Liesl & Po Read Free Page B

animal blood, this and that. These were the scraps that a nighttime business, a business of death, was built on, and Mr. Gray was only happy to pass along the dried and dead and shriveled things, the squirmy and wormy things, the rot, that came his way.
    He shook his head and began rummaging under the kitchen sink for an empty container to hold the mortal remains of a certain John C. Smith, bar owner, who had arrived at his door that morning.
    Only three days ago he had been forced to sacrifice his mother’s old wooden jewelry box in the service of his profession. It was sitting on the kitchen table now, full of ash. He had regretted using the jewelry box for such a purpose, but he could not very well send the widowed Mrs. Morbower home with a cereal box containing her dead husband, as he had done earlier in the week with Mrs. Kittle. . . . Not after Mrs. Morbower had paid him so well and so quickly to have the body burned to ash. . . .
    Mr. Gray sighed. If people would only stop dying. Just for a week! He was sure a week was all he needed. . . .
    Tap-tap-tap.
    A soft knocking shook Mr. Gray from his reverie. He went to the door of his atelier and looked through the grimy window to the narrow street. He saw nothing but a patch of black hair sprouting at the very bottom of the window. The alchemist’s boy: Billy or Michael or something-or-other, Mr. Gray could never remember. All children were the same to him: strange and sticky and best avoided, like an upright variety of jellyfish.
    But he opened the door.
    “Hello,” Will said nervously, as Mr. Gray loomed before him. He shifted the box of magic in his arms—his left arm had started to cramp, from holding the wooden box for so long—and handed Mr. Gray the list the alchemist had written for him. “Here for a pickup, please.”
    Mr. Gray’s long, thin face grew even longer and thinner as he scanned the list. “Come in,” he said finally, and stepped backward so Will could pass through the door.
    The smell hit Will as soon as he entered the small front room that served as Mr. Gray’s kitchen, work space, and receiving room. No matter how many times he came for a pickup, Will could never get used to it: a bitter, scorching smell mixed with the smell of bodies, like a fire lit in the very center of a dirty stable. He pretended to scratch his nose, and he breathed into the fabric of his coat sleeve.
    Mr. Gray didn’t seem to notice. He was still reviewing the alchemist’s list, muttering things like, “Yes, fine, okay” or “Well, I’m not sure about two chicken heads” or “A dead man’s beard? I might have a mustache somewhere.”
    Finally Mr. Gray looked up, stroking his chin. “You may as well sit,” he said. “This might take a little while.”
    “Thank you.” Will did not really want to sit at Mr. Gray’s table, which was cluttered with mysterious jars of things and various foul-smelling chemicals, but he did as he was told because he had always been slightly afraid of Mr. Gray and did not want to anger him. He placed the wooden box of magic on the table, next to another wooden box that looked relatively plain but probably (Will knew) contained chicken hearts or something equally nasty, and sat down. It was, at least, a relief to be off his feet.
    Mr. Gray disappeared into one of his other rooms, and Will heard the sounds of rattling and banging and soft exclamations of “Now where was . . . ?” and “I could have sworn I had . . .” Will did his best not to look around too much. On one of his first visits to Mr. Gray he had made the mistake of approaching a large glass jar, like the kind you store pickles in, and had found it to be full of eyeballs. Since then he was careful to avoid exploring Mr. Gray’s rooms. Instead he kept his eyes fixed on the flames dancing in the enormous furnace in the corner, which sent strange shadows skating and leaping over the walls.
    Will knew that the furnace was used for burning bodies, but