The twins stood on the sidewalk outside the bookshop, glass from the broken windows crunching under their feet, watching as Rain produced a key. “ But we can’t just leave,” Soyeon said firmly.

Seungho nodded. “ We’re not going anywhere. “

Rain- or Jung Jihoon, as they were beginning to think of him- turned the key in the lock of the bookshop and rattled the door. Within the shop, they could hear books sliding onto the floor. “ I really loved this shop, “ Rain muttered. “ It reminded me of my very first job. “

He glanced at Soyeon and Seungho. “ You have no choice. If you want to survive for the rest of the day, you have to leave now. “ Then he turned away, pulling on his battered leather jacket as he hurried across the road to The Coffee Cup. The twins looked at each other, then hurried after him.

“You’ve got the keys ? “

Soyeon nodded. She produced the 2 keys on their Golden Gate Bridge key ring. “ Look, if Suzy comes back and finds the shop closed, she’ll probably call the police or something … “

“Good point. “ Rain said. “Leave a note, “ He told Soyeon, “something short-you had to leave suddenly, some sort of emergency, that sort of thing. Say that I accompanied you. Scribble it. Make it look as if you left in a hurry. Are your parents still on that dig in Utah ? “

The twin’s parents were archaeologists, currently on loan to the University of San Francisco.

Soyeon nodded. “For another 6 weeks at least. “

“We’re still staying with Aunt Miyeon in Pacific Heights, “ Seungho added. “ Aunt Misery. “

“We can’t just disappear. She’ll be expecting us home for dinner, “ Soyeon said. “If we’re even 5 minutes late, she gets in a tizzy. Last week, when the trolley car broke down and we were an hour late, she’d already phoned our parents by the time we got there. “

Aunt Miyeon was 84, and although she drove the twins to distraction with her constant fussing, they were very fond of her.

“Then you’ll need to give her an excuse too, “ Rain said bluntly, sweeping into the coffee shop with Soyeon close behind him.

Seungho hesitated before stepping into the cool, sweet-smelling gloom of the Coffee Cup. He stood on the sidewalk, his backpack slung over his shoulder, looking up and down. If you ignored the sparkling glass littering the sidewalk infront of the bookshop, everything looked perfectly normal, an ordinary weekday afternoon.

The street was still and silent, the air was heavy with just a hint of the ocean. Across the bay, beyond Fisherman’s Wharf, a ship’s horn sounded, the deep noise lost and lonely in the distance. Everything looked more or less as it had half an hour earlier.

And yet …

And yet it was not the same. It could never be the same again. In the last 30 minutes, Seungho’s carefully ordered world had shifted and altered irrevocably. He was a normal high school sophomore, not too brilliant, but not stupid either. He sang-awesomely- in his friend’s band. He played the occasional computer games, preferred first-person shooters, couldn’t handle the driving games and got lost in Myst. He loved The Fugitive and could quote chunks of episodes by heart, really liked Shrek, though he’d never admit it, thought the new Batman was all right and that X-Men was excellent. He even liked the new Superman, despite what other people said. Seungho was ordinary.

But normal teens did not find themselves in the middle of a battle between 2 incredibly ancient magicians.

There was no magic in the world. Magic was movie special effects. Magic was stage shows with rabbits and doves and sometimes tigers, and David Copperfield sawing people in half and levitating over the audience. There was no such thing as real magic.

But how then could he explain what had just happened in the bookshop ?

He had watched shelves turn into rotten wood, seen books dissolve into pulp, smelled the stink of rotten eggs from Junhyung’s spells and the cleaner scent of mint when Rain-  Jihoon worked his magic.

Yang Seungho shivered in the bright afternoon sunshine and ducked into The Coffee Cup, pulling open his backpack and reaching for his battered laptop.

He needed to use the café’s wireless Internet connection. He had names he wanted to look up : Yong Junhyung. Lee Hyori. And especially, Jung Jihoon.

Soyeon scribbled a quick note on the back of a napkin, then chewed the end of the pencil as she read it.

Mrs Hyori unwell. Gas leak in the shop. Gone to hospital. Mr. Rain with us. Everything else OK. Will phone later.

