“So, how does it feel?” Eliza overheard her mother asking Mrs. Carroll. She and Tommy moved closer. “The transformation itself, that is?”
“Mostly it feels itchy. All that hair sprouting everywhere.” Mrs. Carroll gave a delicate shiver. “And it’s uncomfortable. It’s like being squeezed into an outfit that’s much, much too small for you. I’m always quite sore afterward.”
“I know some stretches that might help,” Eliza offered.
But she didn’t get to demonstrate. Before anyone could speak again, the basement door banged open. Mr. Carroll hustled down the steps toward them, his meaty hand clamped around the arm of another man—a man with a battered sweater and tangled hair under a knit cap.
“Leif,” said Mrs. Carroll sweetly. “How are you, dear?”
Leif glanced around the basement. His skin was weather-beaten and sunburned, almost the color of a sliced grapefruit. His eyes were sharp and bright and definitely not yellow, Eliza noticed. They were more of a mirror-y blue—a shade that took in everything and reflected it straight back out again.
“All right. Thanks,” he said shortly. “You?”
Eliza recognized that voice. It was the raspy one she’d heard speaking to Mr. Carroll before. And it was nothing like the soft, polite, old-fashioned voice of the black-cloaked ghost.
“So, Leif,” boomed Mr. Carroll, “we’ve got some questions. Have a seat.”
“More comfortable on my feet,” said Leif. He took another twitchy look around. “Don’t like these enclosed spaces. Too still for my taste.”
“Have a seat.” Mr. Carroll’s jolly tone didn’t change, but his big hand grabbed Leif by the shoulder and shoved him down onto a waiting crate. “We need to know more about one of the plants you brought us.”
“I’m a supplier, not a gardener,” said Leif with a shrug and a nervous grin. “I don’t know poison oak from the Oakland A’s.”
“We need to know where a specific plant came from,” said Mr. Carroll, as though Leif hadn’t spoken.
The explorer gave a short, dry laugh. It sounded like two pieces of toast scratching together. “You want me to remember one little plant? You might as well ask me to remember one time I tied my shoes.”
Eliza’s mother thrust out her cell phone. On its screen was a photo of the red-berried plant. “It’s this one.”
The change in Leif was instantaneous. His twitchy body stilled. His face went flat.
“Thought it might be that one,” he murmured.
“Where did you find it?” her mother asked.
Leif kept silent for several seconds. His hands, covered with tattoos of blue-inked constellations, clenched and unclenched anxiously. “On our last trip, we went up the Atlantic coast,” he said at last. “Maine. Nova Scotia. Chains of little islands. Collected ferns and wildflowers, mostly. Checked out the site of an old shipwreck, found a couple decent pieces. But then one night…” His words slowed. “Out of nowhere, there came this little island. It wasn’t on any of the maps. We found a cove. Went ashore.”
He paused, the Big Dipper rippling below his knuckles. “I’ve visited a thousand islands. But there was something off about this one. Everywhere we went, we felt like we were being watched. Or hunted.” He swallowed. “We never saw what was watching us, but we heard rustles in the underbrush, really soft and slow. Could have been a bear, I suppose, or a mountain lion, or…something else. Whatever it was, it was stalking us.” Leif nodded at the picture. “Quick as I could, I dug up this plant. And we got the heck out of there.
“But that feeling, that we were being stalked…it came with us.” He clasped his shaking hands together. “Now it was on the boat. We still couldn’t see it, but we noticed things. Sounds. Objects that moved. Shadows that definitely weren’t…human. It didn’t leave until we docked and finally got that plant off board.”
He glanced around at everyone, looking like he wished he could laugh at himself. But Eliza saw the fear in his pale eyes. “I know this sounds like drunken sailor talk. But I swear it’s true. Believe it if you like.”
“I believe you,” said Eliza.
Eliza’s mother tapped her fingertips together. “Say your conclusions are accurate. That someone or something was watching you—or perhaps watching the plant. Wouldn’t it be safe to assume that whoever it was is also aware of the plant’s properties? And that whoever it was may be the thief we are looking for now?”
