Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), a House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and a Red Dog (Magic Carpet Books) (7 page)

“Oh no.” Valefor laughed. “I feel so much better right now, I just can’t believe it. Isn’t this fun? It’s just like one of those slumber parties I have read about. The girls lie in the dark and tell sad stories of the deaths of kings, and eat popcorn, and then they give each other green facials.”

“You are not a girl.”

“Oh. Well, yes, I suppose you are right, but now that I feel better, I could be a girl, if you wanted me to be—”

“No,” I said hastily. He was confusing enough as he was. “Just stay the way that you are.”

“Don’t you want any popcorn?” the whiny dark asked.

I sat up, disrupting dogs and kicking aside cold feet. “Look, I am trying to go to sleep. I have had a long day and I have to get up early in the morning. All right? For Pigface Psychopomp’s sake, can’t you shut up?”

“Well, fine,” said the darkness, snippily.

I flopped down, turned my back to the sulky silence, and pulled the covers over my ears. At least I didn’t feel like crying anymore.

V
ALEFOR WAS GONE
when I awoke, and I did not feel so well. My head ached, my bones ached, and generally I felt punk. Rangers suck up pain and sickness; they don’t let a little thing like weakness of the body get in the way of their obligations, so I dragged myself out of bed, did my morning chores, and got to Sanctuary just in time for first bell.

But the day was such a horrible loss; I should have stayed home. In my furry brain-haze, I left my Lit vocab list at home, so I got a zed on the hand-in, which meant that even though I got a plus-ten on the pop quiz, there went a fourth of my grade. In Scriptive, I knocked over the ink bottle and flooded out an entire stack of Catorcena invitations—twenty-five to do over. And after much finger-pricking, thread-snapping, and swearing in Dressmaking, I discovered that I had put the left sleeve of my Catorcena dress in upside down.

Every time I passed Archangel Bob in the hall, he would give me the eye, as though he had noticed I was not up to snuff and was wondering if he should send me to the Infirmary. With Mamma due home on Monday, I had too much to do to go to the Infirmary, and anyway, that was not where I wanted to spend my weekend, swallowing nasty medicine and eating nothing but oatmeal mush with spelt flakes. If you have to die in bed, it’s better that that bed be your own. Nini Mo didn’t say that, but I’ll bet she would have agreed. Of course, she didn’t die in bed, but it’s the principle.

It seemed like the day would never be over, but finally it was, and before Archangel Bob could make up his mind and grab me, I schlepped home. I kicked the dogs into the garden, hung the laundry out, and mucked the horses. The dogs came back in, and I shut them in the parlor, leaving the terrace door open so they could let themselves out. I blearily climbed the zillion stairs up to my bedroom, where I flopped onto the settee and fell into a snuffling sleep.

Time became a sickly blur of waking, stumbling to the potty, stumbling back to the settee, and sleep. Waking, stumbling down to feed the dogs, back to the settee, and sleep. Sometimes it was daylight when I woke, sometimes it was night. Always I was shivery cold, shaky, and miserable.

Finally, I woke up feeling a little better, not nearly as shivery, but still terribly cold. And hungry, too. I didn’t have the energy to get up, light a lamp, check on the dogs, find some chow. I didn’t have the energy to do anything at all. I lay on the settee, staring miserably up into the darkness.

Then I remembered Valefor.

“Valefor,” I croaked.

A thin wavery cloud coalesced at the end of the settee. I could barely make out Val’s narrow face. The cloud crept down over me, and I shivered at the coolness. I put my palms up and he put misty hands against mine, and he immediately brightened into a more solid shape. He bent over and I breathed a deep breath into him, feeling him grow concrete, sucking the ache from me. For a few seconds, my insides felt airy, as though my skin were filled with nothing but a tingling purple light.

When Valefor stood upright, he looked the best yet, not at all a starveling. In fact, if it weren’t for the purple eyes and his purple hair, he could have been a normal boy. He wasn’t exactly pretty, but he sparkled.

Valefor grinned at me and waved his arms about. “Thank you, Flora Segunda. I feel much better. You don’t taste so good right now, but still, it’s enough.”

I flopped back on the pillows, feeling like I had inhaled little sparks of fire. I suddenly felt a lot more perky, albeit a tad breathless. “You are welcome.”

With a gentle hiss, the radiators came on, even though I hadn’t shoveled any coal in over a week. In the fireplace, the fire flared up, bright and friendly.

