Brave Warrior Read Online Free Page B

them made any sense.
    “Wait a minute. Do you think Elm Medona is an anagram for a French word?” he asked suddenly.
    “Well,” Maisie said, “it sure isn’t an anagram for an English one.”
    Felix seemed to be concentrating really hard on something.
    “What?” Maisie asked impatiently.
    “I know you won’t want to do it,” he said.
    “Spit it out already,” Maisie said.
    “Avery Mason speaks fluent French,” Felix said. “She went to a French American school until last year.”
    “No,” Maisie said.
    “I told you that you wouldn’t want to do it. Even though she might be able to help us.”
    “Well,” Maisie said, considering.
    “All we have to do is have her look at the trunk.”
    “Well,” Maisie said again.
    “Or our lists,” Felix offered. “We could go to her house right now. It’ll take an hour, tops.”
    When Maisie didn’t say anything, Felix said, “Or I could go by myself.”
    “No!” Maisie said quickly.
    She was not about to lose Felix again so soon after she’d gotten him back.
    “I’ll go with you,” she said reluctantly, because what else could she say?

    Despite their mother’s insistence that they never ask Charles the chauffeur to drive them anywhere, they had both readily decided that since their mother was out on a
date
with her
boyfriend
, they could do whatever they wanted. Maisie enjoyed pushing the button that beckoned Charles to the mansion. And she liked how quickly he responded, walking into the foyer already dressed in his black chauffeur uniform with his cap pulled low on his forehead.
    “Miss Robbins?” he said, as cool and calm as if she beckoned him every day.
    “We need to go somewhere,” Maisie said.
    “Yes, Miss,” Charles answered.
    Felix gave him the address, and in no time they were sitting in the backseat of the black limousine, cruising down Bellevue Avenue, grinning at each other.
    Avery Mason lived in a big, sprawling house that sat on a long spit of land that stretched out into the ocean.
    “Creepy,” Maisie pronounced when they arrived.
    “Wait here for us, please,” Felix said as he got out of the limo.
    “Yes, Master Robbins,” Charles said.
    “He’s like a robot,” Felix whispered to Maisie on their way to the front door.
    “He’s just a professional, that’s all,” Maisie said, as if she knew all there was to know about chauffeurs.
    Avery opened the door before they even rang the bell.
    “What’s this French emergency?” she asked, letting them inside.
    Her house was the complete opposite of Elm Medona—modern, all glass and sharp angles, open spaces, and cathedral ceilings.
    “We’re playing this…um…game,” Felix said. “And we need to find anagrams.”
    “That’s when you reorder letters to make a new word or phrase,” Maisie explained.
    Avery looked at her like she was a total moron. “I know what an anagram is,” Avery said, tossing her beautiful hair.
    “But we think this one is in French,” Felix said. “And you are fluent in French.”
    “Mais oui,”
Avery said perfectly.
    She led them into a large room with one entire wall made of glass that overlooked the water. Waves crashed onto the rocks below and an almost full moon hung above them. All the furniture was white, which made Maisie uncomfortable, like she was going to get it dirty somehow.
    Once they’d settled onto separate white chairs, Felix handed Avery their lists.
    “The anagram is for Elm Medona?” Avery said.
    Felix nodded.
    “What kind of game is this?” Avery asked.
    But she went to work right away, moving her lips as she read to herself.
    “I can’t really find one,” she said after a long time.
    Maisie sighed with disappointment.
    “That’s okay,” Felix said. “Thanks for trying.”
    “Anything for you, F,” Avery said.
    F?
Maisie thought grumpily.
    Felix grinned. “I appreciate it, A.”
    “Oh, please,” Maisie muttered as the two of them giggled together.
    Avery led them back to the front door, where she