The Secret Fire Read Online Free Page B

the way a thirsty person craves water. They wanted to be filled again. If opened, they would steal love, faith, and hope from anyone standing nearby, ripping those feelings right out of a person’s soul.
    If I opened the urn of Love, everyone at the gas station would become its victim. What would it be like to be emptied of love? To see Mom and Dad and feel nothing. To watch Jax drive away and feel nothing. To watch Tyler collapse when the urn of Hope was unleashed on him and feel nothing .
    It was a horrid thought.
    Tyler was losing his temper again. “Why doesn’t this fill faster?” He tried to shove the nozzle deeper into the tank. Gas fumes drifted in through the window.
    I wasn’t going to tell him to calm down. Thesituation was crazy. He was filling the tank so we could drive to a portal that would take him to the Realm of the Gods. Which was located in another dimension. I was so nervous, I felt like I might cry and laugh at the same time.
    I gripped the warm urn.
    â€œWe have to save Jax,” I told him when he finally got back into the car.
    â€œI know we have to save Jax! Tell me something I don’t know.” I could have told him lots of things he didn’t know. My brain was a fact machine. But now was not the time. He started the engine, then drove back onto the road.
    We didn’t have far to go. It only took ten minutes to reach Boston Common, but it took ten more minutes for Tyler to find a parking space. It was crowded and despite his ability to calculate the position of figures and the properties of space, he was the worst at parallel parking.
    â€œWhat are we going to tell Mom and Dad?” I asked.
    â€œWe tell them nothing ,” Tyler said. The scent of gasoline stung my eyes. In his hurry, he’d spilled some on his hands. “We lie.”
    â€œLie?” I didn’t think my stomach could clench any tighter. But it did and I wondered if I was too youngfor an ulcer. “We can’t keep lying.”
    â€œAu contraire, little bro. We have to keep lying.” He frowned at me. “Seriously, what would be worse? To get caught in a lie, or to never see Jax again?” It was a rhetorical question, of course. He grabbed his phone off the dashboard. “I’ll text Dad and say we’re having car trouble and we need to stay one more day.” He shrugged. “It’s partially true. We did have to call roadside service.”
    â€œYou think we can do this by eight a.m.?” I asked.
    â€œJeez, how am I supposed to know? I’ve never traveled to another dimension before. Well, I have, in my game.” Tyler and two of his friends had been creating a game called Cyclopsville that takes place in the Realm of the Gods. As far as coincidences go, this one was pretty weird.
    â€œThey expect us home tonight,” I reminded him. It was Sunday. Mom was away on a business trip, but Dad had let us drive to Boston to attend a comic-book festival. He’s a big comic-book fan. Our parents knew nothing about the urns, or Ricardo. “I’ll pretend my battery is dying,” Tyler said as he began to text. “I’ll tell Dad not to worry and that we’ll call tomorrow when the car is fixed and my phone is recharged. I’ll tell him we’re going to spend more time at the festival.”
    It all sounded good. Dad wasn’t a worrier. He’d want us to have fun at the festival. Mom worried mostly about the amount of time Tyler spent on the computer in the virtual world with his friends, and the amount of time I spent in the real world not making friends. But in this case, Tyler wasn’t on his computer and I was being social. Maybe Mom would see the extra day as a positive.
    If there was one person who could be given the title “worrier,” it was me. I was making a mental list of all the things that could go wrong. We had no idea what traveling to another dimension might do to Tyler’s body. Was