Free The Dragon at the North Pole by Kate Klimo Page B

“Where are your Keepers? I’ll draw up another contract, and this one, they will sign under duress.”
    Emmy blew on her talons and polished them on her chest. “There’s a fat chance of that,” she said. “And oh, by the way, I love your dress.”
    “WHERE ARE THEY?” he thundered.
    “You just missed them,” Emmy said, yawning widely.
    Beowulf stalked around the room, flinging open doors and peering beneath the table and the chairs. Finally, he came over to the bed. Jesse could hear the angry breath whistling in and out of his nose. They were lying as flat as they could, but would he see suspicious lumps under the quilt?
    Jesse squeezed his eyes shut.
    Beowulf whipped the quilt off the bed. Jesse felt the frigid air hitting his back. When nothinghappened, Jesse dared to open one eye.
    Beowulf was leaning down, staring right at him with eyes of searing icy blue. He was so close that Jesse could see the red veins on his nose and smell the red meat and mead on his breath. Jesse opened his mouth to yelp, but Daisy clamped her hand over his face.
    Beowulf straightened and continued to search the room. Daisy looked at Jesse and mouthed the words “invisibility spell.”
    Suddenly, Jesse understood. The green flash just before the door had opened—Emmy had cast an invisibility spell over them.
    The cousins lay there not daring to move a muscle lest Beowulf sense a stirring in the air even if he couldn’t see them. After he completed his search, Beowulf returned to Emmy and unsheathed his sword. It had a gem-studded hilt and a long blade with a jagged line running diagonally across it where it had been mended.
    “Come with me, she-dragon!” Beowulf said.
    Emmy drew herself up on her hind legs. Just as she took the deep breath that came before she summoned a spell, Beowulf touched the tip of his sword to Emmy’s chin.
    Instantly, Emmy deflated like a blow-up dragonwith a steady leak. She dropped down off her hind legs and hunched onto her elbows. The light in her eyes dimmed and her scales faded from green to gray.
    The cousins were all too familiar with what they were seeing, sadly. It was iron poisoning. Dragons are strong and magical beings, but iron makes them as weak and powerless as lambs.
    Jesse thought he saw a stuttering green light rise up around the bed. He suspected that Emmy’s invisibility spell had weakened. If Beowulf were to turn around, he would see the two of them huddled on the ice bed. Jesse held his breath, but Beowulf marched Emmy out the door and slammed it behind them.
    Jesse pressed his hot, sweaty cheek to the cold, hard surface of the ice bed. “That was close,” he said. “I think that was Naegling.”
    “What?” Daisy asked, sitting up. “Now I’m really confused. I thought that was Beowulf.”
    “It was. Naegling is the name of his sword,” Jesse said. “Beowulf had a few swords. The sword called Hrunting was engraved. Naegling had gems studding its hilt, and he broke it once. I guess its blade is iron, which is why Emmy weakened.”
    “And he’ll use it to finish her off if we don’tfigure out a way to rescue her,” said Daisy.
    “He won’t kill her,” Jesse said. “He wouldn’t get his dragon eggs without her.”
    Daisy hugged herself and shivered. “And what are we supposed to do? He’s a big, scary brute in a leather skirt with a sword.”
    Jesse clucked his tongue. “If the professor could hear you now, do you know what he’d say? He’d say, ‘Stop blubbing!’ ”
    Daisy squared her shoulders. “He’d say, ‘You are Dragon Keepers. Figure it out.’ ”
    “Exactly,” said Jesse. “Let’s start by getting our snowshoes back.”
    “Really?” Daisy asked in surprise.
    “I don’t know about you,” said Jesse, “but when Beowulf came through that door, I sweated my thermal pads into warm Jell-O.”
    Daisy nodded and shivered. “Me too.”
    “Remember how when we first arrived at the North Pole, the snowshoes kept us warm?” Jesse asked.
    Daisy