Read Our Lady of the Ice for Free Online

Luna was at Eliana’s side now, staring at the andie with a peculiar intensity. Intelligence, Eliana thought. Cunning.
    Lines appeared in the robot’s brow, distressingly human.
    “I did hear a—scratching, I suppose you could call it.”
    “Scratching? You didn’t think that was unusual enough to report?”
    “It’s not unusual,” the robot said. “You often hear scratching along the walls. I heard it three times last night, several hours apart.”
    “He’s right,” Lady Luna said. “I hear it sometimes myself, as I’m trying to fall asleep. The emptiness out here—it amplifies sound. That’s what my husband used to say.” She smiled, her face incandescent.
    “Fine. It’s not unusual. But it could still be something.” Eliana stared up at the robot. “Do you remember exactly where you heard it? Each time?”
    “Of course.”
    “I mean, do you know where it was coming from, not where you were—” Eliana’d worked with enough computers in secretary school to know that you had to be specific with them. And this man was a computer, even if he didn’t look like it.
    “Yes, that’s what I thought you meant. I can show you.” The andie smiled politely, coldly. “Come.”
    Eliana glanced at Lady Luna, but she was still watching the andie, her face intense again. It was unsettling. It made Lady Luna’s beauty frightening.
    “The first was in the walls, here.” The andie led Eliana through the hallway and stopped in the parlor. The chandelier threw off dots of light. He pressed his hand against the wall. “It lasted five seconds and stopped.”
    “The others?”
    “One was upstairs, in the attic. Two seconds. I can show you if you insist—”
    “The third one?”
    “In the downstairs guest room.”
    “The walls again?”
    “No.” The andie shook his head. “Outside.”
    “How long?”
    “Seven seconds.”
    Eliana frowned. She turned to Lady Luna. “Did you look in the guest bedroom this morning?”
    “No. I didn’t think to.”
    “Did you?” To the andie.
    “No, ma’am.”
    “All right, show me.” Eliana flicked her hand down the hall. “Is it close to the library?”
    “Yes, it’s one room over.”
    The air took on that tingle that meant she was getting close to something. She’d become a secretary because there weren’t many options for a girl like her, and she didn’t want to wind up like her parents. But she’d become an investigator because of that tingle. That joy of solving a puzzle and finding an answer.
    The guest room door was closed but not locked. The room was decorated as tastefully as the rest of the house, but there was a coldness about it, an unlived-in quality that reminded Eliana of an exhibit in a museum. As in the library, nothing seemed out of place.
    “Where exactly?” Eliana asked.
    “By the window.” The andie walked across the room and laid his hand on the wall next to the sill. His movement rippled the diaphanous curtains stretched over the window. Eliana noticed they never fell still but kept moving back and forth like shimmer across the surface of a water puddle.
    There was that tingle again.
    Eliana slid the curtains aside. Warm air brushed across her knuckles.
    “This window isn’t closed all the way,” she said.
    “No,” said Lady Luna. “It never has.”
    “So it doesn’t lock?”
    Lady Luna shook her head.
    Eliana grabbed hold of the window and pushed. The window slid open, scraping against the frame. The wind blew into the room, bringing with it the dried-herb scent of the grass.
    She turned to the andie. “Was that the scratching you heard? Sounded like seven seconds to me.”
    He glanced at Lady Luna, whose expression did not change. “It could have been, yes.”
    “It didn’t occur to you that was the sound of a window opening?”
    The andie’s expression went slack.
    “You opened it from the inside,” Lady Luna said. “It’s almost impossible to do from outside. And besides, he didn’t hear anything