Zoe led Logan into the stall and picked up the currycomb, showing him how to rub in long, smooth circles along the unicorn’s side.
“It’s so frightfully, frightfully sad,” Charlemagne said. He hung his head over the stall door to watch Logan. “Everyone will miss those cubs terribly.”
“Hey, we already have five of them back,” Zoe said. “We’ll find the other one tonight. Or tomorrow before the agents get here at noon. I know we will.”
Charlemagne stamped his hooves. “Five of them! Back already!”
“You’re speaking to the girl-serf,” Cleopatra reminded him.
“Oh, right.” Charlemagne tossed his head and backed up with a snort.
“Cleo, are you ever going to tell us what we did wrong?” Zoe asked.
“It is so obvious, you should be ashamed to ask,” Cleopatra snapped. Logan moved carefully around to her other side.
“So, the last griffin,” he said, trying to change the subject. “How would you describe her? What kind of treasure might she like?”
Zoe shook her head. “No idea. She’s quiet—a good listener. And clever; Matthew taught her to play chess already.” She paused, twisting a lock of hair around one finger. “I’ve been wondering. I still don’t think I left that gate unlocked. So someone opened it, and whoever let the griffins out must have done it for a reason. What if someone wanted to steal a cub? Maybe that’s what happened to her.”
“Like that Tracker,” Blue said. He leaned back against the wall with his hands behind his head. “The one who ran off with the Chinese dragon instead of bringing it here.”
“We don’t know that that’s what happened,” Zoe said, crouching to retrieve a fallen hoof pick.
Blue shrugged. “Of course people want to steal mythical creatures. Even the animals without powers would sell for a fortune on the black market.”
Cleopatra blew out a skeptical huff of air. “Anyone who buys a griffin cub will learn to regret it.” The unicorn sniffed. “Not that I care about your problems, of course.”
“So if we figure out who let the griffins out,” Zoe said hopefully, “maybe that’ll lead us to the last one.”
“Actually,” Logan said, “I have a theory about that. But if I’m right, it won’t help us find her.”
“All right, griffin whisperer,” Zoe said. “What’s your theory?”
Logan hesitated. It sounded stupid now that he was about to say it. But what if he was right?
“I think,” he said slowly. “I think . . . that Nira let her own cubs out.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
“Ruh-roh,” Zoe said. “The griffin whisperer has lost his mind.” She climbed onto the hay bale beside Blue and leaned back against the wall. It was ridiculous how tired she was. She was too tired even to make fun of Logan’s goofy theory properly.
“Wait, I’m serious,” Logan said. “You can’t hear the cubs, so you don’t realize how they are with her and how tiring it must be. It’s like nonstop insanity in there, and she’s doing ninety percent of the work even when Riff thinks he’s helping. Probably more when Riff thinks he’s helping. What if she let them out because she needed a break?”
“But the cubs would have seen her do that, wouldn’t they?” Blue said.
“Maybe she hopped out of the enclosure while they were asleep, unbolted the door, and then waited for them to find it themselves,” Logan suggested. “She and Riff can fly in and out, right?”
“Sure,” Blue said. “The fence is just for the cubs, or it’s supposed to be. That’s why we moved them in there.”
Zoe kicked the hay bale with her sneakers. “Nira has been tired and irritable lately,” she said. “But what kind of mom would risk her own cubs like that?”
Logan turned away and ran the comb through Cleopatra’s mane. “Maybe she expected them to stay inside the Menagerie. Or maybe not. Some people aren’t meant to be moms,” he said quietly.
“Logan—” Zoe started.
“Hey, I know!” Blue interrupted, sitting up suddenly. “We can find out if it was Nira.” He turned to Zoe. “The security tapes.”
“There are security tapes?” Logan ducked under Cleopatra’s neck and gave them a wry look. “That wouldn’t have been helpful to check sooner?”
“No,” Zoe said. “The cameras are on the inside of the enclosure; there’s no shot of the gate from the outside. But you’re right; we could see what Nira was doing all night.”
“Let’s do it,” Logan said. He stepped out of Cleopatra’s stall and bowed. “May we be excused, Cleopatra?”
