Three Lost Kids & the Death of the Sugar Fairy, The Read Free

birthday, after all.
    " Come on." I charged forward. "We just need to start walking. We can't stand here arguing all night."
    TayTay stayed with me , and Lexie and Bella caught up with me soon enough.
    Bella put her fists on her hips and frowned as we walked. "You can't decide this all by yourself, Maddie. Nobody said you were in charge."
    " I'm the oldest, and it's my birthday. That makes me in charge. If you want to go somewhere else, then go. I'm not stopping you." Mom and Dad would be seriously mad if I we all separated while in the Sugar World, but I didn't care. They seemed so far away, and my sisters seemed way too close.
    TayTay nudged me. "We have to stay together, and I expect we'll not survive this if you three don't learn to work together better. Now think, what can we do to figure out our way."
    Lexie 's eyes lit up and I knew she had an idea. She was the best at figuring out puzzles. "The Sugar Fairy glowed, right? So it makes sense that her baby can glow too. Well, what if Bella climbs a tree and looks for something glowing? Then we'll know which direction to go in."
    Yup, she was a genius.
    "Great idea, but last time Bella climbed a tree in a strange world, she was kidnapped by a Dragon." I turned to Bella. "It's up to you."
    She nodded. "I'm doing it. I'm not scared."
    Of course she wasn 't. Sometimes I thought she needed a little more fear to make her less crazy. Then again, I probably needed less fear.
    With trees everywhere, finding one to climb wasn 't hard, and Bella's Dragon form actually made it easier for her. She shimmied up it in no time and used her enhanced Dragon sight to survey the land. "I see something! Over there."
    I hollered up to her , "Bella, we can't see where 'over there' is, so you'll have to show us when you come down."
    She jumped from pretty high up and I screamed, but then saw that she used her wings to hover herself down.
    "That was cool, but you could have gotten hurt," I reminded her.
    She grinned, the dimple in her cheek deepening. "But I didn't, did I?"
    Oh, Bella.
    She ran ahead, hooting and hollering into the night. "Come on, it's this way, just past the pond. We'll get there in no time, and be home to eat our candy before Mom and Dad even notice we're gone."
    That would only be true if time ran different here. In our last adventures, even though we spent days in our magical worlds, almost no time had passed at home. Hopefully the same was true for this place, otherwise Mom and Dad ha d probably already called every police station in the country to find us.
    Bella screamed , and it wasn't an I'm-having-so-much-fun-I-must-share-it-with-the-world scream.
    I nearly swallowed my tongue in fear. "Bella, what's wrong?" I half ran, half flew to catch up to her.
    " Maddie, help! Something's attacking me."
    Fireballs erupted from her hands, but I couldn 't see anything around her, until I got closer. Hundreds of tennis ball-sized bugs bounced in the air and launched themselves at her. They were white and had sharp teeth that made me think of the pictures I'd seen of those flesh eating fish.
    " Use your fire. Burn them!" I got my sword and used it to swipe at them, but the blade didn't seem to hurt them at all. "They're Sugar Bugs. They must smell the sugar in our systems from all that candy we ate."
    Lexie splashed rainbow light everywhere , like dumping out paint from a can. "I'm never eating candy, ever again."
    Something bit the back of my leg and I screamed as it sucked out my blood like a giant mosquito. Lexie screamed next, and started crying. Even TayTay whined painfully as they latched onto him, but they soon pulled off his fur, spitting out the blood they'd taken. He didn't eat sugar, so they didn't like his blood. Still, my dog was bleeding.
    Tears welled up in my eyes . What should I do?
    Bella cried. "Maddie, this hurts so much. There are too many of them."
    I thought as hard as I could. "They're hungry. She said they're dying, right? Starving for sugar? Throw out all your