Prince of Air Read Free

oil painting by some famous artist of Saint Sebastian with his body pierced by a million swords above the headboard. Anywhere that Felix looked, he saw weapons or something dead.
    The creepy clock beside the bed, an ornate gold thing with miniature swords for hands, reminded Felix that he had exactly one hour before dinner. He missed his mother’s spaghetti carbonara. Or even good old mac and cheese. Now they had to eat in the Dining Room, where the chairs were so heavy it took two people to move one, and Felix spent all his time worrying that he might break a piece of the stupid Pickworth china. Cook, as they called the woman who made all the food downstairs in the giant Kitchen, came from France, and dinner had names that Felix couldn’t pronounce. A ham sandwich with white sauce on it was a
croque-monsieur
. A big stew with every disgusting thing Felix could imagine in it all at once was called
cassoulet
. Even worse, he had to dress up just to eat in there. Great-Uncle Thorne had dug up a tuxedo that almost fit Felix. The jacket sleeves and pant legs were too long, but a seamstress arrived one morning with a mouthful of pins and managed to hem everything by dinner that night.
    Why would people want to live like this?
Felix thought, not for the first time. He worried that Maisie actually liked all this nonsense.
    Last night she’d shown up at dinner wearing an old dress of Great-Aunt Maisie’s, a ridiculous gold thing with a matching headband that had a big feather sticking out from it and a strand of pearls that hung all the way to her knees.
    â€œLook!” Maisie had said happily, “I’m a flapper!”
    â€œWhatever,” Felix had mumbled, yanking miserably on his bow tie.
    His mother explained it away by reminding him how old Great-Aunt Maisie and Great-Uncle Thorne were.
    â€œWho knows how long they have left, sweetie,” she’d said. “It’s wonderful to let them have a little bit of their old lives back.”
    One thing Felix knew for certain—he would
not
go back into The Treasure Chest. Felix had figured out that every time he and Maisie time traveled, Great-Aunt Maisie got healthier and younger. If they kept going back and she kept getting better, Felix would never return to his normal life as a regular twelve-year-old.
    Reluctantly, he got off the bed to start to get ready for another awful dinner. Standing in the middle of the room, he glanced upward at the strangely painted ceiling. Most of the time, Felix averted his eyes to avoid scaring himself with thoughts of war and death, so he hadn’t really studied the weird stuff up there. But now the giant eye painted in the very center of the ceiling caught his attention. It seemed to be looking right at him. Felix stepped back to see it better. One eye in the middle of a fist, the wrist and arm stretching across the dark ceiling.
    Weird
, Felix thought, shuddering.
    An owl swooped from one corner, its wings opened and painted so realistically they practically fluttered. Around the edges of the ceiling, geometric symbols in black and white lined the room.
    â€œIt’s magic,” a voice boomed from the doorway.
    Felix jumped, startled.
    Great-Uncle Thorne laughed his booming laugh as he strode into the room.
    â€œJoy of life, mercy, transformation,” he said, pointing with his walking stick. Today it had a jaguar’s head at the tip and the jaguar had emeralds for eyes.
    â€œMagic symbols,” Great-Uncle Thorne explained. “Clarity, truth, beauty.” He paused, and his eyes grew misty. “Samuel Santiago was a magician. From the time he was a lad, he practiced magic tricks.”
    Suddenly energized, Great-Uncle Thorne’s whole face lit up. “Why, some of his tricks are right here in this room!”
    He went to the large ebony-and-ivory chest of drawers and began opening them, rifling through their contents, then slamming them shut. When he didn’t find what he