She tossed her mane. “I suppose.”
The three of them ran back up toward the house. Zoe pulled open the sliding door and led the way into Melissa’s office, off the living room.
Blue’s class picture from sixth grade hung in a silver frame above her desk; otherwise, the room was all straight edges, clear surfaces, and black and white colors. Melissa’s to-do list for the day was printed out, with half the items in bold, and laid neatly next to her desktop computer. Zoe glanced at it and noticed enviously that nearly all the boxes had check marks in them. Zoe had gotten her to-do list strategy from watching Melissa, but she still felt overwhelmed and disorganized practically all the time.
One corner of the room was set up with the security camera video feeds and archives. Zoe sat down and pulled up the week’s videos from the griffin enclosure.
“There are the SNAPA agents,” she said, fast-forwarding through Sunday. The two agents zipped around the enclosure like windup cars. Logan leaned over her shoulder, frowning at the screen.
“Wait,” he said. “Pause it for a minute?” He stared at the SNAPA agents and then shook his head. “Never mind.”
“What?” Blue asked.
“That guy seems familiar for some reason,” Logan said, pointing to the male SNAPA agent. “But I can’t figure out why.”
Zoe shifted uncomfortably and hit the fast-forward button again. “Here’s Thursday. There’s me brushing all the cubs.” She slowed the video again and watched the smaller version of herself finish another Harry Potter chapter with Flurp, then get up and pat all the cubs good night.
After she left, all six cubs descended on Nira at once. Their mother had been napping under one of the trees, but twenty-four paws clambering onto her back woke her up pretty quickly. She tried to sit up, yawning and blinking, but two of the cubs knocked her over and started wrestling between her wings. The other four began a mad game of chase that seemed to involve tagging Nira’s head or tail every thirty seconds.
“Wow,” Blue said, watching the screen with his arms folded. “That looks exhausting.”
“See?” Logan said. “Poor Nira.” He picked up Melissa’s mug—a joke gift from Blue, which said I’D RATHER HAVE A COWBOY THAN A FISH-MAN on the side—and started fidgeting with it.
Zoe leaned her chin on her fist. How had she never noticed this before? Why had Logan spotted it in just two visits to the griffin enclosure? To be fair, whenever Zoe went in, the cubs paid attention to her—looking for jellybeans, mostly—so she’d never seen them all focused on Nira like this.
“Where is Riff?” Logan asked.
Blue pointed to a corner of the screen. The father griffin was flopped among the tree branches above the gamboling cubs. He was fast asleep.
“Man. When we get the last griffin back, we are having a family dynamic intervention,” said Zoe.
“Talk to Clink,” Logan suggested, pointing to the largest griffin cub, who was clearly herding the others into playing the games she wanted. “If she learns to play with her dad and give her mom some peace, the others will follow.”
Zoe fast-forwarded slowly through the rest of the evening. Nira tried to give each of the cubs a bath and got thoroughly soaked herself. She tried to feed them dinner and had to break up five separate fights over who had the best or biggest pieces of food. Well after dark, the cubs finally fell asleep one by one. The last one was Squorp, who spent at least two hours bouncing out of th
e den to bother Nira instead of going to sleep.
At last Nira stood outside the cave entrance, looking at the little cubs all snuggled together in a big fur-pile. She waited five minutes, until she was sure they were all asleep. Then she backed away slowly, as quietly as possible, and settled herself into a pile of dry leaves. With a sigh, she curled up and closed her eyes.
A few moments later, Riff woke up, yawned, stretched, and jumped down to the ground. Dirt billowed up in wisps around his paws as he landed. He blinked at his sleeping wife, then took a step toward the slumbering cubs. Immediately Nira’s eyes flew open, and her beak snapped around his tail, yanking him back. Before he could yowl in protest, she shoved him to the ground and clamped her paws around his beak.
Riff gave her an injured look, and when she let go, he slunk off grouchily. Nira watched him sternly for a minute. Finally she went back to sleep.
And that was it.
They went forward slowly through the rest of the night. Nira slept like a log, and after puffing up his chest and pacing like a fierce guardian for an hour, so did Riff. Around two o’clock in the morning, Clink suddenly raised her head and swiveled it toward the gate.
