Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), a House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and a Red Dog (Magic Carpet Books) Read Online Free PDF

was—was faintly translucent, so I could see the wavering shade of my purple redingote through his thin fingers. I yanked but his grip was strong.
    I was caught.

FOUR
Val's Strong Grip. Explanations. A Kiss.
    V ALEFOR LOOKED LIKE a high wind could blow him away, but if a high wind came along, it would take me, too, because although I pulled hard, he would not let go. It was like being pinned by a shadow. I should have been able to just pull free of his diaphanous hand, and yet I could not.

    “Let me go, Valefor—”
    “I am so very, very hungry, Flora Segunda,” he whined. “Can’t you feed me?”
    With my free hand, I fumbled in my dispatch case. You never know when you suddenly might feel a wee bit faint, so I make it a practice to keep a few little snackie things about me at all times. “Here, I have a chocolate bar. It’s kinda squished, but you can have it. Take it and let me go.” I pulled, but his grip did not slacken.
    “Yuck—it’s not nasty chewy food I want.” The sunlight gleamed off Valefor’s eyes and made them look as opaque as milk. I had never before wondered what Butlers ate, but suddenly the wonder was foremost in my mind—and not in a good way, either.
    “If you hurt me, I will really tell Mamma,” I said, more stoutly than I felt. I didn’t like the way he was licking his lips.
    “And then we’ll both be in trouble, but whose trouble will hurt the most?”
    Good point.
If force doesn’t get you free,
said Nini Mo,
then fall back on surprise.
    I shouted. The Invocation filled my mouth with a sour taste. And instead of sparking a small coldfire light, which I had hoped would startle Valefor enough to let loose his grip, a huge fuzzy ball of brilliant green coldfire flared, then dwindled into a tiny little green dot that vanished into itself with a brain-rattling, percussive
POP.
    My ears rang, my eyesight went black, and the world went fuzzy. When the blackness cleared and my sight came back into focus, I saw that Valefor had collapsed on the floor in a heap of dusty rags. I didn’t feel so good myself; there was a heavy metallic taste in the back of my throat, like iron filings, and my teeth were buzzing.
    “Where did you learn such an awful Word, Flora Segunda?” Valefor said, coughing out a huge cloud of dust. Now he looked even worse than before, as though he’d been left out in the rain and all his colors had run into a giant blur.
    I clenched my teeth in an effort to get them to stop jittering around in my mouth. “It was supposed to just spark a little light.”
    “You shouldn’t light a match in a powder magazine, Flora Segunda, then be surprised if the gunpowder explodes. Your Gramatica pronunciation is terrible. If you meant to Exhort an Ignition you should have used the Nominative case, not the Vocative. The Nominative lights, the Vocative implodes.”
    “It worked before just fine,” I sputtered.
    “You were lucky! Look what you have done to me—I was hardly here already, and now, thanks to your atrocious accent, I am almost gone! I haven’t even the energy to rise!”
    A tiny bad feeling was growing in me. Poor Valefor, trapped all alone in the library, and when he finally gets a visitor, she is mean to him and almost turns him into soup.
    “What do you want me to do, Valefor?” I asked, relenting.
    He perked up. “Just a wee little thing.”
    “What wee thing?”
    “A tiny teeny thing that will be so small you won’t even notice it.”
    “Such as?”
    “Tiny teeny—”
    “Plainly; Valefor, or I’m out of here!”
    “Your Anima. If you gave me just a tiny teeny bit, it would go so far, and I would feel so much better, and you would be so nice.”
    “My Anima?”
    “Ayah, your Anima—you know, your magickal essence, inside you, your spiritual energy—”
    “I know what Anima is, Valefor, but how can I give you some?”
    He sighed. “You have so little control over yourself, Flora Segunda, that every time you breathe out, you let a bit of your