Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods-3 Read Free

just too cold to do anything else.
    Gregor piled not only his blankets but his coat and a couple of towels on top of him. His mom and dad came in to say good night. That made him feel secure. For so many years his dad had been absent or too ill to come in. To have both parents tuck him in seemed like a real luxury.

    So he was doing all right, keeping his head in the Overland, until his dad leaned down to hug him good night and whispered in a voice his mom couldn't hear, "No mail."

    He and his dad had worked out a system. Gregor's mom had put the laundry room off-limits last summer. You couldn't blame her. In the last few years, first her husband, then Gregor and Boots had fallen through a grate in the laundry room wall that led to the Underland.
    Their disappearance was agonizing. How his mom had kept the family going both emotionally and financially through all this...well, Gregor couldn't say. She had been amazing. So it seemed a small enough thing to let her have her way about the laundry room.

    The tricky thing was...that made checking the grate that led to the Underland impossible for Gregor. But his dad knew how anxious he was for news of Luxa and the others, so once a day he would make a brief visit to the laundry room and see if a message had been left for his son.
    They didn't tell his mom; she would have just been upset. It was different for her. She had never been to the Underland. In her mind, everyone who lived there was somehow connected to the abduction of her husband and children. But Gregor and his dad both had friends down there.

    So there was no mail. No word again. No answers. Gregor stared into the dark for hours, and when he finally fell asleep, his dreams were troubled.

    He woke late the following morning and had to rush to get to Mrs. Cormaci's apartment by ten. He went over every Saturday to help her out. There had been times in the fall when Gregor had felt like she was making up work for him to do because she knew his family was hurting for money. But with the weather so bad, Mrs. Cormaci actually did need his help. The cold made her joints ache and she had trouble navigating the icy sidewalks. She talked a lot about falling and breaking a hip. Gregor was glad he was really earning his money now.

    Today she had a big list of errands for him to run — the dry cleaners, the greengrocer's, the bakery, the post office, and the hardware store. As always, she fed him first. "Did you eat?"
    she asked. He hadn't but he didn't even have time to answer. "Never mind, in this cold you can stand eating twice." She placed a big steaming bowl of oatmeal on the table, loaded with raisins and brown sugar. She poured him orange juice and buttered several slices of toast.

    When he had finished, Gregor felt ready to face any weather, which was good, since it was ten below not even counting the windchill factor. Following the list, he ran from place to place, grateful to have to wait in lines so he had a chance to thaw out. After he had dropped his purchases on Mrs. Cormaci's kitchen table, he was rewarded with a large cup of hot chocolate.
    Then they both bundled back up to go to the two places where Gregor could not run her errands, the bank and the liquor store. Once they got outside, Mrs. Cormaci was on edge. She clung to Gregor's arm tightly as they confronted patches of ice, pedestrians half-blinded by scarves, and swerving taxicabs. They had a chance to warm up at the bank, since Mrs. Cormaci didn't trust automatic bank machines, and they had to stand in line for a teller. Then they went to the liquor store, so she could pick out a bottle of red wine for her friend Eileen's birthday. But by the time they had made their way back home, Mrs. Cormaci's fingers were so numb that she dropped the wine in the hall outside her apartment just as Gregor got the door open. The bottle broke on the tile, and the wine splattered all over the throw rug inside the entrance.

    "That's it, Eileen's getting candy," said Mrs.