by Peter Nelson
“Jordan! How’s your head, dearie?” she asked.
“Fine.” Jordan smiled at her. “How’s yours?”
“My head’s fine!” She held up her empty glass. “Thanks to these. Be right back.”
Jordan watched Doris step into the party, and noticed Syd’s single Soil-Sole parked in its spot on the deck just outside the door. It was a sad sight.
“Gusto,” Jordan said. “He’s—”
“He’s Chupacabra,” Abbie said. “Nice work putting that together, little bro.”
“Thanks. Good job jet-blasting him and saving my life,” Jordan said. “But he’s still out there. He can manipulate fire. It’s kind of his thing.”
“He might be out there,” Eldon said. “But we sure slowed him down, at least for a while. It’ll hopefully give us some time to figure out what his next move might be.”
“Us?” Jordan shook his head. “Not me. You were right. Finding Izzy, winning back his trust, reuniting him with Silvana, that’s what being a Creature Keeper is all about. I learned how much I have to learn. And I’m done trying to save the world.”
Eldon glanced at Abbie. The two of them burst out laughing. “What?” Jordan said. “What’s so funny?”
“It’s too late,” Abbie said. “We’re official.” She pointed to a pin on her shirt. It looked like a small golden shield and had the letters CK engraved on it.
“What’s that?” Jordan said.
Eldon stepped up to him and pinned the same shield on his shirt. “I’m making you and Abbie Elite Keepers. If we’re going to war, I want the best I have to help lead.”
“But we’re interns, remember? What happened to crawling before running?”
“Pff—speak for yourself,” Abbie said. She walked off to join Doris inside.
“Your sister led an entire clan of young Badger Rangers,” Eldon said. “She learned how to lock down a loch and sacrificed her own safety to get Doris and me out of a dangerous situation. But most important, she got her creature home safely. She’s ready.”
“Well, I’m still learning to crawl. Help, hide, and hoax, remember?”
“Like you said, you went back into that jungle and found Izzy. You helped him and hid him—and you pulled off one of the finest hoaxes I’ve ever witnessed in all my days as a keeper. You’re ready enough.”
Jordan looked down at his shield, then back up at Eldon. He had a gleam in his eye. He held up his hand to his forehead in a Badger Claw salute.
“Elite Keeper Jordan Grimsley, reporting for duty,” he said.
As the moon rose above Harrison Lake, Jordan, Abbie, Eldon, Doris, and Syd lay out on the deck in their footie pajamas, staring up at the star-filled patches of sky between the crisscrossing branches of the towering sequoias. They laughed and shared stories from all they’d seen and done, both together and apart. The four humans were sad that they had to leave Mount Breakenridge the next morning, and Syd was sad that he’d have to see them go. But they all agreed that it was a very good thing that Syd wouldn’t have to be relocated from such a peaceful, beautiful place.
One by one, they soon drifted off to sleep. First, Doris’s gibberish about techspertise faded into a dreamy mumble. Next, Syd’s great, snorty snoring echoed off the trees. Then Eldon’s Badger Ranger hat slowly slipped down over his eyes. Jordan and Abbie were the last souls stirring on Mount Breakenridge. They whispered to each other about what they’d need to do to prepare for what was coming, and they admitted to each other that they were both a little anxious about what might happen next. What they didn’t have to say was how happy they were to be in it together. There was no need to mention that.
Just before they drifted off to sleep, they were able to agree on one last thing—of all the Annual International Badgeroobilees they’d ever attended, this one had definitely been the wildest.
Credits
Cover art © 2015 by Rohitash Rao and Rick Farley
Lettering by Annemieke Beemster Leverenz
Cover design by Alison Klapthor
Copyright
Balzer + Bray is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
CREATURE KEEPERS AND THE SWINDLED SOIL-SOLES. Copyright © 2015 by Peter Nelson and Rohitash Rao. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.harpercollinschildrens.com
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Nelson, Peter.
Creature Keepers and the swindled soil-soles / Peter Nelson, Rohitash Rao. — First edition.
pagescm. — (Creature keepers ; 2)
Summary: “Jordan, Abbie, and the rest of the Creature Keepers investigate a case involving Bigfoot and the Chupacabra”—Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-0-06-223645-6 (hardback)
EPub Edition © August 2015 ISBN 9780062236463
[1. Animals, Mythical—Fiction. 2. Secret societies—Fiction. 3. Chupacabras—Fiction. 4. Sasquatch—Fiction. 5. Humorous stories.] I. Rao, Rohitash, illustrator. II. Title.
PZ7.N43583Crm 2015 2014048049
[Fic]—dc23 CIP
AC
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15 16 17 18 19 CG/RRDH 10 9 8 >7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FIRST EDITION
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