Chapter 1: Waking Reflections

Holly Godwin awoke in a cold sweat. She had no doubt that the string of seemingly random images was a message intended for her. Holly was both a djinn and a prophet, and this combination of talents made some other djinn in London hesitant to talk to her, for fear that Holly might have seen the skeletons that they kept in their closets. Of course, the visions and prophesies that Holly received were nothing so trivial.
Holly blinked a couple more times and sat up, yawning and stretching. Then, still feeling tired, she fell back on her pillows and stared at the mural that had been painted on her ceiling.

As she stared at the painted starry sky, a scene that was so realistic that Holly felt as though it were still around midnight, she reflected on the adventure she'd had last summer. Holly dearly wanted to go on another adventure, but with her djinn father, Nimrod, being so insistent about giving Holly and her best friend, Cas Malone, a good education, they had all remained in London since September. Holly had lost count of the number of books she'd read, mostly on Nimrod's pushing, but Cas kept a careful list, which was now about 1153 books long. Nothing stopped Cas from reading when he could.

Holly's mind wandered from Cas to Cas's evil elder brother, Azazel Teer. Azazel had tried to incinerate all of Europe last Summer, and it was only because of Holly calling upon Gabriel the archangel that the millions of people who lived on the European continent were still alive. Holly wondered why she'd had a vision of Azazel, what it all meant. Was Azazel hatching a new plan? Had he already hatched a new plan, and was now implementing it? Holly couldn't say.

Her thoughts were interrupted by her older brother Mark, hammering loudly on her door. "Time to get up, kiddo!" he shouted at her. Holly groaned. Mark was her brother, and she loved him, but sometimes it seemed as though he could be the most annoying person on Earth.

"Yeah, I'm coming." She mumbled in reply. For all of her deep thinking, Holly was still very tired.

"I'm sure you are, Holly. Don't forget to wear your hijab!" Holly groaned again. Mark was getting more and more insistent about Holly 'conforming to the Muslim dress code,' as he put it. Before they had come to live with Nimrod in London, Mark had rarely insisted that Holly do anything, but now he was more bossy than ever. It seemed, to Holly, that her brother was being entirely too protective of her. It may have been that Mark had been rattled by the danger Holly had been placed in last summer, but all the same, Holly hadn't given up fighting Mark's edict.

After she heard Mark make his way, noisily, down the old wooden staircase down the hall, Holly got dressed, as she usually did, very purposefully leaving her favourite red paisley print hijab draped across the back of a chair, but putting on her sleeve-guards. She braided her hair, which had grown several inches (with the help of some djinn power,) and wandered downstairs to the kitchen where Mark and Mr. Groanin, Nimrod's butler, were already busy cooking breakfast.

"What are you making?" Holly asked, trying to look past her brother at whatever was in the frying pan. Mark turned around, and cursed something in Arabic, probably the only curse he knew.

"Didn't I tell you to wear your hijab?" He asked Holly, rather crossly. "Now, go back upstairs and put one of them on, or I promise you, you're not getting fed!"

Holly rolled her eyes. "We have this argument every morning, brother mine. I don't see the point of it anymore!"

"Yeah, neither do I. Especially since I always win. Now, upstairs, and when you come back down, you need to have your hijab on. Go on, scram!" Mark brandished a steel spatula at her, and Holly rolled her eyes again, but went back upstairs to do as he bade her to.

On the stairs, Holly almost ran into Nimrod.

"Good morning, my child," Nimrod greeted Holly with a smile. Then he noticed her less-than-pleased demeanor. "I take it that Mark is threatening to starve you again, is he?"

Holly nodded darkly. "He's just lucky that it's winter. If he tries to make me wear that thing in the summertime..." Holly didn't finish her thought, but sighed, and gave her father a good-morning hug. "I can't do anything about it now, though. So I guess I ought to do as he says until I can make him change his mind. I don't know what his deal is, though! It's just irritating!"

Nimrod patted her consolingly on the back. "You're growing up, Holly. Mark just wants what's best for you. You're really all that he's got to hold on to now."

Holly heaved a sigh. "As usual, you're right, dad. Anyway, have you seen Cas? Or is he oversleeping again?" Nimrod shrugged, and allowed Holly to continue up the stairs and to her room.

