palms against his eyes, which were now stinging furiously. Grabbing the stair rail, he pulled himself up. He needed a breath of fresh air or he was going to throw up—but, strangely, the closer he came to the top of the stairs, the stronger the odors became.
He popped his head out of the cellar door and looked around.
And in that instant, Josh Newman realized that the world would never be the same again.
Josh peered over the edge of the cellar, eyes watering with the stink of sulfur and mint. His first impression was that the usually quiet shop was crowded: four men facing Nick Fleming, the owner, three of them huge and hulking, one smaller and sinister-looking. Josh immediately guessed that the shop was being robbed.
His boss, Nick Fleming, stood in the middle of the bookshop, facing the others. He was a rather ordinary-looking man. Average height and build, with no real distinguishing features, except for his eyes, which were so pale that they were almost completely colorless. His black hair was cropped close to his skull and he always seemed to have stubble on his chin, as if he hadn’t shaved for a couple of days. He was dressed as usual in simple black jeans, a loose black T-shirt advertising a concert that had taken place twenty-five years earlier and a pair of battered cowboy boots. There was a cheap digital watch on his left wrist and a heavy silver-link bracelet on his right, alongside two tatty multicolored friendship bracelets.
Facing him was a small gray man in a smart suit.
Josh realized that they were not speaking…and yet something was going on between them. Both men were standing still, their arms close to their bodies, elbows tucked in, open palms turned upward. Nick was in the center of the shop, while the gray man was standing close to the door, his three black-coated companions around him. Strangely, both men’s fingers were moving, twitching, dancing, as if they were typing furiously, thumb brushing against forefinger, little finger touching thumb, index and little finger extended. Tendrils and wisps of green mist gathered in Fleming’s palms, then curled in ornate patterns and drifted onto the floor, where they writhed like serpents. Foul, yellow-tinged smoke coiled and dripped from the gray man’s gloved hands, spattering onto the wooden floor like dirty liquid.
The stench rolled off the smoke, thickening the atmosphere with the scent of peppermint and sulfur. Josh felt his stomach twist and lurch and he swallowed hard; the rotten-egg smell was enough to make him gag.
The air between the two men shimmered with tendrils of green and yellow smoke, and where they touched, sparks hissed and sizzled. Fleming’s fingers moved, and a long fist-thick coil of green smoke appeared in the palm of his hand. He blew on it, a quick hissing breath, and it spun up into the air, twisting and untwisting at head height between the two men. The gray man’s short, stubby fingers tapped out their own rhythm and a yellow ball of energy spun from his hands and bobbed away. It touched the coil of green smoke, which immediately wrapped around the ball. There was a sparking snap…and the invisible explosion blew both men backward across the room, sending them crashing across the tables of books. Lightbulbs popped and fluorescents shattered, raining powdery glass onto the floor. Two of the windows exploded outward, while another dozen of the small square panes shattered and spiderwebbed.
Nick Fleming tumbled to the floor, close to the opening to the cellar, almost landing on top of Josh, who was standing frozen on the steps, wide-eyed with shock and horror. As Nick clambered to his feet, he pushed Josh back down the stairs. “Stay down, whatever happens, stay down,” he hissed, his English touched with an indefinable accent. He straightened as he turned and Josh saw him turn his right palm upward, bring it close to his face and blow into it. Then he made a throwing motion toward the center of the room, as if he were lobbing a ball.
Josh craned his neck to follow the movement. But there was nothing to see…and then it was as if all the air had been sucked out of the room. Books were suddenly ripped from the nearby shelves, drawn into an untidy heap in the center of the floor; framed prints were dragged from the walls; a heavy woolen rug curled upward and was sucked into the center of the room.
Then the heap exploded.
Two of the big men in black overcoats caught the full force of the explosion. Josh watched as books, some heavy and hard, others soft and sharp, flew around them like angry birds. He winced in sympathy as one man took the full force of a dictionary in the face. It knocked away his hat and sunglasses…revealing dead-looking, muddy, gray skin and eyes like polished black stones. A shelf of romance novels battered against his companion’s face, snapping the cheap sunglasses in two. Josh discovered that he, too, had eyes that looked like stones.
And he suddenly realized that they were stones.
He was turning to Nick Fleming, a question forming on his lips, when his boss glanced at him. “Stay down,” he commanded. “He’s brought Golems.” Fleming ducked as the gray man sent three long spearlike blades of yellow energy across the room. They sliced through bookshelves and stabbed into the wooden floor. Everything they touched immediately started to rot and putrefy. Leather bindings snapped and cracked, paper blackened, wooden floorboards and shelves turned dry and powdery.
Fleming tossed another invisible ball into the corner of the room. Josh Newman followed the motion of his boss’s arm. As the unseen ball sailed through the air, a shaft of sunlight caught it, and for an instant, he saw it glow green and faceted, like an emerald globe. Then it moved out of the sunlight and vanished again. This time when it hit the floor, the effect was even more dramatic. There was no sound, but the entire building shook. Tables of cheap paperbacks dissolved into matchwood, and slivers of paper filled the air with bizarre confetti. Two of the men in black—the Golems—were slammed back against the shelves, bringing books tumbling down on top of them, while a third—the biggest—was pushed so hard against the door that he was propelled out onto the street.
And in the silence that followed came the sound of gloved hands clapping. “You have perfected that technique, I see, Nicholas.” The gray man spoke English with a curious lilt.
“I’ve been practicing, John,” Nick Fleming said, sliding toward the open cellar door, shoving Josh Newman farther down the stairs. “I knew you would catch up with me sooner or later.”
“We’ve been looking for you for a very long time, Nicholas. You’ve got something of ours. And we want it back.”
A sliver of yellow smoke bit into the ceiling above Fleming’s and Josh’s heads. Bubbling, rotten black plaster drifted down like bitter snowflakes.
“I burned it,” Fleming said, “burned it a long time ago.” He pushed Josh even farther into the cellar, then pulled the sliding door closed, sealing them both in. “Don’t ask,” he warned, his pale eyes shining in the gloom. “Not now.” Catching Josh by the arm, Nick pulled him into the darkest corner of the bookstore cellar, caught a section of shelving in both hands and jerked it forward. There was a click, and the shelving swung outward, revealing a set of steps hidden behind it. Fleming urged Josh forward into the gloom. “Quickly now, quickly and quietly,” he warned. He followed Josh into the opening and pulled the shelves closed behind him just as the cellar door turned into a foul black liq-uid and flowed down the stairs with the most appalling stench of sulfur.
“Up.” Nick Fleming’s voice was warm against Josh’s ear. “This comes out in the empty shop next door to ours. We have to hurry. It’ll take Dee only a few moments to realize what’s happened.”
Josh Newman nodded; he knew the shop. The dry cleaner’s had been empty all summer. He had a hundred questions, and none of the answers that ran through his mind was satisfactory, since most of them contained that one awful word
in them: magic. He had just watched two men toss balls and spears of something—of energy—at each other. He had witnessed the destruction those energies had caused.
Josh had just witnessed magic.
But of course, everyone knew that magic simply did not and could not exist.
About the Author
An authority on mythology and folklore, Michael Scott is one of Ireland’s most successful authors. A master of fantasy, science fiction, and horror, he was hailed by the Irish Times as “the King of Fantasy in these isles.” Look for the six books in his New York Times bestselling The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel series: The Alchemyst, The Magician, The Sorceress, The Necromancer, The Warlock, and The Enchantress. You can visit Michael Scott at dillonscott.com and follow him on Facebook and Twitter.
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