Deadly Pink by Vivian Vande Velde Read Free Book Online

only need one. Can you send me to wherever Emily is?” I congratulated myself on being clever enough to ask beforehand, and not waste a wish on something they couldn't grant.
    “Yes,” they both agreed, indicating by their laughter that nothing could be easier, nothing could make them happier.
    Though other things here had annoyed me in their excessive girlyness, these two were just so sweet, it was hard not to giggle right along with them. But I wasn't here to be charmed by how cute things were. “How does this work?” I asked.
    “Coins go in the fountain...” Lime told me in her gleeful little voice.
    “...and wishes get granted,” Raspberry finished. Giggle, giggle.
    Together they said: “That's what we're here for: to grant wishes.”
    The quest games I was used to playing weren't this straightforward. I tossed the coin into the fountain. “I wish to be sent where Emily is.”
    The musical quality of their laughter filled the clearing. Sparkles danced before my eyes. My skin tingled. The topiary maze faded around me.
    Then the sparkles dissolved, and I found myself on the very edge of a large chasm. The ground beneath my feet shifted, crumbling. I looked for something to grab hold of, but there wasn't anything.
    There wouldn't have been time, anyway.
    The ground, a thin lip of earth overhanging that deep, deep expanse, gave under my weight. I bumped. I bounced. I slid. I scraped. Down the face of the cliff, faster and faster I fell. Only after losing half the skin on my hands and knees did I manage to catch hold of a scraggly bush.
    Damn pixies.
    My arms were already beginning to shake with the strain of supporting me as I dangled in the air. I had to look down to try to find a solid place to put my feet.
    There was a whole lot of down.
    Heights are another of those things I hate.
    Just look straight ahead, I told myself. Straight ahead was rock and dirt and one itty-bitty bush.
    One of my little silver ballet flats had been scraped off my foot without my even noticing. Still, I told myself, that actually might work out for the best. I tried to dig my toes into the ungiving surface.
    I had yet to find a toehold when the bush that anchored me gave up on the whole hopeless situation and came out of the ground. I caught a dizzying flash of sky—which told me that I was tumbling through the air.
    That couldn't be good.
    Then I felt a fizzy sensation, like when you're drinking ginger ale and it goes up your nose—except this was all over. I'd had that sensation when I'd played other Rasmussem games—the kind not meant for little kids—when I'd received grave injuries in a swordfight or some other misadventure. It was the Rasmussem equivalent of dying, and it meant the game was over.

Chapter 6
    Adam’s Report
    T HIS TIME I definitely woke up confused. My mother was shouting—and under normal circumstances, my mother is not a shouter—but she was obviously furious. “What the hell were you thinking? How could you be so stupidly thoughtless?”
    Sure, I'd been foolish, first walking out of eyesight of Emily, then trusting those treacherous pixies, then ... what? Not holding on to that sad excuse of a bush tightly enough? Faulting my lack of upper-body strength didn't exactly seem fair. Still, I managed to squeak out, even before opening my eyes, “Sorry. I'll do better next time, really.”
    And then I did open my eyes just in time to see Mom swing around to face me. Her color went from bright, angry pink to what-have-I-done gray. “Oh, sweetie,” she said, her eyes filling with tears as she rushed to take my hand. “No, no, I wasn't talking to you. My poor brave, sweet sweetie.” She was patting my face, being careful of the lead wires that were still connected.
    Someone else was also saying she was sorry, and for a moment I thought it was Emily. Had Emily come back, too? Because as far as I was concerned, she did have a lot to apologize for.
    But then I realized the speaker was Sybella.
    She continued,