Free The Magician (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel #2) by Michael Scott Page B

slid off the roof and crashed into the yard.
    “Go, go now.” He spun the combination lock and tugged the gate open.
    Sophie and Josh ignored him. “What do we do?” Josh asked his twin. “Go or stay?”
    Sophie shook her head. She glanced at Roux and lowered her voice to a whisper. “We have nowhere to go we don’t know anyone in the city except Scatty and Nicholas. We don’t have any money and we have no passports.”
    “We could go to the American embassy.” Josh turned to Roux. “Is there an American embassy in Paris?”
    “Yes, of course, on the Avenue Gabriel, beside the Hotel de Crillon.” The shaven-headed youth cringed as a colossal thump shook the whole building, filling the air with minute particles of dust. The glass in the window beside them cracked from top to bottom and more tiles slid off the roof, to rain down into the yard.
    “And what do we tell the embassy?” Sophie demanded. “They’ll want to know how we got here.”
    “Kidnapped?” Josh suggested. And then a sudden thought struck him and he felt sick. “And what do we tell Mom and Dad? How are we going to explain it to them?”
    Crockery tinkled and shattered, and then there was a tremendous crack.
    Sophie cocked her head to one side and brushed her hair off her ear. That was the main window. She took a step back toward the door. “I should help her.” Wisps of mist curled off her fingers as she reached for the handle.
    “No!” Josh snatched her hand, and static crackled between them. “You can’t use your powers”, he whispered urgently. “You’re too exhausted; remember what Scatty said. You could burst into flames.”
    “She’s our friend we can’t abandon her”, Sophie snapped. “ I won’t, anyway.” Her brother was a loner and had never been good at making or keeping friends in school, whereas she was intensely loyal to hers, and she had started to think of Scatty as more than just a friend. Although she loved her brother deeply, she had always wanted a sister.
    Josh caught Sophie’s shoulders and turned her to face him. He was already ahead taller than she was and had to look down into the blue eyes that mirrored his own. “She’s not our friend, Sophie”, his voice low and serious. “She’s never going to be our friend. She’s a two- and- a- half- thousand- year- old something. She admitted to us that she’s a vampire. You saw the way her face changed in there: she’s not even human. And and I’m not sure she’s all Flamel makes her out to be. I know he isn’t!”
    “What do you mean?” Sophie demanded. “What are you trying to say?”
    Josh opened his mouth to reply, but a series of rattling thumps vibrated through the entire building. Whimpering with fear, Roux darted out into the alley. The twins ignored him.
    “What do you mean?” Sophie asked again.
    “Dee said”
    “Dee!”
    “I talked to him in Ojai. When you were in the shop with the Witch of Endor.”
    “But he’s our enemy!”
    “Only because Flamel says he is”, Josh said quickly. “Sophie, Dee told me that Flamel is a criminal and Scathach is basically just a hired thug. Hes aid that she was cursed for her crimes to wear the body of a teenager for the rest of her life.” He shook his head quickly and hurried on, his voice low and desperate. “Sis, we know next to nothing about these people Flamel, Perenelle and Scathach. The only thing we do know is that they’ve made you different dangerously different. They’ve taken us halfway across the world, and look where we are now.” Even as he was speaking, the building shook, and then a dozen more tiles slid off the roof and crashed into the yard, sending razor-sharp fragments flying around them. Josh yelped as a chunk stung his arm. “We can’t trust them, Soph. We shouldn’t.”
    “Josh, you have no idea what powers they’ve given me.” Sophie caught her brother’s arm, and the air, which was foul with the stink of rotting food, was touched with the odor of vanilla,