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

her brother. He was standing directly in front of her, his face close to hers, his eyes pinched with concern.
    “I’m OK”, she whispered. “I was just trying to remember something.”
    “What?”
    She attempted a smile. “My phone number.”
    “Your phone number? Why?” He stopped, and then added, “No one ever remembers their own phone number. When was the last time you called yourself?”
     
    Hands wrapped around steaming mugs of bittersweet hot chocolate, Sophie and Josh sat opposite one another in an otherwise empty all-night cafe close to the Gare du Nord Metro station. There was only one staff member behind the counter, a surly shaven-headed assistant wearing an upside-down name tag that said ROUX.
    “I need a shower”, Sophie said grimly. “I need to wash my hair and brush my teeth, and I need to change my clothes. It feels like days since my last shower.”
    “I think it is days. You look terrible”, Josh agreed. He reached over and pulled loose a strand of blond hair that had stuck to his sister’s cheek.
    “I feel terrible”, Sophie whispered. “Remember that time last summer when we were in Long Beach and I had all that ice cream, then ate the chili dog and the curly fries and had the extra-large root beer?”
    Josh grinned. “And you finished off my buffalo wings. And my ice cream!”
    Sophie smiled at the memory, but her grin quickly faded. Although the temperature that day had risen into the hundreds, she’d started shivering, icy beads of sweat running down her back as a ball of iron settled into the pit of her stomach. Luckily, she hadn’t fastened her seat belt before she’d thrown up, but the results had still been spectacularly messy, and the car had been unusable for at least a week afterward. “That’s how I feel right now: cold, shivery, aching all over.”
    “Well, try not to throw up in here”, Josh murmured. “I don’t think Roux, our cheerful server, would be too impressed.”
     
    Roux had worked in the café for four years, and in that time he had been robbed twice and threatened often but never hurt. The all-night cafe saw all sorts of strange and often dangerous characters come through the doors, and Roux decided that this unusual quartet certainly qualified as the first sort and maybe even both. The two teenagers were dirty and smelly and looked terrified and exhausted. The older man maybe the kids grandfather, Roux thought was not in much better shape. Only the fourth member of the group the red-haired, green-eyed young woman wearing a black top, black trousers and chunky combat boots looked bright and alert. He wondered what her relationship was to the others; she certainly didn’t look as if she was related to any of them, but the boy and girl were alike enough to be twins.
    Roux had hesitated when the old man had produced a credit card to pay for the two hot chocolates. People usually paid cash for something so small, and he wondered if the card was stolen. “I’ve run out of euros”, the old man said with a smile. “Could you ring up twenty and give me some cash?” Roux though the spoke French with a peculiar, old-fashioned, almost formal lilt.
    “It is strictly against our policy”, Roux began, but another look at the hard-eyed red-haired girl made him reconsider. He attempted a smile at her as he said, “Sure, I think I can do that.” If the card had been reported stolen, it wouldn’t scan in the machine anyway.
    “I would be very grateful.” The man smiled. “And could you give me some coins?”
    Roux rang up eight euro for the two hot chocolates and swiped the Visa for twenty euro. He was surprised that it was an American credit card; he would have sworn by his accent that the man was French. There was a delay and then the card went through, and he deducted the cost of the two drinks and handed over the change in one- and two-euro coins. Roux went back to the math textbook hidden under the counter. He’d been wrong about the group. It wasn’t