The Menagerie #2

by Tui T. Sutherland

  “Hey, Logan, I need to go out for a bit. Sorry about that.” He went into his room and Logan heard him open the closet door. “Rain check on the nachos? I should be back in an hour or so.”

  “Can I come with you?” Logan asked.

  Dad emerged in jeans, buttoning up a light brown shirt. “Really? I’m just going to one of the ranches—some kind of animal attacked one of their sheep.”

  Logan shrugged, trying to hide the surge of curiosity that swept over him. “Sounds like more fun than algebra.”

  “I can’t guarantee that.” Dad smiled and scooped his things off the coffee table. “Let’s go.”

  Outside, gold-tipped clouds swooshed across the enormous blue Wyoming sky. As they drove along the bumpy dirt path that led around the ranch, Logan fiddled with the GPS until he could see a bigger map of the area. The back of his neck prickled as he realized that the ranch was right next to Teddy Roosevelt Park, where the half-eaten rabbits had been found.

  This is his hunting ground, he thought. If there is a werewolf on the loose, this is where we’ll find him. And then we can show SNAPA that Pelly was attacked by an outsider and it wasn’t the Menagerie’s fault. So there’d be no reason to shut them down or exterminate Scratch.

  He had a feeling it wouldn’t be that simple, but he had to hope.

  Logan’s dad pulled over behind the sheriff’s jeep. Sheriff Baxter and a man in a cowboy hat were leaning on the wooden rail fence. Behind them, in the paddock, Logan could see something lying on the ground, part dirty white wool and part bloodstained lumps.

  “Do me a favor, stay in the car,” said Logan’s dad. “This could be pretty gruesome.”

  “What kind of animal attacked it?” Logan asked.

  His dad rubbed his head. “Well, if it’s like the last three, it seems like something bigger than a coyote, and it doesn’t leave clear prints behind. The ranchers are also complaining that several sheep have disappeared completely, but that sounds like a thieving problem, not a wild animal problem. Not my department.” He made a wry face. “Except I’m the only wildlife guy here in Xanadu, so everything’s my department. I’ll be right back, okay?”

  Logan nodded and watched as his dad climbed out and went over to the sheriff and the rancher. He was just as happy not to get a closer look at the dead sheep.

  But this had to be the right area to look for the werewolf. He could see the pine trees on the edge of Teddy Roosevelt Park from here.

  He pulled out his phone and texted Blue and Zoe.

  Meet me @ TR Park tonight. Dad should be asleep by 10.

  He’d never snuck out of the house before, but this was a real case of life or death—Scratch’s life, and possibly the Menagerie’s. Logan looked up at the trees again and thought for another minute. The park was one of the smaller reserves in Wyoming, according to Dad, but it was still a pretty big area for three kids to cover in one night.

  Unless they had a secret weapon, of course.

  He looked back down at his phone and sent one more text.

  VERY IMPORTANT: BRING KEIKO.

  SEVEN

  “Why,” said Keiko, “would I do anything to help a dragon?”

  “Forget about Scratch, then,” Zoe said. She fired the tennis ball launcher three times in rapid succession. The hellhounds lunged to their feet and bolted across the grass, chasing the balls downhill toward the lake. Their black pelts disappeared into the darkness outside the house’s circle of lights. “Think of it as stopping a dangerous werewolf.”

  Keiko crossed her arms. “If there even is a werewolf, why shouldn’t it eat whatever it wants?”

  “Don’t overidentify,” Blue said from his perch on the low wall around the hellhounds’ Doghouse. “Kitsune and werewolves are totally different. You’re much more sophisticated and in control than they are.”

  “True.” Keiko tossed her long, dark braids back over her shoulders. “But we’re more sophisticated than everyone.”

  Zoe understood why Logan wanted them to bring Keiko tonight. Her sense of smell was naturally much better than any of theirs—perhaps good enough to find a werewolf in a big park. But he wasn’t the one here trying to convince Keiko, of all people, to be a glorified bloodhound. She’d refused to help with tracking the griffin cubs. This wouldn’t be any different.

