Dragon Keepers #1: The Dragon in the Sock Drawer (9 page)

CHAPTER NINE

HIDE-AND-SEEK

The doorbell rang. Jesse and Daisy grabbed each other as the house filled with the sound of “Rock of Ages.” St. George must have been leaning on the bell, because the tune played over and over and over again.

Emmy rolled aside the head of cabbage and bounded into Jesse's arms. “Bad. Man. Come!” she whimpered. “Hidemehidemehideme!”

Over the din of the doorbell, they heard the back door slam. Uncle Joe was running through the house, calling out, “All right, all right, all right already! I'm coming!” Then they heard the front door open. Mercifully, the doorbell fell silent. A murmuring of voices came from the front hall.

Emmy had burrowed beneath Jesse's T-shirt. She was trembling. “Where can we hide her?” Jesse whispered to Daisy.

Daisy shook her head and frowned. Then her face lit up. “I know! Come with me!”

Jesse followed her down the hall to her parents' room and into Aunt Maggie's vast walk-in closet. Everything in the closet was in apple-pie order except for her shoes. Aunt Maggie had a lot of them—far too many to organize—so she kept them in three big wicker baskets in the very back of her closet.

Daisy tipped over the basket farthest from the door and dumped out all the shoes onto the floor. “Put her in there,” she said to Jesse.

Jesse lifted his T-shirt. “Don't worry,” he said to Emmy, “we're going to hide you really well. All you have to do is be very quiet and still.” He set the dragon gently in the center of the basket. Then the cousins carefully piled shoes around and on top of her. They stood back and looked at the effect. Emmy was completely covered, but some of the shoes were moving.

“It's fine for you to move around and get yourself comfortable,” Daisy told Emmy. “But once you're settled in there, you can't move. You have to stay very, very still.”

“Stay. Still. Not. Move,” Emmy said from beneath the shoes. But the shoes were still moving. “Notmovenotmovenotmove.” The shoes were churning around now.

Jesse sighed. “And no yakking, either,” he said.

“Em. Meee. Not. Yak. Em. Meee. Eat,” Emmy said. “Em. Meee. Eat. Em. Meee. Eat.
Shoe!
”

Daisy's face took on a look of pure panic. “No, Emmy! Listen to me. Do. Not. Eat. The. Shoes.”

“Fooooood!” Emmy crooned.

Jesse slapped his forehead. “How can she be hungry at a time like this?”

“I'll find you something,” Daisy said to Emmy. “Only please, please don't eat my mother's shoes.” Daisy dashed out of the closet.

Emmy's head erupted from the pile of shoes. “Foooooooood!”

“Hush, Emmy,” said Jesse sternly. “She's gone to get you something. But you
have
to keep your voice down.”

Daisy flew back into the closet with a bottle of Tums in her hand. “It says on the label that these things are loaded with calcium.” She opened the bottle and dumped some of the colorful tablets into her hand. Then she knelt down and held her hand out to Emmy. “Try one and see if you like it. Quickly, please.”

They watched as Emmy, with maddening slowness, took a pink tablet in her shiny green talons and nibbled at it, then popped it into her mouth and crunched it to dust. “Tums. Goooood.”

“At least she won't be suffering from acid indigestion,” Jesse said.

“And she can
read
!” said Daisy, tucking the open bottle next to Emmy among the shoes, then covering Emmy and the bottle with more shoes from one of the other baskets. The cousins took one last look at Emmy's basket. A soft crunching sound was coming from the pile of shoes, but at least the shoes weren't moving. They backed out and closed the closet door. Then they closed the door of the master bedroom and ran up the hall to Jesse's room.

Jesse quickly booted up the computer and slipped in the CD for a video game. Daisy rolled the head of cabbage under Jesse's bed and tidied up the evidence of their thwarted escape. Jesse was pretending to play and Daisy was pretending to watch when they heard the knock on the door they were expecting. Daisy went to answer it.

