The Knaveheart's Curse Read Online Free Page B

Sit back and keep that seat belt fastened,” warned Nora, but now Maddy’s ears pricked as she heard Nora’s heart pumping with nerves. A whirring sound, tantalizing as a cherry Slurpee machine.

“Hang in there, Maddy,” encouraged Dakota, “and I won’t tell kids at school you’re scared of tunnels.”

Maddy’s eyes rolled wild. All she could focus on was Dakota’s plump neck, her pulsing, juicy vein. “Hhhhhhhhhh . . .” Maddy’s hiss startled them all. The tip of her tongue scraped her fangs. She pressed her lips together.

“Breathe into your inhaler, sweetie,” advised Nora. “There’s a girl.” But in the rearview, her wild eye caught Maddy’s. Yet I’m powerless to stop, Maddy thought. She tried to fight the urge. Fortunately, at the same second that she lunged forward to snack on delicious Dakota, a light appeared at the end of the tunnel.

Relief. All fear evaporated. Maddy’s claws instantly relaxed back into dimpled girl hands and Dakota’s neck again looked like a grimy kid neck, no longer tempting as a caramel apple.

“Ahh.” Maddy rolled down the window to drink in the fresh air. Close one.

Nora and Dakota still looked scared. And when had all these leaves blown into the car? Maddy looked around curiously. Why hadn’t any landed on Maddy or anywhere in the backseat? Dakota and her mother seemed guilty as they shook the greenery from their heads, shoulders, and laps.

“Dearie me, that was a dreadful asthma attack, Madison,” said Nora, plucking a leaf from her ear as they crossed the parking lot. “Let’s find someone to give you a once-over. Just to be safe, all right?”

“Uh-huh.” In the distance, Maddy saw a peak-roofed wooden house set on a smooth sheet of lawn. New World green, she thought. Where had she heard that phrase again? Then she remembered and gulped. Uh-oh. How could the Knaveheart’s Curse have slipped her mind so quickly? New World green was all around. Her eyes moved to check out the tennis courts, shaded by silver pines. Woods looked safer.

If a Knave was around, the woods made a good escape route.

“‘Club Lullaby, a Haven for the Young and Old.’” Maddy read the sign nailed to the clubhouse. A few of the Old were snoozing on the porch. “What kind of club is this?”

“It’s a sports-and-hobbies club. They’ve got loads of rules, so just remember to say, ‘may I,’” explained Dakota. “Sure you’re up for a golf lesson, Maddy? P’raps you want to rest with the oldies.”

“I’ll be okay,” said Maddy. She’d just keep off the widest, green-iest greens and hope for the best.

Nora led the girls past the clubhouse and to an adjacent bungalow marked CLINIC, where one of the staff coaches checked Maddy’s pulse and reflexes.

“I’d make a lousy doctor. I can’t even find her heart,” the coach said, shamefaced. Maddy wasn’t surprised—after the tunnel scare, the shy blip of her hybrid heartbeat would be too faint to locate.

She was relieved the coach didn’t take her temperature, which, at fifty degrees Fahrenheit, might have given him an even bigger shock—and was why hybrids tended to stick to their own, Argos-approved doctors as they made the transition to mortality.

“I just need some fruit juice,” Maddy promised. “Then watch out, Tiger Woods!”

“That’s the spirit,” said the coach, pouring Maddy a cup of limeade.

“Make it two,” said Nora. With a weary wave for the girls, she retreated to the clubhouse porch with the other limeade loungers.

On a small putting green, the lesson was under way. A dozen or so kids, including Dakota, wheeled sporty bags stocked with golf irons.

“Ooh. Maybe I’ll take this,” said Maddy as she fished inside a pretty plaid golf bag and selected the shortest iron.

“Maddy, careful. It’s not ‘maybe I’ll,’ it’s ‘may I,’” explained Dakota. “As I said, you must watch your manners here.”

“Hey! That’s my golf bag.” Lisi Elcris, in a minidress