Free Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), a House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and a Red Dog (Magic Carpet Books) by Ysabeau S. Wilce Page B

me. “I can’t stay out late tonight. Mam and the Daddies are going to the opera, and somehow I got stuck with squirt-wrangling. And I got six pages of cyclotomy to do for turn-in tomorrow. You’ll be so lucky when you have Valefor doing your homework, Flora. Gunn-Britt was doing all my math, but she just raised her prices out of spite over the nose thing, and now I can’t afford her. Do you think Valefor would do my homework, too? I guess you could just order him to—”
    “I don’t have a lot of time, either. I have to meet Mamma at the Presidio for dinner. She’s finally back from Angeles.”
    “You are so lucky, Flora, that Buck is gone all the time. I wish
los padres
would go and take all those nasty kiddies with them. How bliss it would be to have no one to look after but blissful me.”
    “And Poppy, and the horses, and the dogs, and the chores—”
    “The Warlord freed all the slaves but you, Flora.”
    “Don’t I know it. Come on. We’re burning daylight.”
     
    C RACKPOT WAS AS I had left it some hours earlier, with no sign of either Poppy or Valefor. A few stray smashing sounds drifted down from the Eyrie, but we pretended not to notice. Let Mamma deal with Poppy when she got home later; let him be
her
job, not mine. Or better yet, let him be Valefor’s job.
    The Elevator was waiting, grille ajar. I jumped in so quickly that it rocked back and forth slightly, squeaking at my weight. Udo followed and pulled the grille shut behind him.
    “Take us to the Bibliotheca,” I demanded, but the Elevator did not move. “Come on, chop-chop. Take me to Valefor in the Bibliotheca.”
    The Elevator remained stubbornly stationary, even when I stamped my foot.
    “Maybe you should press a button?” Udo suggested. “I never did before, but maybe so.”
    Together we peered at the buttons, which were less than helpful, listing:
     
T HE P OOL B OUDOIR
T HE H AMMOCK L OUNGEE
T HE C ELLAR OF S WEETNESS AND L IGHT
T HEL’S R APTUROUS S UNROOM
L IBROS
     
    “This House is bigger than I thought,” Udo said, and before I could stop him, he reached out and punched the LIBROS button.
    The Elevator jolted a bit, dropping a few inches. I grabbed at Udo, and Udo grabbed at me, and we both fell against the wall.
    “Udo! Who knows where we’ll end up now!” I found my footing and stood up.
    “It said
books
and a library has books, don’t it?”
    The Elevator recovered and began to slide downward. “I thought you said the Bibliotheca was up,” Udo said. “It was, blast it all.” I pushed all the buttons, some of them twice, but the Elevator just kept dropping, slowly picking up speed as it went. “But maybe this book place is entirely different.”
    “Hit the STOP button,” Udo said helpfully.
    “There is no STOP button.” I pressed all the other buttons again, and then, for good measure, thumped on the panel.
    “That red one—” Udo leaned in front of me. “There—”
    “That doesn’t say anything about stopping—don’t—Udo—”
    He pressed the button. The Elevator stopped abruptly, sending Udo careening into me and down to the floor, where his elbow crushed my liver painfully.
    “Get off me—” I pushed him off and stood up, holding my hand against my side.
    “See—I told you!” Udo looked pleased with himself.
    “Ayah so, but now we are stuck between floors.”
    With a horrible groan that set my teeth to grinding, the Elevator bounced once, upward. Udo staggered against me again, almost pushing me off balance. The light went out. The Elevator shrieked like a baby.
    And then it dropped like a stone.
    Downward we plummeted, in pitch darkness. The roar of rushing air filled my ears to near bursting, or maybe that was just the pressure of our fall. Dimly, behind the rush, I could hear howling—maybe it was Udo, or maybe it was me. It was so dark that I couldn’t tell if my mouth was open or not. I was pressed into the floor, feeling the Elevator shudder and leap beneath my hands and