The Menagerie (18 page)

THIRTY-ONE

Z
oe felt Logan shiver in the dark beside her.

“That means SNAPA was looking for my mom, doesn't it?” he said. “What if Mom knew something about SNAPA? Why else would that guy be looking for her?”

Zoe had known something like this would happen. The minute she saw the photo on Logan's fridge, she'd told her dad they needed to tell him the truth, but he wouldn't let her. She rubbed her arms, feeling queasy. Well, he wasn't here to stop her now.

“Okay,” she whispered. “Look. I have something to tell you. But don't freak out.”

Logan waved at the dark stairs around them. “I kind of can't. Or at least, I'll do it quietly.” She could tell he was trying to sound calmer than he was.

Zoe let out a long breath. “So, the truth is . . . we know your mom.”

Logan didn't say anything. He put his head down on his hands. Zoe shifted nervously, wondering what she should do.

“Tell me,” he said at last.

“I didn't realize it at first,” Zoe said. “She has a different last name, right? I know her as Abigail Hardy. I had no idea you were related until I saw her photo on your fridge.”

“Oh,”
Logan said, muffled into his hands.

“Dad said we shouldn't tell you yet,” Zoe explained. “He said that if she never told you, then maybe we shouldn't. Or if she did tell you and you were lying to us about what you knew, we needed to figure out what you were up to.” Logan jerked away from her, and Zoe reached out to catch his arm. “I knew you weren't lying. I knew you didn't know anything about what your mom does. I swear.”

“What does she do?” Logan asked.

“She's a Tracker,” Zoe said. “One of the best. Or she was, until she disappeared on her way to us with a Chinese dragon.”

Lightning lit up Logan's puzzled face. “Is that the Tracker Blue was talking about in the stable?” he asked. “He said she ran off with it—like she stole it.”

“I'm sorry, Logan,” Zoe said. “That's what most people think happened.”

“The SNAPA agent must think so, too,” Logan said slowly. “When he came to see us, he asked all these awful, accusing questions as if she'd stolen something from her job and maybe we knew where it was.” He rubbed his face. “She wouldn't do that, Zoe. She might walk away from me and Dad, but she loved her work, and she wasn't a thief.”

“I don't think she was, either,” Zoe said. “I don't think she stole it, and I don't think she left you. I think something happened to her.”

Logan turned to look out the window. Rain pattered against the glass, and thunder rumbled like pianos being pushed across the sky.

“I don't know if that's better or worse,” he said finally.

“The last you heard from her—” Zoe started.

“We got a postcard,” Logan said. “Basically saying she had a new job opportunity and she wasn't coming back to us, ever. It was her handwriting, though.” The griffin cub chirruped softly and wound her tail around his arm.

Zoe tried to imagine what she'd feel like if her own mother disappeared like that. Mrs. Kahn loved the Menagerie, but she loved Zoe, Matthew, and Ruby more. Neither of Zoe's parents had ever spent even a night away from the Menagerie and their kids.

“I didn't know Abigail had a family,” she said, then realized how that sounded. “But Trackers don't usually talk about their nonwork lives,” she added quickly. “She always blazed in and out with cool animals and wild stories about how she caught them. I thought she was kind of this Indiana Jones free spirit.” For a long time Zoe had wanted to be Abigail Hardy, although perhaps with a bit less dragon wrestling and manticore taming.

“She is,” Logan said. “You probably know her better than I do. I've never heard any of the wild stories.”

Zoe watched his silhouette against the storm for a minute. “I could tell you one,” she offered. “Do you want to hear about how she brought us Captain Fuzzbutt?”

Logan leaned back on the stairs and stretched out his legs, letting the griffin flop across his chest. “Mom found your mammoth?”

“Yeah,” Zoe said. “That's probably why he was so excited to see you. I think that's when Dad figured out for sure who you were. That, and your natural Tracker skills.”

“I guess that's why the unicorns recognized me, too,” Logan said, scratching under the griffin's chin.

“Matthew might have as well,” Zoe said. “He's kind of an obsessive Tracker database; he'd know everything about your mom. Anyway, she was following rumors of another yeti in Siberia, hoping to recruit a companion for Mooncrusher, when she found this underground facility, and it turned out to be a cloning lab. So she knew she had to break in and see what they were cloning, in secret, out in the middle of nowhere . . .”

Zoe told the story the way she remembered Abigail telling it over the dinner table, with a tiny mammoth sitting on her lap vacuuming up all the spaghetti in sight. Abigail was covered in spaghetti sauce spatters, but she didn't even care. She talked like snowshoeing through the Arctic Circle towing a baby mammoth was the most fun she'd had since rafting down the Amazon with a basilisk strapped to her back.

Then Zoe told Logan about Abigail's adventures in Chile with the alicanto; her trip to Japan that brought back Keiko and the baku; and the practical jokes she would play on the mermaids, which somehow only made them like her more.

 

Zoe wasn't sure who fell asleep first. Pale, golden light slipping through the window woke her up. She opened her eyes, cramped and stiff, and found her head resting on Logan's shoulder and her arm around the sleeping griffin cub on his chest.

