Three Lost Kids & the Death of the Sugar Fairy, The by Kimberly Kinrade Read Free Book Online Page B

scrunched up my eyes in an attempt to see. "Why do you sound like you're in another room? You're going the wrong way. You have to walk to us." The darkness was so complete, like a black room with no light. "Okay, on three, we're all going to scream. Someone will hear us. Mom and Dad are for sure caught up by now. One, two, three!"
    " Help!" We screamed as loud as we could, over and over.
    W hen we couldn't scream anymore, our throats too sore, a flickering of light came back on and the skeleton waved at me. "Welcome to the haunted house, where guests stay forever and the dead linger on to play."

Chapter 2 – Dying for Sugar
     
    We found our voices and screamed even more, still to no avail, but at least we could see. Bella had wandered off, so Lexie, TayTay and I ran from the scary skeleton and went looking for her. That meant running away from where the front door used to be, and running deeper into a house that looked like it stepped right out of a horror movie.
    It smelled like mothballs and melted wax and everything had a coat of dust over it. Spider webs clung to the corners, and they didn 't look at all fake. Neither did the giant black spiders that crawled over them!
    " Where's Bella? I'm scared." Lexie clung to my hand, the sweat from nerves making the hold slippery.
    " I'm scared too, but we'll find her and get out of here. I promise." We were kind of used to magical stuff happening. I mean, we'd all been to our own magical worlds and met dragons and unicorns and fairies, but this didn't look like Lexie World, Bella World or Maddie World.
    A winding staircase spiraled up to the second floor. "Bella, are you upstairs?"
    " Maddie, where are you? Come up here! You're not going to believe this." Bella's voice carried down to the first floor.
    I couldn 't believe she'd actually gone up there alone, but now we had no choice but to follow our overly brave and impulsive sister.
    A clickety-clack of bones moving behind me sent me running up the stairs faster than I'd intended. I didn't need to see any more walking skeletons.
    The stairs creaked as I pulled Lexie up them, with TayTay at my side. I had horrible visions of one of the stairs breaking and a boney hand pulling me through the crack, but they all held up.
    Once on the second floor, we walked down a hallway wallpapered with peeling roses , and decorated with paintings of people long-dead whose eyes seemed to follow us. I shivered and pulled Lexie closer to me. Of the four doors, only one stood open, so we walked to that and heard Bella talking quietly to someone.
    I rushed to the room and gasped when I looked in. Bella sat on the floor holding the hand of what looked like ... a Fairy. Her skin glistened like iced frosting and her wings glowed in a dull violet light.
    Bella looked up with tears in her eyes. "Maddie, she's dying. We have to help her."
    We walked over and stood at her bed, an old four-poster canopied type with a stepping stool for us to reach her. Up close, I could see how her face looked pale and her violet eyes looked faded, like the light was going out in her.
    " Who are you?" I reached for her hand, and her skin felt like rice paper. I worried it would tear if I held on too hard.
    Her voice came out like a sad song. "I'm the Sugar Fairy, the one who brings magic to Halloween and keeps the veil between the living and the dead open but intact."
    " Why are you dying? What happened?" Lexie stood on her tiptoes to see, and I scooted her onto the stepping stool.
    " Children no longer leave me sugar. All of my babies but one have died, and I'm too weak to retrieve her from her Sugar Flower. Without her, my line will end, and once I'm gone, Halloween will die with me." As she talked, her voice became softer and softer until we could almost not hear her.
    I leaned in to listen harder. "What can we do?"
    " Save the Sugar Baby. Bring her back to me with a petal from the flower she arrived in, and I can brew a potion that will give me back life."
    I looked to