The Menagerie #2 (23 page)

“Hey, Jasmin,” he said.

“Are you excited for tomorrow?” she asked him, hugging her textbooks close. Her long dark hair was held back with a sunny yellow velvet headband, which matched the thin stripes on her gray wool dress and the tall yellow rain boots below that. Logan wondered, not for the first time, how long it took her to get dressed in the morning, and how many clothes she had, because it seemed like she wore something different every day.

“For tomorrow?” Blue echoed.

Logan couldn't even think about tomorrow. It felt like the world was going to end today, Thursday—the day of the trial. The qilin had failed them, and they hadn't found Pelly. If they didn't come up with something in the next few hours, by tomorrow Scratch would be exterminated for a crime he didn't commit.

The only thing he could think of was tracing the fake goose feathers. If they could figure out where those came from, surely that would point them to who had scattered them around the crime scene. But how were they going to do that?

“My party!” Jasmin's smile wavered a little. “Oh, like you forgot.” She laughed, but Logan thought she sounded nervous, and he felt bad for her all over again.

“Right,” Blue said. “Right, no, I'm excited. Almost Friday. Already. Time for a party.”

“Okay, new plan,” she said. “Wouldn't it be funny if we went as cowboys? But, like, ironic cowboys. You'd be Wild Bill Hickok and I'd be Calamity Jane, and we'd do the whole hats-and-spurs silliness. My dad still has loads of costumes left over from his Wild West park. What do you think?”

“Wasn't there a plan somewhere along the way where I just wore brown and carried a bow and arrow?” Blue asked. “That one sounded okay to me.”

“You're right,” Jasmin said, twisting her hair around her fingers. “It's almost too ironic. I'll keep thinking. Maybe we go back to a knight and warrior princess after all.”

Someone bumped into her from behind and Jasmin nearly fell, but Blue reached out and caught her arms. She whirled around, frowning.

“Who—oh, hi, Miss Sameera.” Jasmin's frown melted into a smile for the school librarian.

“Sorry, sorry, dear,” Miss Sameera said, trying to smooth down her bird's nest of hair. She looked even worse than she had the day before—completely exhausted and more disheveled. Her bright colors were muted; today she wore a black skirt with several unraveling gold threads coming out of the seahorse pattern, and her tunic shirt was a plain grape purple, apart from a stain that looked like hot chocolate on most of one sleeve.

Mumbling something that sounded like “Not even sure there's any caviar in the state,” the librarian hurried off in the direction of the library.

“Wow,” Jasmin said. “I'm all for colorful fashion choices, but does she even look in the mirror before she leaves the house? Maybe nobody cared in Missouri, but in Wyoming at least some of us are paying attention.”

“Missouri?” Logan interjected. Something was pinging at the back of his brain like a phone buzzing far away.

“Somewhere like that,” Jasmin said with a dismissive wave. “It's on her key chain—Parkville, Missouri, or Mississippi, or one of those.”

“Excuse me,” Logan said, shutting his locker door in a hurry. He abandoned Blue with Jasmin—despite the evil eye Blue was giving him—and ran into homeroom. Zoe was sitting at her desk with her head in her hands, staring hopelessly at a coded page of her “things to do” notebook.

“Parkville, Missouri,” Logan said. He slid into his seat in the desk next to hers. “Wasn't there a golden goose there?”

“Yeah,” said Zoe, tilting her head at him.

“Miss Sameera was there,” Logan whispered. “She came from Parkville.”

Zoe's eyes widened. “That menagerie was shut down. Maybe because of her! Maybe sabotaging menageries is what she does!”

Logan still found it hard to imagine the nice school librarian as some kind of sinister mythical-creature hunter. But then, he would never have guessed what his mom did for a living, either, so maybe he wasn't a great judge of these things.

“Today at lunch,” he whispered. “It's time to find out what Miss Sameera knows.”

The first problem was luring the librarian out of the library.