As usual, her first thought on waking up was her to-do list. But there was only one item on it for today: Get the last griffin home before SNAPA arrived.

“Uh-oh,” she said, sitting up too fast. A blaze of pain ricocheted through her head, and she pressed her fists into her temples. “Logan, wake up. We have to get out of here.” She nudged his foot, but he didn't move. She had to shake him for nearly an entire minute before he slowly blinked awake. The griffin cub stretched and yawned.

“She says she's hungry,” Logan said, yawning as well. “She doesn't talk much, this one. Oh, she says she will when there's something important to say.” He grinned at the griffin.

“We have to get home.” Zoe pulled out her phone. There were about thirty text messages from Blue and her parents asking where she was. And it was nearly seven o'clock in the morning. “Oh, no.”

Still stuck in the Sterling house,
she texted Blue.
Hopefully out soon.

“Come on,” she said. She tiptoed up the stairs and listened at Jasmin's closet door, then snuck back down and did the same at the door to the library. Silence on both ends. She knew the Sterlings went to church every Sunday, but she couldn't remember when. Had they left already? Or were they not up yet?

Logan tucked the griffin into his jacket and zipped it up. A little beak poked out the top, and he nudged it back in.

Zoe stared through the peephole downstairs for as long as she dared, then felt along the wall for the switch that opened the bookshelves. The shelves swung out on silent hinges, and they found themselves in Mr. Sterling's private library.

It was always against the rules to be in here, so Zoe's jittery nerves felt entirely familiar. She swung the shelves closed again and glanced around. Not much had changed, apart from all the new campaign posters and handouts on the tables. She wondered if her parents were planning on voting for Mr. Sterling for mayor.

“There is a lot of leather in here,” Logan observed. “And is that an actual lion's head?”

The griffin cub squeaked in outrage and started wriggling around inside Logan's shirt.

“Ow!” Logan crouched, readjusting the cub. “Careful with those claws, Sage.”

Zoe paused at the door to the library. “What did you call her?”

“Sage?” Logan glanced up. “That's what she asked to be called.”

Zoe tried to squelch her smile, but she couldn't. “That's the name I picked for her!” She reached into Logan's jacket and patted Sage's head. “I knew you were the cleverest cub.”

Sage rubbed her beak against Zoe's fingers and chirruped in a pleased way.

The doors to the library were massive and wooden and covered in squares of dark-red leather bolted on with rows of shiny brass tacks. Zoe took one of the giant handles and pulled it toward her. She left a gap just wide enough to see the foyer and the front door.

Everything was quiet and still. The low hum of the temperature-controlled air, the polished white-marble floor, and the silent statues around the room made the foyer seem like a museum entrance right before it opened for the day.

The front door was only a few steps away. Even if they woke someone up when they opened it, they'd be down the street and on their bikes before any of the Sterlings made it outside.

Suddenly Logan grabbed her hand and stopped her. He put his finger to his lips and pointed up at the ceiling above them.

They heard a door close, and shuffling footsteps on the balcony overhead. Quickly they ducked behind the doors, and Zoe peeked through the crack between them.

Jasmin came down the stairs in her purple moose slippers, yawning. She was wearing a lavender silk bathrobe over a white tank top and the soccer-playing panda pajama pants she and Zoe had bought together. She rubbed her eyes and combed her hair with her fingers. She looked much less glamorous than she did at school—much more like the way Zoe remembered her.

Zoe had given her those moose slippers. It had been right after Zoe and Ruby had joined the Sterlings on a family trip to the Grand Tetons. They had entered the park through Moose, Wyoming, and Zoe and Jasmin kept cracking up at the name. They had thought up a whole behind-the-scenes drama for the park headquarters. Of course it was a moosical.

Zoe leaned her forehead against the wall. She missed Jasmin.

Jasmin padded into the kitchen and came out again a minute later with a bowl of cereal. She took it into the den right off the foyer, and in a moment they heard the TV turn on.

“She's up early,” Logan whispered. “So now what? Run for it?”

Zoe shook her head. “The couch in there faces the foyer. She'd see us for sure. I guess the rest of the family went to church without her.” She wondered if they could go back up through Jasmin's room and then down again through Jonathan's room and to the conservatory. But there wasn't an easy way out of the garden, either. And what if Jonathan had stayed home from church as well? That was something she did not want to find out by charging into his bedroom.

“Well,” Logan started, “maybe if we—”

And then Zoe's phone rang.

THIRTY-TWO

L
ogan dove behind the desk as Zoe scrambled the phone out of her pocket. The ringing stopped. But so did the noise from the TV across the hall.

“Hello?” Jasmin called. “Dad? Are you still here?”

Zoe tiptoed across the carpet and flung herself under the desk with Logan.

They heard Jasmin's shuffling-slipper steps come into the foyer. “Dad?”

Logan held the griffin to his chest, trying not to breathe.

“Okay, whatever,” Jasmin said. A moment later the TV came on again.

Logan let out his breath. “Who was that?” he demanded. “And why wouldn't you put your phone on stealth mode for a breaking-and-entering mission?”