“This is much, much better,” Val beamed, balancing on the settee arm. “Why didn’t you call me earlier? You shouldn’t be lying around like this, Flora. It’s bad for your mental state. Once you lie down, you might not get up again for ages. Great-uncle Gussie once spent four years lying on the sofa in the Drawing Room of Depredations. You don’t know how hard it was to dust around him.”

“I’ve been sick.”

“Ah...” Val fished around in his long hanging sleeves, then came up with a small green bottle. “I have just the trick.”

“What is it?”

He proffered a spoonful of pinkish liquid. “Open up. It will make you all better.”

I recoiled. I knew from experience that liquids that promise to make you all better usually make you wish you could die. “What does it taste—oof.”

Valefor had shoved in the spoon. I started to choke and then the lovely buttery syrup flowed down my throat and seemed to settle into a warm fuzzy haze in my wheezing chest. Now I was really feeling pretty good.

“What was that?”

“Madama Twanky’s Sel-Ray Psalt Med-I-Cine,” Valefor replied. He’d replaced both bottle and spoon inside his flowing sleeve.

“It tasted like maple syrup.” The Madama Twanky’s Sel-Ray Psalt that Mamma forces me to take when I’m sick tastes like lamp oil.

“Well, I did improve a bit on the original, but it will fix what ails you.”

“When is it?” I asked, pushing myself back up on the pillows. Ah, the lovely warmth puffing from the radiator. Ah, the lovely warmth in my bones.

“All times are alike to me, so monotonous and boring, but—” Valefor considered. “I think it’s Sunday for you.”

“Sunday!” Panic gurgled in my throat, in my voice. Sunday! The entire weekend gone. My dress, my invitations, my speech, the fifty tamales I had to make and distribute to the poor! Everything I was going to get done this weekend, just in the nick of Mamma coming home. And now she would be home tomorrow and I had done nothing. Even if I started immediately, I wouldn’t have time to get it all done. “I’ve wasted the whole weekend. I’ll never get all my chores done!” I slumped back down into gloom and felt babyish tears prickle at my eyes.

“Never you worry,” said Valefor soothingly. “Valefor is here and he specializes in getting things done. But first, teatime!”

Out of Nowhere, Val produced a plate of waffles and a giant pot of orange tiger tea. While I gobbled the first solid food I’d had in forever, he started tidying. He twinkled his fingertips and suddenly my bedsheets were clean and the bed was made. (Pigface, I’d forgotten to get rid of that horrible comforter!) He waved a hand and my scattered Nini Mo yellowbacks hopped into a neat stack, and the painting of Mamma and Idden hanging over the fireplace straightened. He flapped my socks and they were hole-free. He fixed the upside-down sleeve of my Catorcena dress with a flip of one finger, and hemmed it with a wave of another. He tapped pen to paper and soon enough had a full stack of invitations completed, without a smudge or an ink blot. It was so wonderful to lie there, warm and full, and watch someone else do all the work. In just a few short minutes, my bedroom was cleaner than it had been in years and my Catorcena chores were nearly done.
Mamma, why are you so darn stubborn?

“Well,” Val said, finally, after I had drunk the last drop of tea and he had eaten the last waffle. He tossed the tea tray up in the air, and before I could shout, it was gone. “I have been thinking.”

I yawned again. Between the medicine and all those waffles I was feeling awfully sleepy, but in a yummy tired way. “About what?”

He leaned over the back of the settee and grinned ingratiatingly at me. “I don’t think the Elevator was being obdurate when it brought us together, Flora. That Elevator, that part of me, that is, knew what it was doing, even if you and I were slow to pick up on it.”

“Hmm...” My eyelids weighed fifty pounds, and they kept dropping closed.

“Are you listening to me?” Val’s breath smelled like nutmeg. I opened my eyes. His face was so close to mine that I could see the faint shimmer of golden freckles on his skin, which was as smooth as rubber.

“Do you have bones?” I murmured.

He said snippily, “Of course I have bones. Every stone in this house is part of my—”

“No, I mean, inside your skin, do you have bones? Do you have a liver?”

“What would I need a liver for—disgusting organ—of course not! But as I was saying. I could help you further, if you help me further, Flora.”

“Ayah so?” I yawned again.

