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Alchemyst ran the back of his finger down its breast. “Parrots are extraordinarily intelligent. And their eyesight is marvelous. There are some species whose eyes weigh more than their brains. They can see into the infrared and ultraviolet spectra; they can even see waves of light.”
    “Alchemyst . . .,” Prometheus said.
    Nicholas focused on the parrot, blowing gently across its iridescent plumage. The parrot rubbed the top of its head across Flamel’s forehead and started to groom his bushy eyebrows.
    “Alchemyst,” Prometheus repeated, a note of irritation in his voice.
    “John Dee and his kind use rats and mice as eyes to spy for them,” Perenelle explained. “But over the years, Nicholas learned to see through Pedro’s eyes. It’s a simple transference process. You wrap the creature in your aura and then gently direct it.”
    “Pedro saved our lives on more than one occasion,” Nicholas said quietly. “It got so that he would scream at even the hint of Dee’s sulfur stench.” He brought his face close to the Cherry-Headed Conure and it ran its beak back and forth across his forehead, now grooming his close-cropped hair. “Prometheus, would you hold on to me now?” he continued. “I’m going to get a little dizzy.”
    “Why?” Niten asked, puzzled.
    “I’m going flying,” the Alchemyst whispered. He cocked his head and the parrot mimicked the movement. For an instant, they were eye to eye. The salt air turned sharp with mint and the conure shivered. As he stroked the bird, Flamel’s fingers left shimmering trails of green that were almost invisible against the parrot’s feathers. Nicholas closed his eyes . . . and the parrot’s yellow eyes turned pale, almost colorless.
    Then, with a sudden flapping of wings, the bird took to the air, and Prometheus caught the Alchemyst as he slumped to the ground.

CHAPTER SIX
    “ARE YOU REALLY our parents?” Sophie asked.
    “What a question!” Isis snapped.
    Sophie and Josh 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