“Look,” Zoe whispered. “I bet she’s hearing someone unlock it.”
“So it’s not Nira,” Blue pointed out.
“I guess not,” Logan agreed. “And that means it wasn’t Zoe’s fault, either.”
Zoe resisted the urge to hug him.
There was a pause. Clink looked at her sleeping parents, then back at the gate. With a few sharp jabs of her beak, she woke her siblings. Her wings flapped and her paws gestured as if she was giving them a grand speech—probably about all the treasure in the outside world, Zoe guessed.
The cubs stumbled sleepily behind Clink to the gate, which swung open when she leaned against it. Then they followed her out, vanishing into the dark one by one.
Logan leaned over Zoe’s shoulder again. “Wait,” he said. “Go back. What’s she doing?” He pointed to the littlest griffin, the one who was still missing. She trailed at the back of the group.
Zoe rewound a few frames and restarted the tape.
As the other cubs followed Clink, the little griffin looked around furtively and then quickly dug a hole next to one of the boulders. She shoved something into it, scooped dirt back over it, and patted it down. Then she hurried after her siblings, none of whom had seen what she had done.
“What was that?” Zoe whispered, half to herself. She brushed the screen with her fingertips. “What were you hiding, little cub?”
“It looks like she was trying to keep some treasure safe,” Blue said.
“Which means she planned to come back,” Logan pointed out. He rolled the mug between his fingers. “That’s a good sign. Right?”
“I hope so,” Zoe said. “We have to find out what she buried. Maybe it’s a clue.” She rolled the chair away from the desk and stood. Seeing the SNAPA agents on-screen had brought all her anxiety rushing back. They had less than twenty-four hours before the agents returned. At noon tomorrow, the Menagerie could be shut down. Worse than that, if they didn’t find the last griffin, SNAPA might decide to kill her.
“Where are you going?” Zoe’s mom called as they ran through the living room again. She was setting out plates on the table, which made Zoe want to scream. How could her parents stop for dinner? Why weren’t they in a state of total panic? She had never seen them panic, not once in her entire life; but this time it seemed impossible not to.
“Following a hunch,” Zoe called back, sliding the doors shut behind them.
Blue reached the griffin enclosure first and pulled the gate open as Zoe and Logan pelted up behind him. Squorp’s head immediately popped up over his mother’s wings. Zoe could guess what he was thinking even without Logan’s power to hear the cubs: COW?
“Hi to you, too,” Logan said, grinning. The three of them crouched beside the boulder they had seen in the video. Within ten seconds, all the griffin cubs except Clink had flocked to them, sitting on the boulder or poking their beaks between the boys’ knees.
“They’d like to know what we’re doing,” Logan said.
“Wow, thanks,” Zoe said, wrestling Clonk’s nosy head out of the way. “I could never have guessed that. Ow, Flurp, you are too big to sit on my shoulder anymore.” The dark-gray griffin cub snuggled under Zoe’s arm instead.
There was a patch of newly turned-over earth where the littlest griffin had been digging. Logan started to brush it aside, and Squorp bounced down from the boulder, nearly skewering Logan’s hand with his claws by accident.
“Okay,” Logan said, sitting back. “You can do it.”
Squorp scraped at the dirt, quickly digging a hole. He moved back a step as they all saw a flash of purple in the ground.
“No way.” Zoe leaned forward and carefully fished out the buried object. It was crusted with dirt, but she recognized the pink, purple, and yellow threads underneath anyway.
This was her friendship bracelet. Jasmin had made it for Zoe two years ago, and Zoe had never taken it off until they stopped being friends. Even then, Zoe had still worn it at home sometimes where Jasmin couldn’t see it.
The bracelet had gone missing a few weeks ago. Zoe remembered wearing it on a day when she’d missed Jasmin more than usual and then taking it off at the griffin cubs’ bath time. The littlest cub must have nabbed it while Zoe was wrestling with one of the others.
Zoe’s hand went to her bare wrist, and a horrible, sinking sensation flooded through her.
