Read Online Kat, Incorrigible by Stephanie Burgis - Free Book Online

straight toward the golden wall, much, much closer than I’d realized. I was going to hit it if I didn’t turn back. But if I turned back, Lady Fotherington would have me.
    The tingling rose up my jaw. Chills raced across my scalp. My mind was slowing down, my thoughts scattering.
    I closed my eyes and fixed the image of home in my mind with all my strength. I flung myself forward, bracing myself for the collision that would come if I was wrong—
    And I fell, in a flash of golden light, tumbling hard onto the carpet of the sewing room, just in front of a pair of slippered feet.
    Someone was waiting for me.

Six
    After all I’d been through, it should have been a relief to see only Elissa waiting for me. But I had never seen my oldest sister so angry.
    “How could you, Kat?” She kept her voice low, too quiet to wake anyone upstairs, but it vibrated with rage. “I never thought you could be so wickedly hurtful. How could you? ”
    Oh, Lord. It was the fit of prissiness I’d known would happen if Elissa ever found me or Angeline meddling with magic. I sighed and pulled myself up to my knees. The tingling had disappeared, but my head ached worse than ever, and my right hand hurt like blazes. As usual when he was being helpful, Charles had neglected to mention that there was a flaw to what he was teaching me: Hitting people hurt .
    “I didn’t do anything so terrible,” I said. “So you needn’t look at me like that. But I have to tell you—”
    “Not so terrible?” she said. “It’s not only that you must have stolen Stepmama’s key, which is bad enough. It’s not even that you were clearly playing with magic, which is far worse than anything I could ever have believed you would do.”
    I rolled my eyes. “Elissa—”
    “What?” she said. “What are you going to say to try to fob me off this time? What mad scheme? What wild story to excuse yourself?” Her cheeks flushed as she pointed past my shoulder. “Is there anything that could possibly excuse that ?”
    I turned, following the direction of her pointing finger—and lost my breath.
    A whirlwind had torn through Mama’s cabinet, flinging everything in its wake. Her picture frames had broken. Her single strand of pearls had exploded across the floor. And her teacups had shattered. They lay in lifeless, unmoving shards across the carpet before the open cabinet. The same teacups that had tried to brush up against my hands for petting …
    Something welled up in my throat so hard I almost choked.
    “I didn’t—this wasn’t—”
    “It wasn’t you who did it?” Elissa asked. “Can you really bring yourself to say such a deceitful thing when I’ve seen the evidence with my own eyes? Would you actually lie to me right now?”
    I shook my head. I couldn’t look away from the blue and white shards that were all that remained of Mama’s teacups and teapot—the same teapot I’d heard about in Angeline’s stories. It must have been my passage back and forth between here and the mirror world that had done it. I couldn’t deny that to Elissa or myself, no matter how desperately I wanted to.
    Instead I said, “I didn’t mean to.” My voice cracked as I spoke. “I didn’t know it would happen!”
    Elissa shook her head. For the first time I could remember, I couldn’t see a single speck of love or forgiveness in my oldest sister’s face. “You’ve been careless before,” she said, “but never so cruelly.”
    Her voice swelled on the last word, her face tightened, and I finally realized she was trying not to cry.
    I leaned forward hastily to start picking up the scattered pieces and hide my face. But Elissa said, “No,” and took them out of my hand.
    “I’ll take care of them,” she said. “I don’t want them hurt any further.”
    I shuffled back, still on my knees. “Please,” I said. “It was an accident. What happened was—”
    “Not now,” Elissa said. She didn’t even look at me as she spoke.
    “But Elissa, I have to