Read Online A Field Guide to Vampires by Craig Batty Alyxandra Harvey - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Craig Batty Alyxandra Harvey
Ads: Link
on.”
Mother liked the idea of arriving with a manservant and our own lady’s maid, even though Marjorie was actually just a maid-of-all-work. Mother had rescued Marjorie from a brothel just after we’d moved into our new house.
In my less charitable moments, I wondered if she’d rescued Marjorie and Colin so they would serve her out of loyalty and never ask for proper payment.
Colin acted as butler when necessary, servant boy when heavy things needed lifting, and as a guard for my mother when it would add to her mystique. She liked to tell people that her spirit guides had cautioned her to have her own protector, as her gifts were such a weighty responsibility.
I didn’t believe in spirit guides. Or spirits.
Colin and I exchanged a commiserating roll of the eyes before I made my way to my mother’s side. Her dark hair was coiled under a small black hat edged with a lace veil, carefully pinned back so it wouldn’t obscure her face. To be fair, she was uncommonly beautiful; the trouble was, she knew it.
“Mo—,” I cut myself off. She hated it when I called her Mother in front of handsome men. It made her peevish andsour for hours afterward. I swallowed, trying not to notice the way she stood far too close to a man with prodigious whiskers and a neat mustache.
“Violet, come along,” she said, scolding me. “Where on earth have you been?” The scolding was for everyone else’s benefit. I knew full well she hadn’t yet realized I had gone. “Inside now, and not another word.” Which meant she was afraid I would give her away.
I hadn’t given her away in the last seven years, since that first visit to Mrs. Gordon, nor at any of the other sittings we provided. I didn’t know why she thought I’d choose to do so on some train platform without a Spiritualist for miles. I found my seat as her giggle tinkled, like champagne flutes touching. Even one of the disapproving matrons in our car lifted her head, momentarily enchanted. Her scowl returned, dark as a thundercloud, when she spotted my mother stepping nimbly up the stair, wasp-waisted and beautiful.
Mother lowered herself gracefully into her seat. “I should have brought my own cushion,” she said, a trifle too loudly. “I can’t think who might have used this one before me.”
The truth was, she loved the blue silk and would hide the cushion under her crinolines to keep, first chance she got. The warning whistle pierced through the steam and the train lurched into movement, jostling us. We left the station and the red roofs of the village, plunging once more into the green countryside. The sun glinted off a meandering creek as it set. There was something lulling about the motion of the train, once you got used to it.
I leaned my temple against the window, content to decipher shapes in the lilac-colored clouds above us and then the stars when it grew too dark to see anything else. We barely saw the stars in London, because of the coal smoke. We barely even saw the sky.
As we approached the village, the glass grew oddly misty, then abruptly bloomed with frost.
It was nearly the end of summer and far too warm for frost of any kind.
I glanced about but no one else seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary. Mother was resting her eyes so she wouldn’t arrive with lines on her face. Most of the men were reading newspapers; one snored loudly. Two ladies bent over their embroidery hoops. Everyone else appeared to be dozing.
The frost traveled slowly, thickly. The lamplight made it look like lace, but it burned to touch. I snatched my fingers away, sitting up straight, my heart thumping loud and slow under my corset bones. Behind the thin ice, where the glass was still glass, the hills and hamlets that ought to have been dark glowed softly. It wasn’t torchlight I was seeing, or candles in cottage windows. We weren’t that near to the village yet; it was still all fields and oak groves. Otherwise I might have taken the lights for hundreds of
Mother liked the idea of arriving with a manservant and our own lady’s maid, even though Marjorie was actually just a maid-of-all-work. Mother had rescued Marjorie from a brothel just after we’d moved into our new house.
In my less charitable moments, I wondered if she’d rescued Marjorie and Colin so they would serve her out of loyalty and never ask for proper payment.
Colin acted as butler when necessary, servant boy when heavy things needed lifting, and as a guard for my mother when it would add to her mystique. She liked to tell people that her spirit guides had cautioned her to have her own protector, as her gifts were such a weighty responsibility.
I didn’t believe in spirit guides. Or spirits.
Colin and I exchanged a commiserating roll of the eyes before I made my way to my mother’s side. Her dark hair was coiled under a small black hat edged with a lace veil, carefully pinned back so it wouldn’t obscure her face. To be fair, she was uncommonly beautiful; the trouble was, she knew it.
“Mo—,” I cut myself off. She hated it when I called her Mother in front of handsome men. It made her peevish andsour for hours afterward. I swallowed, trying not to notice the way she stood far too close to a man with prodigious whiskers and a neat mustache.
“Violet, come along,” she said, scolding me. “Where on earth have you been?” The scolding was for everyone else’s benefit. I knew full well she hadn’t yet realized I had gone. “Inside now, and not another word.” Which meant she was afraid I would give her away.
I hadn’t given her away in the last seven years, since that first visit to Mrs. Gordon, nor at any of the other sittings we provided. I didn’t know why she thought I’d choose to do so on some train platform without a Spiritualist for miles. I found my seat as her giggle tinkled, like champagne flutes touching. Even one of the disapproving matrons in our car lifted her head, momentarily enchanted. Her scowl returned, dark as a thundercloud, when she spotted my mother stepping nimbly up the stair, wasp-waisted and beautiful.
Mother lowered herself gracefully into her seat. “I should have brought my own cushion,” she said, a trifle too loudly. “I can’t think who might have used this one before me.”
The truth was, she loved the blue silk and would hide the cushion under her crinolines to keep, first chance she got. The warning whistle pierced through the steam and the train lurched into movement, jostling us. We left the station and the red roofs of the village, plunging once more into the green countryside. The sun glinted off a meandering creek as it set. There was something lulling about the motion of the train, once you got used to it.
I leaned my temple against the window, content to decipher shapes in the lilac-colored clouds above us and then the stars when it grew too dark to see anything else. We barely saw the stars in London, because of the coal smoke. We barely even saw the sky.
As we approached the village, the glass grew oddly misty, then abruptly bloomed with frost.
It was nearly the end of summer and far too warm for frost of any kind.
I glanced about but no one else seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary. Mother was resting her eyes so she wouldn’t arrive with lines on her face. Most of the men were reading newspapers; one snored loudly. Two ladies bent over their embroidery hoops. Everyone else appeared to be dozing.
The frost traveled slowly, thickly. The lamplight made it look like lace, but it burned to touch. I snatched my fingers away, sitting up straight, my heart thumping loud and slow under my corset bones. Behind the thin ice, where the glass was still glass, the hills and hamlets that ought to have been dark glowed softly. It wasn’t torchlight I was seeing, or candles in cottage windows. We weren’t that near to the village yet; it was still all fields and oak groves. Otherwise I might have taken the lights for hundreds of
Similar Books
