Key the Steampunk Vampire Girl and the Tower Tomb of Time (9781941240076) by Becket Read Free Book Online

“It’s easy to get lost in here.”
    Along the sides were gas lamps and various kinds of little shops – a hat maker, a candle maker, a brewery, a clock maker, a mechanical horse breeder, and much, much more. The street was filled with merchants and customers of all shapes and sizes. Women were wearing beautiful gowns. Men were wearing tall top hats, three-piece suits, thick coats, and scarves. Over everyone’s fancy attire were strapped the most magnificently metallic mechanisms and gizmos and gadgets. Each contraption looked as unique as a person, for each seemed tailored to especially suit each personality. One man was wearing a large clock face on his chest. Several children had mechanical wind-up toys that spun around them like orbiting moons. One woman was wearing a robotic octopus around her neck like a thick scarf. An older couple was sharing a carriage, before which was trotting a string of steam-powered horses.
    Though still in her nightgown, Key was not bothered by the cold weather. In fact, she was quite used to snow on her bare feet, for the dungeon had been so cold on many nights that more than once Despair froze over. Nevertheless, she still felt embarrassingly underdressed and she wished again that she hadn’t lost her Crinomatic. Maybe Future Key will appear again and give me another one , Key imagined with wishful thinking.
    Miss Broomble boldly led Key, Tudwal, and Pega between a few street performers juggling electricity. They scooted around a nanny leading a gaggle of hologram children. They sidestepped a crowd of businessmen being carried down the street by personal helicopters in the shape of umbrellas. And it dawned on Key then that, as she observed Miss Broomble deftly maneuvering through the crowd, the witch might have been in this place before.
    When they had lunged out of the way of a copper carriage barreling down the street and sputtering out clouds of black smoke, Miss Broomble pulled Key onto the sidewalk and led her another block until they stood before the door of a little darkened shop.
    Soot and snow begrimed the windows, almost completely obscuring them. Key could see some candle flames flickering from somewhere within the shop, but they were only bright enough to show several shadows slinking inside.
    The knocker on this door was similar to the one on the door inside the Doorackle Alleyway – similarly red, similarly ornamented with a gremlin knocker. But the shop door had apparently seen so many hard seasons that its once red color was now dark purple, and its paint was chipped and peeling so badly that the door’s wood had become blackened by the sooty air.
    As Key and Pega did not have any desire to knock on this door either, although Tudwal would have gladly done so if he had been tall enough and had opposable thumbs, Miss Broomble mustered the proper bravery once more and knocked with the brass gremlin.
    Opening the door slowly was a very tall, very thin, and a very gray-skinned butler in a dusty uniform. His cadaverous face showed no emotion other than death. Looming over them all, he spoke no word, but gestured with his sallow hand and sleepy eyes for Miss Broomble and Key to enter. Pega followed them, prodding Tudwal to go before her, for he seemed timid about going past this deathly butler, who was eying Tudwal suspiciously, as if the immortal puppy might make an immortal mess on the rug.
    The shop was a darkly lit office that smelled like a cold, musty cellar, filled with forgotten cobwebs in unswept corners. Mostly Dead Men in business suits and bowler hats were sitting at tall desks and writing with quills on parchment. Some glanced at the vampire and the witch, but most could have cared less with their heavy-lidded eyes fixed upon their parchments, driving their quills at a tortoise’s pace.
    Tudwal eyed these workers doubtfully and he sniffed their tall chairs with greater caution than usual.
    Making slow, lumbering steps, the tall butler led Miss Broomble, Key,