Fixing her hair and putting on the hijab was a matter of a couple minutes, and on her way back down to breakfast, Holly banged loudly on her best friend's bedroom door.

"Wake up, Cas!" she shouted, and a replying grunt came from the other side. "We're not going to wait on you again, y'know!"

"Yeah, I know. Just a minute." Cas was as good as his word, and about a minute later, he appeared at his door, looking disheveled, and otherwise exhausted.

"You were up reading again, weren't you?" Holly smiled. Cas yawned and nodded, straightening his t-shirt.

"Yup. That's what Gabriel told me to do, after all. You can't just ignore an order given to you by an archangel, you know." Cas yawned again.

Holly punched him playfully on the shoulder. "Come on, then. Mark and Groanin are already making breakfast, and I just passed Nimrod on the stairs, so up and at 'em, best bud!" Holly dragged Cas down the staircase and to the dining room, where Nimrod was already seated, waiting for them.

"Mark says that they're almost done in the kitchen. And he'll be quite pleased to see that you've decided to wear your hijab, Holly." he said, smiling and puffing away at a cigar, as he usually was. Holly and Cas, being djinn, didn't mind the smoke the cigar generated; indeed, they were grateful for it, the weather outside being quite unusually cold, even for London. Nimrod smiled as he watched the two young djinn inhale some of the smoke. "I don't know if I ever told you this, but smoking is actually good for djinn. It's terribly bad for mundanes, of course, but we're finally beginning to get the point across that they can't do everything we can." Nimrod blew a smoke ring that was, unusually for him, actually shaped like a smoke ring. He quickly blew another, slightly smaller ring, and sent it through the middle of the first before it dissipated. Holly and Cas smiled at Nimrod's trick, and not two seconds later, Mark and Groanin came through the kitchen door with the food.

By now, Holly, Cas, and Mark had all become quite accustomed to the food, and very much preferred it over the high-preservative American food they had been eating for the past years. They finished off the meal fairly quickly, which was saying something, as Mark and Groanin had cooked quite a bit of food.

Nimrod sat back in his seat and lit another cigar. "Well," he began amiably, as though he were about to announce some great treat for them all. "I have some news for you all. We're headed to Egypt tonight."

Cas, who had just taken a sip of orange juice, nearly spit it out in surprise, but restrained himself when Holly gave him a cold stare.

"Don't. You. Dare." she said, making each word sound deadly, and Cas eventually was able to force himself to swallow the orange juice. Satisfied that her best friend was no longer about to spray his orange juice all over her, Holly turned back to Nimrod primly. "Where in Egypt are we going?" she asked, very politely.

Nimrod, who seemed not to notice Cas's predicament, answered with a question. "Do you know who Ptolemy is, Holly?" He asked, smiling. Slowly, Holly nodded. "Then you ought to know where we're headed." Holly and Cas processed this for a moment, before Cas finally came up with the answer.

"Alexandria? Awesome!" He shouted. This shout earned him a disapproving glance from Mark, who otherwise said nothing. Holly suspected that Mark had known of this plan all along, and had not told either Holly or Cas anything. Holly had to admit, Mark could be a pretty good actor when he put his mind to it.

"You have the whole day ahead of you to pack," Nimrod told them. "The plane leaves at 21:30." Cas leapt up from the table.

"All right!" he said, putting on a great show of enthusiasm, and dashed away upstairs to begin. Holly, by contrast, was somewhat more suspicious of Nimrod's motives for taking them to Alexandria. It had to do with her vision from the previous night. Somehow, she felt that Mr. Peters' dilemma had something to do with the man who had founded Alexandria over two thousand years before.

"Why are we going to Alexandria?" she asked. Nimrod tried to look innocent.

"Oh, no reason in particular. You and Cas just seemed to take so well to Egypt the last time that we were there, that I thought I'd show you two an even more fascinating and wonderful city than Cairo." Nimrod told his daughter. She immediately was able to tell that this was not the truth. At least, not the whole truth.

"That's great," she said. "I guess. I just thought that it might have something to do with Azazel. Guess I was wrong." Holly stood up, gathered her dishes, and took them into the kitchen, leaving Nimrod and Mark behind to talk without her there to listen.