Winterspell Read Online Free PDF Page A

himself had hired detectives and even cut deals with the downtown gangs’ most disreputable figures, to no avail. The only thing anyone could say, after months of questioning, searching, and blackmail, was that there were beasts in New York City.
    The word appeared several times in accounts of testimonies and interviews, in the notes of hired detectives who had abandoned the case and fled without even collecting their pay: “beasts.”
    One detective’s report read: There’s talk everywhere since Mrs. Stole’s murder, downtown and especially by the river, of bumps in the night, of humans and animals alike turning up maimed, of strange writing on the walls. These instances go unreported, for the common folk are too frightened of what it might mean. It’s poppycock, if I may be so candid. It’s the Townies, Gristlers, or Half-Hands, or one of the other gangs infesting the city’s underbelly. They are playing tricks, striking fear into the hearts of the stupid and gullible for their own amusement.
    The detective’s next entry said only: I must leave this place. I have seen . . . I don’t know what I have seen.
    Clara stared at the mess of information in her hands. She could not yet make sense of it, and she shook with fury and fear, but threethings she did know—that her mother’s murder, and the other murders as well, could not have been the work of the street gangs; that her mother’s body had been the only one marked in that strange, savage way, and this was somehow significant; and that, yes, she had seen those symbols before.
    In Godfather’s shop.

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    G odfather Drosselmeyer was a man of clockwork: he used it in his creations, and he hated spontaneity. He would be distinctly bothered that Clara would dare to show up at his shop without advance notice. And the excuse she had given Mrs. Hancock about being out this afternoon was thin. If Clara was too long in getting home, she would have some explaining to do.
    She did not care one bit.
    She burst into Trifles & Trinkets at the corner of West Twenty-Third Street and Sixth Avenue ready to erupt with temper. Lucky for her—and unlucky for Godfather—this was the one place she did not have to stifle it.
    â€œGodfather?” She locked the shop’s door behind her and pulled the drapes down against the late afternoon light. “Are you decent?”
    A metallic clatter, a spat curse, and Godfather emerged from the back room, mouth downturned irritably. Today he wore his most voluminous greatcoat, the one with unfashionable ruffles along the collar and falling down the back; under that, a dark frock coat, a fine red silk vest, and a tattered lavender cravat; faded striped trousers and beautiful square-toed boots that looked fit for a Concordia gentleman; and his “dress” eye patch, the one sewn of black silk.
    The familiar sight of his mismatched eccentricity would normallywarm Clara; obviously he had guessed she might visit today and had dressed for the occasion—never mind that, after a day of work, oil and grease spotted his once-fine garments and the end of his nose. But Clara felt no such warmth today. Had he known about the markings on her mother’s body? And if he had, why hadn’t he told her?
    Since her mother’s death, Godfather was the only one with whom she could speak honestly and without fear. From childhood he had always told her everything—even made-up things, which nevertheless entranced her. He’d told her about magic, and how it could sometimes hurt to use it, how you could soothe animals with it and use it to hide yourself, and even, though it was in poor taste, craft curses with it. Magic, he had warned her, should not be used to hurt. And she had listened to every word, rapt.
    All of that fanciful talk, and nothing of real importance. Oh, how could she have tolerated him filling her head with such nonsense for so many years?
    â€œClara!”