Ruby Red: Edelstein Trilogie 01 Read Online Free PDF Page B

disgusting habit.”
    “Sorry.” I really hadn’t noticed myself beginning to bite my fingernails. “It’s just there’s so much going on—so much I don’t understand.”
    “Same here,” Great-aunt Maddy assured me. “And I’ve been listening to all this stuff since I was fifteen. What’s more, I have what you might call a natural talent for mystery. All the Montroses love secrets. They always have. That’s the only reason my poor brother married your grandmother in the first place, if you ask me. It can’t have been her alluring charms, anyway, because she didn’t have any.” She reached into the box of sherbet lemons, and sighed when her fingers met empty air. “Oh, dear, I’m afraid I must be addicted to these things.”
    “I’ll run to Selfridges and get you some more,” I offered.
    “You’re my darling child, you always will be. Give me a kiss and put your coat on, it’s raining. And never bite your nails again, all right?”
    My coat was still in my locker at school, so I borrowed Mum’s raincoat and pulled the hood over my head as I stepped out of the front door. The man in the entrance of number 18 was just lighting himself a cigarette. On a sudden impulse I waved to him as I ran down the steps.
    He didn’t wave back, of course.
    “Weirdo,” I muttered as I hurried off toward Oxford Street. It was raining cats and dogs, and I wished I’d put on my wellies. The flowers on my favorite magnolia tree on the corner were drooping in a melancholy way. Before I reached it, I’d already splashed through three puddles. Just as I was trying to steer my way around a fourth, I was swept suddenly off my soggy feet. My stomach flip-flopped, and before my eyes the street blurred into a gray river.

 
     
    Ex hoc momento pendet aeternitas.
    (Eternity hangs from this moment.)
    I NSCRIPTION ON A SUNDIAL IN THE M IDDLE T EMPLE , L ONDON

 
     
    THREE
     
    WHEN I COULD SEE properly again, I noticed a car was coming around the corner—a real old-timer—and I was kneeling on the pavement shaking with fear.
    Something was wrong with this street. It didn’t look the same as usual. Everything had changed so suddenly.
    The rain had stopped, but an icy wind was blowing, and it was much darker than a moment ago, almost night. The magnolia tree had no flowers or leaves. I wasn’t even sure whether it was still a magnolia at all.
    The spikes of the fence around it were gilded at the tips. I could have sworn they’d been black when I’d seen it not a moment before.
    Another vintage car came chugging around the corner. A strange vehicle with tall wheels and shiny spokes. I looked along the pavement—the puddles were nowhere to be seen. Nor were the traffic signs. The paving was bumpy and out of shape, and even the street lamps looked different. Their flickering yellowish light hardly reached the entrance to the next building.
    Deep down inside me, a nasty idea stirred, but I wasn’t about to entertain it seriously yet.
    I forced myself to breathe deeply. Then I looked around again, more thoroughly this time.
    Okay, strictly speaking, there wasn’t that much difference. Most of the buildings really looked the same as usual. But still—the teashop where Mum bought the delicious Duchy Originals made by the Prince of Wales had disappeared, and I’d never set eyes on the colossal columned building on the corner.
    A man wearing a hat and a dark coat looked at me with a touch of curiosity as he passed, but he didn’t try talking to me, or even helping me to stand up. Finally, I did it myself and brushed the dirt off my knees.
    The nasty thought that had occurred to me was slowly but surely becoming a ghastly certainty.
    Who did I think I was kidding?
    I hadn’t run into a vintage car rally, and the magnolia hadn’t suddenly lost all its leaves. And although I’d have given anything to see Nicole Kidman suddenly come around the corner, this was not, unfortunately, the set of a film from a Henry James novel.
    I