The Face Read Online Free Page A

he’d gotten it.
    Every volume in the collection had been arranged in alphabetical order, by author. A third were bound in leather; the rest were regular editions. A significant number were rare, and valuable.
    The Face had read none of them.
    More than two-thirds of the collection had come with the house. At her employer’s instructions, once each month, Mrs. McBee purchased the most talked-about and critically acclaimed current novels and volumes of nonfiction, which were at once catalogued and added to the library.
    These new books were acquired for the sole purpose of display. They impressed houseguests, dinner guests, and other visitors with the breadth of Channing Manheim’s intellectual interests.
    When asked for his opinion of any book, the Face elicited the visitor’s judgment first, then agreed with it in such a charming fashion that he seemed both erudite and every bit a kindred spirit.
    As Ethan slid
Lord Jim
onto a shelf between two other Conrad titles, a small reedy voice behind him said, “Is there magic in it?”
    Turning, he discovered ten-year-old Aelfric Manheim all but swallowed alive by one of the larger armchairs.
    According to Laura Moonves, Aelfric (pronounced
elfrick
) was an Old English word meaning “elf-ruled” or “ruled by elves,” which had first been used to describe wise and clever actions, but had in time come to refer to those who acted wisely and cleverly.
    Aelfric.
    The boy’s mother—Fredericka “Freddie” Nielander—a supermodel who had married and divorced the Face all in one year, had read at least three books in her life.
The Lord of the Rings
trilogy. In fact she had read them repeatedly.
    She had been prepared to name the boy Frodo. Fortunately, or not, one month before Freddie’s due date, her best girlfriend, an actress, had discovered the name Aelfric in the script for a cheesy fantasy film in which she had agreed to play a three-breasted Amazon alchemist.
    If Freddie’s friend had landed a supporting role in
The Silence of the Lambs,
Aelfric would probably now be Hannibal Manheim.
    The boy preferred to be called Fric, and no one but his mother insisted on using his full name. Fortunately, or not, she wasn’t around much to torture him with it.
    Reliable scuttlebutt had it that Freddie had not seen Fric in over seventeen months. Even the career of an aging supermodel could be demanding.
    “Is there magic in what?” Ethan asked.
    “That book you just put away.”
    “Magic of a sort, but probably not the kind of magic you mean.”
    “This one has a shitload of magic in it,” Fric said, displaying a paperback with dragons and wizards on the cover.
    “Is that advisable language for a wise and clever person?” Ethan asked.
    “Heck, all my old man’s friends in the biz talk worse stuff than
shitload
. So does my old man.”
    “Not when he knows you’re around.”
    Fric cocked his head. “Are you calling my dad a hypocrite?”
    “If I ever call your dad such a thing, I’ll cut my tongue out.”
    “The evil wizard in this book would use it in a potion. One of his most difficult tasks is to find the tongue of an honest man.”
    “What makes you think I’m honest?”
    “Get real. You’ve got a triple shitload of honesty.”
    “What’re you going to do if Mrs. McBee hears you using words like that?”
    “She’s somewhere else.”
    “Oh, she is?” Ethan asked, suggesting that he knew something regarding Mrs. McBee’s current whereabouts that would make the boy wish he’d been more discreet.
    Unable to repress a guilty expression, Fric sat up straight and surveyed the library.
    The boy was small for his age, and thin. At times, glimpsed from a distance as he walked along one of the vast halls or across a room scaled for kings and their entourages, he seemed almost wispy.
    “I think she has secret passages,” Fric whispered. “You know, pathways in the walls.”
    “Mrs. McBee?”
    The boy nodded. “We’ve lived here six years, but she’s been