A Most Magical Girl - Karen Foxlee Page 0,73

facedown, crying.

“Get up, you big baby,” said Kitty.

Hafwen lifted her tearstained troll face. “I want Annabel back,” she said. “Why did the wind take her?”

Kitty sighed and took Hafwen’s hand and helped her to her feet. She wished the carriage had taken the troll as well.

The wind had lifted up the fog in the street, and the moon now shone down on them. It turned the writing on the stick silvery. All the fear had gone out of the place with the departure of the flying shadowling carriage, but it was now somewhere else in the city. Kitty had to go where that fear went. She knew it. The way was there in her worn little boots. She needed no map drawn upon her skin. The whole of London was inside her head, all its leaning lanes and ragged roads, all its grand squares, all its locked gardens and last meadows.

“Hush,” she said quite gently to the troll now. “I must listen for the way.”

The trouble with Annabel Grey, she thought, was that she made you love her however hard you tried not to and she was always needing to be saved.

“A young lady’s most enviable talent is her artful conversation.”

—Miss Finch’s Little Blue Book (1855)

Inside was very dark, and it took Annabel’s eyes time to adjust after the bright moonlight. She and Mr. Angel were in a black parlor, and everywhere, she heard the rustling of shadowlings. They hung upside down from the ceiling and whispered against the walls. They brushed her skin as she passed. They hissed her name quietly and rattled their claws.

The house rumbled around her. It shuddered and shook.

“What is that noise?” she whispered. There was a grinding sound coming from above. A rhythmical thumping and rasping.

“It is the Dark-Magic Extracting Machine,” said Mr. Angel.

He led Annabel down a murky corridor and into the dining hall, where a table was set with two places. When they entered, the shadowlings erupted from the walls. They swarmed until Mr. Angel raised his wand and commanded them to be quiet. They disappeared into the ceiling and the folds of the curtains again.

“Be seated,” Mr. Angel said. He took his place at the end of the table. Annabel peered at him through the dimness.

“We will eat before the ending,” he said, and his voice was so soft that she could hardly hear him. “A last supper, shall we say.”

She saw him smile his lopsided, half-melancholy smile.

“You are as fair as your mother is dark,” he said. “But also so like her.”

Annabel thought it was very familiar of him to talk of such things. She did not reply but instead pretended to be interested in her napkin, which she placed upon her knee.

He laughed a small, papery, whispery laugh. “We shall eat, and then I will tell you the story of your mother,” he said.

“Mr. Angel, please pardon, but I don’t believe there is anything you can tell me of my own mother,” said Annabel, and she was surprised at the strength in her voice.

She felt angry. She did not like him. She did not want his version at all.

“Oh, but there is, child,” said Mr. Angel, and he began to laugh again, louder this time.

He took his Black Wand and waved it at the table, and food appeared on Annabel’s plate. It was a roast, and the smell of it brought water to Annabel’s mouth—she could not help it.

“Eat, and I will tell you,” he said. “And then it will be time to feed you to the machine.”

Kitty stood before Euston Station. She coughed, and her chest hurt. She would curl into a ball and sleep if she could. She knew places nearby, the colonnade platform or the rail yards farther north, but now was no time for sleep. She shivered in the new wind but was glad for it. On the new wind she could find her bearings. Her way to Mr. Angel’s dark mansion.

“Be quick,” said Hafwen, who didn’t like the wind. She was used to close tunnels and damp, dark places. The wind had taken her humanling friend.

“Be quiet,” said Kitty.

The fog was gone, and the moonlight had woken London. Kitty listened to its scratchings and passages. Mail carriages previously waylaid were moving again, and out on the river was the sound of whistles and horns. Cattle were being herded at Smithfield, and all through Covent Garden wagons were rumbling. Above it all she heard the sudden clear voice of the quarter bells at the Clock