Read Online The Door in the Moon by Catherine Fisher - Free Book Online

all excited, though.
    Won’t let myself think about you, Jake.
    At Oxford we got out. Gave the old biddy the finger. Doubt she even knew what it meant.
    The Ashmolean is a big museum full of all sorts of junk, and Bill the Brick (they called him that because he could smash one with his fist), who used to fence my stuff, would pop his eyeballs at some of it. JHS made a fuss in the entrance hall and they got a little foreign-looking cully with glasses that made his eyes wide as an owl’s, to come down.
    â€œMr. Harcourt Symmes? Good morning, sir. I have to say we weren’t expecting you quite so soon.”
    Symmes shoved the letter in his face. “I came at once. This bracelet. It’s exactly as you describe it?”
    â€œI assure you—”
    â€œThen let me see it, man, immediately. I can’t tell you how much this could mean to the scientific research I am in the process of . . .” Blah, blah, blather, blather.
    The long and short of it is I’m dragged after them through endless rooms of rust and dust and broken pots. Once I got a big shock and screeched and they both stopped and stared at me.
    â€œWhat?” Symmes asked.
    Couldn’t they see? I pointed at the dead geezer in the painted coffin. Talk about a stiff.
    â€œOh for heaven’s sake, Moll.” JHS caught my arm and whisked me on. “It’s ancient Egyptian. It’s not going to hurt you.”
    He smiled a sort of ghastly grin at the other man. “My niece. I’m bringing her up, having rescued her from . . . a very difficult childhood.”
    Owl-Eyes stared at me, his lips as tight as a mouse’s arse.
    We got into a big gallery. Owl-Eyes switched the gas on and I saw long glass cases packed full of serious tin—silver, gold, diamonds.
    He took out a small key and unlocked a case and lifted out a bracelet.
    Me and JHS stared at it.
    The silver creature crawled round and swallowed its own tail. An amber crystal glowed in its heart.
    I would have recognized it anywhere, even though I really only saw it for a few minutes, when you showed me after we got it back from the thieves at Skimble’s.
    Those were the days, eh Jake?
    JHS cleared his throat and shook his big shiny head and made a big effort. “Ah. How unfortunate. It is not at all the same. Quite unlike. The whole design is . . . er totally different. Isn’t that so, Moll?”
    I nodded, deadpan. “Nothink like it, Uncle John, Your Honor, sir. Nothink like it at all.”

    Oberon Venn stood before the obsidian mirror.
    In it he could see his own reflection, his face all angles, a pale glimmer in the depths of the dark glass.
    For a moment he could not recognize himself. The mirror showed him something insubstantial, wavering, a being caught halfway between existing and not existing. He wondered if it could see into his soul, into the fluttering indecisive thing he had become. That Summer had made of him.
    Maskelyne and Gideon watched, the changeling standing, arms folded, in the heart of the malachite web, the scarred man seated at the control panel. The baby, Lorenzo, crawled unnoticed on the dirty floor.
    Venn said, “And you’re sure Sarah went after them unseen?”
    â€œPiers says the cat says so.”
    Venn nodded, reluctant. “That girl . . . She really is a true Venn.”
    He came forward and gripped the silver frame, its unknown letters. As he closed his fingers around it, the mirror gave the smallest shiver; only Maskelyne sensed it, and he looked up and saw that Venn, as always now, was wearing the remaining bracelet locked tight around his wrist.
    â€œStep back,” he said quietly. “The mirror knows you’re there.”
    â€œDoes it?” Venn stared into his own cold eyes. “Does it know what I want? Does it know where they all are, the lost ones, Leah, David, Jake?”
    Piers came running in, breathless. The little man wore his