Spellbinder by Helen Stringer Read Free Book Online Page A

walked to the front door as he always did, turned his key in the latch, and went inside.
    Belladonna pulled a chair up to the window. This was much better than sitting by the television; she didn’t feel at all worried when she could see that everything was normal.
    She was still watching when Aunt Deirdre arrived. She careened around the corner in a small green sports car that hugged the road and made a noise like therumbling of the earth. She parked it outside the house and unfolded herself from the driver’s seat.
    Aunt Deirdre was stick-thin and very tall. She had blond hair and an imperious manner that dared anyone to get in her way. She wore impeccable suits that showed quite a bit of leg when she sat down but might as well have been trimmed with barbed wire for all the encouragement they offered the opposite sex. Belladonna had always been fascinated by her aunt and more than a little afraid. She went to the front door and opened it.
    Deirdre Nightshade strode in. “Lock that.”
    Belladonna did as she was told and followed Aunt Deirdre into the sitting room. Her aunt marched straight to the window and drew the curtains, then she turned the lights on and the television off. She poured herself a whiskey and soda from the cabinet, sat down, and looked at Belladonna.
    “Tell me what happened.”
    Belladonna related the events of the evening again. She also mentioned the incident with the dishwasher the night before, Elsie’s concern that something was wrong, and, as an afterthought, Lady Mary’s vanishing baby. Aunt Deirdre nodded.
    “Well,” she said, “we can’t do anything tonight. Help me make up the bed in the spare room.” She led the way upstairs.
    “Will I be going to school tomorrow?”
    “Of course. Why ever not?”
    “Well, you made it sound—”
    Deirdre opened the linen cupboard and whisked some sheets, blankets, and a pillow out. She marched into the chilly spare room. “Just make sure you’re home before dark.”
     
    The next morning, Belladonna drifted downstairs. She hadn’t slept much, tossing from one side of her bed to the other and replaying the disappearance of her father in her head. On the brief occasions when she did manage to get to sleep, her dreams were almost instantly interrupted by the yellow eyes of the black dog, looking up at her and
knowing
. She ended up spending most of the night staring at the strip of sky between her bedroom curtains and waiting for the stars to flicker off again. It seemed that they ought to, that the disappearance of her parents and the arrival of the monstrous black dog should have some reflection in the natural world. But the stars stayed where they were and everything seemed the same, even though it wasn’t.
    Aunt Deirdre was already downstairs by the time Belladonna got there. She had put out a bowl and a spoon with a paper napkin to one side, but most of the kitchen table was taken up with her laptop and stacks of paper, which she riffled through with one hand while holding her mobile to her ear with the other and giving some poor underling hell for presuming not tobe at work at seven o’clock in the morning. Belladonna sighed and fetched the cereal out of the cupboard. She pushed it around the bowl for a while, but Aunt Deirdre showed very little sign of getting off the phone. One call followed another and they all seemed to involve the person at the other end getting shouted at for not doing something that she told them to do yesterday. Belladonna reflected that working in big business in London sounded worse than school; at least they got breaks and Miss Parker didn’t call them at home at the crack of dawn to see if they’d done their homework.
    She emptied the cereal into the bin, stuck the bowl in the dishwasher, and grabbed her bag. As she pulled on her coat, Deirdre covered the phone with her hand.
    “I’ll see you this evening,” she said. “Remember, get home before dark. What?! Well, what’s it doing there? I told you to