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

Author:Michael Scott [Scott, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-03-31T03:00:00+00:00

The Comte de Saint-Germain had brought Sophie up to the house s tiny roof garden. The view of Paris was spectacular, and she leaned on the balustrade to look down onto the Champs-Elys es. Traffic had finally faded to little more than a sparse trickle, and the city was still and silent. She breathed deeply; the air was cool and damp, the slightly sour smell of the river masked by the herbal scents coming from the dozens of overflowing pots and fancy containers scattered across the roof. Sophie wrapped her arms around her body, vigorously rubbed her forearms and shivered.

“Cold?” Saint-Germain asked.

“A little”, she said, though she wasn’t sure if she was cold or nervous. She knew Saint-Germain had brought her up here to teach her Fire magic.

“After tonight, you will never feel the chill again”, Saint-Germain promised. “You could walk across Antarctica wearing shorts and a T-shirt and feel nothing.” Brushing his long hair off his forehead, he plucked a leaf from a pot and curled it between the palms of his hands, then rubbed them together. The crisp odor of spearmint filled the air. “Joan loves to cook. She grows all her herbs up here”, he explained, breathing deeply.” There are a dozen different types of mint, oregano, thyme, sage and basil. And of course lavender. She loves lavender; it reminds her of her youth.”

“Where did you meet Joan? Here, in France?”

“I finally got together with her here, but believe it or not, I first met her in California. It was 1849; I was making a little gold and Joan was working as a missionary, running a soup kitchen and hospital for those who’d gone west in search of gold.”

Sophie frowned. “You were making gold during the Gold Rush? Why?”

Saint-Germain shrugged and looked vaguely embarrassed. “Like just about everyone else in America in 48 and 49, I went west in search of gold.”

“I thought you could make gold. Nicholas said he can.”

“Making gold is a long, laborious process. I thought it would be far easier to dig it up out of the ground. And once an alchemist has a little gold, he can use that to grow more. That’s what I thought I’d do. But the land I bought turned out to be useless. So I started planting a few fragments of gold on the land and then I’d sell the property to those people who had just arrived.”

“But that’s just wrong”, Sophie said, shocked.

“I was young then”, Saint-Germain said. “And hungry. But that’s no excuse”, he added. “Anyway, Joan was working in Sacramento, and she kept meeting people who had bought useless land from me. She thought I was a charlatan which I was and I took her for one of those dreadful do-gooders. Neither of us knew the other was immortal, of course, and we hated one another on sight. We kept bumping into one another over the years, and then, during the Second World War, we met again, here in Paris. She was fighting with the Resistance and I was spying for the Americans.

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