Dragon Keepers #3: The Dragon in the Library Read Free Page B

of what ?"
    Jesse said, "Queen Hap, the hobgoblin queen, stuck St. George in amber like a bug. You said it would be almost impossible to get him out. So what's so scary?"
    "St. George does not represent the sole threat to your dragon. Threats to dragons abound, and I sense impending danger," the professor said somberly.
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    "What's impending?" Jesse whispered to Daisy. Daisy shrugged.
    "Trouble amasses on the horizon; I feel it in my very marrow," the professor said. "Until further notice, consider yourselves on red alert, Dragon Keepers."
    With a heavy sigh, Jesse switched off the computer, and then they headed down the block to Miss Alodie's house. If anyone had valerian tea, they decided, it would be Miss Alodie. They didn't even bother stopping in the garage to collect Emmy. She hadn't been to Miss Alodie's house in over a week. Their newly sprouted, moody-as-all-get-out Nest Potato had no interest in anything but reading.
    "What kind of a threat do you think the professor was talking about?" Daisy asked.
    "I don't know," said Jesse sullenly. "Maybe there isn't any."
    "What do you mean?" said Daisy.
    "Maybe the professor's feeling grouchy, too," said Jesse. "Maybe he's just imagining things."
    Daisy nodded thoughtfully. The professor had a tendency to express himself dramatically, but she was pretty sure that if the professor felt something in his very marrow , the threat was real.
    When they got to Miss Alodie's house, they didn't see her in the front garden. So they headed
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    down the side yard path, which was lined by ranks of sturdy sunflowers, towering at least eight feet high. Unnoticed, the sunflowers' big pie-plate faces turned and slowly tracked the cousins as they passed.
    There was no Miss Alodie in the back garden, either, where her cutting beds stretched a quarter of an acre to the high hedge of myrtle that ran along the back of her yard. But the garden doors in the rear of the cottage stood wide open. The next moment, Miss Alodie came bursting through them, waving a flowered hanky over her head, as if in surrender.
    "Cousins!" she cried. Her green beanie was askew, and fine white hairs stood up around her head in a trembling nimbus. "It's gone!"
    "What's gone?" Jesse and Daisy chorused.
    "Our project. Our prize! The big book!" she cried. "It's gone! Disappeared!"
    Jesse and Daisy followed her into the cottage. The small, cozy parlor, normally as neat as a pin, looked as if a cyclone had hit it, leaving lamps overturned, vases dumped, and knickknacks scattered in its wake. The big, red leather-bound book, which sat between the couch and the easy chairs disguised as a coffee table, was gone.
    "What happened?" Jesse asked.
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    "Not five minutes ago, I was out front, thinning my zinnia patch, when I heard all hullabaloo break out inside. I ran in the house and..." She pointed to the spot where the book had been.
    "Who took it?" Daisy asked.
    "Well, not St. George, we know that much. He's out of circulation, for a while at least," Miss Alodie said. She plopped down on the sofa. "But who, then? Who?"
    The cousins perched on either side of her and pondered the question in uneasy silence.
    Then Jesse said, "The professor said we should be on red alert. Maybe this was why."
    Miss Alodie snorted. "Well, he might have warned me. I would have stayed inside with the book. I could have thinned the zinnias another day." She pounded her fists on her thighs. "Oh, why am I blaming him? It's my fault. The book was in my care."
    Daisy patted Miss Alodie's shoulder. "It's not your fault, either. And we'll get it back, won't we, Jess?"
    "Sure, we will," Jesse said, not very convincingly.
    Then Daisy remembered the reason for their visit. "Do you have some valerian tea?"
    Miss Alodie gave Daisy an odd look.
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    "It's for Emmy," Daisy said. "The professor prescribed it...for relief of her grumpiness."
    "It so happens I have a formidable valerian blend, if I do say so myself. I'll put the kettle on." Miss Alodie popped up from