Prospero in Hell Read Online Free PDF Page A

head. He moved along, reading other messages as he copied them down.
     
This is a ring from the high wire of the Greatest Show on Earth! I gave Barnum my tiger.
Stirrup from the Steppe. Check monthly.
This is to remind me to catch the Thunderbird.
Wind this bandana in January, May, and September.
This is a hairbrush. I use it to brush my hair.
     
    Mab ran a hand over his face. “Boy, Ma’am, your brother is a certified loony. We’re not going to get anything out of this.”
    “You can say that again,” I murmured, my fingers drumming impatiently against the cover of the
Book of the Sibyl
. As Mab’s pencil still scratched away, recording my brother’s babblings, I added, “Mab, there’s no point in copying it all down.”
    “A detective is nothing if he is not meticulous, Ma’am. One never knows what’s going to turn out to be important.”
    “Nothing here is important, Mab. It’s just nonsense, babble!” I gestured briskly, knocking over a silver flute that had been leaning against the wall. I propped it up again and pushed the attached note back onto the mouthpiece. It read: BONEHEAD, MONTHLY.
    Beneath the flute, a photograph lay on its face. Righting it, I discovered it was a silvery daguerreotype of my family, taken back in England before the days of proper photography. A pale green sticky note pasted to the glass read: THIS IS MY FAMILY, EVEN THE DORKY ONES.
    The note made me smile. I looked at the picture and felt an unexpected fondness for my siblings. I could not help smirking at their muttonchop sideburns, which had been all the rage in that day. They made my brothers look so serious and so ridiculous at the same time.
    Mab leaned over, peering at our faces. “I recognize most of them, Ma’am. You, Harebrain, the Perp… er, Mr. Ulysses—hard to miss him. He’s the one wearing the domino mask around his eyes. That’s Mr. Theophrastus when he was a young man, isn’t it?” Mab tapped on the picture above Theo’s face. “Even back then, he looked like a decent fellow.”
    “Yes. That’s him,” I said softly, blinking tears from my eyes.
    “And Madam Logistilla,” Mab continued, unaware of my sudden sentimentality. “I recognize her. She looks exactly the same as she did when we met her a couple of weeks ago. This big one must be Mr. Titus. Oh, and that’s dead one, Mr. Gregor. Your father showed me a picture of him once. Who are the rest of these guys?”
    “That’s Cornelius.” I pointed at one of the shorter figures. “This is actually a rare shot of Cornelius’s face. Usually, he covers his unseeing eyes with a blindfold.”
    “So, that’s Mr. Cornelius.” Mab squinted at the picture and then picked up the blue and white bandana to which the note about winding in January was attached. He sniffed it carefully, frowning thoughtfully. “He’s the one your sister thinks put the whammy on Mr. Theophrastus, right?”
    “Right.” I shivered, though the chamber was not particularly cold, and I was still wearing my cashmere cloak. “Logistilla claims she saw Cornelius use his staff, the
Staff of Persuasion,
to make Theo keep his vow to give up magic. Retiring from the family work was bad enough, but Theo had come to the bizarre conclusion that the Water of Life that keeps us young counts as magic.”
    “Which is why he stopped taking it and began aging.” Mab patted his notebook. “I got that down.”
    I nodded glumly and thought about Logistilla’s accusation. Ironically, the thought that someone had forced Theo to keep his vow cheered me. Then, his decline became someone else’s fault, someone who might be capable of fixing the problem. I just did not want the responsible party to turn out to be a family member. I hated the idea that any member of our family would do such a thing to one another.
    I glanced at the picture again. It was so nice to see us all together. What a team we used to make! Nothing could withstand us when we worked together.
    How had it happened that we