When Suzy came back and found the shop closed jus before the late-afternoon rush, she was not going to be happy. Soyeon guessed that she might even lose her job. Sighing, she signed the note with a flourish that tore through the paper, and stuck it to the cash register.

Jung Jihoon peered over her shoulder and read it.

“That’s good. Very good. And it explains why the bookshop is closed too. “ Jihoon glanced over his shoulder to where Seungho was tapping furiously at his keyboard. “Let’s go! “

“Just checking my mail, “ Seungho muttered, powering off the machine and closing it.

“ At a time like this ?” Soyeon asked incredulously.

“Life goes on. E-mail stops for no man. “ He attempted a smile, but failed.

Soyeon grabbed her bag and vintage denim jacket, taking a last look around the coffee shop.

She had the sudden thought that she would not be seeing it again for a long time, but that was ridiculous, of course.

She turned out the lights, ushered her brother & Rain- Jihoon- through the door ahead of her and hit the alarm.

Then she pulled the door shut, turned the key in the lock and dropped the key chain through the letter box.

“Now what ?“ She asked.

“Now we get some help and we hide until I figure out what to do with you both. “ Jihoon smiled.

“We’re good at hiding. Hyori & I have been doing it for more than half a millennium. “

“What about Hyori ? “ Soyeon asked. “Will Junhyung.. harm her ? “

She’d come to know and like the tall, elegant woman over the past few weeks as she came into the coffee shop.

She didn’t want anything to happen to her.

Jihoon shook his head. “He can’t. She’s too powerful. I never studied the sorcerous arts, but Hyori did. Right now all Junhyung can do is contain her, prevent her from using her powers. But in the next few days she will start to age and weaken. Possibly in a week, certainly within 2 weeks, he would be able to use his powers against her. Still, he’ll be cautious. He will keep her trapped behind Wards and Sigils …. “

Jihoon saw the look of confusion on Soyeon’s face.

“Magical barriers,” he explained. “He’ll only attack when he is sure of victory. But first he will try to discover the extent of her arcane knowledge. Junhyung’s search for knowledge was always his greatest strength … and his weakness. “

He absently patted his pockets, looking for something.

“My Hyori can take care of herself. Remind me to tell you the story sometime of how she faced down a pair of Greek Lamiae. “

Soyeon nodded, though she had no idea what Greek Lamiae were.

As Jihoon strode down the street, he found what he was looking for. A pair of small round shades. He put them on, stuck his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket and began to whistle tunelessly, as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

He glanced back over his shoulder, “Well, come on. “

The twins looked at each other blankly, then hurried after him.

“I checked him out online, “ Seungho muttered, looking quickly at his sister.

“So that’s what you were doing. I didn’t think e-mail could be that important. “

“Everything he says checks out. He’s there on Wikipedia and there are nearly 200 000 results for him on Google. There are over 10 million results for Yong Junhyung. Even Hyori is there, and it mentions the book and everything. It even says that when he died, his grave was dug up by people searching for treasure and they found it empty- no body and no treasure. Apparently, his house is still standing in Paris. “

“He sure doesn’t look like an immortal magician, “ Soyeon muttered.

“I’m not sure I know what a magician looks like, “ Seungho said quietly. “The only magicians I know are Penn & Teller.”

“I’m not a magician,” Jihoon said, without looking at them.

“I’m an alchemist, a man of science, though perhaps not the science you would be familiar with. “

Soyeon hurried to catch up. She reached out to touch his arm and slow him down, but a spark-like static electricity- snapped into her fingertips.

“Ahhh!” She jerked her hand back, fingertips tingling. Now what ?

“I’m sorry,” Jihoon explained. “That’s an aftereffect of the … well, what you would call magic. My aura-the electrical field that surrounds my body- is still charged. It’s just reacting when it hits your aura. “ He smiled, showing perfectly regular teeth.

“It also means you must have a powerful aura. “

“ What’s an aura ?”

Jihoon strode on a couple of steps down the sidewalk without answering, then turned to point to a window. The word TATTOO was picked out in the fluorescent lighting.

“ See there … se how there is a glow around the words? “

“ I see it. “ Soyeon nodded, squinting slightly. Each letter was outlined in buzzing yellow light.

“Every human has a similar glow around their body. In the distant past, people could see it clearly and named it the aura. It comes from the Greek word for breath. As humans evolved, most lost the ability to see the aura. Some still can, of course. “

Seungho snorted derisively.

