Page 7 - My FlipBook

By every account it was indestructible—a perpetual

motion machine. Lily was not entirely sure what that
was, but there had been some suggestion, from Papa, that
it meant she—or at least the heart—would carry on

forever. To live forever was not an idea she was entirely
CHAPT E R 1 enamored of. The thought of outlasting everyone she’d

ever known and loved was not a pleasant one. It made
Lily feel less a natural human, more a freak of design…

At least, that was how she thought of herself when she
dwelled on such things—though she tried not to, because
often there was so much else to contemplate. Today,

for example, was September the twenty-third and her
fourteenth birthday.
Lily was relieved to be banishing her unlucky
thirteenth year to the past. It had been a time of sticky

scrapes and perilous situations, and she would never
have survived it without the help of her friends. Its
departure was definitely something to celebrate.

The trouble was no one was celebrating.
Not her best friend, Robert, nor Malkin, her pet
mechanimal fox, nor Papa, nor the mechanical cook and
housekeeper, Mrs. Rust. Not even Captain Springer,

Mr. Wingnut, or Miss Tock—the rest of Brackenbridge
Manor’s brigade of clockwork servants. Not a single one
of them!

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