“My texts are set to vibrate, and nobody ever calls me,” Zoe said, flipping open her phone. “Oh, Matthew. Of course. Idiot.”

Immediately her phone buzzed with an incoming text message from Blue.

GET BACK HERE NOW,
it said.
SNAPA AGENTS JUST SHOWED UP 5 HRS EARLY.

“Okay, we run for it,” Zoe said, snapping her phone closed again.

Logan could not see that ending well. “Or we call for reinforcements,” he suggested.

Zoe shook her head. “Mom and Dad can't leave once the SNAPA agents are there. They have to show them the other things on the list—and keep them away from the griffins until we get back with this one.”

“Not them,” Logan said, taking out his own phone. “Blue.”

“Oh, no,” Zoe said. She reached for it, but he ducked away from her hand.

“We have to,” Logan said. “For the Menagerie.” He typed
CODE BLUE! YOU get over HERE now. Distract Jasmin so we can get out.

No WAY
, Blue wrote back.

Just get her upstairs for two minutes
, Logan wrote back.
Borrow a book or something.

“This is awful,” Zoe said. “I wish I could at least warn her so she can change.”

There was a pause. Logan stared at his phone. Sage nosed her way out of the top of his jacket and tried to grab the phone away from him, but he held it out of her reach, waiting for Blue to respond.

RRRRRGH.

“Wow,” Zoe said. “I think you actually managed to make Blue mad.”

Suck it up
, Logan typed back.

“Poor Blue,” said Zoe. “Oh my gosh, poor Jasmin.”

“They'll be perfectly happy to see each other,” Logan said. “She won't care why he's here.”

“Maybe, but she really
will
care that she hasn't brushed her hair yet today,” Zoe pointed out.

If that was true, girls were pretty silly, Logan thought. Jasmin's hair looked perfectly fine to him.

“Make sure your phone won't go off again, and get ready to run,” he said, going back to the library door.

They didn't have to wait long before the doorbell rang. Blue might not have been happy about coming, but he came fast.

Jasmin paused the TV and came into the foyer, yawning again and stretching her long, thin arms over her head. Logan thought something about her face looked nicer than it usually did at school; maybe because her eyelids weren't all sparkly and her lips weren't too shiny. She got to the door and stood on tiptoe to look through the peephole.

With a gasp, she dropped back again and glanced down at her outfit. Quickly she stepped out of the moose slippers and kicked them behind the door, shivering visibly as her bare feet hit the floor. She ran her fingers through her hair and checked her breath.

“Oh, Jasmin,” Zoe murmured sympathetically.

Jasmin fluffed up her hair and pulled the door open with a megawatt smile.

“Hey, Jasmin,” Blue said, sounding more awkward than Logan had ever heard him before.

Jasmin let out a little fake yelp of surprise and wrapped the bathrobe around herself. “Oh my gosh, Blue! What are you
doing
here? It's, like, the crack of dawn.”

“Sorry, yeah, um,” Blue said. “Were you sleeping?”

“Of course,” she said. “I always sleep in on weekends. And everyone else is at church. But it's okay; don't worry about it.” She smiled again.

“Sorry,” Blue said, staring intently at his sneakers. “Uh. I forgot my copy of
The Crucible
at school, and I was hoping I could borrow yours.”

“Right now?” Jasmin said.

He gave her a charming smile. “I really want to know what happens.”

She tilted her head at him, letting her long, black hair fall over one shoulder. “Blue. Come on. Is that seriously why you're here?”

“Uh,” Blue said. “Yup.”

“Even though you could borrow Zoe's copy a lot faster? And even though we read the last scene in class on Friday?” Jasmin arched one of her eyebrows.

“Oh,” Blue said. He shuffled his feet awkwardly. “That was the last scene? Kind of a cliff-hanger, huh?”

“Blue,” Jasmin said. “I know why you're really here. It's about my Halloween party next week, right?”

Blue's shoulders dropped, and he looked relieved. “Yes. Exactly. That. That is what this is. Absolutely.”

“Let me guess,” Jasmin said.

“Please,” Blue said fervently.

“You want to come to the party,” she said, “but you don't have a costume.”

“Um,” Blue said. “Sure?”

“Don't worry,” Jasmin said. She took his wrist and pulled him into the house. “We have a
ton
of old costumes. I'll find you something great.” She towed him up the stairs behind her. “Maybe we could match! I know we have his-and-hers bird costumes somewhere. Or,
oooo
, I could be Kate Middleton and you could be Prince William. Wouldn't that be amazing?”

Blue cast one last, panicked look around the foyer before the Sterling mansion swallowed him up.

“Poor, poor Blue,” Zoe whispered again. They hurried to the front door and slipped outside.

Logan took a deep breath as they ran down the long steps to the driveway. The early-morning air smelled fresh and clean after the rainstorm. Blobs of dark clouds were still scattered across the sky, outlined in gold as the sun tried to break through them.

They'd done it. They'd escaped the Sterling mansion, and they had the last griffin.

Now they just had to get her home before the SNAPA agents noticed she was missing.