“Hi, Poppy!” said Daisy.

Her voice sounded odd. Jesse swiveled in his chair. Uncle Joe was standing in the doorway with St. George right next to him.

Seeing St. George practically inside his bedroom was enough to make Jesse want to pick up his computer and heave it at the man's big head.

“It seems,” said Uncle Joe, giving them each a very careful look, “that Dr. St. George has misplaced his lizard…
again.
”

“Gee,” said Daisy, “that's too bad.”

“She probably hates being in your lab,” said Jesse. His hand flew to his mouth.

But St. George pounced on him. “Then you've been to my lab, have you, boy?” he said.

“Of course not!” said Daisy. “He just figured you have a lab, because you're a, whatchacallit, herpatopterist.”

“Herpabologist,”
Jesse corrected her.

“That's
herpetologist,
” said Uncle Joe. “And didn't you guys tell me you were going over to the college to visit him today?”

Daisy gave her father a scalding look.

“We decided to go to the Dell,” Jesse said flatly. “We had something more important to do there.”

St. George bared his perfect teeth in what passed for a smile. “I suppose you were having a
wagon fiddle
lesson instead?” He wrenched the bandaged hand out of the pocket of his coat and jabbed a finger at them. “You children aren't fooling me. You sneaked into my lab and you stole my lizard, and
I want it back
!”

Uncle Joe cleared his throat uneasily. “Um, guys, if what he's saying is true—and I'm not saying that it is—you need to come clean and tell me. The lizard isn't yours. It belongs to Dr. St. George.”

Jesse said in a small voice, “But, Uncle Joe, we don't have it.”

“Honest, Poppy,” said Daisy.

Uncle Joe closed his eyes and sighed. “Well, fine, then. If that's the case, then you guys won't mind if we check the sock drawer? That
was
where you were keeping the lizard?”

Without waiting for an answer, Uncle Joe went to Jesse's sock drawer and opened it. He dug around in the socks for almost a minute before he said, “No lizard here.” Then he turned to St. George, whose figure hung in the doorway like a long, lank, big-headed bat. “Your lizard isn't here,” he said. “Sorry.”

St. George said icily, “I am, too. But I'm not leaving until you've conducted a thorough search of the premises, and I mean every nook and cranny.”

“Now, wait just a minute—” said Uncle Joe.

“If you refuse, I will go away and come back with the police. I promise you, we will turn your cozy little house upside down,” said St. George.

“My drag—er, my lizard—is here. I know it,” he said, looking pointedly at Jesse, then at Daisy. “I can
smell
it.”

Uncle Joe heaved a big sigh.

“Poppy, you're not going to let him—” said Daisy.

“I don't see that I have much choice,” said Uncle Joe. “You know something, guys? This whole lizard thing has gotten way out of hand.”

What came next felt like the world's most undelightful game of hide-and-seek as Jesse and Daisy nervously followed the two-man search party from attic to basement. By the time Uncle Joe had put his hand on the doorknob of the master bedroom, the cousins were nearly sick with anxiety.

“I thought the master bedroom was off-limits,” said Jesse. (In games of hide-and-seek, they were never allowed to hide in that room.)

Uncle Joe closed his eyes and shook his head sadly. “Guys, this stopped being a game a long time ago,” he said.

The cousins slouched in the doorway as St. George looked under all the furniture and Uncle Joe went through every bureau drawer. Finally, reluctantly—and with a whispered apology to his absent wife—Uncle Joe opened the door of Aunt Maggie's closet. The closet was big enough for all of them to crowd in among Aunt Maggie's sweet-smelling racks of clothes. In such close quarters, Jesse picked up the unbearable stench of St. George's breath. Strangely, there was not a trace of the smell of hot chili peppers.

Uncle Joe took one side and St. George took the other and they worked their way down the racks. They searched every pocket and sleeve, then every drawer, every cubby, every hatbox, until at last they came to the corner where the shoes were kept.

