Read Twisted Sister of Mine (Overworld Chronicles) for Free Online

the stable. Shelton headed toward the parking lot.
    We stopped, turned, and looked at each other.
    "Are you out of your mind, kid?" Shelton's forehead wrinkled with the kind of expression he probably reserved for the mentally insane.
    "I have to find out what they're up to," I said. "You go. Tell the others what I'm doing in case they catch me and kill me."
    He clenched his teeth and forced a storm of curses through them, swirling his long, leather duster as he spun a hundred eighty degrees and stalked my way. "If Elyssa and Bella find out I left you to do something this idiotic, they'd cut my tommy-knockers off and boil them in acid."
    For an instant, I felt bad for putting Shelton in the situation but remembered the time he'd tried to kidnap me and my dad, and the guilty feeling evaporated. Sometimes, a little coercion was the best way to make Shelton do the right thing. I looked toward the stable for a moment to be sure my murderous relatives hadn't reversed course and trotted toward it.
    "G'day, guvnah!" shouted the cheery looking pooper-scooper boy as he appeared from within the stalls.
    I almost screamed at the unexpected declaration of good cheer. My heart did its level best to implode through a black hole of its own creation. I choked back a shout, pressing a hand to my chest and glaring at the young boy whose only function in this place seemed to be cleaning animal dung from the stable.
    "Holy mother of beef burgers," Shelton said, giving the kid an affectionate pat on the head. "You about scared the crap out of me, Oliver."
    The boy grinned. "Can I be of service, Harry?"
    Shelton gave him a sly look. "Maybe." He produced a couple of silvery bills I recognized as tinsel, the official currency of the Overworld. "A woman and girl just went behind the stables. Do you know what's back there?"
    The boy gave Shelton an innocent look, though the proffered bills vanished so fast, I thought I might have imagined the boy's fingers snatching them. "Oh, sir, I wouldn't know anything about a hidden control room or anything like that."
    "What a shame," Shelton said. "Well, is there anything else you can't tell me about it?"
    "I wish I could tell you about an air vent with an illusion covering it so it looks like part of the cave wall." He walked behind the stable, leading us down the narrow alley between it and the smooth-hewn cave wall behind it, trailing his fingers along the rock at waist level until, at one point, they went through it. He pushed something. It clicked, and a thin, mesh-like spider web detached from inside. Oliver rolled it up and stowed it inside the fake wall.
    "What was that?" I said in a hushed voice.
    "It keeps out bugs and stuff," Shelton said. "Like an air filter."
    The boy pointed toward a section of wall several hundred feet away. "The main entrance."
    Shelton gave him a couple more bills. "Thanks, Oliver."
    The boy gave Shelton a grave look. "I don't mean to pry, but are you on another investigation?"
    "You two know each other?" I asked.
    Shelton shrugged. "Oliver assists me from time to time."
    "I helped him pull a bounty on a rogue fader a few months ago," the boy said proudly.
    "A what?" I asked.
    "A dream leecher," Shelton said. He regarded Oliver for a moment. "Ever been inside the control room?"
    "I've looked inside from the air passage a few times. It's quite large." Concern welled inside his large eyes. "They ward the floor against non-authorized personnel. I let a cat run loose in there once, and it set off an alarm."
    "Did the cat explode?" Shelton asked.
    The boy shook his head.
    Shelton ducked and poked his head through the illusionary wall. Pulled it out. "The duct is big enough for us," he told me. "Let's go see what there is to see."
    Taking a deep breath to allay the knot in my stomach, I followed Shelton through the fake wall. Invisible from the inside, I clearly saw Oliver and the back of the stable. The sounds of elephants, birds, and other creatures within the structure provided