Traps and Specters

H
e moved across the Clarksville Zoo. In the midnight sky, clouds slipped across a bright moon, claiming its light. Throughout the zoo, animals slept. Most of them. Others were on patrol. The man lifted his pale face and spotted two koalas clinging to tree branches, their dark, beady eyes turned to him. He saw owls, orangutans, and a red panda chewing on a bamboo leaf. They were watching for the man the Secret Society feared most. The Shadowist. DeGraff.

He sneered. The animals were stupid. All of them.

Toward the middle of the grounds, he stepped into Flamingo Fountain, a glass building in which a marble fountain sprayed streams of water straight up. The drone and splash of the artificial spring grew louder and louder until it became the only sound. He walked through a cloud of cool mist, squinting. Then he stepped back outside, the door easing shut behind him.

He had a heavy pack on each of his shoulders, and as he rounded Metr-APE-olis he arched his back in different ways to adjust them. Near Koala Kastle, he spotted a few otters posted in the bushes. Their twitching snouts sniffed the air and traced his passage. He wondered if any of the Descenders could see him. Sam, Solana, Tameron, Hannahâwere any of them watching?

The shadowy rooftops of the surrounding neighborhood resembled the peaks of tiny, black pyramids. Smoke streamed from their chimneys, and a few large antennas looked like the cleanly picked bones of strange animals. He spotted a monkey jumping from one house to another. A police-monkey, on patrol. It would spend all night secretly leaping across the rooftops in its tireless circle of the zoo.

The man reached the west entrance, where a bulb buzzed overhead and a cone of light fell across a concrete path that led to a small, wrought-iron gate. He glanced over his shoulder and slipped into a booth beside the path. Inside, a guard sat in a chair, his feet propped up on a small desk. He was gnawing on the end of a toothpick, rolling it across his lips. The two exchanged nods. Then the man carefully set one of his backpacks at the feet of the guard, who quickly looked down at it.

“This it?” the guard asked.

The man nodded.

“When?”

“Soon. In the meantime, just make sure no one finds it.”

“You got it, boss.”

Their conversation ended, and the guard began again to noisily pick at his teeth. The man stared him up and down and decided he didn't look much different. Not yet.

The man moved to a window and scanned the trees along the perimeter wall. Somewhere in them, animals were posted, hoping to spot the Shadowist advancing on the zoo. In almost a century, it had never happened. And except for the few times Noah and his friends had glimpsed him, he'd never been seen at all.

The man intended to change this. Tonight.

He reached around and patted his remaining backpack, ensuring everything was there. It was. He turned, slipped out of the booth, and quietly stepped through the gate. Now outside the zoo, he sank into the cover of the trees along the concrete wall, dead leaves crinkling beneath his weight. He hunkered in the thick underbrush and eased the backpack off his shoulders.

He waited. He watched the treetops. Nothing stirred. He was certain he hadn't been seen by any of the animals.

A line of bats flew past, but he had no reason to worry about them. They'd see him, but they wouldn't notice him.

He waited a few minutes, then dumped the contents of his pack. Seeing them lying thereârealizing what they wereâhe suddenly became nervous. He glanced all around to reassure himself that he was alone.

On the ground lay a trench coat, gloves, and a hat.

First he gathered up the coat, which was long and leather. He stood, fed his arms through its sleeves, and let its length spill down his legs. Next he donned the gloves, finger by finger. Finally he put on the hat. It was a fedora with a tall crown and a wide brim that bent down over his face.

The man pulled up his collar, tipped the hat down to mask his eyes, then fled, his open trench coat fluttering behind him like a cape. He went swiftly from one point to the next, keeping cover under the trees and in the deeper shadows. They were watching, of this he was certain. From the trees, the rooftops, the sky, the groundâowls and bats and tarsiers.

He dashed across a backyard and hurdled a short fence, his long coat slipping across the sharp pickets. He dodged behind a tree and pressed his back flat against the trunk. He listened for movement in the treetops. Nothing. He pushed off and hurried across the lawn, the edges of his coat snapping. He sank into the shadow of a small shed. From beneath the curved brim of his hat, he turned his eyes to the star-spotted sky. No owls, no bats.

Something moved on a rooftop, two houses down. He peered out and tried to extract shapes from the darkness. Smoke plumed from a chimney, tree branches swayed, billowy clouds drifted across the sky, but nothing else.

Then, suddenly, two silhouettes rose on the rooftop. Two creaturesâpolice-monkeys, no doubtâcharged to the edge of the house and lunged six or seven feet to the next one, their dark forms falling into the shadows there.

He slipped inside the shed and eased the door shut, careful not to make a sound. He wrinkled his nose at the stinging smells: fertilizer, paints, and rust. The small space was silentâno wind, no creaking branches, no drone of faraway cars. He leaned toward a small window and peered out. After a few minutes, the monkeys rose and bounded to the next house, disappearing again. Several minutes later, they rose, ran forward, and jumped to the next roof.

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