Julia Unbound by Catherine Egan

Author:Catherine Egan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2018-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Two hours after sundown, Agoston Horthy is still in his room, praying. I am in a chair in the corner, vanished. I found dust coating the pillow and the coverlet of his bed in the next room. He does not sleep. I file that away to tell Pia and finger the vial of poison in my pocket. There are a carafe of water and a glass at his desk. It would be as simple as pouring the contents of the vial into his drink. I keep telling myself to do it, reminding myself of what he has done—and then I remember Ko Dan’s horrible death, choking on poison, and I can’t.

I huddle in the chair, a viselike pressure wrapped around my skull, my gut cramping. The hermia is crueler this time, but I feel it less when I’m vanished. At last the prime minister stands up, unlocks his desk, and takes out the closed frame he was looking at the other day. He opens it and gazes at the photograph, his lips moving like he’s still praying. I move closer, hoping to get a peek, but he snaps it shut and puts it back in the desk, locking the drawer.

I’m curious about the picture, but right now I don’t want to lose him, so I stay close when he opens the door, casting myself farther out of my body and into the hallway as he leaves. I follow him down the stairs to the servants’ quarters, through another door, and down another set of stairs.

Every door down here is locked, and Agoston Horthy has a key to each on a chain in his coat pocket. We are under the parliament now. The walls are stone, dark and cold. He takes a lantern from the wall, lighting it and striding down this hall that feels more like a tunnel. I hear something…it sounds like an animal screaming. We go down yet another set of stairs, and the screaming gets louder. Suddenly I don’t want to know where he goes at night, but I suppose this is it, I’m finally going to find out the secret of the great and terrible Agoston Horthy, prime minister of Frayne, bane of witches.

We round a corner. The screaming is very close now. Two armed guards at the end of the hall bow when Agoston Horthy approaches. One of them takes the lantern from him, and the other unlocks the door with the screaming behind it.

The screaming becomes a howl. A small figure comes hurtling out of the door as soon as it opens and crashes straight into Horthy, who grapples with it. The guards help him to pin the thing against the wall. At first I think the prime minister is trying to strangle it, but then I realize he is embracing it; the howling becomes a pathetic sort of whine.

The whining creature is shaped and dressed like a child, but when I catch a glimpse of its head, I recoil. The head is bloated and pale, nearly hairless, with swollen features and eyes like gray stones.

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