Soul Stealer Read Online Free PDF Page A

the impression
     he was sort of magnetizing me. He wasn’t looking at me and he wasn’t close, and yet…”
    “And the pendant?” Sebastian inquired.
    “I couldn’t look at it much without drawing attention to it,” Pip admitted, “but, during registration, it vibrated.”
    A realization began to dawn on Tim.
    “Are you saying,” he asked Sebastian, “that our homeroom teacher…?”
    “Finally,” Sebastian continued, ignoring him, “in your class, is there a boy of diminutive stature who seems quite objectionable?”
    It was Tim’s turn to nod.
    “And his name, dare I hazard,” Sebastian added, “is Guy Scratton.”
    “Scrotton,” Tim corrected him. “Guy Scrotton.”
    “Time changes words,” Sebastian replied, adding pensively, “and I would wager the master’s name is Yoland.”
    “Yes,” Tim confirmed in a voice little louder than a trembling whisper.
    “You mean you know them?” Pip asked incredulously, a feeling of intense dread welling up through her entire body as if she
     were being filled with liquid fear.
    “In a manner of speaking,” Sebastian answered. “Let us say I was once acquainted with them, many years ago.”
    “Hang on!” Tim exclaimed. “Are you telling us Scrotton and Yoland’re like you, six hundred and something years old?”
    “And they can hibernate like you?” Pip asked.
    “No,” replied Sebastian. “They are both ignorant of
aqua soporiferum
which permits me, as you put it, to hibernate. Only I possess that knowledge, handed down to me by my father. Yet do you
     recall,” he went on, “the threefold aims of alchemy, of which I have informed you?”
    “Make a homunculus, turn common metals into gold, and achieve immortality,” Tim said.
    “The latter,” Sebastian added, “was to be done by the discovery of the
elixir vitae,
or elixir of life, otherwise known as
aurum potabile,
or liquid gold. Yoland hasclearly obtained an elixir, but it seems not to be the actual potion, for he continues to age, if slowly.”
    “And Scrotton also has a sip of this brew off and on?” Tim surmised.
    “Indeed, no,” Sebastian retorted. “Scrotton has no need of the elixir. He simply does not die.”
    “Like yeah!” Tim retorted. “That’s impossible. Everything living dies at some time.”
    “On the contrary,” Sebastian said. “Scrotton has already died, long ago, and is now — how can I put it…”
    “Resurrected?” Pip suggested incredulously.
    “Not exactly,” Sebastian replied. “More preserved.”
    “Preserved!” Pip exclaimed.
    “You mean like a pickled onion?” Tim went on. He looked at Pip. “Might account for the whiff.”
    “Do you know of embalming?” Sebastian then asked.
    “The ancient Egyptians did it to their dead pharaohs,” Tim replied. “I saw it on the History Channel.”
    “The reason for that,” Sebastian explained, “was so that they could be reborn again in human form in the afterlife.”
    “So Scrotton’s a reborn ancient Egyptian!” Pip blurted out.
    “The curse of the pharaohs in the flesh?” Tim added, raising his hands, gnarling his fingers into crooked hooks and flailing
     his arms. “The mummy returns!”
    “No,” Sebastian said, “the knowledge of embalming was brought to these shores by Phoenician sailors well before the time of
     Our Lord Jesus. Ancient Britons learnt of it from them. Scrotton, I am certain, has never left these shores.”
    “So how old is he?” Tim asked.
    “I would think,” Sebastian answered, “he is probably the better part of 6,000 years old by now”
    Pip and Tim fell silent.
    “I just can’t get my head around this,” Tim said at length.
    “Are you telling us,” Pip rejoined, “that we’ve got a 6,000-year-old ancient British boy in our class?”
    “Maybe his father worked as a brickie when they built Stonehenge,” Tim ventured glibly.
    “I know not what you mean by brickie,” Sebastian replied, “but, yes, it is not inconceivable he was present at the