Josh nodded. He shifted the map tube on his shoulder, the heavy sword rattling inside. From that very first moment back in the bookshop when he’d popped his head up over the edge of the cellar and seen Flamel and Dee fighting with spears of green and yellow energy, he’d known the world would never be the same again. That had been-what?-four days ago, but in those four days, the world had turned upside down. Everything he’d thought he knew was a lie. They had met myths, fought legends; they had traveled halfway around the world in the blink of an eye to fight a primeval monster and watch stone carvings come to lumbering life.

“You know,” Sophie said suddenly, “we really should have taken last Thursday off.”

Josh couldn’t resist a grin. “Yeah, we should have.” He’d spent weeks trying to talk Sophie into taking a day off so they could visit the Exploratorium, the science museum close to the Golden Gate Bridge. Ever since he’d heard about it, he’d desperately wanted to see Bob Miller’s famous Sun Painting, a creation of sunlight, mirrors and prisms. Then his smile faded. “If we’d done that, then none of this would have happened.”

“Exactly,” Sophie said. She looked at the towering metal walls of rusting cars, the pockmarked muddy landscape and the red-eyed dogs. “Josh, I want things the way they were. Ordinary.” She turned back to her twin, her eyes catching and holding his. “But you don’t,” she said flatly.

Josh didn’t even bother trying to deny it. His sister would know he was lying; she always did. And she was right: even though he was exhausted and barely able to cope with his Awakened senses, he didn’t want things to go back to the way they’d been; he didn’t want to go back to being ordinary. He’d been ordinary all his life-and when people did notice him, they only saw him as half of a set of twins. It was always Josh and Sophie. They went to summer camp together, went to concerts and movies together and had never spent a holiday apart. Birthday cards were always addressed to the two of them; party invitations came with both of their names on them. Usually, it didn’t really bother him, but over the past few months, it had all started to grate on him. What would it be like to be seen as an individual? What if there were no Sophie? What if he was just Josh Newman, not half of the Newman twins?

He loved his sister, but this was his chance to be different, to be an individual.