Free A Bitter Magic by Roderick Townley Page B

look I shoot him is poisonous. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”
    “You can’t be soft if you want to be a magician.” With his left hand, he brushes the dead rodent into the rubbish bin. “What
is
it?” he says. “Why are you looking at me that way?”
    “What way?”
    “Never mind. We have time for one more experiment. Let’s get to work.”
    “No thanks.”
    “I promise not to slice up any more rodents.”
    “Glad to hear it.”
    “This next one’s interesting. It’s all set up.” He goes over to the apparatus he’s built. It’s meant to test myability to “precipitate,” as he puts it—to make writing appear on a blank page. “Shall we give it a try?”
    I’m a little startled by the idea. Writing tricks are one of Mother’s specialties, as I saw last winter in Trieste, when her letter to Asa unwrote itself before my eyes.
    Is it possible I could do it, too? I’d love to find out. But I wouldn’t want Asa to know about it. He knows too much about me already. “I do better when I’m fresh.”
    He sighs. None of today’s experiments has worked. “All right, get out.”
    “Thank you.”
    “But I want you back at seven tomorrow morning. We’ve got a lot to do.”
    Very carefully I lift my bag, hitching it on my shoulder. The glass clinks. He looks at me curiously. I give him a weak smile.
    Hugging the bag against my side, I ease out the door, shut it gently behind me, and head for the stairs.

Chapter Fifteen
    It’s not like me to pace about like this, but back in my rooms, I can’t stay still. Each time I pass the table, I glance at the jagged glass I’ve laid there. A blotch of nothingness. A spill of black ink. An absence.
    I stop to examine it for the tenth time. What do I think I can learn that Uncle Asa couldn’t, with all his cleverness?
    The glass, pitch-black, has a sinister look. Turning it on edge, I see that the backing is thick lead. Why so thick? Protecting against what? I wish Cole were here to help puzzle it out. He may be a “commoner,” as Uncle Asa has reminded me several times since that awful day in Mother’s room, but he’s smart. Also, for some reason, he seems to like me. (Does that mean he’s not so smart after all?)
    I see Miss Porlock has left a pot of tea for me, and more out of duty than anything else, I pour a lukewarm cup, swirling it absentmindedly as I circle the table. The mirror belonged to my mother and to her mother before her. There’s another mystery. What did they
use
it for?
    I set my cup down on it and stare out the window. In the late afternoon sun, the firth is blinding, as bright as the mirror is dark. I toy with a tortoiseshell hair clip, turning it around in my hands as I watch the first fishing boats return to the harbor. Directly below me, someone is leaving the castle, a woman lugging a suitcase.
    From this distance, it looks like Anna.
    Anna!
    Suddenly I realize what I’m holding: Anna’s hair clip, the one I gave her. She returned it!
    I run for the door, down the curving staircase, and out through the atrium, only to find the labyrinth still blocked off. Reversing myself, I race down the great hall and burst through the door to the kitchen. Mrs. Quay looks up from the turkey she’s basting, but before she can speak, I’m out the back door.
    At the crossroads, I finally catch up with Anna. Her big eyes widen as I stand before her, gulping for air.
    We don’t say a word.
    Uncle Asa’s “servant problem.”
    She sets down the suitcase.
    Silently, I hold out the hair clip. No reaction. I take her wrist and place it in her hand and close her fingers around it. The same as her gesture, I realize, when shegave me the key. She looks at me steadily, but I can’t read her expression. Slowly, she gathers her long hair and snaps the clip in it.
    What am I supposed to say? I’m sorry? She can see that
.
    I pick up her suitcase, and together we start off. She glances at me sideways. After a few minutes, she takes over. We trade