Josh blinked in surprise; he never imagined an immortal having problems with the government. Then he realized that in these times of computers and other surveillance technology, it must be increasingly difficult to remain in hiding from the authorities. “Do people live here?” he asked. “I don’t see anyone…”

“You won’t. The people”-he used the word carefully-“who live in my houses only come out at night.”

“Vampires,” Josh murmured.

“Not vampires,” Palamedes said quickly. “I have no time for the blood drinkers.”

“What then?”

“Larvae and lemurs… the undead and the not-dead.”

“And what are they?” Josh asked. He was guessing that larvae did not mean insect young and that lemurs were not the long-tailed primates he’d seen in zoos.

“They are…” Palamedes hesitated, then smiled. “Nocturnal spirits.”

“Are they friendly?”

“They are loyal.”

“So why are we waiting?” Josh asked. It was clear that Palamedes wasn’t going to tell him anything else. “What are you looking for?”

“Something out of the ordinary.”

“So what do we do?”

“We wait. We watch. Have a little patience.” He glanced back at Josh. “By now much of the immortal world knows that the Alchemyst has discovered the legendary twins.”

Josh was surprised by how direct the knight was being with him. “You didn’t seem too sure about that earlier. Do you think we are?” he asked quickly. He needed to find out what Palamedes knew about the twins and, more importantly, about the Alchemyst.

But Palamedes ignored the question. “It doesn’t matter if you are the legendary twins or not. What matters is that Flamel believes it. More importantly, Dee believes it also. Because of that, an extraordinary series of events has been put in motion: Bastet is abroad again, the Morrigan is back on this earth, the Disir brought the Nidhogg to Paris. Three Shadowrealms have been destroyed. That hasn’t happened in millennia.”

“Three? I thought it was just Hekate’s realm that was destroyed.” Scathach had spoken of other Shadowrealms, but Josh had no idea just how many existed.

Palamedes sighed, clearly tired of explanations. “Most of the Shadowrealms are linked or intersect with one another through a single gate. If anything happens to the Shadowrealm, the gate collapses. But the Yggdrasill, the World Tree, stretched up from Hekate’s realm into Asgard and down deep into Niflheim, the World of Darkness. All three winked out of existence when Dee destroyed the tree, and I know that the gates to another half dozen have collapsed, effectively sealing off that world and its inhabitants. Dee added a few enemies to the long list of people-both human and inhuman-who hate and fear him already.”

“What will happen to him?” Josh asked. Despite all he’d been told about the Magician, he found he still had a niggling admiration for him… which was more than he had for the French Alchemyst at the moment.