Circles in the Stream (Avalon: Web of Magic #1) by Rachel Roberts Page A

around and ran back. “What happened?”
    “I don’t know, my stone, it just—” Emily began.
    “That was so awesome!” Kara exclaimed. “I’ve never seen anything like that!”
    “What did you do?” Adriane asked Kara accusingly.
    “Easy, Godzilla, I didn’t do anything. Her stone just lit up like a sparkler.”
    Adriane glared. Kara beamed.
    Adriane turned to Emily. “Are you okay?”
    “I’m fine.” Emily answered. The gem, in its woven bracelet, was now back to normal. “That was so weird.”
    “I have the perfect silver chain for my jewel,” Kara went on excitedly.
    Adriane ignored her. “We’re coming up to the topiary gardens. Over there.” She pointed to a garden of living sculptures. There was a lion, a giraffe, an elephant, even a dinosaur all carefully carved out of magnificent foliage. “The topiary gardens are of the most amazing gardens on the estate.”
    “Oooh, look!” Kara bent over and picked up a sparkly stone. She studied it, scrunched her nose, then tossed it away. “What’d you say?”
    “Never mind.”
    As they walked into the garden, even Kara seemed impressed with the carefully sculptured hedges. “Wow, tree animals! Cool!”
    Adriane continued. “First designed in 1920, each of the hedge sculptures is supposed to represent an animal that was on the preserve at that time.”
    “I thought we were in a ‘no lectures’ zone,” Kara commented.
    “Oh, yeah.” Adriane and Kara actually smiled at each other.
    “And another thing,” Kara continued, “these hedge sculptures can’t possibly represent the animals that were on the preserve.”
    “What do you mean?” Adriane asked.
    “Hellloo! That’s a unicorn, and that’s…like, a dinosaur! I’m pretty sure the hedge-a-saurus has been extinct for like a billion years.”
    “Maybe they represent animals that were just visiting,” Emily said.
    “Oookay.” Kara skipped ahead through the tall hedges. Out of the topiary gardens, the lawn sloped downward. Kara stopped as Ravenswood Manor loomed ahead like a gigantic haunted house nestled in the woods. “Are you related to the Addams Family?” Kara quipped.
    “Very funny,” Adriane replied. “You’ve never seen Ravenswood Manor?”
    “Just in some old pictures.”
    “They used to have tours here,” Emily said.
    “Big business on Halloween, I bet,” Kara remarked.
    Adriane just rolled her eyes. “Come on, we’ll go out past the manor. I’ll show you the gardens out back.”
    “What about my stone?”
    “We said you might find one,” Adriane said.
    Kara crossed her arms and pouted.
    “We could look around a bit more,” Emily suggested.
    “All right!” Adriane led them to the side of the manor and onto another path. They were soon in deep woods and the air was cool and damp. Above, the boughs seemed woven together into a solid canopy of green.
    Something rustled in the trees.
    “What was that?” Kara whispered nervously.
    “Just animals,” Emily reassured her. “They won’t hurt you.”
    “This is creepy. It’s like they’re following us.”
    “They probably never saw anything like you before,” Adriane said sarcastically.
    “On any other day, I might take that as a compliment.” Kara studied the ground around her. She gingerly picked up rocks and pebbles, compared them to pictures in her book, and placed some neatly in her backpack.
    “Remind me again why she’s here,” Adriane grumbled to Emily.
    “To convince her father to keep the preserve safe.”
    “Ugh, bugs!” Kara announced behind them. “And I bet there’s poison ivy all over here.”
    “Just keep looking for stones,” Adriane shot back over her shoulder. “They could be anywhere.”
    She leaned in toward Emily again. “And what about the CDC?” she continued. “How are we gonna get through that inspection?”
    “I don’t know,” Emily admitted.
    “I don’t think they have a listing for ‘Black Fire.’”
    Over the next hour, Kara amassed a small collection