“It was the ghost!” Eliza exclaimed. “It all makes sense!”
“Hang on,” said Leif. “What properties are we talking about?”
Eliza’s mother took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “It appears that ingestion of the plant’s fruit transforms a human into a canine.”
Mr. Carroll let out a sudden belly laugh. “You know, we should call the plant a dogwood tree! Too bad the name’s already taken!”
“Oh, Win!” laughed Mrs. Carroll.
“Mr. Carroll, please,” said Eliza’s mother. “Now, we should try to determine what our thief plans to do with the plant. He might want it for himself. Or he might plan to profit from it somehow. Who would pay most for this sort of ability?”
“Dog lovers?” offered Mrs. Carroll.
“Movie people,” suggested Mr. Carroll. “It would be a lot easier to train Lassie if Lassie was really a person.”
Eliza’s mother frowned. “Genetic researchers would be fascinated. It would also be extremely interesting to the military, and to the intelligence community. Spies would make great use of it. So would organized and unorganized crime…”
Leif stared up at Eliza’s mother, looking dazed. “Run this by me one more time,” he said. “You’re saying that plant turns people into dogs?”
“Care for a demonstration?” asked Mr. Carroll. “Head upstairs and find a moonbeam with me, and—”
“There’s no time,” said Eliza’s mother. “We need to act swiftly. The thief may already have gotten away.”
Eliza raised her hand. “I think we should—”
“We can search the neighborhood,” suggested Mr. Carroll. “Camila and Tommy and I, in dog form. We’ll follow our noses right to the culprit!”
Eliza raised her hand again. “Ghost-hunting techniques might—”
“That’s a decent start,” her mother said over her. “In the meantime, if I enlarge the photo of the plant on my laptop and set it somewhere in view of the windows, it might be mistaken for another sample of the real thing and lure the thief back in.”
“Can’t hurt to try,” said Mr. Carroll.
“But it’s clear that supernatural powers are—” Eliza began.
“Or we could just put out some kibble!” blurted Leif. He gave a nervous laugh, then bit his lips. “Sorry. I’m out of my depth here.”
“We all are,” said Eliza’s mother briskly. “But we’ll just have to plunge in. All right, everyone. Let’s move.”
Everybody but Eliza and Moggie rushed up the stairs.
Eliza started to follow, and then looked down at Moggie, who panted hopefully up at her.
“I was going to say,” Eliza told the dog, “considering that this mystery combines natural and supernatural elements, we should try ghost-summoning techniques.” She sighed and crouched down to scratch Moggie’s ears. “They can believe in a plant that turns people into dogs, but they still don’t believe me.”
She and Moggie padded up into the shop. The Carrolls had already vanished. Eliza could hear her mother and Leif in the distance, murmuring about which windows had the best views.
“To summon a ghost,” Eliza told Moggie, “it helps to know the ghost’s name. But we don’t. The next best thing is to use an item that once belonged to that ghost, something important to…”
But now even Moggie was ignoring her. The dog put her snout to the floor and turned away, snuffling loudly.
“What?” Eliza asked. “Is this the way the ghost went?”
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Moggie snuffled across the rare plant room and toward the floral department. She sniffed straight up to the base of the stairs. Instead of climbing them, she lumbered to the right, toward a big tub full of mums. Then she bent her front legs, put her rump in the air, and shoved her head as far behind the tub as it would go. Sounds of loud snorting filtered out through the flowers.
“What is it?” Eliza knelt beside the dog. “Did you lose a dog treat down there?” She shoved the tub aside.
Behind it, wedged against the wall, was one bright jewel-red berry.
Eliza grabbed it.
She recognized it: size, shape, and color. The berry must have fallen from the missing plant, maybe when the ghost had smuggled it away.
“Good girl, Moggie,” she whispered.
Eliza slipped the berry into her pocket.
If no one else took her ghost hunting seriously, then she would hunt this ghost on her own.
And now she had a plan.
