Razorhurst by Justine Larbalestier Read Free Book Online Page B

shook harder.
    Focus. Where had the lodger gone? To the police? The shakes were in her hands now. She put them behind her back.
    “We should go,” Dymphna said. “Your lodger …”
    “Miss Pattinson won’t say nothing to no one. She’s here to escape her husband. Ain’t even her real name. She won’t do nothing that’ll help him find her.”
    “Her old man tried to dead her,” one of the smaller Darcys announced.
    “With an axe,” another added breathlessly.
    Dymphna breathed in sharply. Did it have to be an axe?
    Kelpie turned to look at her and then away.
    Dymphna shivered. She had to calm herself.
    Sheep’s brains.
    Dymphna’s mother used to make brains for her and her twin sisters when they were wee. Strained so that they became a delicate, tiny-bubbled sauce. They called it fluffy. It was the one savoury dish Mama always prepared, though Isla, their cook, made most of their food.
    Mama had made it for them whenever they were upset. When the littlies, faces streaked with tears, begged, “Fluffy, please, Mama.” Or when Dymphna’s leg started shaking. She’d had these tell-tale tremors all her life. Set off by anxiety, by fear, by death.
    Mrs. Darcy handed a half-full bowl of pale, grey mess to Dymphna. The uneven, muddy porridge was not fluffy. “You’ll have to share.”
    Dymphna gave the sludge to Kelpie, who ate until she was scraping the spoon at nothing. Dymphna didn’t wonder at it. There was almost no meat on the girl’s bones.
    Mrs. Darcy and Neal Darcy stared at Kelpie. The girl kept her eyes low.
    “When’s the last time you ate, girl?” Mrs. Darcy asked. “It wasn’t when I gave you that scrap of bread, was it?”
    “Her bones are sticking out,” one of the little Darcys said.
    “Most everyone’s bones stick out round here,” an older Darcy said.
    “Not like hers. She’s like old Mr. Farrow’s horse that fell downdead in the middle of Crown Street. Nothing but bones with a bit of skin tying them together.”
    Dymphna saw the suppressed smile in Neal’s eyes and smiled too. She liked a fella who could laugh. Jimmy was not much for laughing.
    “Shush, Eoin,” Mrs. Darcy snapped. “Don’t repeat what you don’t understand.”
    “I understand bein’ hungry!”
    Dymphna could see that all the Darcy children understood that.
    “Shush, Eoin.”
    Mrs. Darcy opened the cupboard behind her and unwrapped a half loaf of grey bread. Dymphna doubted much wheat had gone into the making of it. Mrs. Darcy cut off a bit, leaning heavily on the knife, and handed it to Kelpie.
    The girl took the bread and ate it as though she worried that Mrs. Darcy might change her mind and snatch it back. Mrs. Darcy handed her another piece. The girl gobbled that down too.
    Mrs. Darcy shook her head.
    “You’ll be all right, Kelpie,” Neal said. “I promise.”
    Kelpie edged closer to the back door, scrupulously avoiding Jimmy. Dymphna could see she didn’t like going through ghosts. Jimmy moved closer to Kelpie. The girl twitched.
    “You can stay with us, love,” Mrs. Darcy said. Neal smiled.
    “There’s no room—” one of the younger Darcys began.
    “I’m looking after her,” Dymphna said.
    A factory whistle sounded. Then another and another.
    “Time to finish up,” Mrs. Darcy announced. “Got to get youse all to school. Mary, you with the dishes. Seamus, take the little ones out to wash.”
    “
Ma
,” Seamus whined.
    “Now.”
    Seamus led the three youngest through Jimmy, not a shiver among them, out back to the rusted tub, but not before shooting a look at Mary. The back door crashed shut behind them.
    “Upstairs,” Mrs. Darcy said, pushing Dymphna towards the stairs. In any other situation, Dymphna would have let the woman know how much she presumed. “You too, Kelpie.”

The Angel of Death
    They called Miss Dymphna Campbell the Angel of Death because every man she was with for more than a couple of days wound up dead.
    It started as a joke.
    But some believed that she