01_-_The_Alchemyst

“You’re not the boss of me,” Josh snapped, but his voice was shaky.
Josh had a fear of snakes going back to the time he’d gone camping with their
father and had fallen into a rattlesnake nest. Luckily, the deadly serpent had
just fed and had chosen to ignore him, giving him the seconds he’d needed to
scramble away. He’d had nightmares about snakes for weeks after that, and
still did occasionally, when he was particularly stressed—usually at exam
time. The huge, serpentlike pterosaurs belonged to his darkest nightmares,
and when they’d come hopping out of the night, he’d felt his heart hammering
so powerfully that the skin on his chest had actually pulsed. When that longtoothed
face had leaned toward him, he’d been sure he was going to faint.
Even now, he could feel the icy sweat trickling along the length of his spine.
Sophie and Josh followed Scathach through Hekate’s house. The twins
were aware now of movement in the shadows, floorboards creaking
underfoot, wooden walls popping and cracking as if the house were moving,
shifting, growing. They were also conscious that the voices, the screams and
shouts of earlier, had fallen silent.
Scathach led them to an empty circular room where Nicholas Flamel
was waiting. He stood facing away from them, hands clasped tightly against
the small of his back, and stared out into the shadowed night. The only light
in the room came from the huge moon now starting to dip toward the horizon.
One side of the room was bathed in harsh silver-white light, the other was in
darkness. Scatty crossed the room to stand beside the Alchemyst. She folded
her arms across her chest and turned to the twins, her face an expressionless
mask.
“You could have been killed,” Flamel said very softly, without turning
around. “Or worse.”
“You can’t keep us here,” Josh said quickly, his voice sounding too loud
in the silence. “We’re not your prisoners.”
The Alchemyst glanced over his shoulder. He was wearing his tiny
round glasses and, in the gloom, his eyes were hidden behind the silver
circles. “No, you’re not,” he said very quietly, his French accent suddenly
pronounced. “You are the prisoners of circumstance, of coincidence and
chance…if you believe in such things.”