The two men had been sitting in the dining room of Machiavelli’s grand town house off the Place du Canada in Paris for the past thirty minutes. In that time neither had spoken a word. They had each received the same summons on their cell phones: the image of a worm swallowing its own tail-the Ouroborus-one of the oldest symbols of the Dark Elders. In the center of the circle was the number thirty. A few years ago they would have received such summonses by fax or mail, decades ago by telegram and messenger, and earlier still on scraps of paper and parchment, and they would have been given hours or days to prepare for a meeting. Now the summons came by phone and the response was measured in minutes.

Although they were expecting the call, each jumped when the speakerphone in the center of the table buzzed. Machiavelli reached out to spin the phone around and check the caller ID before answering. An unusually long number beginning with 31415-he recognized it as a portion of pi-scrolled off the screen. When he hit the Answer button, static howled and crackled before dying away to a soft breezelike whisper.

“We are disappointed.” The voice on the phone spoke an archaic form of Latin that had last been used centuries before the time of Julius Caesar. “Very disappointed.” It was impossible to tell whether the voice was male or female, and at times it even sounded as if two people could be talking together.

Machiavelli was surprised; he had been expecting to hear his own Dark Elder master’s scratchy voice-he’d never heard this speaker before. But Dee had. Although Dee’s face remained impassive, the Italian watched as the muscles tightened in the English Magician’s jaw and he straightened almost imperceptibly. So, here was Dee’s mysterious Dark Elder master.

“We were assured that all was in readiness… we were assured that Flamel would be captured and slain… we were assured that Perenelle would be disposed of and that the twins would be apprehended and delivered into our hands…”

The voice trailed away into static.

“And yet Flamel remains free… Perenelle is no longer imprisoned in a cell, though she is trapped on the island. The twins have escaped. And we still do not have the complete Codex. We are disappointed,” the disembodied voice repeated.

Dee and Machiavelli looked at one another. People who disappointed the Dark Elders tended to disappear. An Elder master had the power to grant human subjects immortality, but it was a gift that could be withdrawn with a single touch. Depending on how long the human had been immortal, sudden and often catastrophic old age raced through the body, centuries of time aging and destroying flesh and organs. In a matter of heartbeats, a healthy-looking human could be reduced to a pile of leathery skin and powdered bones.

“You have failed us,” the voices whispered.