Read Mixed Magics: Four Tales of Chrestomanci for Free Online

timidly. “I think so, sir.”
    Cat kept his eyes on Gabriel’s unmoving, folded hands and braced himself for an hour or more of talk about magic theory. But to his surprise, the kind of talk Cat could not understand only went on for about five minutes. Then Gabriel was saying, “In that case I would like to try a little experiment, with your permission. A very little simple one. As you can see, I am very feeble today. I would like to do a small enchantment to enable myself to sit up, but I believe it would not come to much without your help. Would you do that for me?”
    “Of course,” Tonino said. “Would—would a strength spell be correct for this? I would have to sing, if that is all right, because that is the way we do things in the Casa Montana.”
    “By all means,” agreed Gabriel. “When you’re ready then.”
    Tonino put back his head and sang, to Cat’s surprise, very sweetly and tunefully, in what seemed to be Latin, while Gabriel’s hands moved on the bedspread, just slightly. As the song finished, the pillows behind Gabriel’s head rebuilt themselves into a swelling stack, which pushed the old man into sitting position. After that, they pushed him away from themselves so that he was sitting up on his own, quite steadily.
    “Well done!” said Gabriel. He was clearly delighted. A faint pink crept over his jutting cheeks, and his eyes glittered in their caves. “You have very strong and unusual magic, young man.” He turned eagerly to Cat. “Now I can talk to you, Eric. This is important. Are your remaining lives quite safe? I have reason to believe that someone is looking for them as well as for mine.”
    Cat’s mind went to a certain cardboard book of matches, more than half of them used. “Well, Chrestomanci has them locked in the castle safe, with a lot of spells on them. They feel all right.”
    Gabriel’s eyes glittered into distance while he considered Cat’s lives, too. “True,” he said. “They feel secure. But I was never totally happy while Christopher’s other life was locked in there. I put his last life into a gold ring, you know, and locked it in that same safe—this was at a time when he seemed to be losing a life once a week, and something had to be done, you understand—but it was a great relief to me when he married and we could give the life to Millie as her wedding ring. I would greatly prefer it if your lives were equally well guarded. A book of matches is such a flimsy thing.”
    Cat knew this. But Chrestomanci seemed to him to be the best guardian there could be. “Who do you think is looking for them?” he asked.
    “Now that is the odd thing,” Gabriel answered, still looking into distance. “The only person who seems to fit the shapes of the magics I am sensing has, I swear, been dead and gone at least two hundred years. An enchanter known as Neville Spiderman. He was one of the last of the really bad ones.”
    Cat stared at Gabriel staring into distance like a bony old prophet. On the other side of the bed, Tonino was staring, too, looking as scared as Cat felt. “What,” Cat asked huskily, “makes you think it might be someone from the past?”
    “For this reason—” Gabriel began.
    Then the thing Cat had been dreading happened.
    Gabriel de Witt’s face suddenly lost all expression. Behind him, the pillows began slowly subsiding, letting the old man down into lying position again. As they did so, Gabriel de Witt seemed to climb out of himself. A tall old man in a long white nightshirt unfolded himself from the old man who was lying down and stood for a moment looking rather sadly from Cat to Tonino, before he walked away into a distance that was somehow not part of the white bedroom.
    Both their heads turned to follow him as he walked. Cat realized he could see Tonino through the shape of the departing old man, and the lilies of the valley on the bedside table, and then the corner of the white wardrobe. The old man was getting smaller all the time