“Former apprentice! He is most certainly fired!”
“Former apprentice”—the Lady Premiere gritted her teeth—“have conspired to steal a most powerful magic. Magic that, incidentally, belongs to me.” She flicked an invisible speck of dust from her fur coat with a long, sharp fingernail. “This, of course, cannot be permitted. We must find them. The question now is”—she leaned forward—“where have they gone?”
The drawing room was silent but for the sonorous ticking of the large grandfather clock in the corner.
The real Vera, who was pretending to be Liesl, coughed. “Excuse me,” she ventured, blushing a deeper green as four pairs of eyes turned instantly on her. “I found these today in L—I mean, in Vera’s room. When you asked me to search it this morning, Mama.” She reached into her small fur-lined satchel and pulled out a handful of crumpled-up paper.
“What is this trash?” Augusta snatched the papers from her daughter’s hands and smoothed them against her lap. Her face grew very still.
“I believe they are drawings, Mama,” Vera squeaked. Then she added, “I think they are quite good.” When to her surprise her mother did not tell her to shut up, or turn around and cuff her around the ears, she felt inspired to say, “That is a weeping willow tree, I believe, and beyond it, a pond. Quite realistic. My art teacher, Mrs. Gold, would say she had l’oeil. That’s French, of course, and means—”
“Shut up!” Augusta hissed, and Real Vera shut her mouth quickly.
Augusta stared wonderingly at the collection of drawings heaped on her lap. She was surprised the girl remembered so accurately. It had been years since she’d lived in the Red House, which stood near the pond and the willow tree—exactly four years since Augusta had become her stepmother and insisted the family move into the city. Augusta had visited that awful, creaking place only twice, but that had been sufficient. She knew she could never live in that shambling, fallen-down mess—with its maze of small rooms and faded yellow wallpaper and slanty wooden hallways and smell, all the time, of wild heather. She shuddered to recall it. And why should she have lived in such a hovel, when Mr. Morbower could practically afford a palace!
She frowned. Yes, the first Mrs. Morbower had been most definitely soft in the head.
Liesl had been only seven years old when they moved: And yet here it was, every detail on the page, every blade of grass and leaf exactly where it should be. Remarkable.
Augusta realized that the alchemist and the Lady Premiere were both staring at her with thinly veiled impatience.
She stood up, folding the drawings as she did so and tucking them carefully into her purse.
“I have a very good idea of where she is,” Augusta said grimly. “She is no doubt headed for Gainsville even now. And she must be gotten back.” She added in her head: And then, she dies.
The Lady Premiere felt a sharp pulsing in her chest: Her heart, which very occasionally still made itself known, let out a few panicked movements. Gainsville was not far from Howard’s Glen, and she had vowed never to go to that part of the world again for as long as she lived. But there was nothing to be done about it.
“We leave at once,” the Lady Premiere said, and swept to the door before anyone could contradict her.
Chapter Seventeen
PO WOKE LIESL SOMETIME TOWARD DAWN. FOR A moment she didn’t know where she was. Then, as her eyes adjusted, she made out the looming shapes of the boxes and suitcases all around her, and recognized the musty smell and the lurching of the train car. Her hand went reflexively to the wooden box tucked behind her feet. Safe.
“Liesl, come look,” the ghost said, then skated to the window. The sky was still a velvet purple dark, with just a thin line of gray ringed around the horizon.
Liesl stood up unsteadily. Her legs were cramping, and she was very sore. She navigated the teetering piles of luggage with difficulty and joined Po. By standing on her tiptoes on top of a hatbox placed on a wooden trunk, she was able to see out the window. She saw all the many train cars ahead of hers shaking and clattering and shimmying past the flat, dark fields that surrounded them, looking like a long metal snake.
“A city made of smoke and fire,” Po said, with a note of excitement in its voice. It pointed with what would have been a finger, if it had had one.
Ahead, Liesl saw the rising spires of an approaching city. The buildings seemed to be built out of soot and blackness; a haze of smoke clung to them like a shroud, and everywhere high towers sent bright orange flames toward the dark sky, and belched terrible-smelling fumes.
“That is our stop,” Po said, although the ghost made it sound like a question.
Bundle went, Mwark.