01_-_The_Alchemyst

“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