Nicholas opened his mouth to spit out a reply, but Josh took a step forward, bringing him close to the Alchemyst. “We need them now.” There was something like arrogance in his voice. Standing on the parvis in front of the cathedral in Paris, feeling the raw power flow through his body, watching the animated stone gargoyles shatter to dust, he had realized just how powerful he and his sister were. At this moment they might need the Alchemyst, but he needed them also.

Nicholas looked into the boy’s bright blue eyes, and whatever he saw in them made him nod and turn back to a row of shops. “Water and sunglasses,” he said. “Any particular color sunglasses?” he asked sarcastically.

“Black,” the twins answered in unison.

Sophie stood with Josh outside the shop. She was exhausted, but she knew Josh was feeling even worse. Now that the rain had blown over, the street was beginning to fill up. People of a dozen different nationalities walked past, chatting in a variety of languages.

Sophie suddenly tilted her head to one side, brow creasing in a frown.

“What’s wrong?” Josh asked immediately.

“Nothing’s wrong,” she said slowly, “it’s just that…”

“What?”

“I thought I recognized some of the words those people were speaking.”

Her brother turned to follow her gaze. Two women in the long flowing abaya of the Middle Eastern countries, their heads covered and their faces hidden behind burkas, chatted together animatedly.

“They’re sisters… They’re going to see a doctor just around the corner in Harley Street…,” Sophie said in wonder.

Josh turned to hear better and pushed his hair back off his ear. Concentrating hard, he managed to isolate the voices of the two women. “Sophie, I can’t make out a word they’re saying; I think they’re speaking Arabic.”

Two smartly dressed businessmen walked past, heading toward Regent’s Park tube station. They were both on mobile phones.

“The one on the left is talking to his wife in Stockholm,” Sophie continued, her voice now little more than a whisper. “He’s sorry he missed his son’s birthday party. The one on the right is talking to his head office, also in Sweden. He wants some spreadsheets e-mailed.”

Josh turned his head again, ignoring the traffic and the myriad other noises of the city. Suddenly, he found that by focusing on the two businessmen, he could pick up individual words. His hearing was so acute that he could even hear the tinny voices on the other end of the cell phone. Neither man was speaking English. “How can you understand?” he asked.

“It’s the Witch of Endor’s knowledge,” Nicholas said. He had stepped out of the shop in time to hear Josh’s question. He pulled two pairs of identical cheap sunglasses from a paper bag and handed them over. “Not designer, I’m afraid.”