A Bitter Magic by Roderick Townley Read Free Book Online Page B

curve brings me a faint scent of flowers.
    Heavy thudding above me. Coming nearer. But Uncle Asa’s outside!
    I snatch off my shoes and pad back down the stairs, trying not to make a sound. The footsteps are louder and closer. I make it to the bottom just as Janko, my uncle’s assistant, clumps into view.
    “What you do here, jong lady?” His voice is heavy and slow, as if words aren’t natural to him.
    I take too long to answer. He grabs my arm, hard enough to leave a mark. “You were going up dere, no?”
    My heart’s blasting away.
    He shoves me so roughly I bang against the wall. I clutch my shoes to my chest, an image of my mother flashing through my brain. How disappointed she would be.
You’re a Thummel. Act like one!
    “Guess I took a wrong turn,” I murmur.
    Janko purses his lips, deciding whether or not to kill me. “Go,” he grunts.
    I slip past him down the corridor.
    Still shaking, I stick my hand in my pocket and touch my wooden turtle for luck. “In times of stress,” my mother once told me, “always keep your bowler on.” That didn’t make much sense to a girl who would never think of wearing a man’s hat, but it means something now. Always carry on. Don’t give in. In my case, at this moment, it means going down to the pantry and getting a snack.
    The cook—portly Mrs. Quay—and Jenny the pantry maid both like me, the cook, I think, because her own children have all grown up and moved away, and Jenny because she doesn’t have any. I sit on a stool by the work counter and swivel back and forth while they gossip and feed me candied walnuts.
    The subject of gossip today is Uncle Asa’s latest tantrum about dining chairs. The chairs still aren’t right.
    “He can be a terror, your uncle,” says Mrs. Quay.
    I nod, wondering,
Are we ever angry about what we think we are?
    I
have
to find out what he’s doing up there.
    Stuffing an almond cookie in my pocket, I thank the ladies and hurry to the atrium. Through the front gate, I can see Uncle Asa and Janko talking. I’ll never have a better chance than now.
    I run to the second floor, then patter up the spiral staircase to the roof. In a moment, I reach the relief of open air, amid flashing scimitars of red, blue, and yellow light that ricochet between the crystal walls and glass-paved patio. It’s like being inside the sun, without the heat, or on top of a glacier, without the cold. Overhead flies a canopy, green and flapping in the wind, while just beyond, nestled between glittering turrets, stands the laboratory: a squat structure with glass walls to let the sunlight in.
    Uncle Asa’s secret.
    No surprise that the door is locked, but I can see through the glass. On a long worktable, pots of flowersstand like patients in a hospital ward, many of them attached to machines, tubes, cables. And all of them roses: dark red, dark brown, dark purple, in various stages of growth or decay.
    The words from Mother’s letter swirl in my head:
Inhale the scent of a pure black rose. But it must be purest black
.
    Of course. But why does he care so much? Surely his own tricks are spectacular enough. He’s practically a genius at them.
    They’re not enough. Of course they’re not enough. I never realized it so clearly before. It’s real magic he craves.
    Something on the worktable catches my eye, next to the line of test tubes: a jagged piece of glass. Hard to see, but from where I stand, it looks black.
    Black rose.
    Black glass.
    Black…magic?
    All within the dance and dazzle of refracted light.
    I am now desperate to get inside. I examine the door. If I broke one small pane, I might be able to reach through and undo the lock.
Yes, but think about it. When Asa gets back, he’ll see what I’ve done. Then what will I say?
    Cross that bridge later
. I glance around, searching for something, anything. The patio is bare except for a hedge in a long flower box and the canopy overhead. Hanging from it is a metal rod that you turn to retract the