The Passage to Mythrin 2-Book Bundle Read Free

into a block of ice.”
    They started back along Riverside Drive, with Amelia in the lead. Two steps, and the toe of her boot sent something bouncing along the ice-crusted sidewalk. It winked at her, one red gleam, as it flew. She nabbed it in mid-stride and stopped under the next streetlight to look at it.
    Her first thought was that she held a lump of glass. A shiny pebble, heavy, dark, with a fiery spark at its heart. Then she rolled it over and saw the metal band.
    â€œIt’s a ring!” Ike reached for it, but Amelia pulled her hand back.
    â€œSomebody must’ve dropped it.” She tucked it into her jacket pocket.
    â€œYou should put a notice in the
Independent
, in the lost and found column,” Ike said. “It could be valuable. Maybe you’ll get a big reward. Which you could share with us.”
    â€œYeah, likely.”
    They walked on, passed the new mall with its wall of coldly lit windows, turned the bend onto King Street, passed stores in old brick buildings twinkling with coloured lights. There were more people here, more cars passing. Amelia felt safer.
    Safer? Why shouldn’t I feel safe?
    Funny how tacky those lights look when Christmas is over, she thought, as they stopped at the corner of King and Peel and waited for a couple of pickup trucks to rumble past. And the red and green floodlights that splashed down the building fronts from the eaves were just plain ugly. What was worse, you couldn’t see past them when you looked up. They made a ceiling of light. Anything could be up on those roofs, looking down, and you’d never know.
    Peering upward under her hand, she made a sound. Simon pulled at her wrist. “What?”
    â€œI saw something up there.” She pointed at the roofline above Smith Hardware. “On the roof. Just a ... a sort of flicker behind the lights.”
    Both boys squinted upward. “Can’t see a thing with all that glare,” Simon said.
    â€œâ€™Course, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing there,” Ike said. “There could be. Easily.” He looked at Amelia and his eyes brightened. “We’re being followed!”
    â€œDon’t
say
that!” She darted across the street. Moving felt safer than standing still. It was like a hole had opened in the sky above her head, and if she moved fast she could get out from under it.
    Only the hole’s inside my head, not above it. In my memory. Something I’ve forgotten. Something about that blue light. And now all of a sudden I have this ring, as if it dropped out of that hole.
    Amelia, chill!
    She kicked a chunk of ice along the sidewalk. Ike fielded it with his boot and kicked it onward, and Simon jumped after it, and soon they were running and laughing and jostling for control of the ice chunk. They kept that up until they reached the town hall square. By then Amelia was starting to feel as if things were normal again.
    Music tinkled at them as they trotted into the square. More people were here, mostly parents andyoung kids, skating on a rink in the middle of the square. The sound system was playing the Skater’s Waltz. Amelia dropped onto a concrete bench and watched the skaters whiz and wobble past.
    â€œYou skate?” Simon asked.
    â€œNo. You?”
    â€œA bit.”
    â€œHuh!” Ike snickered. “Simon’s hopeless on skates. I’m good, though.” He uncased his camera and walked over to the edge of the rink.
    â€œIs he always like that?” she asked Simon.
    â€œYup, pretty much. He’s, um...” Simon thought about it. “Playful.”
    She looked up at the town hall tower, with its carved parapet and red and green lights. You’d think they’d try different colours, like purple, or turquoise, or...
    â€œHey. I thought you said people can’t go up there.”
    â€œI don’t think they can. Why?”
    â€œOh ... it’s nothing.” Her hands were shaking. She hid them