A Most Magical Girl Read online

  Also by Karen Foxlee

  Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy

  The Midnight Dress

  The Anatomy of Wings

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2016 by Karen Foxlee

  Cover art and interior illustrations copyright © 2016 by Elly MacKay

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Foxlee, Karen, author.

  Title: A most magical girl / Karen Foxlee.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Alfred A. Knopf, [2016] | Summary:

  “When Annabel’s mother abruptly leaves her with her two mysterious aunts, she is thrust into a magical side of Victorian London she never knew existed and discovers that she is the key to saving it from an evil wizard bent on destroying all good magic.” —Provided by publisher

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015029974 | ISBN 978-0-553-51285-4 (trade) ISBN 978-0-553-51286-1 (lib. bdg.) | ISBN 978-0-553-51287-8 (ebook)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Magic—Fiction. | Witches—Fiction. | Wizards—Fiction. | Great Britain—History—Victoria, 1837–1901—Fiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Action & Adventure / General. | JUVENILE FICTION / Social Issues / Friendship. | JUVENILE FICTION / Family / Orphans & Foster Homes.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.F841223 Mo 2016 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/​2015029974

  ebook ISBN 9780553512878

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

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  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Karen Foxlee

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part I: Dark-Magic Gauge ⅓ Full

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Part II: Dark-Magic Gauge ⅔ Full

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Part III: Dark-Magic Gauge Full

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Acknowledgments

  For the most magical girls I know: Julia Elizabeth, Chloe Rose, April Maria, and Alice May

  It’s exactly the kind of day she sees things. She knows it, but it doesn’t stop her going out. Her head tells her to stay indoors, but the outside is calling: all the gray buildings and dripping eaves, all the wet stone and gleaming, rain-polished streets. The clouds are streaming, and the wind is banging at the windows. She slips out before Mercy can catch her and make her do schoolwork.

  It has rained so hard that the street has filled with puddles. She mustn’t look. Don’t look, she tells herself. Don’t look. The wind is tugging at umbrellas. It’s pulling at her skirts, untying her hair. She should go inside. Her mother will be coming down the stairs. She’ll make Annabel recite a passage from her Latin reader. Then they will take their places, pretty and fragile as flowers, pick up their embroidery, and wait for their callers.

  Only, Annabel doesn’t go inside.

  Nothing in her lessons can explain this sensation, nothing in the way she is taught to walk and talk and sing and dance. There is a cord of something that joins her to a day like this. It feels like a rope that starts inside her belly and stretches up into the wild clouds. This rope tugs at her, as though at any moment she’ll be dragged up into the sky. She struggles to keep her feet on the pavement. That’s just what it feels like, and it frightens her, but part of her feels excited, too.

  There—she’s looked now.

  She’s looked straight into the puddle at her feet.

  It’s just an ordinary puddle, dull ditchwater, the wind rippling across its surface. She shouldn’t bend down. What if her mother, coming down the stairs, catches a glimpse of her kneeling in the street? Oh, the shame of it! It has happened before, and her mother has been incensed. She has held Annabel’s face in her hands and spoken wildly, in a way that Annabel has never heard. “It cannot be!”

  But there is nothing that can stop her falling down, hands to stone. There is something moving there. She’s leaning closer. Through the puddle clouds she catches a glimpse of something dark. There’s a window. It’s a window filled with blackness and a curtain blowing, and she wants to see inside it and she wants to look away, both at once. She moves closer, her nose almost touching the water, and sees inside.

  There’s a great room filled with shadows, and a man standing with his back to her. She’s filled with dread upon seeing him. Cold dread, as though her heart has stopped. She cannot breathe. Look away, she tells herself. He’s turning, that man, tall and dark and horribly thin. He’s turning, and she doesn’t want to see his face. She doesn’t want to see the shadows in his cheekbones and the shadows in his eyes.

  She hears someone crying out, doesn’t know it is herself, and then there are arms around her, lifting her up and away from the ground.

  The day slides back into view, the clouds twisting in the sky. Faces swim before her, fade, form again. There is the maid, Mercy, clearly, her face grimly set, holding out her arms, and, standing at the top step, her mother, darkly beautiful, trembling.

  It was dark in Mr. Angel’s ballroom, but the small words etched on his invention glinted. DARK-MAGIC EXTRACTING MACHINE. There was a cold quietness. The large machine made soft noises. It hissed in the darkness and sighed. Its inner workings rattled the floor of the room, which it filled. Its bellows opened and shut, inhaled and exhaled. The waxing moon gleamed on the moon funnel, a great brass horn that sprouted from the top of the machine and almost touched the jagged hole in the ceiling. Mr. Angel stood very still and admired his terrible invention. It had been almost thirteen years since he had fed the first tearstained handkerchief to its strange, dark heart.

