The Appearance of Annie Van Sinderen by Howe Katherine

Author:Howe, Katherine [Howe, Katherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Young Adult, Paranormal, Historical, Fantasy, Mystery, Romance, Contemporary
ISBN: 9780698173620
Amazon: B00R3GAT3M
Goodreads: 25172935
Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers
Published: 2015-09-15T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 2

When I take my hands away from my eyes to look at Wes, I’m met with the figure of a snoring girl, her arms draped down on either side of a scarred wooden table. One of her shoulders peeks out from her dress, which has been loosened in the back. A tankard of beer has been knocked over, making a puddle that runs along the table, along her arm, and drips down her fingers to the floor.

I leap to my feet with a rumption, turning over the bench where I’m sitting. “But,” I say, looking to both sides of me in shock.

Wes is gone. The victualing house where we were sitting has vanished.

I’m in a small ground-floor room that’s been set up as a beer hall. Half a dozen tables and benches, lamplit, a few posters tacked up on the wall. Men and women hunched over tables, drinking beer, and some of them eating.

I stagger back from the table in confusion.

“Watch it!” cries a woman carrying mugs of beer. I’ve staggered into her, knocking her sideways, and she only just saved herself from pouring beer down the back of my day dress.

My day dress.

I look down at myself, at my tidy clothes and clean fingernails. No soot. The only smoke that I smell comes from oil lamps on the tables.

What’s just happened? I was in the victualing house, I was thinking about eating bacon, I was talking to Wes. Wes was looking at me through his funny looking-box. He asked me something. Something that made me struggle to remember. And I covered my face. And then . . .

“What day is it?” I demand of the room at large.

“Day?” the ruddy beer-hall mistress asks me, her head cocked sideways. “Why, Tuesday, I should think.”

“Tuesday,” I say. “What Tuesday?”

“What d’you mean, what Tuesday? This one, with her questions.” She jerks her chin at me as she sets the beer mugs down in front of four men at the table next to the one where I awoke.

“I mean, when’s the Aquatic Display?” I ask. “Has it happened yet?”

When I ask this, two young men in shabby work pants sitting together at the rear of the hall prick up their ears. They’re both young, not much older than I am. One of them has curls over his ears, and a skullcap. The other is dark as a Senegalese. They exchange a look.

“Naw,” the beer-hall mistress says, giving me a Croaker-eye. “Not ’til day after tomorrow. And the ward boss making me pay for bunting out of my tribute, too.”

She eyes the unconscious girl who’d been sharing my table with me, then eyes me, and then folds her arms.

“That beer paid for?”

“Um,” I demur.

The girl’s obviously not going to pay. I have no idea who she is. I rummage in my pockets, wondering if this strange memory I’ve stumbled into will supply me with any money. Sure enough, I find a few pennies in my pocket and count them out in my palm.

The woman snatches them out of my hand with a sour look and turns her back on me.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.