He continued, “You just don’t know how boring and lonely it is to be so diminished, me who once had the world begging for favors. And it’s not right, either, to close up such a House and let it molder away just because you are afraid—”

This woke me up some, indignantly. “Mamma is not afraid of anything.” In her youth, my mamma killed a jaguar with a shovel. She’s won the Warlord’s Hammer twice. She’s fought three duels, one bare-knuckled, and won them all. And, of course, she’s been married to Poppy for twenty-eight years, which alone takes an awful lot of sand.

“Pah. You can be as brave as a lion on the outside, Flora Segunda,” Val answered, “and fight bears with your fingernails and stare down monsters until they melt into little puddles of goo at your feet and still be a coward inside, in your heart, where it counts.”

I rolled over and turned my back to Val. He was lucky I didn’t believe in violence; otherwise, I would have punched his lights out for maligning Mamma so. The comfy feeling of chores done was receding into the more familiar feeling of gloom. Why did Valefor have to remind me of all this when I had been feeling so nice?

Val’s nutmeg breath tickled my ear. “Don’t sulk, Flora Segunda. It is not becoming to your lineage. I mean no disrespect to your dear lady mamma, but you have to face facts that this is not the way things should be.”

“That’s not my mamma’s fault,” I said into the cushion. “She does the best she can.”
Which isn't good enough,
my brain whispered.

“No doubt she does, but that’s not helping me, and it’s not helping you, either. If we got together, we could help each other, and help your dear mamma, and even help darling Hotspur, too.”

I rolled back over and stared up at Val’s looming head. The coldfire burned purple in his eyes, like sparks of light deep in a black well. His lips were a faint shade of lavender, like very pale blueberries. He cocked his head and grinned at me, very sweet.

“What do you mean, help Mamma and Poppy?” I asked.

“You know,” he said, “I remember the night the First Flora was born. It was strange weather. First came huge rain, then loud thunder, then an earthquake. An omen, don’t you think? The First Flora was a stubborn little thing, and she was not going to come out. Such screaming and shouting and rushing to and fro, and, ah, the blood—I was never so strong, I think, as I was that night. Your mamma almost died. And you know why she didn’t?”

I shook my head. Mamma never speaks of the First Flora.

Val looked smug. “Your father wasn’t there, or I suppose he would have tried to help her, being a great one with the knife, Hotspur, always hoping to find something or someone to carve up. Your mamma was spewing blood and her eyes were growing dark. A doctor could not have helped her. But for me, for Valefor, what is a truculent baby and a dying mother? I just reached right in with one slender hand and I took a hold of that bad little girl’s feet and she popped like a cork out of a bottle. Flora knew she’d met her match in me and there was no more insolence from her, I tell you.”

“You are so full of hoo,” I said. “Anyway, so what?”

“You ask your dear lady mamma,” Val said, wounded. “And she will tell you I am saying nothing but the truth. I am the power of this House, Flora. The point is you all
need
me.”

“Mamma is the power of this House. You are just the Butler.”

“You decline without me. You dwindle. I told Buck, two wasn’t enough, but did she listen to me? Of course not. See—she’s already had to replace one!”

There were fewer Fyrdraacas in Califa than there had once been, but that didn’t mean that we were in decline, did it? Fyrdraacas tend to die young, in all sorts of glamorous ways. It’s not so good for the bloodline if people keep getting killed in duels (Great-aunt Arabelle), breaking their necks in cross-country horse races (Great-uncle Anacreon), drowned trying to swim across the Bay’s Gate (Great-aunt Anacreona), or bit by a rattlesnake during a bar bet (Cousin Hippolyte), and not leaving any heirs behind. Pretty soon the family tree is pretty thin.

I answered, “Says you! There’s still me and Idden. We aren’t chopped mackerel.”

“You are thin-blooded and miserable, that’s what you are.

“We aren’t.” But my protest was halfhearted. I
was
a replacement, wasn’t I?

“Suit yourself, then,” he said, shrugging. “Whether you believe it or not does not affect whether it is the truth. It’s not fair. I am oppressed, and nothing more than a slave to Buck’s Will.”

“You are just the Butler, a denizen—you
should
be subject to Mamma’s Will. It was what you were made for, to serve her, as the Head of the Fyrdraaca family,” I said meanly, for he had completely spoiled my happy mood.

Valefor glared at me. “Fyrdraacas come and go, but I alone of this House stand forever. Buck should understand that and treat me with the respect that I deserve. And anyway, it’s not just me—we are
all
slaves to Buck’s Will. Hotspur, Idden, you—”