Magic or Madness Read Online Free PDF Page A

By the time she ran away, Sarafina was still only twelve. I was fifteen.
    Esmeralda couldn’t do anything vile to me too soon, and I’d be gone before long.
    They weren’t the most comforting thoughts, but they were enough to make me open the door. I groped for a light switch. Nothing but a cold stone wall. The light from the hallway didn’t reach very far down the stairs. I could see only the first ten steps, nothing of the cellar below. It was very dark and cold: the first stone step chilled my bare feet. This was how I’d imagined the whole house. Dark and bone-penetratingly cold, even in summer.
    I descended until the light ended in front of me. The darkness had a sharp edge, like a curtain. Here be dragons. I edged my left foot forward, let my toes curl around the stone. What if I took another step forward and there was nothing there? Would I fall all the way to the cellar floor? Or keep falling and falling forever?
    Stop it. These were the kinds of fears that Sarafina always chided me about. There were enough real things to be scared of.
    I took a deep breath, kept my left hand firmly on the stone wall, and edged forward. My foot found another cold stair. I felt for the stone in my pocket, my lucky ammonite. Sarafina had given it to me when she first taught me about the Fibonacci series. Each segment spiralling out from the centre, equalling the area of the two previous ones, infinity in a fossilised shell, a golden spiral. It was beautiful. I carried it with me wherever I went. Normally it comforted me, yet this time I didn’t feel any less nervous.
    I went down the rest of the way slowly, a step at a time. There were so many, I started to think the stairs would never end. When my soles finally slapped the uneven stone of the cellar floor, I yelped, “Bloody hell.”
    For a moment I couldn’t move. I was in the cellar.
    My mother’s stories flooded into me. All those things Sarafina had seen—they had happened down here. She’d been tied to a chair here, been made to watch Esmeralda slit the throat of Le Roi, Sarafina’s fat ginger cat. Now I was in that same cellar. I half expected to feel the squish of cat’s blood and innards under my toes.
    I tentatively felt for a light switch, half hoping I wouldn’t find one. Did I really want to see this place? Of course I did. I had to. Anything was better than standing here in the dark, imagining what was in front of me. Especially now that my eyes—finally—had started to adjust to the darkness. The cellar was crowded with dark shapes.
    A loud groan came from upstairs and then a boom. The front door opening and closing.
    I froze. Esmeralda. Bugger, I thought. I’d left the cellar door ajar. What if she came down here? I had to hide. But all those dark shapes. What if they still had their teeth?
    What were they, anyway? Not anything living. (Which immediately made me think of something dead. ) Whatever they were, they didn’t move. There was no sound of breathing other than my own. Dead things, I reminded myself, can’t hurt you.
    The floorboards overhead creaked loudly. Quickly I threaded my way between the shapes, stumbling on the uneven stones under my feet, afraid that I would bump into the strange shapes. I scraped my knee on concrete, lost my footing, and steadied myself against something that felt like smooth, rounded glass. My heart beat in my fingertips.
    Above me, the door creaked open wide. I ducked down, not sure if I was actually hidden.
    There was a click, and the cellar was instantly bathed in dazzling light. My eyes watered, but I forced them open.
    Wine racks everywhere, holding hundreds and hundreds of bottles of wine. Enough to hide me, unless she was searching for me.
    Footsteps down the stairs. I crouched even lower, holding my breath, praying Esmeralda wouldn’t see me. I heard the scraping of wine bottle against brick. Then steps back up the stairs. The lights went out. The door closed.
    I breathed again.
    My night vision was gone,