Phoenix and Ashes Read Online Free

to see the automobile belonging to Alison’s solicitor, Warrick
Locke, standing at the gate, gleaming wetly in the lamplight. He looked like
something out of a Dickens novel, all wire-rimmed glasses, sleek black suits
and sleek black hair and too-knowing face.
    Oh.
Him again. He seemed to call at least once a week since Papa had gone. Not that
she cared why he came. It was odd for him to come so late, but not unheard-of
.
    Someone
uttered an exclamation of anger. It sounded like Alison. Eleanor leaned her
forehead against the cold glass again; she felt feverish now, and the glass
felt good against her aching head. And anyway, the window-seat was more
comfortable than the lumpy mattress of her bed.
    Her
door was thrust open and banged into the foot of the bed. She jerked herself
up, and stared at the door.
    Lauralee
stood in the doorway with the light behind her. “Mother wants you,
Eleanor,” she said in an expressionless voice. “Now.”
    Eleanor
cringed, trying to think of what she could have done wrong. “I was just
going to bed—” she began.
    “
Now
,”
Lauralee repeated, this time with force. And then she did something she had
never done before. She took two steps into the room, seized Eleanor’s
wrist, and dragged her to her feet. Then, without another word, she continued
to pull Eleanor out the door, down the hall, and down the narrow
servants’ stair
.
    The
stair came out in the kitchen, which at this hour was empty of
servants—but not of people. Alison was there, and Carolyn, and Warrick
Locke. The only light in the kitchen was from the fire on the hearth, and in
it, the solicitor looked positively satanic. His dark eyes glittered, cold and
hard behind the lenses of his spectacles; his dark hair was slicked back,
showing the pointed widow’s peak in the center of his forehead, and his
long thin face with its high cheekbones betrayed no more emotion than
Lauralee’s or Carolyn’s. He regarded Eleanor as he might have
looked at a black beetle he was about to step on.
    But
Alison gave her a look full of such hatred that Eleanor quailed before it.
“I—” she faltered.
    Alison
thrust a piece of yellow paper at her. She took it dumbly. She read the words,
but they didn’t seem to make any sense.
Regret to inform you,
Sergeant Charles Robinson perished of wounds received in combat
—
    Papa?
What was this about Papa? But he was safe, in Headquarters, tending
paperwork—
    She
shook her head violently, half in denial, half in bewilderment.
“Papa—” she began.
    But
Alison had already turned her attention away towards her solicitor. “I
still say—”
    But
Locke shook his head. “She’s protected,” he said. “You
can’t make her deathly ill—you’ve tried today, haven’t
you? And as I warned you, she’s got nothing worse than a bit of a
headache. That proves that you can’t touch her directly with magic, and
if she had an—accident—so soon, there would be talk. It isn’t
the sort of thing that could be covered up.”
    “But
I can bind her; when I am finished she will never be able to leave the house
and grounds,” Alison snarled, her beautiful face contorted with rage, and
before Eleanor could make any sense of the words, “you can’t touch
her directly with magic” her stepmother had crossed the room and grabbed
her by one wrist. “Hold her!” she barked, and in an instant, the
solicitor was beside her, pinioning Eleanor’s arms.
    Eleanor
screamed.
    That
is, she opened her mouth to scream, but quick as a ferret, and with an
expression of great glee on her face, Carolyn darted across the room to stuff a
rag in Eleanor’s open mouth and bind it in place with another.
    Terror
flooded through her, and she struggled against Locke’s grip, as he pulled
her over to the hearth, then kicked her feet out from underneath her so that
she fell to the floor beside the fire.
    Beside
a gap where one of the hearthstones had been rooted up and laid to one
side—
    Locke
shoved her flat,