“After the battle in Hekate’s Shadowrealms, Flamel told me that he’d only started to suspect that we were the twins mentioned in the prophecy the day before.”

Sophie shook her head. “I hardly remember anything about that day.”

“You were asleep,” Josh said quickly, “exhausted after the battle.” The memory of the fight chilled him; it was the first time he had seen how alien his sister had become. “Scatty said that Flamel was a man of his word and told me that I should believe him.”

“I don’t think Scatty would lie to us,” Sophie said but even as she was speaking, she wondered if these were her thoughts or the Witch’s.

“Maybe she didn’t.” Pressing both hands to his face, Josh rubbed his fingers over his forehead, pushing back his overlong blond hair. He was trying to remember exactly what had happened last Thursday. “She wasn’t agreeing with him when he said he hadn’t known who we were. He said that everything he’d done had been for our own protection: I’m thinking she was agreeing with that,” he finished. “And the last thing Hekate said to me before the World Tree burned was ‘Nicholas Flamel never tells anyone everything.’”

Sophie closed her eyes, trying to blank out the sights and sounds of the junkyard, concentrating hard now, thinking back to early April, when they’d both started the part-time jobs. “Why did you go for that particular job?” she asked.

Josh blinked in surprise, then frowned, remembering. “Well, Dad saw an ad in the university newspaper. Assistant Wanted, Bookshop. We don’t want readers, we want workers. I didn’t want to do it, but Dad said he’d worked in a bookshop when he was our age and that I’d enjoy it. I sent in a résumé and was called for an interview two days later.”

Sophie nodded, remembering. While Josh was in the bookshop, she’d gone across the road to wait for him in a small coffee shop. Bernice, the owner of The Coffee Cup, had been there talking to a striking-looking woman who Sophie now knew was Perenelle Flamel. “Perenelle,” Sophie said so suddenly that Josh looked around, half expecting to see the woman behind him. He would not have been surprised.

“What about her?”