The Alchemyst Read Online Free Page B

old-fashioned etching of a sharp-faced man with a triangular beard. The clothes were different, but there was no doubt that this was the man they had encountered.
    Sophie took the book from Nick’s hands. “It says here that Dee was born in 1527,” she said very softly. “That would make him nearly five hundred years old.”
    Josh came to stand beside his sister. He stared at the picture, then looked around the room. If he breathed deeply, he could still smell the peculiar odors of…magic. That was what he had been smelling—not mint and rotten eggs, but the scent of magic. “Dee knew you,” he said slowly. “He knew you well,” he added.
    Fleming moved about the shop, picking up odd items and dropping them to the floor again. “Oh, he knows me,” he said. “He knows Perry, too. He’s known us for a long time…a very long time.” He looked over at the twins, his almost colorless eyes now dark and troubled. “You’re involved now, more’s the pity, so the time for lies and subterfuge is past. If you are to survive, you will need to know the truth.”
    Josh and Sophie looked at one another. They had both picked up the phrase “If you are to survive…”
    “My real name is Nicholas Flamel. I was born in France in the year 1330. Perry’s real name is Perenelle: she is ten years older than me. But don’t ever tell her I said that,” he added hastily.
    Josh felt his stomach churn and rumble. He was going to say “Impossible!” and laugh and be irritated with Nick for telling them such a stupid story. But he was bruised and aching from being flung across the room by…by what? He remembered the Golem that had reached for Perry—
Perenelle
—and how it had dissolved into powder at her touch.
    “What…what are you?” Sophie asked the question that was forming on her twin’s lips. “What
are
you and Perenelle?”
    Nick smiled, but his face was cold and humorless, and for an instant, he almost resembled Dee. “We are legend,” he said simply. “Once—a long time ago—we were simple people, but then I bought a book, the Book of Abraham the Mage, usually called the Codex. From that moment on, things changed. Perenelle changed. I changed. I became the Alchemyst.
    “I became the greatest alchemyst of all time, sought after by kings and princes, by emperors and even the Pope himself. I discovered the secret of the philosopher’s stone hidden deep in that book of ancient magic: I learned how to turn ordinary metal into gold, how to change common stones into precious jewels. But more than this, much more, I found the recipe for a formulation of herbs and spells that keeps disease and death at bay. Perenelle and I became virtually immortal.” He held up the torn pages in his hand. “This is all that remains of the Codex. Dee and his kind have been seeking the Book of the Mage for centuries. Now they have it. And Perenelle, too,” he added bitterly.
    “But you said the Book is useless without these pages,” Josh reminded him quickly.
    “That is true. There is enough in the Book to keep Dee busy for centuries, but these pages are vital,” Nick agreed. “Dee will be coming back for them.”
    “There’s something else, though, isn’t there?” Sophie asked quickly. “Something more.” She knew he was holding something back; adults always did. Their parents had taken months to tell Josh and her that they would be spending the summer in San Francisco.
    Nick glanced at her sharply, and once again she was reminded of the look Dee had given her earlier: there was something cold and inhuman in it. “Yes…there is something more,” he said hesitantly. “Without the Book, Perenelle and I will age. The formulation for immortality must be brewed afresh every month. Within the full cycle of the moon, we will wither and die. And if we die, then the evil we have so long fought against will triumph. The Elder Race will claim this earth again.”
    “The Elder Race?” Josh asked, his voice rising and