Read Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), a House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and a Red Dog (Magic Carpet Books) for Free Online Page B

swift exit.
    He put his elbows on the table, and the sleeves of his tattered cardigan fell away, showing livid knife stripes along his inner arms, one so fresh it still oozed. “Do you think she will ever forget what I did?”
    I wasn’t sure which “she” he was referring to, but I said, “I am sure that she would understand.”
    “How can she understand in the dark? I never saw her after that, they kept us apart, but I could hear the screaming, maybe that was me, it was so far off that I couldn’t quite make out the words, they gave me Moxley’s heart on a soup plate, with barley broth and carrots, and I have always hated cooked carrots. They make me
sick
!”
    He flung the plate against the wall, and the cake exploded into chocolate and hazelnut shrapnel. After that, he screamed and yelled and got the dogs all into a huge barking uproar, and then escaped the kitchen. Although I couldn’t cajole him back up the Stairs of Exuberance to his Eyrie, I finally corralled him upstairs, in the Garterobe of Resolution, our only working potty, then locked the door.
    I brushed back my messy hair and plopped down on the hall settle to catch my breath. In the dustup, I had knocked my elbow against a case full of ancient family artifacts, and now the bone throbbed in time to my newly pulsing headache. For a moment I thought I might throw up. Rangers do not cry, but my nose was running in a most unprofessional way.
    “I had a ghost who was that noisy once, but you can bet that I got rid of him quickly.” It was Valefor.
    “I thought you couldn’t leave the Bibliotheca.” Despite the bad timing, I was a little pleased to see him. He was company, after all. I wiped my nose on the edge of my kilt. “Are you still banished?”
    He smirked. “Ayah so, but I’m feeling a bit better. Not completely myself, but stronger.”
    Although his voice sounded less scratchy, the rest of him bordered on the transparent. I could see the wall behind him, through him. But the coldfire violet eyes still glittered.
    “I can see through you,” I said.
    “Yes. I may be feeling better, but it’s still a lot of effort for me to get out. I could use another sip.” He looked at me hopefully.
    “Flora!
" Poppy roared from the potty.
“Unlock this door right now!
"
    “He needs a good thumping,” Valefor said. “That would shut him up.”
    “I don’t believe in thumping people,” I answered. “And besides, it’s not Poppy’s fault that he is this way. So thumping him would hardly make him better. He’s sick.” “Hotspur’s drunk,” Val said. “It’s the curse of the Fyrdraacas. You’ll probably go that way one day yourself.”
    I said hotly, “I don’t drink.”
    “Not drunkenness, pinhead. I mean the madness. It’s been bred in the bone; you are all high-strung, like good hunting dogs. The Fyrdraacas make magnificent soldiers and fantastic lawyers, but it’s the madness in them that makes them great.”
    “Mamma’s not mad!”
    “There is more than one way of being crazy, Flora,” Valefor said. “Some people are crazy for glory, some crazy for drink, some crazy for duty. You’ll see.”
    I doubted it. I had no intention of becoming a drinker like Poppy, or a workaholic like Mamma, or a self-righteous git like Idden. Being a great ranger requires many qualities, but madness and drunkenness aren’t among them.
    Valefor continued, “Ah, poor Hotspur. He was so glorious once. The best of all the Fyrdraacas and the most beautiful, too. Who would have thought this day would come? I remember, when he was just a tot—”
    “Flora, damn you, let me out!”
    That crashing sound was probably Poppy throwing a chair against the door. Mamma was going to be very angry if she came home to find the Garterobe of Resolution trashed. We only have access to one indoor loo, and I hate going outside to the bog.
    “You could threaten his life with a railway share,” Valefor offered. “I have a huge collection of them in the Bibliotheca