The Alchemyst Chapter 20 Summary

How It All Goes Down

  • Back with Dr. John Dee in San Francisco, we learn he's starting to feel out of control.
  • He's feeling pressured by people and beings too eager for results. 
  • We guess it ain't easy being an Elder's henchman.
  • Dee's memories flash back in time to when he first met Nicholas Flamel. 
  • Dr. John Dee was born in 1527 and was Queen Elizabeth's advisor, translator, mathematician, astrologer, and spy. 
  • He pretended to speak only English, Latin, and Greek, but he actually spoke a dozen more languages, which allowed him to get lots of secret information for the Queen. 
  • He always signed documents with the code name 007—just like our James Bond. 
  • Then, when he recognized Flamel and his wife at a hospital they had built, the Flamels agreed to take Dee on as an apprentice.
  • Bad idea.
  • One night Dee was studying in his tiny attic room in Flamel's house when a gargoyle crawled down the chimney and invited him to meet at the top of the cathedral of Notre Dame. 
  • Dee followed and waited on the roof, looking out at the picturesque Paris nighttime sky. He wished he could fly. 
  • That's when the Morrigan showed up and told him the whole story of the Elder Race, and how the Elders want to return to being the rulers of mankind. 
  • The Morrigan promised that Dee would be the master of the entire world if only he would steal the book and give it to the Elders. 
  • Uh, duh. Dee agreed. 
  • Since then, he has battled many creatures in many lands, but he has never been truly scared—until now.
  • That's it for Dr. John Dee's story. 
  • Now back to the present, where he is sitting in his car outside the entrance to a Bel Air estate in Los Angeles.
  • He is greeted by Senuhet, a tall, bald, olive-skinned man who is Bastet's minion. His eyes are painted with kohl in horizontal lines—the makeup of ancient Egypt. 
  • Senuhet leads Dee down through underground caverns to meet Bastet—the Egyptian goddess with the body of the young woman and the head of the cat. 
  • Dee tells her that the Morrigan, Bastet's niece, says it is time to join her to attack Hekate's Shadowrealm. 
  • An overjoyed Bastet tells her thousands of cats that it is time to hunt. Time to feed.