  Today he offered up flowers stolen from a new grave. A black feather from a large bird kept in a very small cage. The machine sucked these things from his hand with great force, drew them across the room, and gobbled them up through a slit in its leather.

  It was hungry and growing stronger. It wanted more. It wanted unfinished embroidery, stopped clocks, roses that a lover had refused. Mourning rings and black-bordered handkerchiefs freshly stolen from those still weeping. It wanted the bonnets of long-dead babies. The machine made Mr. Angel smile. Its bellows huffed and sighed.

  Through the leather slit, sad things went in. Lost things went in. Left-behind things went in. Through the funnel near the ceiling, moonlight went in. The more he fed the machine, the faster the cogs and wheels moved, the faster its black heart spun. It was nearly ready.

  He strode across the ro
om and examined the dark-magic gauge. He wiped the condensation from its glass face and leaned his crooked body forward, his monocle pressed to his eye.

  One-third full.

  His breath quickened. It was working. It was filling. He could begin.

  He took his Black Wand. The Black Wand. The only wand that could channel dark magic. The only wand that could raise the shadowlings. He held it to a small valve at the end of the machine. It was an ordinary brass tap, yet when he twisted it, an arc of energy connected to the Black Wand’s tip and jolted him backward toward the wall. The machine thrummed loudly. The house shook. He held the wand high and marveled at the power he could feel. What would the machine be capable of at full moon? Thirteen years’ worth of full moons. Thirteen years’ worth of sorrowful things. Pure dark magic.

  His elderly butler appeared at the door.

  “I heard a commotion, Mr. Angel,” he said. “I came to see…”

  But he stopped because Mr. Angel was striding toward him, a terrible smile stretched on his bone-white face.

  “Jeremiah,” whispered Mr. Angel. “Perfect.”

  He raised the Black Wand and aimed it at the butler, whose eyes widened as a single blast of mauve light shot toward him.

  Mr. Angel stepped over the pile of dust that had been Jeremiah the butler. He went down the stairs, ignoring the frantic scurrying of servants, the hurried closing of doors. The wand was still heavy with dark magic, but he did not want more piles of dust. He went down—down past the parlor, down past the kitchen, down into the cellars.

  He stood in the blackness and sensed them. He knew from his books it was a place they would exist. He could smell them in amongst the turnips and apples, the bottles of cider and sherry. They smelled of emptiness. He would raise one. He would raise one from its sleep with the Black Wand and put the dark magic in it.

  He pointed the wand at the corner where barrels were stacked. He uttered his raising-up words—Umbra, antumbra—quietly, coaxingly, and the wand quivered in his hand. The wood bowed and twitched as he spoke; like a fishing pole, it shivered and snagged on something invisible.

  “Come now,” whispered Mr. Angel, straining to hold the wand. “Come now.”

  In the darkness he saw the arc of deep purple light disappearing behind the barrels and a grayness begin to rise. The thing emerged, its long shadowy body slipping silently from the gloom. It stretched out its thin gossamer arms toward him. Its long claws clicked. It breathed its first shuddering breath.

  “Welcome, shadowling,” whispered Mr. Angel.

  “A young lady should find, in all manner of circumstances and predicaments, a way to be both cheerful and content.”

  —Miss Finch’s Little Blue Book (1855)

  Annabel Grey arrived late in the afternoon in her best dress and her new red town cloak. She stepped down from the carriage and surveyed the street with her chin held high. She smiled. She smiled the way she had been taught to smile when things were terrible or even just a little bad. She smiled as though she’d just seen something lovely. A beautiful painting, perhaps, or a butterfly.

  It was exactly the sort of street she had imagined, although she had never once been to this side of London. It was a mean street, the buildings leaning, holding each other up like a mouthful of rotten teeth. It was a stinking, wet place. There were cattle being herded across intersections, and stone buildings and churches and factories streaming black smoke, all crammed side by side. It was a damp and dark street, choked with wagons and carriages and filled with foul weather. A temperamental wind stamped up and down the road, slamming doors and stealing umbrellas and tugging at her bonnet ribbon.

  She concentrated very hard on not letting her smile falter.

  The costermongers were cowering under eaves, calling out, “Hot cooked eels” and “Pickled whelks,” above the sound of the wind. The shop signs read USURER and MILLINER and HABERDASHER. SHIP BROKER and GRAIN BROKER and SILVER BROKER. FALCONER and FEATHER PURVEYOR and SUPPLIER OF FINE TARTAN. But before her was a shop with the words MISSES E. & H. VINE’S MAGIC SHOP neatly printed on the glass. And opening the door was a tall, straight woman with a scowl on her face.

  “Annabel Grey?” said the woman.

  “Yes,” said Annabel Grey.

  The tall, straight woman wore a dark dress buttoned up to her chin. Her hair was black and in no way matched her face, which was very old—long and thin and crosshatched with grooves.

