We Sled With Dragons Read Online Free

were the only guests. This was not the sort of place that the Travel Channel would recommend. This was not the sort of place that the Health and Wellness Channel would recommend either.
    Beverly, being a poisonous lizard, quite liked the hotel room for the exact same reasons Oliver thought it was gross. She scurried to and fro along the floor and up the walls, gobbling up beetles and flies and mosquitoes. Oliver cringed with every crunch. He found lizards very unsettling.
    â€œWe have to keep a low profile,” said Celia. “It’s not like we could just check into the nicest hotel in town. We have a prisoner.”
    She nodded to Ernest, who was tied up and gagged. Their parents had dumped him on the other metal bed, face down so that any complaining he did through his gag was muffled by the pillows. Dennis had decided to pace back and forth over the prisoner’s back, his little chicken claws scratching Ernest mercilessly. Ernest groaned but didn’t struggle. It seemed only fair that he should be a little uncomfortable after all the times he’d tried to murder Oliver and Celia.
    â€œAnyway,” said Celia. “At least we have something to do while we wait for Mom and Dad to get back with Corey.” She ran her hand along an old television sitting on a stand. A cloud of dust billowed. She coughed.
    â€œBut there’s no remote,” Oliver complained.
    Oliver never remembered anything, thought Celia. She crossed the room and rummaged in her backpack, pushing aside some wetsuits, an old leather journal that had once belonged to the long-lost explorer Percy Fawcett, a brass compass with Percy Fawcett’s initials on it, some empty snack cake wrappers, and a few empty cheese puff bags, until she found their big universal remote control.
    It had seen better days.
    There were two buttons missing, although they were buttons the twins never knew what to do with anyway. There were nuclear-orange stains around the channel changer from cheese puff dust, and a dried crust of salt from when Oliver had dropped into it an underwater cave. The remote had been through a lot with them. But it had also been blessed by a monk in Tibet, and now it could work on any TV in the world. The remote also had a few other unique abilities, but the twins didn’t care so much about those right now. They just wanted to watch TV.
    Celia pointed the remote at the television, closed her eyes, and pressed the power button. She waited. She opened one eye, cocked her head, and smiled!
    â€œIt worked!”
    â€œIt did?” said Oliver. The screen looked just as dark as it had before.
    â€œListen,” said Celia.
    They listened. A quiet hum grew louder and louder; the darkness on the screen lightened to gray, then to a lighter gray, then to white and gray.
    â€œSee?” said Celia. “These old TVs just have to warm up. In the old days, people had to wait for, like, a whole minute while their TVs got started.”
    â€œThat’s horrible.”
    â€œI know,” said Celia. “Let’s see if we get any channels.” She hit the channel-changer button. More static. She hit it again. Static, static, and more static.
    â€œBo-ring,” said Oliver.
    He threw himself backward onto the bed, forgetting how gross he thought it was. He was tired and really wanted to watch TV, even if it was one of the dumb soap operas that Celia always made him watch, like
Love at 30,000 Feet.
As long as it wasn’t one of those fashion shows.
    â€œOoh,
Celebrity Fashion Crimes
is on!” Celia squealed.
    â€œAnything but that!” Oliver groaned.
Celebrity Fashion Crimes
was about celebrities in terrible outfits giving free makeovers to non-famous people who looked fine until the celebrities came along. “Can’t we look for
Agent Zero
?”
    â€œNo,” said Celia. She’d had enough action and adventure for a while.
    â€œHow about
Bizarro Bandits
?” Oliver