The Mourning Emporium Read Online Free PDF Page B

opportunity to crouch down and bolt between the legs of the policemen now doubled over in helpless mirth. Then she hurtled down the stairs, three at a time, as if she was flying.
    Teo skidded through the muddy streets toward the one place where she’d surely find the answer to the question she could hardly bear to voice.
    A sob tore from her throat. “It was him who sent the ice storm, wasn’t it? He kidnapped my parents, didn’t he?”
    It was not the Mayor’s mustachioed face Teo carried in her mind as she virtually skated on her heels through Campo San Bartolomeo. The Mayor’s foolish vanity made him nothing more than an unwitting tool of the real enemy. That was how it had been last time: the Mayor putting all Venice at risk, without the least idea of what was really happening. No, as she pounded over the Ponte dell’Olio, what Teo was recalling was the pointed face shimmering like half-boiled egg white, the pale lizard eyes and the sharklike nose of Bajamonte Tiepolo, Il Traditore, staring down at her with a centuries-old hatred. She remembered him striking a sickening blow to Renzo’s cheek. Renzo! Surely he was thinking the same thing she was? Perhaps he was with the mermaids already?
    Never had the House of the Spirits seemed so far: it felt as if someone had moved it two miles away from its original location at the Misericordia. A stitch clamped Teo’s side and she stumbled over a pile of sodden postcards. All the gaily colored photographs of Venice had turned black.
    “Even the pictures of Venice—ruined!” she mourned breathlessly.
    By San Felice she had shrugged off her heavy-footed pursuers, who were still forced to pause and laugh every so often, remembering what she’d shouted at the Mayor. Finally, Teo stopped, sniffed the air and looked around her.
    “Strange,” she muttered. “It doesn’t feel as if …”
    At the basin of the Misericordia, she threw herself into a boat, clambered over four more and then grabbed a drainpipe to lever herself on to an ornate gate. This she scaled with her customary lack of grace, dropping on all fours into the garden below. Teo galloped through the sodden grass and into a small chapel, where frescoes glowed above a pool of water. She reached down into the still wetness to grasp the handle of a door almost hidden by floating seaweed, lifting it with a grunt.
    The water parted like a curtain and a mouth-tingling fume of curry wafted up from the light-filled staircase below. It was underlaid by a faint smell of squid ink from the Seldom Seen Press, the mermaids’ printing machine.
    “Eating, as usual!” An emptiness stirred in Teo’s own belly. All she’d managed since the flood was a bowl of lukewarm soup and a nibble at a rind of cold pumpkin. She took the stairs two at a time, finally tumbling through an archway to a gilded cavern in which nestled a deep pool of black water rimmed by a sturdy walkway. The first thing she saw was a tattered Christmas tree bedecked with silver seaweed and living fireflies in tiny filigree cages.
    “I’d almost forgotten it was Christmas,” Teo thought, struggling to catch her breath. “Doesn’t much feel like it now. Renzo!” she puffed hopefully. “I’m … here!”
    No answer came back. A prickle of worry nipped her spine. At the sight of Teo, the cavern filled with splashing and rough, sweet voices. A hundred blond and tousled mermaids greeted her affectionately. “Why, Teodora!” “ ’Tis the Undrowned Child!” “Give the little maid a bite o’ somefing hot and nicely greasy!”
    The Seldom Seen Press stood silent, for the mermaids were presently gathered around floating banquet tables. Their faces showed distinct traces of enthusiastic dining. A flock of melon-sized icebergs eddied and bumped around their blue tails. Above the mermaids’ pretty heads, dozens of parrots in rainbow plumage craned their necks toward Teo.
    The birds squawked, “Bite! Bite! Bite!”
    Teo thought, “They won’t be so hungry