St. George picked up the first wicker basket and dumped the shoes out onto the floor.

“Easy, buddy!” said Uncle Joe with a frown.

“Some of those shoes are Italian.”

St. George went through the shoes one by one. He even looked inside them, not that Emmy was small enough to fit in a shoe anymore.

Uncle Joe emptied the next basket himself, much more carefully. St. George tossed the shoes every which way. Then he seized the third basket and turned it upside down. Boots and pumps and sandals thundered to the floor, and St. George dropped to his knees and pawed through them. Any second now, Jesse expected him to find Emmy. Instead, he came up with an empty bottle of Tums and something else—something bright and sparkly.

“We
told
you we don't have your lizard,” said Daisy, shooting Jesse a puzzled look. Jesse was too relieved that St. George hadn't found Emmy to worry yet about where she might have gone. “She probably ran away because you treated her so badly,” Daisy said boldly. “Or maybe somebody from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Lizards rescued her.”

St. George held up the bright, sparkly thing in his fist. “It was here. It was! And this is my proof!” he cried. “A hoard of gold and precious gems!”

“Actually, ‘hoard' is a misnomer,” Jesse muttered under his breath.

“Hey,” Uncle Joe said. “That happens to be the garnet necklace I gave my wife for our twenty-fifth anniversary. And I'd like it back, if you don't mind.” He plucked the necklace from St. George's hand and added coldly, “We're finished here.”

         

Dinner was a nearly silent affair. Uncle Joe had very little to say, and Jesse and Daisy kept their worries about Emmy to themselves. After they had eaten, Uncle Joe pushed his chair away from the table and said, “I'll do the dishes. Why don't you two go upstairs and try to stay out of trouble for a while.”

Jesse and Daisy nodded and went to Jesse's room. Jesse booted up the computer while Daisy watched.

“First we let him steal her and now we lose her. Professor Andersson is going to skin us alive,” Jesse said.

The stern bearded face appeared on the screen, and Jesse clicked the mouse. He cleared his throat and started off with the good news: “We got Emerald back from the Dragon Slayer.”

The professor's dark eyes twinkled and he stroked his beard. “Ah! Congratulations! Very good work, you two!” he said.

Jesse took a deep breath and launched into the bad news: “But then we lost her.” He went on to explain, as clearly and succinctly as he could, how the Dragon Slayer had searched the house and how Emmy had disappeared from the basket of shoes where they had hidden her.

To Jesse's relief, the professor didn't even look upset. “Most intriguing!” he said. Jesse and Daisy watched his expression and waited for him to say more. At last he said, “It's possible that she has simply found herself a more effective hiding place.”

“But St. George is gone,” said Daisy, “and Emmy still hasn't shown up.”

“Regardless of what you may have read about dragons,” Professor Andersson said, “they are not aggressive. They are, by nature, prey. And so their first instinct when faced with danger is to run and hide.”

“All right,” Jesse said impatiently. “We already got that.”

“Sometimes for years,” the professor added.

Daisy draped herself over the back of Jesse's chair and groaned.

“Then again,” said the professor, “there is the very slightest chance that she might be masking.”

“What's that?” Jesse asked.

“Normally, dragons do not acquire the ability to mask until they are one or two years of age. But your dragon has already proved that she can scry, so she may also be an early masker.”

“What is masking?” Jesse asked again.

The professor frowned in thought. “On the whole, I'd say, a very handy defense mechanism. Just as lizards such as chameleons practice camouflage, so dragons are capable of masking themselves as other creatures or things to elude predators.”

In his mind, Jesse saw those insects called walking sticks, which can look like twigs. He saw tree frogs, which can look like leaves. Could Emmy be blending in with the kitchen canisters or the boxes of old records in the basement? Maybe she'd been right there among Aunt Maggie's shoes all along and they just hadn't seen her.

“Do you think she's masking somewhere in the house?” Daisy asked the professor.