Read The Clockwork Three for Free Online Page A

larger, and Madame Pomeroy shuffled them. “Tell me, child, why are you working in this hotel?”
    Hannah looked down at her apron.
    “Come, child. What is it?” She began laying cards out on the table and appeared purposeful about where they were supposed to go. She placed four cards in a column. “You can trust Madame Pomeroy.”
    Hannah knew it was wrong to be so familiar with a guest. She could be punished for it. But something about Madame Pomeroy drew her in. Hannah took a deep breath, and then she told the truth.
    “A few years ago my father was struck with apoplexy. He lost his speech and the strength in his legs. He was a stonemason, before. But he couldn’t work anymore, so we had to sell our home. My mother can’twork, because she has to care for him all the time, and there’re my little sisters to look after, too. That left me. Since my father had worked hard for this hotel, I went to the owner, Mister Twine, and I asked him for a job. He took me on as a maid.”
    Madame Pomeroy had frozen with her hand outstretched, a card quivering between her fingers. “How old are you, child?”
    “I’m twelve.”
    “You carry a heavy weight, for one so young.”
    “I manage well enough.”
    Madame Pomeroy set the card in place. She drew another, placed it, and another, and placed it, too, forming a cross of five cards next to the four already on the table. She turned one over, then the next. She studied each, muttered to herself, and said, “Hmm.”
    Hannah took a few glances around the suite while Madame Pomeroy pored over the cards. The room was finer than any Hannah had been in, with inlaid furniture varnished like a mirror, silver clocks forged into clever animal shapes, fine drawings and paintings hanging on the walls in gilt frames. Hannah’s eyes met the blue in Yakov’s, and she smiled at him. He smiled in return, but it was more of an attempt at a smile than a smile itself.
    “Hmm,” Madame Pomeroy said.
    Hannah cleared her throat. “I should be getting back, ma’am. Miss Wool will be cross with me.”
    “Miss Wool.” She rolled her eyes. “Let me worry about Miss Wool, dear.”
    Hannah thought that Madame Pomeroy had no idea what she was asking for.
    “Now,” Madame Pomeroy said. “You see these cards?”
    Hannah looked at them. She saw a man hanging upside down by his foot, a wheel, a tower struck by lightning, and a strange figure that might have been a man, or it might have been a woman. Other cards bore numbered pictures with swords, chalices, coins, and staves.
    Madame Pomeroy waved her hands over the table. “These cards hold keys for you, Hannah. Keys to who you have been, who you are, and who you will be, as you experience the journey of your life.”
    Hannah nodded, skeptical.
    “I see you have sacrificed much of yourself, and this has taken its toll. You were once so happy and carefree. Life held such promise. Now you feel trapped. You are full of dark thoughts. Bitterness and sadness devour you like wild beasts.”
    In her heart, Hannah argued with Madame Pomeroy. What did this woman know of her? Hannah was not sad. She had no right to be. Her father lived when doctors said he should have died, and she had her family. Hannah was not bitter or angry. Who could she be angry with?
    She barely heard the knock on the front door of the suite.
    Hannah could not be angry with her father or mother. It was not their fault her father had gotten sick. It was not their fault Hannah had been forced to quit her schooling and work at the hotel.
    Madame Pomeroy sighed. “Such darkness. You lie all the time, to yourself and to others, and also feel much temptation.”
    Hannah squirmed in her chair. She did not like this woman.
    “You are at a fulcrum, Hannah. A balancing point. There is conflict in your future, a challenge to the old ways by new ideas and a possible reversal in the order of things, the creation of something wholly other. You will meet some who can help you, if you trust and