Read Online The Accidental Afterlife of Thomas Marsden by Emma Trevayne - Free Book Online Page A

quickly turned her mouth upward again.
    The ices were on the other side of the bustling square. The cobblestones underfoot ran slick with stinking stuff that could no longer be called water, though it had leaked from the fishmonger’s big barrels of thrashing creatures. Jostled and bumped, Thomas and Mary fought their way through to the stall, where the ices sat glowing brighter than the jewels in the theater.
    Surely tasted better too. True to her word, Mary bought a large one and led him to a sheltered spot between a baker’s and a stall hung the whole way around with golden spangles. He didn’t have time to look at what it sold, but he knew it hadn’t ever been there before and decided to look when they were done, for Mary was already enjoying the ice, and she had offered him half.
    Thomas’d never eaten anything so good. The flavor burst like fireworks on his tongue, sweet and sour all at once in the way the best summer raspberries were.
    No sooner had Mary swallowed her last mouthful than she dropped the now-empty twist of paper at their feet and gave him another odd stare. “I must go!” she said. “Isn’t all that gold pretty? I just noticed. Thank you, Thomas!”
    â€œBut—”
    But she was gone, dashed off and swallowed by the crowd. Perhaps Thomas was now attracting strangeness, and this sort was certainly more pleasant than graves or ghostly voices.
    He stepped out of their spot, peering around for a grocer’s, remembering the onion, and then turned to look at the sign in front of the glittery new stall.
    He spun, squinting through the crowd for any glimpse of the girl. She had called him Thomas, though now he thought on it, she hadn’t asked his name.
    She was gone, and only the stickiness on Thomas’s lips assured him she had been real in the first place.
    The sign was real.
    Charlatans , Silas always spat about such people. Liars and fakes, dishonest souls out to rob a man of his last copper, which was a bit rich from a man who stole what little the dead had left.
    Thomas didn’t know if it was usual for them to be out in the open like this, with a sign proudly proclaiming it, but all sorts ended up in and around the market, trying to scrape by a living. It wasn’t just meat and vegetables.
    FORTUNE-TELLER , read the sign. And under that . . .
    Under that were those same strange letters as were on the note in his pocket, the ones it made his head ache to read.
    COME IN , they said.
    Inside, a funny smell stung Thomas’s nostrils. Something foreign and strange, wafting from the shadows.
    Inside, it was painted with shadows.
    â€œHello,” said a voice.
    A candle burst to life.
    If forced to close his eyes and imagine such a person, Thomas would have described a fortune-teller who appeared exactly as this one did. Plump, with long eyelashes and bright red lips, surely the result of carmine, which Thomas knew of only because Silas had once given Lucy some as a present. Her thick hair was jet-black where it wasn’t streaked with white as pale as milk. Everywhere, she glittered with enough gold to make Silas reconsider robbing only from the dead.
    â€œA young one. A long future.” She smiled. “And what is your name, young one?”
    Thomas rather thought she should already know, but he hadn’t paid her yet, which might explain it. “Thomas,” he said. He wondered if he’d had a different name before, whether someone had wished him good-bye with it as they put him in the grave as a babe. “Where do those letters come from, the ones on the sign? I need to know.”
    â€œThomas.” Her voice was as rich as the red on her lips. “Do you have money?”
    Silas could be right about them. Charlatans, swindlers. But Thomas withdrew his hand from his pocket, a handful of coins clattering on the table at which she sat. She considered him for a moment and selected two of the smallest. Her face