“Guys,” she said. “I think I know where the last griffin is.” She took a deep breath and met Blue’s eyes. “I think she’s gone to the Sterlings’.”
TWENTY-NINE
Logan wasn’t sure why Zoe looked like the apocalypse had just come to kick the Menagerie in the head. She was staring at the dirty woven bracelet as if it were, like, the epic tragedy of the century.
“So,” Logan said, “that’s . . . bad.”
“That’s terrible,” Zoe said. “What if they find her? Of all people, the Sterlings!”
“Why would she go there?” Blue asked.
Zoe draped the bracelet over her palm. “Sometimes I talked about Jasmin and her house: the secret passageways, the hidden rooms, and all the cool and random stuff they have. I thought the cubs would like to hear about it, that’s all. I never thought any of them would actually go looking for it.”
“Is this such a big deal? If the Sterlings see her, can’t you just zap them again?” Logan asked.
“Maybe,” Zoe said. “But it’s not really good for anyone to drink too much kraken ink. And seeing a griffin could trigger all kinds of lost memories. Plus, we never figured out what Jonathan was planning to do with the jackalope he tried to steal, so we don’t know what they might do with a griffin.”
“Whoa,” Logan said. “Are you serious? He actually stole a— Okay, I have no idea what a jackalope is.”
“Sort of a rabbit with horns,” Blue said. “It’s like the official mythical creature of Wyoming.”
Logan blinked. “You’re kidding,” he said. “That’s a thing? State flower, state bird, state mythical creature?”
“Depends on the state,” Blue said with a straight face. Logan couldn’t tell whether he was joking.
“Anyway, Matthew caught him sneaking out with it, and that’s when we knew we had to wipe Jonathan’s memory,” Zoe said. “We couldn’t trust him anymore. Ruby threw such a fit.” She rubbed the bracelet between her fingers, brushing away some of the dirt. “What if he was going to sell it? What if they put the cub on eBay or something? We have to get over there right now.” She stood up, shaking off griffin cubs as though they were raindrops, and hurried to the gate.
Logan and Blue ran after her. “Wait, we need a plan,” Logan called.
Zoe didn’t answer. She blitzed through the garage and was halfway up the drive on her bike before the boys could get their helmets on.
“This is not going to end w
ell,” Blue said, wheeling out his bike. “There’s no way Jasmin will let Zoe into the house.”
“Me neither, I imagine,” Logan said. “But at least there’s one of us she won’t mind seeing.”
“Who?” Blue shook his hair out of his eyes.
“Um, you,” Logan said as they climbed on their bikes. “You could get into the Sterling mansion easily.”
“Me?” Blue said, sounding genuinely confused. “Why?”
Logan hesitated. Blue couldn’t be that dense. “You don’t know Jasmin has a huge crush on you?”
“Aaah!” Blue put his hands over his ears. “Logan! Why’d you have to tell me that?” He hit the pedals and flew off down the driveway.
Logan caught up to him a couple of blocks later. Thick black clouds were rolling across the sunset, and thunder rumbled in the distance, echoing off the mountains. “Sorry,” Logan said. “Do you not like her?”
“Even if I did, and I’m not saying I do, I can’t date anyone outside the Menagerie,” Blue said. “Or a human, for that matter. Besides, you’re probably wrong. How would you even know something like that?”
“Check your desk on Monday,” Logan said. “She lends you a pen nearly every morning, whether you need it or not. She talks to you more than to any other guy in class. She looks at you a lot, and drops things near you so you’ll both stop to pick them up. And the other girls in class talk about it all the time—I can’t tell if they don’t notice when I’m around or just don’t care if I hear.”
Blue held out his palm and looked up at the sky. “So now you want me to use Jasmin’s supposed feelings to get into the Sterling mansion and look for the cub? That’s not right.”
“But it’s for the Menagerie,” said Logan.
Blue sighed. “We’d better catch Zoe.”
They found Zoe’s bike stashed behind a tree a block away from the Sterling mansion. They dropped their bikes and helmets as well and ran up the road, staying close to the trees.
“Uh-oh,” Blue said, nodding at the tall white brick wall around the Sterlings’ backyard.
The Menagerie Page 15