01_-_The_Alchemyst

“I don’t,” Scathach muttered.
“Neither do I,” Nicholas said, turning around. He took off his glasses
and squeezed the bridge of his nose. There were dark circles under his pale
eyes, and his lips were pinched in a thin line. “We are all prisoners of a sort
here—prisoners of circumstance and events. Nearly seven hundred years
ago, I bought a battered secondhand book written in an incomprehensible
language. That day I too became a prisoner, trapped as securely as if I were
behind bars. Two months ago, Josh, you should never have asked me for a
job, and you, Sophie, should never have started working in The Coffee Cup.
But you did, and because you made those decisions you are both standing
here with me tonight.” He paused and glanced at Scathach. “Of course, there
is a school of thought that suggests that you were fated to take the jobs, to
meet Perenelle and me and to come on this adventure.”
Scathach nodded. “Destiny,” she said.
“You’re saying that we have no free will,” Sophie asked, “that all this
was meant to happen?” She shook her head. “I don’t, for one minute, believe
that.” The very idea went against everything she believed; the idea that the
future could be foretold was simply ludicrous.
“Neither do I,” Josh said defiantly.
“And yet,” Flamel said very softly, “what if I were to tell you that the
Book of the Mage—a book written more than ten thousand years ago—
speaks of you?”
“That’s impossible,” Josh blurted, terrified by the implications.
“Ha!” Nicholas Flamel spread his arms wide. “And is this not
impossible? Tonight you encountered the nathair, the winged guardians of
Hekate’s realm. You heard their voices in your heads. Are they not
impossible? And the Torc Allta—are they not equally impossible? These are
creatures that have no right to exist outside of myth.”
“And what about us?” Scathach asked. “Nicholas is nearly seven
hundred years old, and I am so old I have seen empires rise and fall. Are we
not equally impossible?”
Neither Josh nor Sophie could deny that.