The Alchemist's Shadow by Gregory Funaro

The Alchemist's Shadow by Gregory Funaro

Author:Gregory Funaro
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-11-29T00:00:00+00:00


Eight

Agatha

Lucy and the others had been walking for only a couple of minutes when Torsten began sniffing along the baseboard. Lucy folded her arms and looked around. The cellar stairs had brought them up into a hallway that resembled the servants’ wing.

“Is it oil?” Agatha asked—she was calmer now, Lucy could tell.

Torsten shook his head. “I think it’s aftershave,” he said. “Old Spice, if I’m not mistaken. I’ll wager this is where the bathroom used to be.”

Lucy’s heart squeezed. A thought had been bubbling up in her brain ever since this nightmare began, but now that she was separated from Oliver, it was getting harder to push it away. Where was Pop in all this? Had he come back from Narragansett to find Blackford House had changed? He must be worried sick about them. And what about Oliver? Would he be okay without her?

A panicky sob escaped Lucy’s lips, and she inhaled sharply to snatch it back.

“Now don’t you worry, Miss Lucy,” Torsten said, padding over to her. “You and I have been through tougher scrapes than this. Well, maybe not tougher, but . . . you get where I’m going.”

Torsten smiled up at her with his tail wagging and Lucy smiled back. There was just something about the way the little dog looked at her that always made her feel better—never mind that he was still wearing Algernon’s bow tie.

Lucy bent over and scratched him between the ears.

“I’m glad to see you’re back to your old self now, Torsten,” Lucy said. “You really gave me a scare there in the library.”

Torsten hopped up onto his hind legs and licked Lucy’s cheek. “Oh, it’s so good to see you again, miss! I didn’t realize until now how much I’d missed you!”

“Well, of course you didn’t,” Agatha said. “I should think you don’t experience such feelings when you’re in the clock, do you? Otherwise, you’d go mad.”

“Er—well—I suppose you’re right, miss,” Torsten said. “We exist only in the present when we’re in the clock.”

“I suspected as much,” Agatha said. “I try to live by the same philosophy, in a way. Focusing on the present does indeed help keep one’s feelings in check.”

“Anyway,” Lucy said, “I’ve missed you, too, Torsten.”

Agatha sighed wearily, and after they had pressed on a little farther, she began humming to herself. Lucy recognized the tune at once—“Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” from The Nutcracker. That had been her mother’s part before she met Pop, when she was with the Boston Ballet. And often, Lucy would hear her humming the tune in the kitchen when they lived above the clock shop.

The clock shop. Lucy’s heart ached at the memory of it, and in her mind, Lucy’s eyes fell on her mother’s old headshot hanging behind the counter. Last she’d seen it, the photograph had been on the dresser in Pop’s bedroom here at Blackford House—but where was it now?

Another sob escaped Lucy’s lips, this one too big to snatch back, and then Lucy burst into tears. Suddenly, more than anything, she wanted her mother.



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