Read Online Emily Feather and the Chest of Charms by Holly Webb - Free Book Online Page A

glancing at the clock on the kitchen wall.
    â€œWhat time did she go out?” Emily asked, jabbing uncertainly at the top of her toffee-sponge cake. It wasn’t done. She put it back in the oven and came to sit down with Lark and Robin. Even cooking, which always cheered her up, wasn’t working today.
    Sasha, who had been standing by the sink and letting water drip over her hands, pulled out a chair opposite Emily. Their parents hadn’t actually said she was allowed to stay – but it was as if they were pretending not to see her.
    â€œI don’t know when Lory went!” Lark wailed. “I didn’t see, and it’s not as if she told me she was going, is it? I haven’t spoken to her since yesterday. I’ve hardly even seen her.”
    After the fight, Lory had stayed in her room all evening. She’d told their mum she wasn’t feeling well, that she had a headache and she just wanted to be left alone. Then sometime that morning she’d disappeared out again.
    â€œAfter what Lory did to you yesterday, I don’t know why you’re worrying about her.” Robin shrugged.
    â€œIt wasn’t Lory.” Emily flicked through her recipe book, so as not to look at Robin and Lark. She had a feeling they were going to laugh at her. But she was sure now. As if saying it out loud had made her certain. It wasn’t Lory who Lark had fought. Lory would never bind her sister in a spell like that. Emily nodded to herself. She couldn’t bring herself to believe that the real Lory would do such a thing.
    â€œLooked like Lory to me!” Robin snorted.
    â€œI know. But she’s being made to do all this stuff. I’ll bet you anything. Chocolate brownies every day for life.”
    Robin looked up at her sharply and Brownie's small, whiskery face appeared over the edge of the table, staring eagerly at Emily.
    â€œYou think Dan put a spell on Lory, then?” Lark asked curiously. There was a hopeful tone in her voice too, as though she wanted to believe it. She and Lory had always been so close. Emily couldn’t imagine how it must feel to have her twin suddenly turn on her like this.
    â€œMm-hm. Think about it,” Emily said. “She complained about him like anything, didn’t she? Said he was a real pain, and she hated the way he kept turning up everywhere.” Emily frowned. “And then he wrote that song…”
    Emily’s eyes widened. How many times had she heard it faintly floating out from Lory’s room? How many times had Lory listened to it? He must have charmed her with the song! Lory was bound under a spell – a slow, gentle, but clever and awfully strong spell that had started a long time ago, when Dan Hargreaves first tried to charm the pretty Feather sisters.
    â€œIt was the song! It’s a spell!” she gasped.
    Lark stared at Emily, her eyes so dark with surprise they looked almost black, and then slowly, she began to smile, a huge grin of relief. “You're right! She listened to it loads. I kept hearing her playing it on her laptop – even though she said it was terrible. It drove me mad. She kept putting it on, as if she didn’t even notice she was doing it. That’s when I started leaving her on her own in her room.”
    â€œExactly.” Emily nodded.
    â€œThe song was a spell?” Sasha asked.
    â€œI think so. Specially designed to trap Lory.”
    Robin scowled at her. “That’s so stupid it’s almost definitely right, and now we won’t get the chocolate brownies.” Brownie stared up at Emily, his fat moustache of white whiskers drooping sadly.
    â€œIf we can get rid of Dan, I promise I’ll make brownies once a week,” Emily told him. She reached out a finger and dipped it in the spilled sugar on the table, holding it out for the tiny mouse to nibble. “I don’t mind. I like making them.” She drew a pattern in the sugar, which made Brownie