Mixed Magics: Four Tales of Chrestomanci Read Online Free PDF Page A

Millie. But,” she added, coughing again, “he’ll be very nice.”
    “Not like me then,” Cat said sadly. “I’m nastier than everyone. I think I’m growing into an evil enchanter. And I think you’ve got measles, too.”
    “I have not !” Janet exclaimed indignantly.
    But she had. By that evening she was in bed, too, freckled purple all over and looking uglier than Julia. The maids once again ran up and down stairs with possets to bring down fever, while Millie used the new telephone at the top of the marble stairs to ask the doctor to call again.
    “I shall go mad,” she told Cat. “Janet’s really ill, worse than the other two. Go and make sure Tonino’s not feeling too neglected, there’s a good boy.”
    I knew it! Cat thought, and went very slowly back to the playroom.
    Behind him the telephone rang again. He heard Millie answer it. He had gone three slow steps when he heard the telephone go back on its rest. Millie uttered a great groan, and Chrestomanci at once came out of the office to see what was wrong. Cat prudently made himself invisible.
    “Oh, lord!” Millie said. “That was Mordecai Roberts. Why does everything happen at once? Gabriel de Witt wants to see Tonino tomorrow.”
    “That’s awkward,” Chrestomanci said. “Tomorrow I’ve got to be in Series One for the Conclave of Mages.”
    “But I really must stay here with the other children,” Millie said. “Janet’s going to need all magic can do for her, particularly for her eyes. Can we put Gabriel off?”
    “I don’t think so,” Chrestomanci replied, unusually seriously. “Tomorrow could be Gabriel’s last chance to see anyone. His lives are leaving him steadily now. And he was thrilled when I told him about Tonino. He’s always hoped we’d find someone with backup magic one day. I know what, though. We can send Cat with Tonino. Gabriel’s almost equally interested in Cat, and the responsibility will do Cat good.”
    No, it won’t! Cat thought. I hate responsibility! As he fled invisibly back to the playroom, he thought, Why me ? Why can’t they send one of the wizards on the staff, or Miss Bessemer, or someone? But of course everyone was going to be busy, with Chrestomanci away and Millie looking after Janet.
    In the playroom Tonino was curled up on one of the shabby sofas deep in one of Julia’s favorite books. He barely looked up as the door seemed to open by itself and Cat shook himself visible again.
    Tonino, Cat realized, was an avid reader. He knew the signs from Janet and Julia. That was a relief. Cat went quietly away to his own room and collected all the books there that Janet had been trying to make him read and that Cat had somehow not got around to—how could Janet expect him to read books called Millie Goes to School anyway?—and brought the whole armful back to the playroom.
    “Here,” he said, dumping them on the floor beside Tonino. “Janet says these are good.”
    And he thought, as he curled up on the other battered sofa, that this was exactly how a person got to be an evil enchanter, by doing a whole lot of good things for bad reasons. He tried to think of ways to get out of looking after Tonino tomorrow.
    Cat always dreaded going to visit Gabriel de Witt anyway. He was so old-fashioned and sharp and so obviously an enchanter, and you had to remember to behave in an old-fashioned polite way all the time you were there. But these days it was worse than that. As Chrestomanci had said, old Gabriel’s nine lives were leaving him one by one. Every time Cat was taken to see him, Gabriel de Witt looked iller and older and more gaunt, and Cat’s secret dread was that one day he would be there, making polite conversation, and actually see one of Gabriel’s lives as it went away. If he did, he knew he would scream.
    The dread of this happening so haunted Cat that he could scarcely speak to Gabriel for watching and waiting for a life to leave. Gabriel de Witt told Chrestomanci that Cat was a strange,