01_-_The_Alchemyst

“Everyone OK?” he asked shakily.
He tilted the rearview mirror down so that he could see into the back.
His twin lay stretched across the wide leather seats, her head on Scatty’s lap.
The Warrior was using a scrap of cloth torn from her T-shirt to wipe the
girl’s forehead. Sophie’s skin was deathly white, and although her eyes were
closed, her eyeballs moved erratically beneath her lids, and she twitched as
if she was having a nightmare. Scatty caught Josh looking at them in the glass
and she smiled in encouragement. “She’s going to be OK,” she said.
“Is there anything you can do?” Josh demanded, glancing at Flamel
sitting next to him. His feelings for the Alchemyst were completely confused
now. On the one hand, he had placed them in terrible danger, and yet Josh had
seen how 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 both hands were scratched from his encounters with the cats. “Let
her sleep, and when 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
continue the conversation with the Alchemyst. He doubted that his sister
would ever be fine again. He’d seen how she looked at him, her eyes blank
and staring: she hadn’t recognized him. He’d listened to the voice that had
come out of her mouth: it wasn’t a voice he’d known. His sister, his twin, had
been utterly changed.
They came up on a sign for Mill Valley, and he turned left. He had no
idea where they were going; he just wanted to get away from the
Shadowrealm. More than that: he wanted to go home, wanted to go back to a
normal life, he wanted to forget that he’d ever come across that ad in the
university newspaper his father had brought home.
Assistant Wanted, Bookshop. We don’t want readers, we want workers.
He’d sent in a résumé 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