The Severed Tower Read Online Free Page A

frowned. “I don’t see what’s wrong with having a little luck on our side.”
    “What’s ‘wrong’ is that, in order to increase your luck, that thing drains someone else’s nearby. Did you forget that?” Her eyes burned into his. “What happens when you use it in the Strange Lands, and there is no one else nearby? Who do you think it’ll take the luck away from? Max? Me? Zoey? ”
    Holt shook his head. “If we stay in its influence sphere, we should be—”
    “You don’t know that! It could kill everyone in order to profit, you—me, and Zoey included.” She held her hand out toward him. “I’m sorry, Holt, but I need you to give it to me. It’s just too dangerous. I shouldn’t have asked you to carry it in the first place.”
    Holt stared at her and felt the anger begin to rise again. Now she was giving him orders? She just expected him to do as he was told?
    Holt pushed it back down. Again, it wasn’t like him … and maybe there was something to that.
    He pulled the Chance Generator out of his pocket. It looked harmless—an ornate antique piece of wood with chipped, colorful beads running its length. As he looked at it he felt the need to slide a few of them upward. Just to be safe.
    Just a few of them …
    Holt’s eyes narrowed. He pushed all the beads down, shutting the abacus’s power off. He showed it to Mira. “Look, it’s off, see? If it’ll make you feel better, I won’t use it anymore.”
    “Holt—”
    “I promise. If you think it’s dangerous, then I’ll leave it alone. You know more than me, and nothing’s more important than you and Zoey. I’ll shut it off, and I’ll keep it. You said it shouldn’t be near your other artifacts, that they might react to each other.”
    Mira stared at him, unsure, thinking things through. In the end she nodded. “It would be best if you could hold it, but I’d feel better if it was in your pack, not your pocket.”
    “Done,” Holt said, though he felt a slight twinge of worry. All the same, he shoved it in his pack and sealed it away. “Okay?”
    Mira smiled and reached out, touching his hand. “Thank you.” It had been a day or more since Holt had felt her hand. It felt good.
    The two stared at each other, then Zoey spoke up beneath them. “I feel better now,” she said. “The Max helped, I think.”
    They looked down at her. The little girl had an arm around the dog’s neck while she scratched his ears.
    Mira frowned. “I doubt that. Unless his smell overpowered the pain.”
    “The Max doesn’t smell!” Zoey insisted.
    “You know, if her powers are causing the headaches, it’s just another reason she shouldn’t use them,” Holt said. “The Assembly come running every time she does.”
    “Once we get to the Strange Lands, that won’t be a problem.” Mira smoothed the little girl’s hair. “The Assembly never go in there.”
    “I can’t even imagine that,” Holt said. “Not having to look over our shoulder every five minutes.”
    “We might lose the Assembly,” Mira replied, “but there’ll be plenty of other things to watch out for. You might end up missing our alien friends.”
    Holt doubted that was true, but then again, he had very little idea what was ahead of him. He’d never been farther north than Midnight City, and certainly never stepped foot in the Strange Lands. Yet, their plan was to go farther than even that.
    In the Midnight City artifact vault, Zoey had interacted with the Oracle, a major artifact that functioned something like a fortune-teller. Holt didn’t completely understand all that it had revealed to the little girl, but it had been clear about one thing: To get the answers Zoey needed, there was a place she needed to go—an infamous landmark in the center of the Strange Lands called the Severed Tower. Supposedly, so the stories went, if you could survive the Strange Lands and make it to the Tower, it would grant you one wish.
    It always sounded like a fairy tale to Holt, but lately