“And it was in America?” Gilgamesh asked. “Tell me it was America.”

“It was in New Mexico.”

The king clapped his hands. “At least I was right about that. What happened to the last pair?” he suddenly asked Flamel.

The Alchemyst remained silent.

“I think we’d like to hear the answer too,” Sophie said coldly, eyes blinking silver. “We know there’ve been other twins.”

“Lots of other twins,” Josh added.

“What happened to them?” Sophie demanded. Somewhere at the back of her mind she thought she already knew the answer, but she wanted to hear Flamel say it out loud.

“There have been other twins in the past,” Nicholas admitted finally. “But they were not the right twins.”

“And they all died!” Josh said, a crack of anger in his voice. The scent of oranges filled the cab, but the odor was sour and bitter.

“No, not all,” Flamel snapped. “Some did, and some went on to live to old age. Including the last pair.”

“And what happened to the ones who didn’t survive?” Sophie asked quickly.

“A few were damaged by the Awakening process.”

“Damaged?” She picked up on the word, determined not to let him get away with anything.

The Alchemyst sighed. “Anyone can be Awakened. But no two people react to the process in the same way. Some were not strong enough to handle the wash of emotions. Some fell into comas, others ended up lost in dreams or unable to cope with the real world, or their personalities split and they spent their days in institutions.”

Sophie began to tremble. She felt physically sickened by what Flamel was saying. Even the way he reported it-coldly, without emotion-frightened her. She knew now that Josh’s suspicions were justified: the Alchemyst was not to be trusted. When Nicholas Flamel had brought them to the Witch of Endor to be Awakened, he had been fully aware of the terrible consequences of a failed Awakening. But he’d still been willing to go through with it.

Josh slid across the seat, moving closer to his sister, wrapping his arms around her, holding her. He couldn’t speak. He knew that he was close, dangerously close, to hitting the Alchemyst.

“How many other sets of twins have there been, Flamel?” Gilgamesh asked. “You have lived on this earth for more than six hundred and seventy years. Was there one set a century? Two? Three? How many lives have you destroyed trying to find the twins of legend?”