“Niten travels,” Aoife said simply. “He wanders the Shadowrealms.”

Sophie looked again at the Asian man. She had initially assumed he was in his late teens or early twenties, but now she could make out the faint lines around his eyes, and she noticed that his wrists and knuckles were thick: the sure signs of a martial artist. He was stripping old paint from the wood with smooth, fluid movements.

“Tell me what happened to my sister.”

Sophie turned back to Aoife and put down the grapes. “All I can tell you is what Nicholas told me and Josh yesterday, and he heard it from Saint-Germain. Scathach and Joan of Arc were preparing to jump from Paris to Mount Tamalpais to attempt to rescue Perenelle, who was trapped on Alcatraz…”

Aoife held up her hand. “What has Joan of Arc got to do with this?”

“She’s married to Saint-Germain.” Sophie grinned at the look of surprise on Aoife’s face. “You didn’t know? I think they got married recently.”

“Joan of Arc and Saint-Germain,” Aoife murmured, shaking her head. “Did you hear that?” she said, without raising her voice.

“I thought you knew,” Niten said, and although his voice was barely above a whisper, it carried clearly. He continued to peel long strips of flaking paint off the side of the houseboat.

“How would I know?” Aoife snapped. “No one tells me anything.” She twisted in her seat to look at Niten. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You never liked the Frenchman, and I knew you would dislike the Frenchwoman even more because your sister made her immortal with her blood.”

“She did?” Aoife looked horrified. “Joan carries my sister’s blood within her?”

“You didn’t know about this?” Sophie asked, surprised.

The red-haired woman shook her head. “I did not. What happened?”

“Joan was condemned to be burned at the stake. Scathach single-handedly rode into the city and rescued her, but Joan was injured in the escape. The only way to save her life was to give her a blood transfusion,” Sophie explained.

Aoife leaned forward, elbows on her knees, long pale fingers locked together. “Tell me about my sister. What happened to her?”

“I don’t know much more,” Sophie said. “Apparently, they were going to use the leygate at Notre Dame, but it was sabotaged. Saint-Germain found traces of mammoth dust around the spot. Nicholas thinks Machiavelli was responsible. Instead of landing on Mount Tamalpais today, it looks as if they’ve been dropped sometime in the past.”

“How far in the past?”

“Nicholas and Saint-Germain think the mammoth bones mean the Pleistocene era. So that could be anywhere from one point eight million years ago to just over eleven thousand years ago.”

Sophie watched in astonishment as Aoife visibly relaxed. “Oh, that’s not too bad, then. If that’s all that’s happened, we can go back and rescue them.”

“How?” Sophie demanded.