The Enchantress (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel)
looked at one another. The twins were sitting in two narrow seats directly behind Isis and Osiris. Virginia Dare crouched on the floor behind them. Josh had attempted to give her his seat, but she’d told him she preferred not to be strapped in. She patted his face as she thanked him, and the touch sent a flush of heat through his entire body.
Richard Newman—Osiris—swiveled around in the black leather seat and smiled. “Yes, we really are your parents. And we really are archaeologists and paleontologists—or at least, we are in your Shadowrealm. Everything you know about us is true.”
“Except the Isis and Osiris, rulers of Danu Talis, part,” Josh said. “Or the whole aging and immortality thing.”
Osiris’s smile broadened. “I said everything you knew about us was true. But I didn’t say you knew everything about us.”
“What do we call you?” Sophie asked.
“What you’ve always called us,” Isis said. She was controlling the crystal and gold vimana, her long-fingered hand flat on a glass panel, tiny movements of her thumb and forefingers sending the craft buzzing through the air.
Sophie stared at the back of the woman’s head. This woman looked like her mother, talked and moved like her mother . . . and yet . . . there was something different, something wrong. She glanced sideways at her twin and knew instinctively that he was feeling exactly the same way. The man who looked like her father was smiling at them. And the smile was identical to the one she knew so well in her own Shadowrealm, Earth—wrinkles creasing the corners of his eyes, little lines at the corners of his mouth. His lips were tightly shut, just like those of her father, who never opened his mouth when he smiled. She’d always thought he was self-conscious of his long eyeteeth. “Vampire teeth,” he’d called them when she was a child. She’d laughed at it then, but now the words were chilling.
“I think I’ll call you Isis and Osiris,” she said eventually—it felt
right
—and from the corner of her eye, she could see Josh nodding in agreement.
“Of course,” Osiris said evenly. “I’m sure this is a lot to take in. Let’s get you back to the palace and get some food into you. That’ll make things easier.”
“Palace?” Josh asked.
“Just a small one. The bigger one is in a nearby Shadowrealm.”
“So you are the rulers here?” Virginia Dare called up from her place on the floor.
The tiniest flicker of annoyance danced across Osiris’s face at the question. “We are rulers, yes, but we are not the ultimate rulers. Another rules.”
“Though not for much longer,” Isis said. She turned her head to smile at her husband.
This time Osiris’s pointed incisors appeared against his lower lip as he grinned. “Not for very much longer,” he agreed. “And then we will be the rulers of this world and all the worlds beyond.”
“So we are definitely on Danu Talis,” Josh said, almost talking to himself. He raised his head to look out the speeding vimana. All he could see from his side was the mouth of a massive volcano, a thin thread of gray-white smoke curling into the skies. “The famous source of all the legends of Atlantis.”
“Yes, this is Danu Talis.”
“When?” he pressed.
Osiris shrugged. “It’s hard to say, really. The humani have adjusted and readjusted their calendars so often that a precise measurement is impossible. But roughly ten thousand years before your time on Earth.”
“From
our
time?” Josh said. “Not your time?”
“This is our time, Josh. Your world is just a shadow of this one.”
“But you lived in our world also.”
“We have lived in many worlds,” Isis said, “and many times, too.”
“Your mother is right,” Osiris said. “We have walked between the worlds for millennia. Between us we have probably explored more of the Shadowrealms than any other Elders.”
“So you’re Elders?” Sophie asked.
“Yes, we are.”
“And what does that make us?” Josh asked. “Are we Elders or Next Generation?”
“That remains to be seen,” Osiris said. “At this particular point in time, there are no Next Generation. And if all goes according to plan, then there will be no Next Generation. They only arrived after the sinking of the island.”
“All that matters is that you are here and that you have both been Awakened and trained in many of the Elemental Magics,” Isis said.
The craft dipped and suddenly a vast circular,
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