Mixed Magics: Four Tales of Chrestomanci Read Online Free PDF

reserved boy. To which Chrestomanci answered “Really?” in his most sarcastic way.
    People, Cat thought, should be looking after him , and not breaking his spirit by forcing him to take Italian boys to see elderly enchanters. But he could think of no way to get out of it that Millie or Chrestomanci would not see through at once. Chrestomanci seemed to know when Cat was being dishonest even before Cat knew it himself. Cat sighed and went to bed hoping that Chrestomanci would have changed his mind in the morning and decided to send someone else with Tonino.
    This was not to be. At breakfast Chrestomanci appeared (in a sea green dressing gown with a design of waves breaking on it) to tell Cat and Tonino that they were catching the ten-thirty train to Dulwich to visit Gabriel de Witt. Then he went away, and Millie, who looked very tired from having sat up half the night with Janet, rustled in to give them their train fare.
    Tonino frowned. “I do not understand. Was not Monsignor de Witt the former Chrestomanci, Lady Chant?”
    “Call me Millie, please,” said Millie. “Yes, that’s right. Gabriel stayed in the post until he felt Christopher was ready to take over, and then he retired— Oh, I see ! You thought he was dead ! Oh, no, far from it. Gabriel’s as lively and sharp as ever he was, you’ll see.”
    There was a time when Cat had thought that the last Chrestomanci was dead, too. He had thought that the present Chrestomanci had to die before the next one took over, and he used to watch this Chrestomanci rather anxiously in case Chrestomanci showed signs of losing his last two lives and thrusting Cat into all the huge responsibility of looking after the magic in this world. He had been quite relieved to find it was more normal than that.
    “There’s nothing to worry about,” Millie said. “Mordecai Roberts is going to meet you at the station, and then he’ll take you back there in a cab after lunch. And Tom is going to drive you to the station here in the car and meet you off the three-nineteen when you get back. Here’s the money, Cat, and an extra five shillings in case you need a snack on the way back—because efficient as I know Miss Rosalie is, she doesn’t have any idea how much boys need to eat. She never did have, and she hasn’t changed. And I want to hear all about it when you get home.”
    She gave them a warm hug each and rushed away, murmuring, “Lemon barley, febrifuge in half an hour, and then the eye salve.”
    Tonino pushed away his cocoa. “I think I am ill on trains.”
    This proved to be true. Luckily Cat managed to get them a carriage to themselves after the young man who acted as Chrestomanci’s secretary had dropped them at the station. Tonino sat at the far corner of the smoky little space, with the window pulled down as low as it would go and his handkerchief pressed to his mouth. Though he did not actually bring up his breakfast, he went whiter and whiter, until Cat could hardly credit that a person could be so pale.
    “Were you like this all the way from Italy?” Cat asked him, slightly awed.
    “Rather worse,” Tonino said through the handkerchief, and swallowed desperately.
    Cat knew he should sympathize. He got travel-sick himself, but only in cars. But instead of feeling sorry for Tonino, he did not know whether to feel superior or annoyed that Tonino, once again, was more to be pitied than he was.
    At least it meant that Cat did not have to talk to him.
    Dulwich was a pleasant village a little south of London and, once the train had chuffed away from the platform, full of fresh air swaying the trees. Tonino breathed the air deeply and began to get his color back.
    “Bad traveler, is he?” Mordecai Roberts asked sympathetically as he led them to the cab waiting for them outside the station.
    This Mr. Mordecai Roberts always puzzled Cat slightly. With his light, almost white, curly hair and his dark coffee complexion, he looked a great deal more foreign than Tonino