All That Glitters (Avalon: Web of Magic #2) Read Online Free

felt as if she’d been left behind. What had happened here in the two weeks since she convinced her father to let the girls work at the preserve?
    They rounded a bend and entered the grand circular driveway in front of Ravenswood Manor. With its towers and stained glass, the amazing old building looked like a castle. Ivy crawled up the stone walls to reach gargoyles perched under the eaves. Kara thought it looked haunted.
    “What about the manor?” she asked. “Will that be part of the tour?”
    “We haven’t explored much of it yet,” Emily responded.
    “The garden tours and website should keep the council off our backs till we figure out how much of the manor we want to include,” Adriane added.
    Kara was actually starting to get excited. Emily and Adriane were really taking this seriously.
    “Come on.” Emily laughed as she walked around the cobblestone path that skirted the manor. “Ozzie’s with the animals out back.”
    Kara and Adriane followed, glaring at each other.
    “Show-off!”
    “Barbie!”
    “Come on, hurry!” Emily shouted, running onto the manicured sea of grass that was the great lawn behind the manor. Kara was surprised by a cacophony of neighing, bleating, hooting, and other less identifiable sounds. Before her stood a herd of animals.
    “All right, everyone. Calm down.” A gold-and-brown ferret paced back and forth in front of the crowd like a small furry general.
    The animals surged forward, bounding over the ferret.
    “Gah!” came his muffled response.
    Incredible animals surrounded Kara: butterfly-winged horses, green-and-purple-striped deer with long, floppy ears, silver duck-like things, and others even more outrageous. Kara felt giddy.
    “I am Ronif,” one of the silver duck-things announced—quiffles, Emily had said they were called. “Emily and Adriane told us how you helped to give us a home here.”
    “Stories will be passed down to generations of quiffles,” another quiffle proclaimed.
    “The town allowed the preserve to stay open,” Kara said modestly. “I really didn’t do much.”
    “You helped fight off the manticore!” a winged pony said.
    The animals cheered.
    The ferret came bounding over. “Welcome back, Kara. Your friends missed you.”
    “I don’t know about that, Ozzie,” Kara said, bending down to speak to him. “Things seem to be going fine here without me.”
    “Nonsense. It’s been much too boring.” The ferret smiled.
    Kara grinned, though she was a little embarrassed to be talking to a ferret. Well, not really a ferret, she reminded herself—he claimed to be an elf trapped in a ferret body, but Kara had her doubts. Would an embattled world of magic really send a ferret to find help against the forces of evil?
    Emily stepped forward. “Okay, everyone, roll call!”
    With quacks, neighs, and a hoot, the animals quickly fell into line, shoulder to shoulder across the lawn. A large, white snow owl glided gracefully out of the sky to land on Emily’s arm. Turquoise and lavender glistened in her wing feathers.
    “I’m here.”
    “Thank you, Ariel,” Emily said. “You remember Ariel,” she said to Kara.
    Kara gave the magnificent owl a little wave.
    Emily took out a notebook and began to check off her list. “Pegasi?”
    “We’re here,” a winged pony announced.
    “Thank you, Balthazar. We have four pegasi,” she said so seriously that Kara almost laughed.
    “Quiffles?”
    “All here,” Ronif announced. Adriane scooped up four baby quiffles, and immediately the other little ones tried to leap up into her arms. She fell over in the grass laughing, covered in quiffle kisses.
    “There are six adults and twelve babies.” Emily checked them off, then looked around. “Where’re the jeeran, Ozzie?”
    “Running in the field,” Ozzie said, a little annoyed. “They can’t stand still for more than two minutes!”
    Kara looked across the lawn and saw the tail end of a green-and-purple-striped deer soaring over a hedge.
    “We