  It had already been a horribly frustrating day. The agents had cordoned off the dragons and the Aviary while they gathered evidence, so the Kahns couldn’t do any investigating of their own. Zoe wanted to look at that broken anklet, and she wanted to compare the marks on the Aviary’s back door to Scratch’s claws, and she wanted to test his electric fence implant, but she couldn’t do any of those things. Her parents had made her focus on regular Menagerie chores all day, and now she felt like kicking something. It was too late to save Pelly, but Zoe refused to lose Scratch, too.

  The trial was set for Thursday. Four days—how could they clear Scratch’s name in just a few days unless they were allowed access to everything?

  Well, step one: find another suspect.

  Jaws, Killer, and Ripper came barreling back into the light and flung slobbery tennis balls at Zoe’s feet. It was a little late to be exercising the hellhounds, but there hadn’t been any time before dinner, and if they didn’t burn off some energy they might literally burn up something else. Zoe fired the machine again and the dogs all sprinted away. Except for Sheldon, who was flopped in front of Keiko, presenting his belly in a hilariously optimistic way. Sheldon the Misfit Hellhound was just about the only animal in the Menagerie—or person, for that matter—who didn’t have a healthy fear of Keiko.

  “Why isn’t Logan here, again?” Blue asked Zoe.

  She wrinkled her nose. “Something to do with bears. He said he had to watch bears with his dad. I guess it’s on the Nature Channel? I have no idea.”

  A figure moved, out in the darkness, and Zoe held up her hand to shield her eyes from the light. Someone was heading up from the lake to the garage on the other side of the house. From the shape, she guessed it was her brother.

  Matthew had been to Tracker camp this past summer. Maybe they’d learned about tracking werewolves. Maybe he’d have some ideas she could use.

  “Be right back,” she said to Blue.

  The garage had two back doors: one leading directly into the Kahns’ kitchen, and the other leading out to the Menagerie. This last one was swinging shut as Zoe ran up to it.

  She pushed through into the garage and found the lights were off.

  “Matthew?” she said, flicking them on.

  Her brother leaped away from the van as if a chupacabra had bitten his toes.

  “Zoe!” he yelped, nearly tripping over a pile of chains on the floor. “Give me a heart attack, why don’t you?”

  “What were you doing in the dark?” she asked, puzzled.

  “Um . . . checking for holes in the fireproof suits.” He pulled a black flashlight out of his hip holster. “I shine this at them and see if any light comes through on the walls.”

  “Wow,” Zoe said. “That is so far down on our list of things to do. Are you kidding? If you need some real work, come to me. I could keep you busy for weeks.”

  “Why are you creeping around after me?” Matthew asked.

  “I wasn’t CREEPING,” Zoe objected. “I wanted to ask you something. Hypothetically, if you needed to track a werewolf, what would you do?”

  Matthew frowned. “Well,” he said, “for starters, I would not be twelve years old, and I would not be planning to sneak out of the house and go wandering around the woods in the middle of the night. Even with my special amazing friend and his natural Tracker instincts.”

  For a moment Zoe thought he meant Keiko, and then she realized he was talking about Logan. She’d been bothered by how easily Logan got along with all the animals, too, until he spent the whole weekend helping to save the Menagerie and also turned out to be generally pretty cool.

  But Matthew had dreamed of becoming a Tracker his whole life. H
e’d been studying and practicing for as long as Zoe could remember, long before he finally qualified for Tracker camp. It must be extra-weird for him to have Logan come in and instinctively be good at everything Tracker related.

  “I didn’t say anything about sneaking out,” she said. “I was just wondering what you would do if you thought there might be a werewolf around.”

  “I would call SNAMHP,” Matthew said firmly. “Catching werecreatures is their problem.” The SuperNatural Agency for Mostly Human Protection was SNAPA’s sister department; they showed up occasionally to bustle around and check on the mermaids. Zoe figured the Menagerie had enough problems with SNAPA. Besides, she wasn’t even sure yet there was a werewolf.

  “Well, you’re a fountain of helpfulness,” Zoe said. “Thanks anyway.”

  “Zoe, you’d better not be planning something stupid,” Matthew said. “Mom and Dad let you do lots of crazy things, but I’m pretty sure looking for a werewolf during the full moon isn’t one of them.”

  “You should talk,” Zoe said. She darted past him and pulled open the van door. A loaded tranquilizer gun was leaning against the passenger seat.

  “Aha!” she cried. “I knew you weren’t checking the fireproof suits! Where do you think you’re going with this?”