Logan and Zoe peeked through the open doorway. Miss Sameera was tapping on her keyboard with a giant pile of books beside her. She yawned hugely and rubbed her face. As usual at lunchtime, there was no one else in the library.

They ducked back behind the next corner, where Marco and Blue were waiting.

“If she knows about the Menagerie, she knows about you,” Logan pointed out to Zoe. “And maybe about Blue. And she might have noticed us together.”

“We send in Marco,” Zoe decided.

“Yes!” Marco said, pounding the air. “I am the king of undercover missions! I'll tell her—uh—I'll tell her—um, okay, I'll think of something. Like a book emergency! Oh, there's a book stuck in a tree that needs rescuing! That would work, right? Or I need help with my locker, like there's a book stuck in it? Hmm. I might need some help with my cover story, guys.”

“I meant as a rooster,” Zoe admitted.

“Oh,
no
,” Marco said. He clutched his hair.

“Any self-respecting librarian will chase a rooster out of her library,” she pointed out. “Make her chase you all around the school and keep her away as long as possible.”

“This is a terrible plan,” he said. “My parents will kill me for shifting during school. What if I get caught?”

“Don't get caught,” Blue suggested.

“We'll rescue you if that happens,” Logan reassured him.

“And just think of Pelly,” Zoe said. “This could be her only chance! Bird solidarity, right?”

“Actually, roosters and geese are historical enemies,” Marco said. “They find our plumage ‘ostentatious,' if you can believe that, and we find them very shallow. You should hear the way geese gossip. It makes seventh-grade girls seem totally interesting and mature.”

“Oh, come on,” Blue said, dragging him into the boys' bathroom across the hall.

A few minutes later, Blue came back out carrying Marco's clothes and shoes. He held the door open as a rooster strutted slowly out of the bathroom behind him, eyeing Logan and Zoe with fierce dignity.

“Thank you, Marco,” Zoe said.

“
BAWK
,” he grumbled. He paced around the corner and made a beeline for the library entrance. The red crest on his head wobbled and his sharp little claws
tip-tapp
ed on the dirty tile floor.

They watched him stalk into the library and then ducked out of sight.

A moment later, there was a shriek that was much louder than Logan had expected.

“ABSOLUTELY NOT!” shouted Miss Sameera. “I'm not cleaning up ANY MORE FEATHERS and if you peck ONE THING I will clobber you with this—OH NO YOU DIDN'T.”

The rooster burst out of the library,
BAWK
ing and flapping its wings frantically, and charged down the hallway with Miss Sameera in hot pursuit. She was waving a stapler, which made Logan wince in sympathy. He really hoped she had terrible aim, for Marco's sake.

Zoe and Blue and Logan ran into the library and hurried to her desk. Logan pointed to Miss Sameera's cup of tea.

“See, if you'd dosed her earlier this week, she might have forgotten where she stashed Pelly,” he said.

“Yeah, but if someone had dosed her in Parkville as they were supposed to, she would have left our Menagerie alone,” Zoe said. “Blue, guard the door.”

Blue picked up a book from one of the carts and leaned casually in the door frame.

“I feel like I've become such a criminal since I started hanging out with you guys,” Logan said as Zoe went behind the desk. “Sneaking into Jasmin's house, sneaking
out
of my house, kidnapping innocent roosters, borrowing a federal agent's computer, and now snooping in a librarian's stuff. Is this, like, normal life for you?”

“There's never been a librarian involved before,” Blue said, deadpan.

“I don't see her cell phone,” Zoe said, sifting through the piles of paper. “Or anything about mythical creatures. This all looks school related.” She moved the mouse and peered at the computer screen. “Overdue books. She doesn't even have email open.”

“Can you search her computer for . . . I don't know, griffins or something?” Logan asked, leaning over to look at the screen.

“Or the name of the guy she was talking to on the phone,” Blue suggested. “Mr. Claverhill.”

