I stand anxiously near the cliff’s edge, not daring to look down.
“What a sight to see, eh son?” My father slaps me on the back. I grasp the metal railing with all my strength, my hands sweating and my knuckles turning white. He reaches up and adjusts his hearing aid. “Time to take
AMSTERDAM 1857
Ash impersonated the falling of snow as night wrapped its overbearing arms around Amsterdam. This shouldn’t have been happening.
Flowers should have been blooming. Tourists, strolling the marketplace. Festivals, lighting up the city. But none of that was happening.
All because I’d opened that music box.
And now, I had to close
Excitement skitters across my limbs as I peer over the tops of all the other trees. I can see six-year-old Ruby Sue get off the school bus in front of her house and run straight into the woods. Toward me. Her friend.
Here in the easternmost part of the Berkshire Mountains…
Faced with great adversity, most gingerbread men will crumble. But not the gingerbread men of the Cloves family. No, they are tough cookies.
“You ready?” Samuel T. Cloves yelled to his friend Billy.
“I am, but I think this is crazy.” Billy’s frosty mouth quivered on his brown cookie face. He perched on
Sam snatched the steaming paper cup of black coffee off the counter. His palm crawled at the heat from the cup as he stepped outside. He set the coffee down carefully on the wrought-iron tabletop where legal pads and heavy historical tomes teetered in unstable stacks.
The barista was a loser.
The shop had
Ronnie wedged his armored fingertips under the heavy stone concealing the control box. He yanked and the slab cracked apart, the noise thunderous in the tomb-like corridor.
“Oops.”
Not that he felt bad about breaking anything in Emperor Thallia’s creepy castle, but the louder he was, the better chance the mechanical samurai patrolling
Yesterday, I declared war.
On a bugle.
0600. Time for “Reveille.” Our base commander, Wizard-General Lytton, won’t waste even the newest recruit mage on that duty. A simple spell makes the bugle perpetually hovering by the flagpole sound any required call at the proper time.
Until yesterday. Ten seconds into the silence
Read it now
The fierce storm had run its course by morning. Scores of leaves now lay scattered on the ground in a thick pile of reds, oranges, and yellows. Only one remained attached to the old maple tree.
Leaf clung to the tree’s highest branch, stem battered but intact.
The fallen leaves started to dry
My boyfriend’s eyes light up as he catches sight of the 1981 Thunderbird I just inherited from my grandfather. I figured Michael would be impressed with Blue Bob, given his freakish obsession with repairing old cars. However, I’m afraid even Michael can’t handle Bob’s special quirks.
Michael’s chiseled face stretches into a Zac Efron
I revved my motor and slipped out of park, checking the glowing digits of the clock on my nightstand. 2:59 a.m. I’d woken just in time. It’s tough to be a crime-solving teenage car. Sometimes you have to sacrifice a little sleep.
But I had a mystery to solve.
Kyle yelled as a tendril of vine lifted him off his feet, whirled him through the air, and deposited him in a breathless heap on the ground.
Gritting his teeth, he sprang back up and raised his axe. The vines drew back, their long cords moving like fingers, preparing for another assault.
“Of course, it’s genuine.” I rub my sweaty palms together in a vain attempt to relieve my tension. “This is a worthy trade.”
This is the one. Surely this old farmer will deliver me from my burden.
“Burden, am I?”
Orc fumes! Not a moment’s peace.
“This isn’t a jolly jaunt for me either, Master.”
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