  Matthew flushed bright red, making the scar next to his eyebrow stand out even whiter. “I have important Tracker business to do.” He reached around Zoe and slammed the door shut again.

  “You aren’t a Tracker,” Zoe said. “You’re still in high school. Is this about Pelly? Are you looking for whatever killed her, too?”

  “Ye-es,” Matthew admitted reluctantly. Relief swept through Zoe. That meant they could all work together. She’d feel much safer about their werewolf escapade if Matthew—and all his Tracker training—was with them.

  She was about to invite him to join their hunting party when he cut her off. “But no, you can’t come.”

  Zoe’s mouth snapped shut and she decided to keep Logan’s theory about Teddy Roosevelt Park to herself. If Matthew didn’t want help, then fine, she’d catch the werewolf herself.

  “All right,” she said. “I won’t tell Mom and Dad on you if you don’t tell them on me.”

  Matthew sighed huffily. “Fine,” he said. “Don’t you dare get eaten.”

  “Same to you.” Zoe lifted her chin and marched back outside.

  Okay, she thought. Potentially I haven’t completely thought this through. Like, if they did find a werewolf, she didn’t exactly have a plan for catching it. A tranq gun would be pretty useful. Not to mention chains or a net or something.

  But she couldn’t really imagine they would catch a full-grown werewolf by themselves. No, what we’re looking for is information, she told herself. We just need to know there is a werewolf, and if possible what his human face looks like. Then we tell SNAPA and they’ll see there’s a better suspect than Scratch for them to investigate—one that wouldn’t result in shutting down the Menagerie.

  She knew, deep down inside, that even if they found a werewolf, Scratch might still be guilty. There was a lot of upsetting evidence stacked against him. But the jury needed reasonable doubt in order to find him innocent, which meant they needed another believable suspect. Plus investigating a werewolf would keep SNAPA busy and might buy the Menagerie a little more time to clear Scratch. If he hadn’t done it. Surely he couldn’t have done it.

  When she got back to the Doghouse, Blue was still trying to convince Keiko to go with them.

  “Well,” he was saying as Zoe came up. “What if Zoe did all your homework for a month?”

  “Blue!” Zoe protested. As if she had time for another set of homework!

  “Oooh. I do hate homework,” Keiko said thoughtfully.

  “You keep saying foxes don’t need math,” Blue observed.

  “Or history,” Keiko said. “Or shove-a-spike-in-my-ears stupid SPANISH.”

  “Wait, wait,” Zoe said. “How about something else? Half my lunch money for a week?”

  “Lame,” said Keiko. She gave Blue an appraising look. “Did I hear that you’re going to Jasmin’s Halloween party on Friday?”

  Blue’s sigh was epic and long-suffering. Zoe felt a stab of irritation. She’d give almost anything to be invited to Jasmin’s party—not because she cared about the party itself, but because it would mean being friends with Jasmin again.

  Last Halloween they’d dressed up as Anne of Green Gables and her best friend Diana. Almost nobody knew who they were supposed to be, but they didn’t care. Jasmin had insisted that Zoe be Anne because of her red hair, even though Zoe thought Jasmin was a lot more Anne-like than she was. They’d trick-or-treated at the fancy houses near Jasmin’s and then had a sleepover where they tried to scare themselves with the spookiest-sounding movie in Jonathan’s collection, except it turned out Ghost was some kind of mushy love story and not that scary at all and then Jasmin yelled at the movie for making them cry, which made Zoe laugh until she fell off the bed and broke Jasmin’s tiger lamp, and then they both got in trouble. It was the best Halloween ever.

  This Halloween she would be at home, alone, most likely trying to distract Captain Fuzzbutt with It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown while combing out the knots in his fur. So when Blue acted like seeing Jasmin was such dreadful torture, it made her want to smack him.

  “All right,” Keiko said. “I’ll come to the woods with you tonight if you promise to get me invited to the party. Don’t give me that face. I know you can make it happen.”

  “Why would you want to go?” Zoe asked. “Isn’t it terribly boring and human to care about popular kids’ parties?”

  Keiko narrowed her eyes at Zoe. “Then again, my Spanish homework has been particularly awful lately . . .”

  “Okay, okay,” Blue said, waving his hands. “I’m sure I can bring you, too. Jasmin won’t care who’s there.”

