Free Deadweather and Sunrise by Geoff Rodkey Page B

quite sure where Percy went during these weeks. There were loads of servants at Cloud Manor—between the mansion, stables, grounds, and greenhouse, there must have been dozens—but they kept out of sight, scurrying around the edges of wherever we were but otherwise in their own secret world. Once my family disappeared, Pembroke must have shuffled Percy off into this world so deftly that I barely noticed he was gone.
    So it came as a shock when he appeared at my elbow one afternoon in the stables. He was in a servant’s uniform, holding a currycomb and wearing a furtive look.
    “Master Egbert! You look well. Food’s good, eh?”
    I was too stunned to answer—not just by his sudden reappearance but by the fact that he’d called me Master. And rather than sneering, he seemed to want to impress me.
    As I stared at him, one of the other servants exited a distant stall and, seeing us talking, began to stride toward us. Percy lowered his voice and quickened his speech.
    “Want you to know I’ve always felt you got a bit of a raw deal with the old family, rather too hard on you, never MY idea certainly—”
    “Ch-ch!” The other servant uttered something that sounded like a bird call but must have had some meaning specific to their business, because Percy broke away from me, pleading as he went.
    “Don’t forget your old Percy—put in a good word—wouldn’t mind tutoring!”
    Then he was gone, and within an hour, I’d managed to put him out of my mind again.
    Just like, I’m embarrassed to admit, I’d mostly put my family out of my mind. And not accidentally, but intentionally—because thinking about them forced me to think about how living with the Pembrokes might only be temporary, and it was so wonderful, and life with my own family had been so lousy, that I never wanted to leave.
    But sometimes the thought of Dad would creep in, and I’d get a little gnawing pang of guilt, thinking about how hard he used to work, and how he’d never had the chance to live, even for a day, as richly as I was living at the Pembrokes’.
    Then I’d force myself to remember all the times he cracked me for lazing around, and how he never seemed to crack Adonis nearly as much even though Adonis was easily twice as lazy as me. Or how he never said a word or lifted a finger when Venus or Adonis went at me.
    That made it easy to forget again. And when Mr. Pembroke updated me on the search, with vague but confident promises of search parties “leaving no stone unturned” or “scouring every corner of the map,” I’d nod and smile and quickly change the subject.
    This seemed to be fine with the Pembrokes. Everything seemed to be fine with them—fine and rich and effortlessly happy.
    Except for Millicent and her mother. They fought constantly, not in the normal way, but in their own odd style—with words that seemed pleasant on the surface, but had ugly meanings stuck to their undersides.
    “I’ll be at the stables, Mother,” Millicent would say as we went out, but the way she said it made the words mean something more like
leave-me-alone-you-shrew.
    “You’ve finished your lessons, then?” Edith would reply. Meaning
don’t-you-dare-leave-without-doing-your-work.
    “In spec-tacular fashion,” Millicent would say, or really,
haven’t-done-a-bit-of-it-but-just-try-to-stop-me.
    I couldn’t understand why they didn’t get along, because Mrs. Pembroke seemed like the nicest person I’d ever met, and even though Millicent had a wicked streak, she was smart and funny and beautiful, and what more could a mother want in a daughter?
    Eventually, I got up the courage to ask Millicent about it. We were in the library reading, and Mrs. Pembroke had just paused at the entry to call out Millicent’s name, in a way that meant
don’t-sit-with-your-legs-over-the-side-of-the-chair-because-it’s-not-ladylike.
Millicent grudgingly sat up straight, but as soon as her mother was gone, she swung her legs right back over the chair