The Girl With the Iron Touch by Kady Cross Read Free Book Online Page B

clicked and chirped. Bladders filled with liquids hung from hooks, their tubes attached to one larger hub on the outside of the tank. One thicker tube ran inside and was embedded in the man’s forearm. Were they giving him medicine? Sustenance? Poison?
    No, they weren’t trying to kill him. They were trying to save him. As soon as she realized it, she knew who he was.
    “Get away from there!” the old woman snapped, shoving her out of the room. Her voice hummed with an odd metallic echo. She smelled bad, and her gown gaped where it was missing a button, showing a stained chemise beneath the dirty silk. She shut the door.
    “You’ve no business in there. None whatsoever. You were made for one purpose, to learn and understand. To be the perfect vessel. You should be content with that. It is a great honor that awaits you, little one. If you fail, you will doom us all. You will doom him. Now, back to your room. There are books there for you to read.”
    Reading. That was the deciphering of words upon a page so that they told a story. Yes, it was one of her favorite pastimes, though she was certain she’d never done it before. In fact, she knew she hadn’t done it before, because she had no idea how to figure out what the letters meant when they were bunched together.
    As she glanced over her shoulder at the door of the man’s room, she was also certain of something else: if the red-haired girl was her mother, then the man being kept alive in the glass-and-metal tube was her master.
    “Well, this was a rather dismal waste of time,” Finley commented as she and Emily worked their way through the dank darkness of the catacombs toward an exit. While their excursion had yielded a Roman coin, a few skeletons and a host of belligerent rats, it had not produced any information to support Jack’s story.
    She hadn’t even found anything to hit. Kicking rubbish and old bottles didn’t afford the same satisfaction.
    “Do you think Dandy lied to us?” Emily asked.
    Finley shook her head and wrinkled her nose as a whiff of something that smelled suspiciously like sewer assaulted her. “Jack manipulates with charm and power. He doesn’t lie so much as wrap the truth in temptation.”
    “You’ve given it considerable thought, haven’t you?”
    Despite Emily’s teasing tone, Finley stiffened and made a point of shining the small but powerful lamp Emily had given her on the catacomb wall. “He’s my friend.”
    “Oh, now don’t go getting all bent out of shape. I’m just teasing, lass.”
    “I’m sorry, Em. I reckon I’m more thinly skinned than I thought.”
    “No need to apologize. I ought to have known better than to poke you when Griffin’s being such a dunderhead.”
    “Dunderhead,” Finley scoffed, unable to keep from smiling. “I can think of a few stronger names to call him.”
    “No doubt they’d be more succinct.” Her friend grinned but quickly turned serious once more as she shone the beam of her light around them. “Other than some tracks in the dirt I haven’t seen anything out of sorts. You?”
    Finley shook her head. “If the automaton is down here they’ve done a bang-up job of hiding it, and any tracks it might have made.”
    Emily glanced over her shoulder. “I feel like someone is watching us. Did you hear that?”
    “It sounded like a moan.” Finley aimed her light in the direction of the sound. “I don’t see anything.”
    “It could have come from anywhere. This place is bad for echoes.”
    “And plenty of things that could have made such a sound.”
    “Don’t remind me. I’ve heard that there are people who live down here, and strange creatures unlike anything you’d see street-side.”
    Finley scratched her back. “Now you’ve got me thinking we’re being watched, too.” She’d rather take on a stronger opponent she could see than tangle with a weak one she couldn’t.
    “Paranoia’s contagious. I don’t see a ruddy thing and I’m hungry. Let’s go back to the