  The tall, straight woman did not smile. “I am Miss Henrietta Vine.”

  “My great-aunt!” cried Annabel, and she thought perhaps she should throw herself at the woman’s feet, but Miss Henrietta Vine did not look as if she would tolerate such a thing.

  There was nothing welcoming about Henrietta Vine.

  “ ‘Miss Henrietta’ will do,” she said sharply. “And you are nearly thirteen?”

  “On Friday I will be thirteen,” said Annabel.

  “You are small for your age, then,” the woman said. “And too young in my opinion to have had your skirts let down.”

  Miss Henrietta had grave blue eyes, and her expression was solemn, as though she were about to tell Annabel something terrible, something much more terrible than what had already happened. The terrible-news gaze was unwavering, and it made Annabel look away. She looked at her feet, at the footpath, at the shop glass behind Miss Henrietta.

  “So, here you are,” said Miss Henrietta. “Your mother has finally done what is proper.”

  Just the mention of her mother made Annabel sway.

  It was her mother who had sent her here. Her mother, who had suddenly needed to go abroad. Annabel felt the smile slipping from her mouth, and she fought very hard to keep it in its place. Tears threatened to spill from her eyes.

  Miss Henrietta Vine did nothing to comfort her. “You have a secret,” she said, looking at Annabel carefully. “You have a secret you try to keep from the world.”

  “No, I don’t,” said Annabel. She was so shocked by these words that the tears completely dried up.

  The wind blew against their skirts and it began to rain. Miss Henrietta told the driver where to take Annabel’s trunk, then raised her dark eyebrows and motioned for Annabel to follow her inside.

  “This is not an ordinary magic shop,” said Miss Henrietta Vine when they were inside. She looked at Annabel sternly, daring her to disagree. Annabel dared not. It was most definitely a magic shop, and it was crowded with the most unusual things Annabel had ever seen. There was a long counter cluttered with greasy jars and bottles. Some contained greenish liquids; in others, things floated that she did not wish to see. There was a long gray stick, with words carved faintly all over it, beside a dog-eared ledger.

  The shop smelled peculiar. It was pepperminty and medicinal and sweet and sour in equal parts. It smelled wrong, and Annabel took a handkerchief from her sleeve and held it to her nose, but Miss Henrietta frowned so fiercely that she quickly put it away. She breathed through her mouth and smiled as pleasantly as she could. Miss Henrietta glowered in return.

  Behind the counter were two large specimen cabinets with many small drawers, some of them open and some of them shut. What looked like black feathers spilled from one and blue ribbons from another, and gray brittle twigs spewed in a tangle from a third. There were shelves behind the cabinets that reached high up the walls to where a dark clock ticked angrily, as though every second were an insult to itself. The shelves were crammed with books and hats and boxes and feathers and leaves and large sticks and more jars and more wooden boxes and, on the very top shelf, several large stones.

  “No, this is not an ordinary magic shop,” repeated Miss Henrietta, looking at Annabel’s open mouth with disapproval. Her long black skirt made a dreadful swishing noise on the marble floor. A dark brooch glittered on her chest. Her hand reached out to the gray stick on the counter. “This is the Ondona, our wand, the Vine Witches’ Wand. We do not keep any of the newer types of wands. You will meet customers inquiring after such things. They rush
past to catch a late train and see the word magic and think they will buy tricks for their children. We trade only in high-end items that come upon the market rarely. Why, we have traveled twice to New York to purchase important wands from important witches who were about to die. These are old wands, passed down through generations. We also hold a small amount of seeing glass, most of it for the Finsbury Wizards, which must be delivered to their door, for they do not travel nowadays. They send their requests via pigeon.”

  Annabel closed her mouth. She tried very hard to be polite.

  “In this cabinet there are some important ingredients that you will soon accustom yourself with. The drawers are alphabetically listed, as you will see—dandelion, devil’s claw, dogwort—and you may in time learn to retrieve things that we ask for.”

  Annabel felt dizzy. Miss Henrietta Vine used the term we, but there was no one else present in the messy shop. Miss E. Vine’s absence made her nervous. And surely she wasn’t expected to work here, was she? Her mother had told her she was coming to continue her education.

  She was a young lady.

  “Your mother has sent you here to learn what you should have commenced learning long ago,” said Miss Henrietta, as if she could hear Annabel’s thoughts. “Your life has been but an illusion. Your mother has lied terribly. The sea-captain husband lost at sea? All deceit. She turned her back on us years ago, on magic—good magic, proper magic.”

  “But my father was a sea captain,” said Annabel.

  “Nonsense,” replied Miss Henrietta. “Your mother married a magician without our consent. A magician—yes, cheap tricks in halls—and with her so divinely magical. It was a great shock, and Estella never quite got out of bed again. Then one day while your mother was very heavy with you, why, he up and died.”