Turn to this page.
ELIZA STOOD ALONE IN the dark greenhouse.
Shut outside the glass doors, Moggie harrumphed, licked the panes, and finally moseyed away. Eliza felt sorry for excluding her, but she needed to focus. Now the room was so quiet, she could almost hear the hundreds of plants breathing, leaves unfurling bit by bit.
By touch, she dug through her backpack and pulled out the candle and matches. She lit the wick, and the greenhouse filled with a faint gold glow. The glass-paned walls reflected a hundred copies of Eliza’s dimly lit face. She looked a little scared. And determined. And excited.
Sometimes she and Xavier and Chloe had practically seen Bloody Mary surfacing in their toothpaste-flecked bathroom mirrors. She knew what to do next. So what if she didn’t know the ghost’s name? She had something important to him tucked right in her pocket.
Setting the candle on a table, Eliza pulled out the berry. She cupped it in her palm, her fingers open just enough that its redness glinted in the candlelight.
“I call you,” she whispered.
It felt funny to be talking to no one, not even a dog. Eliza swallowed and spoke again. “I call you.”
Reflected candlelight flickered in the panes. Was it just her breath that moved it?
“I call you….”
Maybe it was the dark, or the quiet, or the flickering light, but behind her reflection, she thought she saw the outline of a low, hulking shadow. It was gone as soon as she glimpsed it. Had it been on the outside or inside of the glass?
Eliza shuddered. Her hip bumped the table, making the candle waver.
Don’t be silly. Ghosts can’t hurt you.
She tried to swallow, but her throat felt dry and tight, like a crumpled paper straw. “I call you….”
And then, in the darkness behind her, something growled.
Eliza whirled around.
Crouched a few feet away, near enough that it could close the gap in one lunge, was a wolf.
A massive, charcoal gray wolf.
The biggest wolf Eliza had ever seen anywhere.
Even in a crouch, its face was level with hers. She stared straight into its snarling maw and burning gold eyes.
She recognized those eyes.
They were the same inhuman eyes that had stared at her from the stormy backyard.
A burst of triumph—the summoning had worked!—seeped away in a swell of terror. She was staring into the jaws of a wolf. A huge, hulking, snarling wolf.
Then, to make things even worse, the wolf spoke.
“You have something that belongs to me,” it growled.
Its voice was low. Soft. Disused. It made Eliza’s skin crawl with a thousand icy spiders, all of them screaming, Run away!
But if she ran, she would be letting fear take control. No. She needed to think. She needed to keep the berry safe. She needed to keep the wolf here, in hopes that someone else would come to help her.
She needed to stall.
“Wh-what do you mean?” she stammered, closing her fist around the berry.
“I smell it.” The wolf’s voice grew deeper still. It stepped closer, its huge paws rasping on the floor. “Just like I can smell your fear.”
“Oh. I’ve heard that animals can smell fear,” said Eliza, her own voice high and trembling. “I’ve just never heard it from the horse’s mouth before. Or from the wolf’s mouth, I mean!” Sheesh, she sounded like Mr. Carroll. Panic was making her goofy.
Subtly as she could, she edged sideways, putting distance between them. But the wolf caught this. It tracked each movement, its head lowering, its powerful body twitching. Ready to spring.
“Give me the fruit,” it growled.
Eliza’s mind whirled. What was this creature? A ghost? A werewolf? A berry-eating human? Did it even matter? She gripped the berry. If she could reach the greenhouse doors, she might be able to escape—or at least to scream for help.
“Why should I give it to you?” She took another sideways step.
“Otherwise,” growled the wolf, “I will be forced to take it.”
With those words, Eliza’s fear won. She dove to the right, around the end of a table. The wolf charged after her. Eliza felt a freezing gust sweep over her, as though the wolf itself was made of ice.
She tore down the row, her shoes pounding the floor. The wolf coursed easily, silently, after her. She had to delay. She had to outmaneuver it somehow.
