Free Sapphire Blue by Kerstin Gier

that. Which was not a lot of fun. But the fact is that everyone thought my cousin Charlotte was the gene carrier, because she was born on the right day, and my mum lied about my birthday. So Charlotte had dancing lessons instead of me, and she knows all about the plague and King George, and she can fence, and ride sidesaddle, and play the piano—and goodness only knows what she learned during her introduction to the mysteries.” The more I talked, the faster the words came tumbling out of me. “Anyway, I don’t know anything except what they’ve told me so far, and I can’t say that was much, or very enlightening—and what’s worse, I haven’t even had time to make sense of the whole thing. Lesley—she’s my best friend—Googled it all, but Mr. Whitman confiscated her folder, and I’d only copied half of the stuff she found out anyway. Everyone seems to have expected me to be somehow special, and now they’re disappointed.”
    “ Ruby red, with G major, the magic of the raven, brings the Circle of Twelve home into safe haven ,” murmured Lucas.
    “Yes, well, there you are—magic of the raven, blah blah blah. But I’m the wrong person. Count Saint-Germain throttled me even though he was standing several yards away, and I could hear his voice in my head, and then there were those men with pistols and swords in Hyde Park, and I had to run a sword into one of them because otherwise he’d have killed Gideon, who is … who’s such a…” I took a deep breath, only to go headlong on the next minute. “Gideon is a pain in the neck, he acts as if I were a millstone around his neck, and this morning he kissed Charlotte, well, only on the cheek, but maybe it meant something, I never ought to have kissed him without asking about that first, after all, I’ve only known him a day or so, but suddenly he was so nice and then … oh, it all happened so fast … and everyone thinks I told Lucy and Paul when we were visiting Lady Tilney because we need her blood, and we need some of Lucy and Paul’s blood too, but they need Gideon’s blood and mine because that’s still missing from their chronograph. And no one tells me what’s going to happen when everyone’s blood has been read into the chronograph, and sometimes I think they don’t know for certain themselves. And Lucy said I ought to ask you about the Green Rider.”
    Lucas had half closed his eyes behind his glasses and was obviously trying desperately to make sense of my torrent of words. “I have no idea what this Green Rider could mean,” he said. “I’m sorry, but it’s the first time I ever heard of him. Maybe it’s the title of a film? Why don’t you ask … I know, you could simply ask me in the year 2011.”
    I looked at him, horrified.
    “Oh, dear, I see,” said Lucas quickly. “You can’t, because I’ll be dead by then, or old and blind and deaf drowsing away in some senior citizens’ home.… No, no, please, I really don’t want to know.”
    This time I couldn’t hold back my tears. I sobbed for at least half a minute because—strange as it sounds—I suddenly missed my grandfather dreadfully. “I loved you very much,” I said at last.
    Lucas gave me a handkerchief and looked at me sympathetically. “Are you sure? I don’t even like children. Little pests, if you ask me.… But maybe you were a particularly nice child. In fact, I’m sure you were.”
    “Yes, I was. But you were nice to all us kids.” I blew my nose noisily. “Even Charlotte.”
    We said nothing for a little while. Then Lucas took a watch out of his pocket and said, “How much time do we have?”
    “They sent me here for exactly two hours.”
    “Not very long, then. We’ve wasted far too much time already.” He got up. “I’ll get pens and paper, and we’ll try to find some kind of system in all this chaos. You’d better stay here. Don’t move from the spot.”
    I just nodded. When Lucas had left, I stared into nothing with my face buried in my