“Whoa,” said Logan. “How did you remember that?”

“He's annoying that way,” Zoe said. “But useful, too.” She typed “Claverhill” into the “Search programs and files” box.

One file popped up—a Word document. Zoe clicked it open.

“It's a letter,” she whispered.

Logan jumped up and came around to read over Zoe's shoulder.

Dear Mr. Claverhill,

This is my fourth formal request for additional Free Ranger resources to be assigned to Xanadu. I'm not sure why you persist in ignoring my letters. I admit that I was wrong about Newton and Grantham, and the whole situation in Parkville was very confusing and unfortunate, but this time I am one hundred percent certain that there is a government facility imprisoning the creatures we're looking for here in town. Think of all the good we could do!

And this letter is different, because now I have proof. If you would just send two more Free Rangers to verify the situation, you'll see that I've gotten my hands on the most marvelous

That was where the letter ended.

Logan wasn't sure whether to be relieved or horrified.

“It's her,” Zoe said, looking up and meeting Logan's eyes. “She says she has proof. You know what that means?”

Logan nodded. “Miss Sameera has Pelly.”

M
iss Sameera's house was small, like Logan's, all on one level, and painted a pale orange with a dark red roof. Cheerful yellow and pink chrysanthemums sat in planters beside the door and along the path from the street, clashing merrily with the house.

“You're sure she won't come straight home?” Logan said to Blue. His stomach was churning nervously. He almost wished her address hadn't been so easy to find online. This was worse than hiding out in the library past closing time, although perhaps not as awful as sneaking around the Sterlings' house with a griffin cub while they were right on the other side of the secret passageways.

“She always stays late to monitor the kids in detention,” Blue said. “At least, that's what Marco said.”

Marco's mom had appeared in the classroom door at the end of the day like a wrathful griffin, giving Marco the full steely glare. She'd heard from someone at the supermarket that there had been a rooster loose at the middle school that day. Marco had been marched sheepishly out to the parking lot without even getting to say good-bye to the others.

“Poor Marco,” said Zoe. “I hope he forgives us.”

They left their bikes around the side of the house and tried to peek in the windows, but all the bright pink and sequin-covered purple curtains were closed.

“I don't think she'd keep Pelly here,” Zoe said. “I mean, if she went to the trouble of getting goose feathers from Parkville and staging a whole crime scene, wouldn't she also have prepared some kind of secret location to hide her in?”

“I don't know,” Logan said. His instinct was still telling him that the librarian wasn't a plan-ahead kind of person, despite the elaborate crime scene, which didn't fit at all with his image of her. “I think this is worth checking out, though.”

The front door was locked, so they walked around the house, poking at all the closed windows, until they reached the tall wooden fence that enclosed her garden. The gate just had a latch, which they easily lifted to slip inside, into a tiny garden riotous with wildflowers.

“Maybe there's a back door we can—” Zoe started, then stopped, her mouth dropping open.

Sunning herself on the little stone patio was an enormous goose.

Pelly opened her eyes and spotted them.

“NOOOOO!” she shrieked. “I'm not going back! You can't make me!” She lurched upright and bolted for the house, but Blue and Logan were faster, throwing themselves between her and the sliding glass patio door.

Pelly hissed and snapped her beak at them. Logan remembered the Band-Aids all over Miss Sameera's hands and winced.

“Out of my way,” she ordered in her drawly quack of a voice. “You and your Menagerie people had your chance and now I've moved on. Oh, I know everyone takes me for granted and sees me as merely a
lowly goose
who happens to be blessed with perfect feathers and golden eggs and a wonderful personality, but I have
feelings
,
too
, you know. I have
never
complained about all the
neglectful treatment
I suffered for so long, but now I have
finally found
a loving caretaker who worships the ground I squawk on and who
appreciates
my many fine qualities, and so I have decided I am never leaving her, never never never.” The goose flung her wings about petulantly.