Free Fairy Metal Thunder (Songs of Magic, #1) by JL Bryan

room.
    “Wait, Katie!” Jason chased after her. She
was already opening the front door.
    Erin stood outside the storm door. She waved
when she saw Jason, and his heart skipped a beat or three.
    Katie pushed open the storm door.
    “Are you Erin?” Katie asked.
    “I am. Who are you?” Erin smiled.
    “That’s Katie, my sister.” Jason reached over
Katie’s head and held the door open while Erin stepped inside. Erin
hugged an arm around his waist.
    “Are you in love with my brother?” Katie
asked.
    “Katie, don’t you want to go play video
games? Or watch TV?” Jason asked.
    “No, I want to see what you guys are doing,”
Katie said.
    “Katie, we need to talk alone for a minute,”
Jason said.
    “Then I’ll tell Mom you had a girl come over!”
    Jason sighed. Katie really had him trapped on
that one.
    “Okay, Katie,” Jason said. “But you can’t
tell Mom and Dad what I’m about to show you.”
    “Is it a secret?” Katie whispered, with her
hands over her mouth.
    “Yep, it’s a big secret.”
    “I like secrets,” Erin said. She winked, and
Jason thought he might melt.
    “It’s out in the garage.” Jason led them down
the steps to the living room, and from there into the garage.
    “Are we going to play?” Erin took out her
harmonica.
    “Maybe.” Jason knelt by his dad’s old
Corvette and slid out a cardboard box covered with a drop cloth.
He’d moved the instruments into it when they shrank to toy
size.
    Now he removed the drop cloth. Erin and Katie
leaned forward to look at the little instruments, all of them
carved with fairy runes: the lute with the amethysts in the
soundboard, the reed pipes, the silver harp, the drum.
    “Oooh, pretty!” Katie said.
    “What are these for?” Erin asked.
    Jason took a deep breath. “Okay. So the other
night, this…goblin sneaks into my house.”
    “Goblin?” Erin raised an eyebrow.
    “It’s true!” Katie said. “He was a ugly green
monster!”
    “Oh…a goblin ,” Erin said, as if this
were just a game for Katie’s benefit, and she was playing along. “I
bet that was scary.”
    “But Jason runned him off!” Katie added.
    “Yeah…” Jason actually felt a little
relieved Katie was here to back up his story. “So I chased the
goblin over to Mrs. Dullahan’s house. You know Mrs. Dullahan?”
    “I know of her,” Erin said. “With the creepy
house on the edge of town?”
    “She’s a witch!” Katie said.
    “So, I chase the goblin there, and then…I
follow him into the fairy world.”
    “I like fairies!” Katie contributed.
    “And I found these instruments,” Jason said.
“They’re magic.”
    Erin looked from Jason to Katie, as if trying
to figure out the joke.
    Jason picked up the lute. “The problem is,
they shrank when I brought them back. Just like the goblin—he was
smaller when he was here, but he was taller in the fairy world.
Still pretty short, though. Everyone over there was short, except
for the ogres.”
    “Of course…the ogres.” Erin looked puzzled.
And a little worried. She crossed her arms tight and leaned back,
away from him.
    “Yeah, I know it sounds crazy,” Jason said.
“But these things make amazing music. Just listen to this,
okay?”
    Erin stared at him, frowning.
    “This isn’t really funny, Jason,” she
said.
    “You’ll see what I mean. Trust me.” Jason
touched his guitar pick to one string of the lute, took a deep
breath, then plucked it and let it hum. A deep, melancholy sound
filled the garage, and he suddenly felt very sad.
    He plucked the next string, a higher note,
and now he felt wistful, nostalgic, thinking of the time his team
had won the county Little League championship. And his fifth
birthday party. And his Grandmother baking sugar cookies on
Christmas Eve.
    Erin frowned and looked away. “That’s really
powerful,” she said, and she sounded a little sad, too.
    He plucked the next string, and as it
vibrated its slightly higher tone, he felt lonely.
    “I wish we had a dog,”