Read Online The Enchantress (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel) by Michael Scott - Free Book Online

identification: passports, driver’s licenses, identity cards. Everything had a photo, and the immortal in those photos had to change, to subtly alter and age. A mistake brought attention from the authorities, and immortals were particularly vulnerable to any investigation that questioned their past. Tsagaglalal hadn’t left the country in decades and her American passport had lapsed. However, there was an immortal human working in New York who had once specialized in forged Renaissance masterpieces. He had a little sideline business in forged passports and driver’s licenses. She’d need to visit him when this was over. If she survived.
    Tsagaglalal ran the tap hot, then cold, and filled the sink. Bending her head, she scooped water into her hands and washed her face with L’Occitane Shea Butter Soap, wiping away the makeup she’d put on for the gathering of immortals and Elders who’d picnicked in her backyard earlier that day.
    Dying was always the hard part. There was always so much to do in the weeks and months leading up to dying: making sure all the bills were paid and the life insurance was up to date, canceling any newspaper and magazine subscriptions and, of course, making a will leaving everything to a “relative.” Male immortals usually bequeathed everything to a nephew, female immortals to a niece. Others, like Dr. John Dee, willed everything to a series of corporations, and Tsagaglalal knew that Machiavelli had left all his worldly goods to his “son.” The Flamels willed everything to one another and a nephew named Perrier, whom she doubted had ever existed.
    Tsagaglalal looked into the mirror again. Without hair and with her face wiped clean of makeup, she thought she looked even older than usual. Leaning closer to the glass, she allowed a little of her rarely used aura to blossom deep in her chest. The faintest hint of jasmine filled the small bathroom, mingling with the rich warmth of the shea butter. Heat flowed up her body, across her neck and into her face. She stared at her gray eyes. The sclera—the whites of her eyes—were yellow, threaded with veins, the right eye slightly milky with the hint of a cataract. She’d always thought that was a really nice touch.
    The scent of jasmine strengthened. Heat flowed into Tsagaglalal’s throat and mouth, up across her cheeks and into her eyes: and the sclera turned white.
    The woman breathed in, filling her lungs, then holding her breath. The skin of her face rippled and smoothed, soft plump flesh flowing along the hard bony lines of her cheeks, filling out her nose, rounding out her chin. Lines vanished, crow’s-feet filled in, the deep bruise-colored shadows beneath her eyes disappeared.
    Tsagaglalal was immortal, but she was not human. She was clay. She had been born in the Nameless City on the edge of the world when Prometheus’s fiery aura had imbued ancient clay statues with life and consciousness. Deep within her she carried a tiny portion of the Elder’s aura: it kept her alive. She and her brother, Gilgamesh, were the first of the First People to be born or achieve a consciousness. Every time she renewed herself, she could remember with absolute clarity the moment she had opened her eyes and drawn her first breath.
    She laughed. It began as the cracked cough of an elderly woman and ended with the high pure sound of a much younger person.
    Powered by her aura, the transformation continued. Flesh tightened, bones straightened, teeth whitened, hearing and sight grew sharp once more. A thin fuzz of jet-black hair pushed through her scalp, then thickened and streamed past her shoulders. She opened and closed her hands, wriggled her fingers and rotated her wrists. Placing her hands on her hips, she twisted her body from side to side, then bent at the waist and touched the floor with the palms of her hands.
    Standing before the mirror, Tsagaglalal watched age fall away from her body, saw herself grow young and beautiful again. She had