A Murder of Magpies Read Online Free PDF Page B

recant, that will be the best way, because it will kill off the rumors. If they can’t, and can just frighten me—or you—into abandoning publication, that would be fine, too.”
    â€œKit, wait a minute. I do women’s fiction. I do the occasional frock book with you, and the odd biography. This is not what I’m used to.”
    â€œWell,” he said, sounding grim and not at all amusing now, “you’d better get used to it.”

 
    3
    I was lying in wait for Miranda the next morning. I was anxious and unhappy, and I didn’t see why I shouldn’t spread that around. Miranda eventually came tripping in at twenty past ten, and although I try not to sound like her mother, this time I couldn’t stop myself.
    â€œIs that new?”
    She smiled radiantly and flicked the fifth piercing in her ear, which had a silver skull hanging from it. “Good, isn’t it?”
    I moved on hastily. “Do you want to get your hands dirty with a little editorial work?”
    Her radiant smile turned into a beam. Assistants spend most of their lives checking proofs and keying in schedules.
    â€œHere’s Breda’s new book.” I ignored her instinctive recoil. “Now, Breda hasn’t been twenty in a long time. Maybe she never was. The evidence isn’t in yet. I want you to go through the manuscript and suggest amendments for everything you think is inappropriate for her characters. Change the places that they go to to the kind of places girls that age would go to; fix the language to bear some resemblance to the way people that age actually talk; make the clothes right—basically, make it plausible.
    â€œIf it’s at all possible, work on the title, too. We really can’t publish a book called Toujours Twenty-one . Hell, I can’t even bring myself to say it in public.” I can’t, either. That’s why I think about it as “Breda’s book.” If I had to say Toujours Twenty-one too often, I’d come out in a rash.
    Miranda was less radiant, but still hopeful. “You want me to do a serious edit?”
    â€œYep. Then I’ll go out to Galway to see her, pass off everything you’ve done as my own work, while at the same time subliminally suggesting that these were all ideas she’d had and discarded. Your name won’t be anywhere near this as far as she’s concerned—she can’t ever know that—but I’ll see that you get the credit here.”
    She looked at the manuscript. “It might be more helpful to my career if no one knows.”
    â€œIt just might at that. Do fifty pages and let’s talk it through.”
    I left her poking at the pile of paper with a black-polished fingernail and went to call Breda. “Sorry I’ve been so long, but you know what it’s like.…” She didn’t, but wouldn’t say so. “I’ve read the manuscript, and I love it.” I crossed my eyes and stuck my tongue out. There’s nothing like a little editorial gravitas. I went on, in my perkiest aren’t-we-all-having-fun voice. “I thought, since it’s a departure for both of us, maybe instead of sending you my notes, I should come out to Galway and we can go over things at a more leisurely pace.”
    â€œYou think that’s necessary.” It wasn’t a question.
    I held on to the perky singsong. “Not necessary, but a nice excuse for me to get out of the office and come and see you.” Breda is much too polite to say that she might not want a visit. “I’ve got a lot on here, and even though the manuscript won’t take me any time—” well, it wouldn’t take me any time—“I’m not going to be able to get away for about ten days. The plus is, I’ll then have some jacket artwork for you to look at, too.” I sounded like a kindergarten teacher promising extra biscuits if the little bastards would only lie