Jihoon glanced over his shoulder. “It’s true. The aura has even been photographed by a Russian couple called the Kirlians. The electrical field surrounds every living organism. “

Seungho & Soyeon nodded, finally understanding the meaning.

“But, why is Junhyung .. chasing after you ? “ Soyeon asked.

“That … well, long story short, me & Hyori met with him and we had a bitter argument. That night he sent the first assassins after Hyori & me. They were human and we dealt with them easily. The next night, the assassins were decidedly less than human. So Hyori & I took the Book, gathered up our few belongings and fled Korea. He’s been chasing us ever since. “

They stopped at a cross light. A trio of British tourists was waiting for the light to change and Jihoon fell silent, a quick glance at Soyeon & Seungho warning them to say nothing. The light changed and they crosses, the tourists heading to the right, Jihoon and the twins moving to the left.

“Where did you go when you left Korea?” Seungho asked.

“London,” Jihoon said shortly. “Junhyung nearly caught us there in 1666,” he continued. “He loosed a Fire Elemental after us, a savage, mindless creature that almost devoured the city. History calls it the Great Fire. “

Soyeon looked over at Seungho. They had both heard of the Great Fire of London. They had learned about it in world history.
She was surprised by how calm she felt.

Here she was, listening to a man who claimed to be more than 5 hundred years old, recounting historical events as if he had ben there when they happened.

And she believed him!

“Junhyung came dangerously close to capturing us in Korea in 1763,” Jihoon continued, “ and again in 1835, when we were in Seoul, as if happens. That was always my favourite occupation,” he added.

He fell silent as they approached a group of Japanese tourists listening intently to their guide, who was standing beneath a bright yellow umbrella.

When they were out of earshot, he continued, the events of more than a century and a half earlier obviously fresh and bitter in his memory.

“We fled to Ireland, thinking he would never find us on that island at the edge of Europe. But he pursued us. He had managed to master the control of Wights then, and brought two over with him. The Disease Wight and the Hunger Wight, no doubt intending to set them on our trail. At some point he lost control of the creatures. Hunger and disease ravaged that poor land. A million people died in Ireland’s Great Famine in the 1840s. “

Jung Jihoon’s face hardened into a mask.

“I doubt if Junhyung even paused to think about it. He always had nothing but contempt for humankind. “

Soyeon glanced at her brother again. She could tell by the expression on his face that he was concentrating hard, trying to keep up with the deluge of information.

She knew he would want to go online and check out some of the details.

“But he never caught you,” she said to Jihoon.

“Not until today.” He shrugged and smiled sadly. “It was inevitable, I suppose. Throughout the twentieth century, he kept getting closer. He was becoming more powerful, his organization was melding ancient magic and modern technology. Hyori and I hid out in Newfoundland for a long time until he loosed Dire Wolves on us, and then we drifted from city to city, starting on the East Coast in New York in 1901 and gradually moving westward. I suppose it was only a matter of time before he caught up with us, “ he added.

“Cameras, videos, phones and the Internet make it so much harder to remain hidden nowadays. “

“This book… his Codex he was looking for …,” Seungho began.

“The Book of Abraham the Mage,” Jihoon clarified.

“What’s so special about it? “

Jung Jihoon stopped in the middle of the sidewalk so suddenly that the twins walked right past him.

They turned and looked back.

The rather ordinary-looking man spread his arm wide, as if he were about to take a bow.

“Look at me. Look at me! I am older than America. That is what is so special about the book. “

Jihoon lowered his voice and continued urgently.

“But you know something- the secret of life eternal is probably the least of the secrets in the Codex. “

Soyeon suddenly found herself slipping her hand into her brother’s.

He squeezed lightly and she knew, without his saying a word, that he was as frightened as she was.

“With the Codex, Junhyung can set about changing the world.”

“Changing it?” Soyeon’s voice was a raw whisper, and abruptly, the May air felt chilly.

“Changing it how? “ Seungho demanded.

“Remaking it.” Jihoon said softly. “Junhyung and the Dark Elders he serves will remake this world as it was in the unimaginably ancient past. And the only place for humans in it will be as slaves. Or food. “

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