Creating the link with the Shadow had proven to be surprisingly easy. Perenelle had known Scathach for generations. She could clearly visualize everything about her: her bright red hair and brilliant green eyes, her round face and the dusting of freckles across her straight nose. Her fingernails were always ragged and chewed. She looked to be a girl around seventeen years old; in truth she was more than two thousand five hundred years old and was the finest martial artist in the world. She had trained most of the great warriors and heroes of legend and had saved the Flamels’ lives on more than one occasion. They had returned the favor. Even though the Shadow was more than eighteen hundred years her senior, Perenelle had come to think of her if not as a daughter, then certainly as a niece. “Tell me what happened, Scatty,” Perenelle demanded.

“Nicholas and the children escaped to London. He was taking the twins to see Gilgamesh.”

Perenelle nodded. “I know that. Nicholas told me. He also said that both twins have been Awakened,” she added.

“Both,” Scatty agreed. “The girl has been trained in two of the elemental magics, but the boy has no training. However, he has Clarent.”

“Clarent,” Perenelle murmured. She’d watched her husband sink the ancient blade into the lintel over the window of their home on the Rue du Montmorency. She’d wanted to destroy it; he’d refused. He’d argued that it was older than a score of civilizations and they had no right to break it; he’d also argued that it was probably impossible to harm the blade anyway.

“So where are you?” Perenelle asked.

“Paris.” Scathach’s face swam in and out of focus. “It’s a very long story. Parts of it are quite boring. Especially the bit where I was dragged into the Seine by Dagon…”

“You were dragged into the Seine!” Nicholas hadn’t told her that.

Scatty nodded. “That happened just after I’d been rescued from the Nidhogg, which had rampaged through the streets of Paris.”

Perenelle stared at her openmouthed. Finally, she said, “And where were Nicholas and the twins while all this was happening?”

“They were the ones who chased the Nidhogg through the streets and rescued me.”

The Sorceress blinked in surprise. “That does not sound like my Nicholas.”

“I think it was more the twins’ doing,” Scathach said. “Especially the boy, Josh. He saved my life. I think he slew the dragon.”

“And then you fell into the river,” Perenelle said.

“I was pulled,” Scathach corrected her immediately. “Dagon came up like a crocodile and grabbed me.”

“Did you not once fight him and a school of Potamoi fishmen on the Isle of Capri?”

Scatty’s savage vampire teeth flashed again. “Now, that was a good day.” Then her smile vanished. “Anyway, he turned up working with Machiavelli in Paris.”

“I’d heard the Italian was in Paris.” Perenelle nodded.