The Alchemyst Read Online Free

pile of books that cushioned his fall. Black spots and darts of rainbow light moved across his eyes every time he blinked.
    Dee’s gray shape loomed over Josh, then his gloved hand reached down for the book. “Mine, I think.”
    Josh’s grip tightened, but Dee simply wrenched the book from his hand.
    “You. Leave. My. Brother. Alone.”
Sophie Newman brought the broom down five times on Dee’s back, once for every word.
    Dee barely glanced at her. Clutching the book in one gloved hand, he caught the broom in the other and muttered a single word, and it immediately withered and turned to ragged pulpy splinters in Sophie’s hands. “You’re lucky I’m in a good humor today,” he whispered, “else I’d do the same to you.” Then Dee and his two remaining Golems swept out of the devastated bookshop, carrying Perry Fleming between them, and slammed the door closed. There was a long moment of silence, and then the last remaining undisturbed shelf of books clattered to the floor.

CHAPTER FOUR
    “I suppose calling the police is out of the question.” Sophie Newman leaned against a precariously listing bookcase and wrapped her arms around her body to stop herself from shaking. She was surprised that her voice sounded so calm and reasonable. “We’ve got to tell them that Perry’s been kidnapped….”
    “Perry’s not in any danger just yet.” Nick Fleming was sitting on one of the lower rungs of a short stepladder. He was holding his head in his hands and breathing deeply, coughing occasionally as he tried to clear his lungs of dust and grit. “But you’re right, we’re not going to the police.” He managed a wan smile. “I’m not sure what we could say to the police that would make any sense to them.”
    “I’m not sure that it makes much sense to us either,” Josh said. He was sitting on the only unbroken chair left in the bookshop. Although he’d broken no bones, he was bruised all over and knew he was going to turn several really interesting shades of purple over the next couple of days. The last time he’d felt like this was when he’d been run over by three guys on the football field. Actually, this felt worse. At least then, he knew what was happening.
    “I think that perhaps gas escaped into the shop,” Nick suggested cautiously, “and what we’ve all experienced and seen is nothing more than a series of hallucinations.” He stopped, looking at Sophie and Josh in turn.
    The twins lifted their heads to look at him, identical expressions of disbelief on their faces, bright blue eyes still wide with shock. “Lame,” Josh said finally.
    “Very lame,” Sophie agreed.
    Nick shrugged. “Actually, I thought it was a pretty good explanation. It covered the smells, the explosion in the shop and any…any
peculiar
things you
thought
you might have seen,” he finished hurriedly.
    Adults, Sophie had decided a long time before, were really bad at making up good excuses. “We didn’t imagine those things,” she said firmly. “We didn’t imagine the Golems.”
    “The what?” Josh asked.
    “The big guys were Golems; they were made out of mud,” his sister explained. “Perry told me.”
    “Ah, she did, did she?” Fleming murmured. He looked around the devastated shop and shook his head. It had taken less than four minutes to completely trash it. “I’m surprised he brought Golems. They are usually so unreliable in warmer countries. But they served his purpose. He got what he came for.”
    “The book?” Sophie asked. She had caught a glimpse of it in Josh’s hand before the small man pulled it free. Although she was standing in a shop full of books, and their father owned a huge library of antiquarian books, she had never seen anything like that particular one before. It looked as if it was bound in tarnished metal.
    Fleming nodded. “He’s been looking for that for a long time,” he said softly, his pale eyes lost and distant. “A very long time.”
    Josh rose slowly to his feet,