Blood Spirits Read Online Free Page A

Murray?”
    â€œCall me George. ‘Mr. Murray’ makes me think I’ve been busted, or worse, I’m back in a suit and tie. Yes, I did see snow once, when I was a kid, but.... Here, let me help forklift the kafuffle,” Dad said, pointing to the bags.
    Dad made easy weather chat as the porter got tipped, and the suitcases, along with the box containing the clock, got shifted to the trunk of a beautifully maintained Bentley Mulsanne.
    Dad and I were glad to get into the warm car. Although we’d separately made sure that Gran had several choices of outer garments, the weather had been hot when we left, and I’d overlooked the possibility that I might need anything beyond my denim jacket (which had been fine, so far, in Oklahoma). Dad had relied solely on his ancient fringed suede, which had lasted for four decades thus far because in Southern California, you wear a coat maybe three times a year.
    Conversation during the drive was a three-cornered question and answer session on what plays were running in London. Dad cheerfully outlined his plan to see everything he could, Mom told us what she’d seen and done, and Emilio made recommendations. I sat next to Gran, equally quiet as I fought against the vertigo induced by traffic on the wrong side of the road.
    Finally I shut my eyes. I had to get a grip. When I next saw Milo, I knew it would be his son I’d be thinking about.
    I gave Alec up for the sake of the Blessing, and there is no Blessing.
    Supposedly, there was this magic protection, the Blessing, that happened around Dobrenica’s borders if the five ruling families met in peace on September 2nd for a marriage between two of their members. The little country would be shifted outside of our time-space continuum into something called Nasdrafus , which I didn’t understand well enough to try translating. (“Fairyland” isn’t quite right.) Anyway, peace was a political necessity in a country still recovering from the old Soviet hold, and as for magic—or Vrajhus , as they called it—well, all I can say is, once you’ve seen Dobrenica, you could totally believe it exists.
    But I guess it doesn’t exist, after all . September 2nd had come and gone, Alec and Ruli had married, and Dobrenica was still here. If they hadn’t married—if there had been some last-second reprieve—then surely, surely , Alec would have shown up on my doorstep on September 3rd.
    But no call, no letter. No visions. Nothing.
    â€œHere we are,” Mom said.
    We’d already reached Hampstead. When I looked up, the headlights glowed on two rows of snow-dusted trees as we drove down a long driveway.
    The house was a Georgian three-story, mostly hidden by trees. The Bentley drove directly into a spacious garage that had probably once been a carriage house. It was only slightly warmer than being outside.
    Emilio sent our bags off with a couple of servants and escorted us to a parlor where tea awaited, steam rising invitingly from the spout of the silver teapot. Havilland cups and saucers sat on a silver tray that looked like it had been etched around the time that Paul Revere was learning his trade on my side of the Atlantic.
    My recent life having been measured out in daily doses of Styrofoam-encased teabag caffeine reluctantly sloshed out in the faculty nook, I appreciated the marriage of culture with art. Mom set about providing tea and coffee as if she’d been handling this kind of porcelain all her life, instead of our old stoneware at home.
    Gran accepted a cup of tea, her back straight, her shoulders tense. She had dressed formally for the plane, in her customary widow’s black, her long silver hair pulled up into its bun. Her pulse beat softly, visibly, in her neck as she held her cup and saucer.
    A pair of double doors opened. In came a thin elderly gentleman in an expensive suit, leaning on a gold-topped cane. Marius Alexander Ysvorod’s face was craggy