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) by Ysabeau S. Wilce

knees, my head swimming with nausea. I closed my eyes tightly against the darkness, and so dark was it that even the sparks of light you normally see when you squinch your eyes up were extinguished.
    After a while, maybe it was forever even, it seemed like we were not moving at all, that we were suspended in a black void, and it was the Void itself that was moving, rushing by us in a howl. Perhaps this is what the Abyss is like, I thought, the impenetrable blackness, the scream of air; perhaps it was not the air screaming, but—The Elevator hit hard and bounced upward, and so did I, catching my tongue painfully between my teeth. Something knobbed into my side, bright and hard. I jerked away and whacked my noggin into a stony object, which complained, “Owwww, that was my chin.”
    I opened my eyes. Gray light hazed in through the Elevator’s open door. Udo sat on his heels, rubbing his chin with one hand and patting his hat with the other. The foot-long hat pin had kept it on his head, but now it was quite cockeyed. My head felt as though a hundred million goldfish were flapping their fins inside my skull. I tried to stand, but my knees wobbled me back down again. The grille stood open, so I did the easy thing and crawled out of the Elevator, into the huge expanse of the Bibliotheca.

TEN
Nausea. Discussion. Tea. Sigils.
    T HE FLOOR BOBBED and jumped with imaginary motion, and the mocha in my tum was threatening to abandon ship. Every time I raised my head, the Bibliotheca swirled into a blur of steel gray, and closing my eyes was worse: Then the darkness itself whirled and lurched. If I stared directly at one fixed point, my head started to slow down, but the second I moved my eyes, everything began to spin again.

    Udo moaned, “Are you okay, Flora?”
    I tried to look back to the Elevator without actually turning my head to look back at the Elevator, and I realized that Udo had crawled up next to me. I risked a glance and saw that his face was almost as green as his hat.
    “I’m going to urp,” Udo complained.
    “Don’t do it on me—”
    “Floooooooooora!”
    “Valefor?” I risked another turn of the head and saw that the Bibliotheca was shrouded in gloom. Today the light filtering through the windows was weak and gray, and rain skimmed the outside of the glass. It hadn’t been raining earlier.
    “Floooooooooooora!”
    “Valefor—where are you?”
    This time the only response was a wracking cough. I pushed up off the floor and stood, staggering over to the nearest table, to grab for balance. The floor tipped up and then down again, and for a moment my mocha was poised to spew. But then I got enough balance back to stand straighter and to see Valefor wavering, as thin and pale gray as newsprint. He looked terrible, much worse even than when I had first seen him. His hair stuck out like thistledown and his eyes gleamed wetly white.
    “I am receding again, Flora,” he moaned, and held his hands out to me. The floor swayed, but I lurched over to him, my own hands outstretched, and breathed so deeply that my chest grew tight with exertion. A cold misty feeling flowed over me, and Val’s cold tenuous grip fastened upon me.
    Val’s lips were so faint that I could barely feel them press against mine. I breathed deeply out until my lungs felt sucked and empty, then inhaled again until they felt like balloons. It wasn’t until my second exhalation that he began to solidify. First he felt wiry and thin like sinew, then tough and hard like bone, and then, finally, like solid flesh, warm beneath the grip of my hands.
    I let go and pressed my hand on my chest, trying to hold my bouncy heart in, and gasped deeply. My insides felt as though my blood had been replaced with swirly giddy light, rushing golden through my veins. The dizziness was gone.
    Valefor said happily, “Well, I feel much better! That was some good stuff, Flora. You are so full of lovely nice stuff: anger, guilt, sorrow. Yum!” He smacked his