The Alchemyst by Michael Scott Read Free Book Online

floor of the car.
    At the back of the book, two pages were missing, roughly torn out.
    Dee closed his eyes and then licked his lips with a quick flicking movement of his tiny tongue. “The boy,” he rasped, “the boy, when I pulled it from his hand.” He opened his eyes and began to scan the preceding pages carefully. “Maybe they’re not important…,” he murmured, lips moving as he followed the shifting, moving words. He concentrated on the bright illuminated letters at the top of every page, which gave a clue to what followed. Then he stopped abruptly, clutching the book in trembling fingers. When he raised his head, his eyes were blazing. “I’m missing the Final Summoning!” he howled. Yellow sparks danced around his head, and the rear window behind him bloomed a spiderweb of white cracks. Tendrils of yellow-white power dripped from his teeth like saliva. “Go back!” he roared to the driver. “Go back now. No, stop, cancel that order. Flamel’s no fool. They’ll be long gone.” He snatched the phone off the floor and, avoiding Perenelle’s eyes, took a moment to compose himself. He drew in a deep shuddering breath and visibly calmed himself, then dialed. “We have a slight problem,” he said crisply into the phone, voice calm and unemotional. “We seem to be missing a couple of pages from the back of the book. Nothing important, I’m sure. Perhaps you would do me a courtesy,” he said very casually. “You might convey to the Morrigan that I am in need of her services.”
    Dee noticed that Perenelle’s eyes had widened in shock at the mention of the name. He grinned in delight. “Tell her I need her special talents and particular skills.” Then he snapped the phone shut and looked over at Perenelle Flamel. “It would have been so much easier if they had just given me the Codex. Now the Morrigan is coming. And you know what that means.”

CHAPTER SEVEN
    S ophie spotted the rat first.
    The twins had grown up in New York and had spent most of their summers in California, so encountering a rat was nothing new. Living in San Francisco, a port city, one quickly got used to seeing the creatures, especially early in the morning and late at night, when they came out of the shadows and sewers. Sophie wasn’t especially frightened of them, though like everyone else she had heard the horror stories, urban legends and FOAF—friend of a friend—stories about the scavengers. She knew they were mostly harmless unless cornered; she thought she remembered reading somewhere that they could jump to great heights. She’d also read an article in the
New York Times
Sunday magazine that said that there were as many rats in the United States as there were people.
    But this rat was different.
    Sleek and black, rather than the usual filthy brown, it crouched, unmoving, at the mouth of the alleyway, and Sophie could have sworn that its eyes were bright red. And watching them.
    Maybe it was an escaped pet?
    “Ah, you’ve noticed,” Flamel murmured, catching her arm, urging her forward. “We’re being watched.”
    “Who?” Josh asked, confused, turning quickly, expecting to see Dee’s long black car cruising down the street. But there was no sign of any car, and no one seemed to be paying them any special attention. “Where?”
    “The rat. In the alleyway,” Nicholas Flamel said quickly. “Don’t look.”
    But it was too late. Josh had already turned and looked. “By a rat? A rat is watching us: you cannot be serious.” He stared hard at the rat, expecting it to turn and scuttle away. It just raised its head and looked at him, its mouth opening to reveal pointed teeth. Josh shuddered. Snakes and rats: he hated them equally…though not as much as he hated spiders. And scorpions.
    “Rats don’t have red eyes, do they?” he asked, looking at his sister, who, as far as he knew, was afraid of nothing.
    “Not usually,” she said.
    When he turned back, he discovered that there were now two jet-black rats