“But even there you failed,” Bastet whispered coldly. “The Codex was incomplete, lacking the final two pages.” The Elder’s breathing changed and Dee was suddenly aware in the darkness that her meat-tainted breath was dangerously close to his face. “Magician, you enjoy the protection of a powerful Elder-perhaps the most powerful of us all-and that has kept you alive thus far,” Bastet pressed on. Huge glowing yellow eyes appeared out of the gloom, the pupils as narrow as knife blades. “When others called for your punishment or death, your master has protected you. But I wonder-and I am not alone in this-why does an Elder use such a flawed tool?”

The words chilled him. “What did you call me?” he finally managed to whisper. His mouth was dry and his tongue felt huge in his mouth.

Bastet’s eyes blazed. “A flawed tool.”

Dee felt breathless. He tried to calm his thundering heart. It had been more than four hundred years since he’d last heard those three words, but they’d remained vividly etched in his memory. He’d never forgotten them. In many ways they had shaped his life.

Turning his face away from the stink of Bastet’s breath, Dee rested his forehead against the cool glass and looked out into the night flashing past in streaks of light. He was driving through the heart of twenty-first-century London, and yet when he closed his eyes and remembered the last time he had felt this way, the last time he had heard those words, he felt as if he were back in the city of Henry VIII.

Memories, long buried but never forgotten, came flooding back, and he knew the Elder’s use of those three bitter words could not have been accidental. She was letting him know just how much she knew about him.

It was April 23, 1542, a cold showery day in London, and John Dee was standing before his father, Roland, in their house on Thames Street. Dee was fifteen years old-and looked older than his years-but at that moment he felt like a ten-year-old. He had locked his hands into fists behind his back and was unable to move, afraid to speak, breathless, heart thundering so hard it was actually shaking his entire body. He knew if he moved he would fall over, or turn and run like a child from the room, and if he spoke he would break down and weep. But he would not show any weakness in front of Roland Dee. Over his father’s right shoulder, through the tiny diamond-paned window, John could see the top of the nearby Tower of London. Standing still and silent, he allowed his father to continue reading.

John Dee had always known he was different.