Free The Alchemyst by Michael Scott Page A

both drive,” Sophie said. “Well, sort of,” she added.
    “Can either of you ride a horse?” Flamel asked, “or drive a carriage, or a coach-and-four?”
    “Well, no…,” Sophie began.
    “Handle a war chariot while firing a bow or launching spears?” Scatty added. “Or fly a lizard-nathair while using a slingshot?”
    “I have no idea what a lizard-nathair is…and I’m not sure I want to know either.”
    “So you see, you are experienced in certain skills,” Flamel said, “whereas we have other, somewhat older, but equally useful skills.” He shot a sidelong glance at Scathach. “Though I’m not so sure about the nathair flying anymore.”
    Josh pulled away from a stop sign and turned right, heading for the Golden Gate Bridge. “I just don’t know how you could have lived through the twentieth century without being able to drive. I mean, how did you get from place to place?”
    “Public transportation,” Flamel said with a grim smile. “Trains and buses, mainly. They are a completely anonymous method of travel, unlike airplanes and boats. There is far too much paperwork involved in owning a car, paperwork that could be traced directly to us, no matter how many aliases we used.” He paused and added, “And besides, there are other, older methods of travel.”
    There were a hundred questions Josh wanted to ask, but he was concentrating furiously on controlling the heavy car. Although he knew
how
to drive, the only vehicles he’d actually driven were battered Jeeps when they accompanied their parents on a dig. He’d never driven in traffic before, and he was terrified. Sophie had suggested that he pretend it was a computer game. That helped, but only a little. In a game, when you crashed, you simply started again. Here, a crash was for keeps.
    Traffic was slow across the famous bridge. A long gray stretch limo had broken down in the inside lane, causing a bottleneck. As they approached, Sophie noticed that there were two dark-suited figures crouched under the hood on the passenger’s side. She realized she was holding her breath as they drew close, wondering if the figures were Golems. She heaved a sigh as they pulled alongside and discovered that the men looked like harassed accountants. Josh glanced at his sister and attempted a grin, and she knew he had been thinking the same thing.
    Sophie twisted in her seat, and turned to look back at Flamel and Scatty. In the darkened, air-conditioned interior of the SUV, they seemed so ordinary: Flamel looked like a fading hippy, and Scatty, despite her rather military dress sense, wouldn’t have looked out of place behind the counter at The Coffee Cup. The red-haired girl had propped her chin on her fist and was staring through the darkened glass across the bay toward Alcatraz.
    Nicholas Flamel dipped his head to follow the direction of her gaze. “Haven’t been there for a while,” he murmured.
    “We did the tour,” Sophie said.
    “I liked it,” Josh said quickly. “Sophie didn’t.”
    “It was creepy.”
    “And so it should be,” Flamel said quietly. “It is home to an extraordinary assortment of ghosts and unquiet spirits. Last time I was there, it was to put to rest an extremely ugly Snakeman.”
    “I’m not sure I even want to know what a Snakeman is,” Sophie muttered, then paused. “You know, a couple of hours ago, I could never have imagined myself saying something like that?”
    Nicholas Flamel sat back in the comfortable seats and folded his arms across his chest. “Your lives—yours and your brother’s—are now forever altered. You know that, don’t you?”
    Sophie nodded. “That’s beginning to sink in now. It’s just that everything’s happening so fast that it’s hard to take it all in. Mud men, magic, books of spells, rats…” She looked at Scathach. “Ancient warriors…”
    Scatty dipped her head in acknowledgment.
    “And of course, a six-hundred-year-old alchemyst…” Sophie stopped, a sudden thought