Lord of the Wings Read Online Free

acknowledged my arrival with a casual wave.
    I parked my car and joined Michael at the Twinmobile, where Jamie and Josh and their two best friends, Mason and Noah, had resumed squabbling mildly over who got to sit in the third row. I wondered, for a moment, if Mrs. Shiffley’s decision to put these four together was wise. On the one hand, Michael and I had long ago realized that when the foursome got together they produced at least eight times as much noise and mischief as they did singly. But on the other hand, at least the odds were they’d comply pretty well with Mrs. Shiffley’s orders to stay together as a group. And we’d have plenty of help. There were almost as many chaperones as children, probably because the Creatures of the Night exhibit was usually crowded beyond belief during the zoo’s normal visiting hours.
    Once we’d settled Josh and Mason in the third row, promising Jamie and Noah that prized position on the way back, we headed out. I distracted the boys by pointing out all the Halloween decorations we passed and challenging them to pick their favorite. At first, the army of skeletons outside the Caerphilly Hospital was running neck-and-neck with the Caerphilly Garden Center’s display of three animated witches stirring a kettle that emitted dry ice fumes. But once we sighted the Haunted House it blew all its competition out of the water.
    â€œAwesome!” Josh and Noah whispered in unison, while Jamie and Mason just stared.
    â€œIt is pretty cool, isn’t it?” Michael said.
    The Haunted House had started life as the Smoot family house. Like our house, it was a sprawling three-story Victorian. But in the last ten years we had transformed ours from a seedy wreck into a showplace, under Mother’s guidance and with much expensive help from the Shiffley Construction Company. After inheriting it from his aunt last year, Dr. Smoot had taken his house in the other direction. The white siding and woodwork were now gray and black. The ornate gingerbread trim was still intact, but painted in gray and black it gave the impression that the house was trimmed with sooty geometric spiderwebs. Many of the windows had faux cracks painted on the glass, and flickering candles in a few of them seemed to be the only light. Right now the irregular slate front walk still looked ever-so-slightly too new, and I was suspicious that the weeds springing up between the stones were planted, since it was a little too soon for even the most enterprising weeds to grow quite so tall. But time would no doubt mellow all that. I’m not sure I would have replaced a perfectly nice white picket fence with an eight-foot black wrought-iron fence, but it looked elegant. Although I hoped the skull-shaped lights on the posts were Halloween decorations, not permanent features.
    â€œLook!” Noah said. “Is that a vampire?”
    â€œNo,” I said. “That’s just Dr. Smoot, who owns the Haunted House.”
    â€œAwesome,” Josh said. “Does he live there?”
    â€œYes,” I said. “On the third floor.”
    â€œI bet he has fangs,” Mason said.
    I decided to ignore that remark. Where did they learn about such things? At least, since it was Halloween, I wouldn’t have to answer questions about why Dr. Smoot was dressed like a vampire. Their parents could explain that later, when the kids noticed he did it year round instead of just at Halloween, like most people. Halloween was the one time when Dr. Smoot looked more or less normal. Normal for Caerphilly, at least, where almost everyone would be dressed in costume for the entire ten days of the festival.
    Before the children could ask any more questions, fresh sights pushed Dr. Smoot out of their minds. First the Halloween Fun Fair, a temporary amusement park complete with rides, games of skill and chance, and food concessions—a sort of Halloween-themed midway that filled the nine and a half acres of