Desperately, Eliza grabbed the edge of one table and swung herself beneath. The wolf lunged after her, its broad body knocking the table out of place. That table crashed into the next one, setting it wobbling. Two plants toppled from its surface, along with Eliza’s burning candle—which fell directly into a pile of dry leaves.
The candle glass shattered.
Eliza heard the crackle of leaves catching fire. She saw the flare as the leaves burst into flame, and then another flare as the fire reached a pile of cardboard boxes. She scurried beneath the next table.
The wolf paused, giving the spreading fire one swift glance. It turned back toward Eliza, hunched its shoulders, and sprang.
Eliza shot to her feet. The table above her crashed down onto its side, sending an avalanche of potted plants into the wolf’s path. The wolf snarled, its heavy body smashing through the plants and striking the barricade of the tabletop. Eliza couldn’t stall any longer. She raced along the row, straight toward the doors.
The air of the greenhouse was thickening with heat and smoke. Her eyes stung. Beneath her own gasping breaths, she could hear the fire, crackling and snapping as it spread. She was two steps from the doors when a dark hulk leaped into her path.
Eliza reeled back.
The wolf had landed inches away. It crouched between her and the doors, its golden eyes glimmering with reflected flames. Its lips curled back, revealing rows of long, jagged teeth.
“Give me the fruit,” it commanded, in a growl that made every hair on Eliza’s body tremble.
The hand holding the berry shook.
There was no escape. She was caught between a wolf and a spreading fire.
She’d thought she could do this all alone.
She’d been wrong.
Wrong.
Wrong.
Helpless, hopeless, she lifted the berry toward the wolf’s glinting jaws.
A piercing BEEEEEEEEEEP blared through the greenhouse.
Eliza flinched, raising both hands to her ears. The wolf flinched, too. As they huddled there, pinned in place by the noise, a blast of cold water filled the air. It shot down from the spigots covering the ceiling. It stung Eliza’s eyes and soaked through her clothes. Coughing, half-blinded, she heard the fire hissing out.
Someone switched on the lights.
Eliza pushed a hank of soaked hair out of her eyes.
Between the open greenhouse doors stood her mother and Leif, and the Carrolls and Tommy in dog form. Mr. Car
roll rose onto his hind legs and pawed a switch on the wall. The blaring fire alarm died. The sprinkler system gave a final splutter.
Moggie barreled into the greenhouse. She charged straight to Eliza, licking the water off her arms and snuffling at the hand that still held the red berry, safe and sound. Then, growling loudly, she wheeled around to face the wolf.
But the wolf wasn’t there.
Hunched in front of Eliza, holding the lapels of his dripping black coat, was a man. The man she had spoken to in the shop. His broad hat and plastic sunglasses were gone, so Eliza could clearly see his sharp-featured face, his drenched black hair. His burning yellow eyes.
“It’s you,” she whispered.
Turn to this page.
THE GHOST STOOD VERY still. Water dripped from the cuffs of his coat. In his squelchy human state, he looked far less intimidating than a moment ago. He looked wet and uncomfortable and real.
Nudging Moggie aside, Eliza stepped closer. The man watched her, keeping perfectly still. He didn’t even move when Eliza reached out and, very gently, touched his arm.
It was solid. Wet. Warm.
Alive.
“You’re not a ghost,” Eliza whispered.
“No,” the man murmured back in that low, old-fashioned voice. She should have recognized it before. “I am not.”
“But…” Eliza looked up into his flickering yellow eyes. “You’re not really human, either. Are you?”
“No,” said the man again. “Not anymore.”
Eliza’s mother seemed to snap out of an observational trance. She charged into the greenhouse, wrapping an arm around Eliza and planting herself firmly in the man’s path. “I take it you’re the one who’s been terrorizing us,” she said, the hedge-trimmer voice out in full force. “Stealing from us.”
The man’s face seemed to flicker. Not just to flicker, but to shift—becoming longer and more pointed in places, flatter and darker in others. When he spoke, Eliza could see the flash of a wolf’s long teeth.
The Story Pirates Present Page 10