Michael Scott - The Alchemyst

Is there anything you can do? Josh demanded, glancing at Flamel sittingnext to him. His feelings for the Alchemyst were completely confused now. Onthe one hand, he had placed them in terrible danger, and yet Josh had seenhow savagely Flamel had fought in their defense.

There is nothing I can do, Flamel said tiredly. She is simply exhausted;nothing more. Nicholas also looked worn out. His clothes were streaked with mud and what might have been blood. Bird feathers stuck in his hair, and bothhands were scratched from his encounters with the cats. Let her sleep, andwhen she awakens in a few hours time, she will be fine. I promise you.

Josh nodded. He concentrated on the road ahead of him, unwilling to continuethe conversation with the Alchemyst. He doubted that his sister would ever befine again. He d seen how she looked at him, her eyes blank and staring: shehadn t recognized him. He d listened to the voice that had come out of hermouth: it wasn t a voice he d known. His sister, his twin, had been utterlychanged.

They came up on a sign for Mill Valley, and he turned left. He had no ideawhere they were going; he just wanted to get away from the Shadowrealm. Morethan that: he wanted to go home, wanted to go back to a normal life, hewanted to forget that he d ever come across that ad in the universitynewspaper his father had brought home.

Assistant Wanted, Bookshop. We don t want readers, we want workers.

He d sent in a r sum and a few days later he d been called for an interview.Sophie had had nothing else to do that day and had come along for company.While she d been waiting, she d gone to the shop across the road for a chailatte. When Josh had come out of The Small Book Shop, beaming delightedlybecause he d been offered the job, he d discovered that Sophie had found ajob as well in The Coffee Cup. They would be working right across the streetfrom each other it was perfect! And it had been perfect until yesterday, whenthis madness had begun. He had trouble believing it had only been yesterday.He looked in the mirror at Sophie again. She was resting quietly now,completely still, but he was relieved to see that a little color had comeback into her cheeks.

What had Hekate done? No what had Flamel done? It all came back to the Alchemyst. This was all his fault. The goddess hadn t wanted to Awaken thetwins she knew the dangers. But Flamel had pushed, and now, because of theAlchemyst, Hekate s Shadowrealm paradise was under attack, and his sister hadbecome a stranger to him.

When Josh had started working in the bookshop for the man he knew then asNick Fleming, he d thought he was a little strange, eccentric, maybe even alittle weird. But as he d gotten to know him, he d come to genuinely like theman, and to admire him. Fleming was everything Josh s father wasn t. He wasfunny, and interested in just about everything Josh did, and his knowledge oftrivia was incredible. Josh knew that his father, Richard, was really onlyhappy and comfortable when he was standing before a lecture hall full ofstudents or buried up to his knees in dirt.

Fleming was different. When Josh quoted Bart Simpson to him, Flemingcountered with Groucho Marx and then went further and introduced Josh to the movies of the Marx Brothers. They shared a love of music even though theirtastes were widely different; Josh introduced Nick to Green Day, Lamb andDido. Fleming recommended Peter Gabriel, Genesis and Pink Floyd. When Joshlet Fleming listen to some ambient and trance on his iPod, Fleming loaned himCDs of Mike Oldfield and Brian Eno. Josh introduced Nick to the world of blogging and showed him his and Sophie s blog, and they had even startedtalking about putting the entire shop s stock online.

In time Josh had come to think of Fleming as the older brother he d alwayswished he had. And now that man had betrayed him.

In fact, he d been lying to Josh from the very beginning. He hadn t even beenNick Fleming. And somewhere at the back of Josh s mind, an ugly question wasbeginning to form. Keeping his voice low and his eyes on the road ahead, heasked, Did you know all this would happen?

Flamel sat back into the deep leather seat and turned to look at Josh. TheAlchemyst was partially in shadow and he clutched the seat belt across hischest with both hands. What would happen? he asked carefully.

You know, I m not a kid, Josh said, his voice rising, so don t talk to me like one. In the rear seat, Sophie muttered a little in her sleep, and heforced himself to lower his voice. Did your precious Book predict all this?He caught a glimpse of Scatty moving in the backseat and realized she hadeased forward to hear the Alchemyst s answer.

Flamel took a long time before replying. Finally, he said. There are some things you must know first about the Book of Abraham the Mage. He saw Josh open his mouth and he pressed on quickly. Let me finish. I always knew theCodex was old, he began, though I never knew just how old. Yesterday Hekatesaid she was there when Abraham created it and that would have been at least ten thousand years ago. The world was a very different place then. Thecommonly held view is that mankind appeared in the middle of the Stone Age.But the truth is very, very different. The Elder Race ruled the earth. Wehave scraps of the truth in our mythology and legends. If you believe thestories, he continued, they possessed the power of flight, they had vesselsthat could cross the oceans, they could control the weather and had evenperfected what we would call cloning. In other words, they had access to ascience that was so advanced, we would call it magic.

Josh started to shake his head. This was too much to take in.

And before you say this is all far-fetched, just think how far the humanrace has come in the past ten years. If someone had told your parents, forexample, that they would be able to carry their entire music library in theirpocket, would they have believed it? Now we have phones that have morecomputing power than was used to send the first rockets into space. We haveelectron microscopes that can see individual atoms. We routinely curediseases that only fifty years ago were fatal. And the rate of change isincreasing. Today we are able to do what your parents would have dismissed asimpossible and your grandparents as nothing short of magical.

You haven t answered my question, Josh said. He was watching his speedcarefully; they couldn t afford to be pulled over.

What I m saying to you is that I do not know what the Elder Race was able todo. Was Abraham making predictions in the Codex, or was he simply writingdown what he had somehow seen? Was he aware of the future, could he actuallysee it? He swiveled around in the seat to look at Scatty. Do you know?

She shrugged, lips curling into a little smile. I m Next Generation; much ofthe Elder World had vanished before I was even born, and Danu Talis was longsunk beneath the waves. I ve no idea what they could do. Could they seethrough time? She paused, thinking. I ve known Elders who seemed to have that gift: Sibyl certainly could, and so could Themis and Melampus, ofcourse. But they were wrong more often than they were right. If my travelshave taught me anything, it is that we create our own future. I ve watchedworld-shaking events come and go without anyone making predictions aboutthem, and I ve also seen prophecies usually to do with the end of theworld that also failed to happen.

A car overtook them on the narrow country road, the first they had seen sofar that morning.

I m going to ask you the question one more time, Josh said, struggling tokeep his voice even. And this time, just give me a straight yes-or-noanswer: was everything that just happened predicted in the Codex?

No, Flamel said quickly.

I hear a but in there somewhere, Scatty said.

The Alchemyst nodded. There is a little but. There is nothing in the bookabout Hekate or the Shadowrealm, nothing about Dee or Bastet or the Morrigan.But He sighed. There are several prophecies about twins.