01_-_The_Alchemyst

Flamel bowed. “We will be honored by their presence.”
“Don’t be,” the old woman snapped. “They’ll not accompany you solely
for your protection: they’re to ensure that you really do leave my realm.” She
spread her long-fingered hands on the table, and Sophie noticed that her
fingernails were each painted a different color. Strangely, the pattern was
identical to the one she’d noticed on Hekate’s nails earlier. “You cannot stay
here,” the woman announced abruptly. “You must go.”
The twins glanced at each other; why was she being so rude?
Scathach opened her mouth to speak, but Flamel reached over and
squeezed her arm. “That was always our intention,” he said smoothly. The
late-afternoon sunlight slanting through the trees dappled his face, turning his
pale eyes into mirrors. “When Dee attacked my shop and snatched the Codex,
I realized that I had nowhere else to go.”
“You should have gone south,” the old woman said, her dress almost
completely black now, the red threads looking like veins. “You would have
been more welcome there. I want you to leave.”
“When I began to suspect that the prophecy was beginning to come
about, I knew I had to come to you,” Flamel continued, ignoring her. The
twins, who were following the exchange closely, noticed how his eyes had
flickered briefly in their direction.
The old woman turned her head and looked at the twins with her buttercolored
eyes. Her wizened face cracked in a humorless smile that showed
her tiny yellow teeth. “I have thought about this; I am convinced that the
prophecy does not refer to humani—and especially not humani children,” she
added with a hiss.
The contempt in the woman’s voice made Sophie speak out. “I wish you
wouldn’t talk about us as if we weren’t here,” she said.
“Besides,” Josh said, “your daughter was going to help us. Why don’t
we wait and see what she has to say.”
The elderly woman blinked at him, and her almost-invisible eyebrows
raised in a silent question. “My daughter?”