Liesl turned pale. “What did you do?” she whispered fiercely.
Augusta’s smile was like the wide grin of a piranha: humorless, and all teeth. “I have shored him up tightly behind a downstairs wall, where he can keep company with the slick and the slime and the deep and the damp and the creepy, crawly things, and where he will be always and forever in the dark.”
“You’re a monster.” Liesl could barely get the words out. The room underneath her chair seemed to be swinging wildly from side to side. She worried for a moment that she might be dying—and then for another terrible moment, felt she wouldn’t care if she were.
“Enough dawdling!” the Lady Premiere barked. She gestured to a chair on her left. “Augusta, if you please.”
Augusta inclined her head graciously and swept to the Lady Premiere’s side. “My pleasure,” she cooed, settling her massive girth into the narrow chair, which creaked and moaned under her weight.
“And now . . .” The Lady Premiere folded her hands in her lap. But she was anything but calm; she eyed the wooden box with the greed of a cat eyeing an injured mouse. “The magic, if you please.”
The room was utterly silent.
The old lady stopped sneezing.
Will and Liesl held their breath.
And the alchemist opened the box.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
A FUNNY THING HAPPENED WHEN THE ALCHEMIST saw, instead of the missing magic that had been the start of all his trouble—magic made from summer afternoons, from laughter and snowflakes, magic distilled from the sun!—a mound of worthless powder that looked suspiciously like potato flour: He felt in that moment as though his insides, too, had been turned to flour, all dry and crumbly. For a second he worried he would disintegrate into a pile on the floor. Then, feeling the weight of the Lady Premiere’s eyes on him, he almost wished he would.
“Well?” the Lady Premiere demanded eagerly. “How does it look?”
“Oh—all in order. Yes, absolutely. Very magic,” the alchemist stammered, angling his body slightly so that the contents of the box were concealed from the Lady’s view. His mind was cycling furiously. He knew without doubt that if he were to admit to the Lady Premiere that the magic had once again been lost, it would be very, very bad for him. She had already threatened several times to consign him to the darkest, dampest corners of her dungeons, and provide him free lodgings among her rats, should he fail to recover the magic that had been promised her.
“Are you going to get on with it or what?” the Lady Premiere prodded him.
“Patience, dear Lady,” the alchemist said, licking sweat from his upper lip. “Magic is a very finicky thing. It cannot be rushed.”
The Lady Premiere settled back in her chair, grumbling. The alchemist mopped his forehead with his sleeve.
Time. What he needed was time.
Across the room, Liesl was thinking exactly the same thing. Moving her ankles continuously back and forth, she felt a slight loosening of the ropes. She had to move ever so slowly: Periodically, Augusta swiveled to fix her with a terrible stare, and she could feel the old woman’s eyes on her as well. If only Po would come back! Perhaps it could make itself visible, as it had just before they escaped from the attic. How long ago that seemed.
The alchemist began muttering to himself. It sounded to Liesl’s ears as though he were reciting a spell or incantation. At least, she thought, the attention was now firmly on him. If she could somehow manage to swing her body around toward Will, perhaps he could help her jimmy the handcuffs. . . .
A small blue flame appeared in the air, hovering just above the alchemist’s outstretched palm. He continued murmuring under his breath, and it swelled to a melon-sized ball of flame.
The Lady Premiere half rose from her seat; a small gasp went around the room. Even Liesl stopped fidgeting and stared.
It was real. The alchemist was doing magic.
“Now,” the Lady Premiere said, and her eyes reflected twin orange balls of fire. “Call up the dead.”
This was what the alchemist had feared. He had hoped to keep the Lady Premiere distracted with a simple fire charm. He always carried some flame-wood and a small quantity of sparking potion with him when he traveled, and he had prayed that this little display would buy him some time to think.
Now, he knew, he could no longer pretend. He would have to tell the truth.
The ball of fire floating in the air flared, as the alchemist opened his mouth. “The magic . . . ,” he started to say. The magic is lost.
But he did not finish his sentence.
All of a sudden, the room seemed to blink. The empty air shivered, and flexed, and then opened like a mouth, revealing a long, dark throat.
Liesl recognized the dark space at once: It was a tunnel to the Other Side.
The Lady Premiere stood up all the way, so quickly she overturned her chair, which fell to the ground with a clatter.
The alchemist gaped.
The old woman sneezed.