  Except me, Zoe thought sadly. She remembered the day her parents had made her slip kraken ink to Jasmin. Its magic erased any supernatural memories, so if Jasmin knew anything about the Menagerie—if her brother, Jonathan, had told the rest of the Sterlings—then it would all disappear from her mind.

  But of course she hadn’t known anything. Most of all, Jasmin hadn’t known that would be the last day she and Zoe could hang out, since the Kahns couldn’t risk Zoe’s presence triggering any memories in the Sterlings. Jasmin hadn’t understood why Zoe kept bursting into tears. Instead Jasmin had hugged her and made her sit on the counter while Jasmin made banana bread and told her whatever it was would be okay.

  Which it hadn’t been, and still wasn’t.

  That was the same day Zoe’s sister, Ruby, dosed Jonathan and his parents, so the scene at home was All About Ruby and the Epic Tragedy of her Failed Romance, featuring lots of wailing on the couch about how Ruby would have sacrificed ten jackalopes for her one true love and now he wouldn’t remember anything about their time together (her sister’s own fault, Zoe thought savagely, for telling him about the Menagerie and letting his memories of Ruby get all wound up with supernatural secrets in the first place). Zoe’s mom and dad had been too busy comforting Ruby to notice Zoe going up to her room and crying into Captain Fuzzbutt’s fur for the next two weeks.

  Keiko had noticed, but Keiko’s reaction to human emotions usually involved disgust and/or hiding, which was fine by Zoe. Sympathy from Keiko would only have made things worse.

  “Fine,” Keiko said. “But if we get caught, I am so letting them ship me back to Japan.”

  “Sounds awesome,” Zoe muttered.

  Three hours later, they were pacing in the parking lot near the picnic area of the reserve—the same part of the park where they’d caught a griffin cub on Saturday. According to Logan, Yump still hadn’t forgiven them for the cheeseburgers trick, although his new fish-and-vegetables diet probably wasn’t helping his mood.

  Streaks of clouds gathered overhead, blocking most of the moon and making all the shadows jump and seethe. The wind wh
ipped fiercely through their jackets. Blue and Keiko seemed to have some kind of Mostly Human immunity to cold, but Zoe shivered and stamped her feet, wishing she’d worn boots instead of sneakers.

  The lot was mostly deserted, apart from one empty car and one minivan, which made Zoe a bit nervous. Was someone camping out here, in late October on a Sunday night? Or did one of the cars belong to the werewolf? The minivan seemed familiar; Zoe had the weird feeling she’d seen it in this exact parking lot before, but she hadn’t been here that often—and she wasn’t really into cars, so most likely she was imagining things.

  “Why are we waiting for your boyfriend?” Keiko demanded. “He isn’t essential to finding this thing; I am.” She twisted her braids up onto her head and clipped them in place, so the ends stood up like little fox ears.

  “He’s not my boyfriend!” Zoe said. “And from what we’ve seen of him so far, he probably is essential. Besides, this was his idea.”

  The coughing rumble of an engine reached their ears. Something was approaching from the main road, but it wasn’t Logan’s bike.

  Zoe, Blue, and Keiko darted into the shadows behind the restroom building, where they’d hidden their bikes. They crouched and peered out as a rickety van shambled into the lot and wheezed to a stop not far away.

  “Isn’t that our van?” Blue whispered.

  “Shh,” said Zoe. The Menagerie’s old blue-gray van had been battered enough before a griffin cub had gone nuts in it on Friday. Now there were dents and long scratches on the roof, where Clink had landed, and the back door she’d knocked off had been reattached by Matthew and Dad in a makeshift way that Zoe was pretty sure involved duct tape. So yes, that was definitely their van.

  Matthew climbed out of the driver’s seat, lifted a clanking duffel bag out of the back, picked up the tranq gun, and strode into the forest. In two minutes, he’d vanished into the trees.

  “Huh,” said Blue.

  “I guess he had the same idea we did,” Zoe said. What does he know? she wondered. Why is he here, too?

  She realized a small part of her felt like, Oh, Matthew’s on the case, now we can go home. But there was also a part of her that wanted to find the werewolf before he did. And there was a third, not so small part that was starting to loudly point out that maybe they were both crazy to be doing this.