From the Dragon Keepers' Vault Read Online Free Page B

right now.
    Daisy gasped as she dropped the treasures she had just collected. At first, Jesse thought it was because of the cold, but she was wading toward something in the center of the tide pool. It looked like the softball Jesse had lost last summer. He walked along the edge of the tide pool to get a closer look. It was definitely
not
a softball.
    “Is that what I think it is?” Jesse asked Daisy, his heart starting to flutter.
    Jesse charged, sneakers and socks and all, into the freezing water just as Daisy bent to pick up the object.
    “It is!” she said, cradling it in her hands. It was a perfectly round rock with a rough surface the texture of congealed oatmeal. “It’s a geode.”
    “Wow,” said Jesse in a hushed voice. “A Thunder Egg. Do you think …?”
    Daisy looked up at him. Neither one of them wanted to say it aloud, but they were both thinking the same thing:
Maybe there’s a baby dragon inside
.
    They waded out of the tide pool. Jesse held the geode while Daisy sat on a rock and puther socks and sneakers back on. Emmy had hatched from a geode that had looked just like this one, except that Emmy’s geode had had purple specks in it. This one was shot through with specks of glittering gold.
    “We should tell the professor what we found,” Daisy said. The professor was Lukas B. Anderssen, their online dragon consultant.
    “We should probably go say ahoy there to the Driftwoods first, like Polly said,” Jesse murmured, his eyes never leaving the geode.
    Daisy stood up. “Okay, we’ll say ahoy, then go back and hop online,” she said. She held out her hand for the geode. Reluctantly, Jesse gave it back to her. After all, she was the one who had spotted it first, just like he had been the one who had found Emmy’s egg.
    They headed down the beach, Jesse’s wet sneakers making a squelching sound as he walked.
    “We shouldn’t get our hopes up,” Daisy said.
    “I know,” said Jesse with a sigh. “Sometimes a rock is just a rock.”
    Daisy lifted the rock to her lips and whispered, “Hi there.” Her eyes went wide. “Jess, I think I felt it hum!”