The Wrong Side of Magic Read Online Free

heart.”
    And, unfortunately, she also had a gullible mind. Only Hudson didn’t come out and say that. He just sighed. “Charlotte lied to you. Magic doesn’t really exist. It’s all tricks and pretend.”
    Bonnie gripped the compass and set her jaw.
    â€œYou don’t believe me?” Hudson picked up the phone from the countertop and held it out. “Call and ask somebody: Mom, Grandpa, your teacher. I’m sorry, but Charlotte took advantage of you.”
    Bonnie stared at the phone for a moment, then looked down at the compass. Her eyes puffed up with tears. “Charlotte promised. She said when I pull the knob up, I’ll go to Logos. I only came home to drop off my backpack and to tell you so you wouldn’t worry.…”
    Hudson gently took the compass from her hand. Maybe he hadn’t done the right thing by letting her walk home by herself, but he would fix his mistake. “Yeah, well, I’m going to talk to Charlotte. Don’t worry, I’ll get your money back.”
    Hudson put on his jacket. The last image he saw as he went out the door was Bonnie, her shoulders slumped as she cradled the mixing bowl.
    Hudson walked quickly, his feet making an angry rhythm down the sidewalk. Charlotte had gone too far this time. It was one thing to come up with stories about magic; it was another to use them to take money from little kids. He turned the compass over in his hand, squeezing it.
    Charlotte’s house came into view. He could see her lying on her stomach in the grass, sorting through the clover again. Pull up the knob and he’d be in a magical kingdom, huh? What kind of compass had a knob on it, anyway?
    Hudson jerked up the knob with his thumbnail. A few angry words had been heading toward his lips. These stopped, faltered, and completely toppled off his tongue.
    He no longer stood on his street. He was on a meandering dirt path in the middle of a thick forest. Huge trees towered over him, their leafy canopies nearly crowding out the sky. He had seen autumn trees with their yellow, orange, and red leaves. This forest not only had those sorts of trees, but it also had purple, light blue, and dark blue ones. The place looked like a rainbow had fallen to earth and toppled color everywhere.
    Hudson let out a startled scream. He blinked and then blinked harder in case the last time hadn’t worked. He checked behind him. The trees there looked as though they’d sprouted out of a box of Crayolas. He had landed in freaking Candy Land.
    This couldn’t be real. It was an illusion of some sort, a trick. A really good trick, since Hudson could even smell the forest. He was surrounded by the scent of trees, bushes, and soil. Every once in a while, he caught a whiff of something flowery. “Hello?” he called.
    He heard nothing except birds chirping to one another. Even that sounded strange. The chirps had a trilling noise to them like someone playing a piano.
    â€œCharlotte?”
    No answer.
    Hudson turned in a circle, searching for anything familiar. “Hey, Charlotte, where are you? How did you do this?”
    The wind blew through the trees. It made the forest seem like a parade, with thousands of leaves fluttering like colorful confetti. Don’t panic , he told himself. This isn’t real.
    Hudson stepped over to a blue bush, whose featherlike leaves swayed in the wind, and he ran a finger along a leaf. It felt as soft as velvet. He drew his hand away quickly. A magic trick couldn’t have turned his neighborhood into a forest. He shouldn’t be able to see, smell, or feel this place if it didn’t exist. His heart beat faster, half with excitement and half with fear. The compass had really done something, had taken him somewhere new. Charlotte hadn’t lied about the compass’s magic. Cool. Beyond cool. Magic was real. Logos actually existed.
    Why hadn’t Charlotte shown people this before? She should have taken a few