Brave Warrior Read Online Free PDF

out there,” their mother said. “Came out of nowhere and it’s wreaking havoc all over. Bruce and I were having a lovely dinner on Thames Street, and they made us evacuate.”
    At the sound of the name
Bruce
, Maisie decided to stomp off to her own room.
    “Be careful of the candles,” her mother called after her.
    Felix looked at his mother. She was pretty in the candlelight, which made her face glow and soften.
    “Were you two out somewhere?” she asked him.
    “No,” he said.
    She narrowed her eyes.
    “You’re wet,” she said.
    Felix looked down at his wet clothes.
    “We stepped outside to see if anybody else had electricity,” he lied.
    His mother kept staring at him for a long minute. Then she shook her head and turned to go back in her room.
    “Mom?” Felix asked.
    She paused.
    “Is Bruce Fishbaum still your boyfriend?”
    “Yes,” she said gently.
    Felix sighed, a long, sad one. Then he followed the path the candles lit for him back to his room.

    Even though the next morning arrived sunny and bright, school was cancelled. Debris littered the streets of Newport, and two-thirds of the city still didn’t have electricity. Felix and Maisie sat in the Dining Room eating croissants and trying to figure out what to do with their freedom.
    “Maybe we could take a little trip,” Maisie said, her eyes sparkling. She spread some strawberry jam on her croissant and took a big, sweet bite.
    At first Felix didn’t know what she meant. He was too busy separating the flaky layers of the pastry and eating each thin one before moving on to the next.
    “Lame demon,”
Maisie said.
    “No,” Felix said when he realized his sister wanted to go into The Treasure Chest.
    “Wasn’t Phinneas Pickworth clever?” Maisie said as if Felix hadn’t spoken. “Not just an anagram butan anagram from a French book about time travel. Anyone could figure it out, really.”
    “We didn’t,” Felix grumbled. “Avery Mason did.”
    Maisie spread extra jam on her next piece of croissant, as if that could take away the bad taste in her mouth for all things Avery Mason. “She’s a snob.”
    “She helped us,” Felix reminded his sister.
    “Inadvertently,” Maisie said, happy to use both an adverb and a vocabulary word from last week’s list.
    “Don’t those look good?” their mother purred as she came into the Dining Room.
    Great-Uncle Thorne had decided that they absolutely had to stop eating in the Kitchen. “Pickworths don’t dine in the basement!” he’d roared earlier that morning. Cook had scurried to move breakfast upstairs, setting up everything on the sideboard, which was really just a long table against the far wall.
    “And isn’t it nice to have everything laid out like this?” she added as she floated over to the sideboard and poured a cup of coffee from a silver pot with two interlocking
P
s etched into it.
    “Oh, cubes of sugar!” she said, as if cubes of sugar were a marvel.
    When she took a seat across from Maisie, Maisie saw that her mother was dressed for work. She had on a khaki-colored suit with a faint stain on the jacket lapel.
    “Mom,” Felix said, “Newport is basically closed.”
    “Not Fishbaum and Fishbaum,” she said in her new, happy voice. She picked at some fresh fruit, all of it cut into exactly equal-size pieces. “Mmmm. How did Cook find such delicious strawberries in March?”
    “I had them flown in from Guatemala,” Great-Uncle Thorne roared. “Pickworths do not eat flaccid fruit.”
    “They are delicious,” their mother said dreamily. Then, “Well, I’ve got to get to the office.”
    She had on lipstick and some kind of blush that made it look like she had a slight tan. Maisie studied her more closely. Her mother actually kind of sparkled.
    The three of them watched her drift out of the room.
    “What’s wrong with her?” Great-Uncle Thorne asked Felix and Maisie.
    “She has a boyfriend,” Felix said.
    “Do you mean she’s in love?” Great-Uncle Thorne