City of Dark Magic Read Online Free PDF

called it.”
    “You have to pray for help. But Sarah, don’t ask until you’re sincere.” Sarah said nothing. “Be careful,” Pols added, continuing to cough in a way that worried Sarah. “Prague is a threshold.”
    “A threshold?”
    “Yes. Between the life of good and . . . the other.”
    Sarah thought of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. “I’m not going to have to fight demons, am I?”
    Pols did not like her teasing tone. “You can laugh, but it’s true. There’s a castle outside of Prague built over a hell portal. Half-man, half-animal winged creatures fly out of it, and if you go near it you age thirty years in one second.” Pols coughed again. “Prague is a place where the fabric of time is thin.”
    Sarah sighed. “Pols, are you okay? And how do you know all this about Prague?” Despite her globe-trotting parents, as far as Sarah knew, the little girl hadn’t been out of Back Bay.
    “I just wish I could go with you,” Pols said sadly, leaning against Sarah’s shoulder. “The Lobkowiczes are a great Catholic family. And Joseph Franz Maximilian Lobkowicz was my favorite of Beethoven’s patrons. He was a singer and a musician, too. And he had a clubfoot, did you know that?”
    “Yup. Did you know that Beethoven once freaked out over something he did and stood in the doorway of Lobkowicz Palace shouting, ‘Lobkowicz is a donkey!’ over and over again?”
    Pollina giggled.
    “Let’s eat some more ice cream,” Sarah said. “And then play me something, okay?”
    An hour and a half later, Sarah left an almost sleeping Pollina tucked up on the sofa, covered partly by one of the many embroidered shawls in the room and partly by Boris.
    Jose met her in the hallway, wearing a giant peach bathrobe. Sarah was surprised to see him still awake and, it seemed, relatively sober.
    “She asleep?” Jose asked, jerking his head in the di Seadoberection of the music room. Sarah nodded, attempting to thread her way between Jose, a Louis XVI commode, and a porcelain cheetah umbrella stand.
    “Listen, Jose.” Sarah lowered her voice. “Is she okay? I mean, all that coughing? She seems a little feverish.”
    Jose shrugged theatrically.
    “Who knows? I tell her to let me call the doctor and she tells me that she is in God’s hands. I say, God’s hands are awesome, but what about a little Theraflu? Lately she no want to sleep at night and she keeps coming to my room and waking me up: Jose, I can’t find Lamby; Jose, I can’t reach the cereal; Jose, this can’t be Otto Klemperer conducting, you messed up my CDs again.”
    Jose leaned forward.
    “And then when she does sleep, she get the nightmares. I worry, okay? She dream of fire, all the time. And you see, she want that fire all the time, going. It’s hot as hell in here.”
    “I’ll be away for a couple of months,” Sarah said. “You e-mail me, all right? Every few days. And get her to see a doctor.”
    “Everybody goes away,” Jose said sadly. “But we stay, slowly burning up to death.”
    Sarah patted Jose on his fuzzy shoulder and stepped out into the Boston evening. It was already muggy and warm, though slightly less so than the interior of Pollina’s mansion. Sarah was surprised to find she was shivering.

FOUR
    S arah’s T ride home was blissfully free of the usual subway saxophonists and zealots, and gave her a few minutes to organize her thoughts. Tomorrow she should get a few books on Prague, maybe a Czech-English dictionary. A raincoat? She was going to a castle, did she need some kind of evening gown? She had never owned anything remotely like that. The last time Sarah had bought a dress was for her former roommate Andrea’s wedding. It was a hot dress, but the zipper was broken. Her date, George, whom she had taken to the wedding on the theory that you should always take a wildly inappropriate person to functions where nuptials were involved, had gotten it caught in the lining. Served her right, really, having sex in a supply closet