The Glass Casket by Mccormick Templeman Read Free Book Online

the square?” Lareina asked, and the girl sighed.
    “Fine, I suppose. Not much of interest, and no one will talk to me. They stare at me, though.”
    “That’s to be expected, my child. You are growing to be quite lovely. People are bound to appreciate it,” she said, but her heart was heavy at the prospect. She’d been noticing for a while that Fiona was no longer a child, that before her eyes she was transforming into a truly beautiful creature. Yet Lareina also knew that too much beauty could be a dangerous thing, and that often it was best to be just on the pretty side of plain. The pretty side of plain was no longer an option for Fiona, however, and now more than ever, Lareina wanted to keep the girl in her sights.
    “I don’t think they like me,” Fiona said, staring into the fireplace, her eyes dancing along with the flames.
    “They will once they get to know you.”
    “I’m not so sure. They look at me like I’m an infection,” she said.
    “You must be imagining things,” Lareina said, massaging her stepdaughter’s shoulders. “We will grow to like it here. I promise you. We just need to settle in.”
    “I’m afraid,” Fiona said without really meaning to. Sometimes when she was with her stepmother, her heart opened up and unexpected things came spilling forth, things she herself did not know that she felt.
    “Shhh, now,” Lareina whispered. “Everything will be okay. You’ll see.” And sitting there by the warmth of the fire, gazing out the window and through the veil of snow, both believed that it just might be true.

    That afternoon, Tom and Rowan walked south through the woods to Seelie Lake.
Wolves be damned
, she’d declared, setting off through the trees. When they reached the edge of the frozen lake, he and Rowan lay on their backs atop the cold rocks that stretched along the icy banks, and stared up at the clouds. Crows were gathering up in the branches of a high-reaching pine, and Tom couldn’t help wondering if the birds were watching them as they seemed to watch all the forest creatures. If there really was a wolf about, the crows would know. Would the birds give them warning, he wondered? Or would they watch the humans be slaughtered on the shores of the lake?
    “What did they look like? The men who died on the mountain?” Rowan asked, as if reading his thoughts.
    “Oh, that,” he said, cringing at the memory. “It was awful, Rowan. You don’t need to hear it.”
    “Sometimes you can be so tiresome,” she said, hitting him gently on the shoulder.
    “I’m protective.”
    “You don’t need to protect me,” she laughed. “I’m older than you.”
    “By three months.”
    “A lot happened in those three months, Tom,” she said, turning to face him, her clear blue eyes squinting at him through pale lashes. “I didn’t want to tell you this before, but a lot of secrets were divulged. I was inducted into some really high-ranking societies, stuff you’ll neverunderstand.” Her lips quivered as she suppressed her laughter.
    “Is that so?” Tom laughed. “This explains why you so often need me to point out when you’ve failed to twin your stockings,” he said, pointing to her mismatched pair.
    “Mine is a life of the mind,” she proclaimed, making a grand gesture with her arms. “Let others worry about my feet! Now, please, Tom. My curiosity is killing me. Tell me about Beggar’s Drift.”
    Tom’s eyes grew dark. “Ro,” he said. “What I saw up there, I don’t know how to explain it. It’s a bad place, everyone knows that, but if you could have seen that man … his eyes, his tongue—they were gone, torn from him. What could do a thing like that?”
    Rowan cocked her head to the side. “But everyone’s been saying it was a wolf. That doesn’t sound like the work of a wolf.”
    Tom nodded, relieved to hear her speak aloud what had been troubling him. “That’s what I thought. It seemed to me that it was something … beyond wild animals, but no