The Menagerie #2

by Tui T. Sutherland

  DEDICATION

  For Mum and Dad,

  who are brave enough to wake sleeping dragons,

  even without a fireproof suit.

  CONTENTS

  DEDICATION

  MAP

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CAMP UNDERPAW’S GUIDE TO MYTHICAL CREATURES

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  CREDITS

  COPYRIGHT

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  MAP

  ONE

  Sunlight reflected off the tails of the mermaids gathered at the edge of the lake. The two unicorns bent their heads gracefully to sip the water, pretending they weren’t eavesdropping. In the distance, Logan Wilde could hear the yips and squawks of the griffin cubs playing in their enclosure, happy to be home.

  It seemed like a peaceful Sunday morning in the Menagerie . . . except for the bloodstained feather lying on the wet grass between him and Zoe.

  Feathers. Again.

  It had been only two days since Logan Wilde woke up to find giant feathers on his bedroom floor. Those feathers had belonged to a griffin cub hiding under his bed, who had led him here, to the Menagerie—a secret home for mythical animals run by the family of Logan’s classmate Zoe Kahn.

  But this feather was white, bigger than the griffin feathers, and part of a murder scene.

  Logan crouched to pick it up and Zoe grabbed his shoulder.

  “Don’t touch it,” she said. “It could be evidence.” She shuddered. “Also, it’s horrible.” She rubbed her wrist anxiously and shook her chin-length red-brown hair out of her face. Her eyes were fixed on the door of the Aviary. No one had emerged in half an hour, not since Zoe’s dad had sent the two of them away from the crime scene.

  Logan studied the feather for a moment, then used his phone to take a picture of it with the Aviary in the background. There had been feathers all over the place in there, not to mention the blood splatters on the pillows and silks of Pelly’s nest. At least there wasn’t a body—the goose herself was nowhere to be found. Logan was pretty sure he wouldn’t want to see whatever was left of her.

  “What do you think happened?” he asked Zoe. “That poor goose.” He’d spent only five minutes with Pelly, but it was horrifying to think that someone who had been alive two days ago was now gone.

  “I have no idea,” said Zoe. “There’s never been an attack in the Menagerie before. It feels impossible.”

  Logan wanted to agree, but in the past couple days he’d learned to be careful of using that word. After all, there were lots of things that Logan had thought were impossible that turned out to be not just possible but living only a few miles from his house.

  The yeti currently zipping toward them on a golf cart, for instance.

  “What’s happening?” Zoe called as Mooncrusher jumped off the cart and bounded toward the Aviary, brandishing a walkie-talkie in his paws.

  “BLAAAAAARGH!” the yeti answered before disappearing inside.

  “Hmm,” Zoe said. “Okay. I guess I asked for that.” She narrowed her eyes at the mermaids, who were whispering and snickering behind their hands.

  “At least the birds have stopped screaming,” Logan said. A muted bellow came from the white dome of the Aviary. “Apart from whatever that is.”

  “The roc,” Zoe said. “We have this tranquillity mist Dad must have released to calm down the other birds, but she’s too big for it to work on her. Poor Aliya, she sounds totally traumatized.” She pulled out her phone and checked it again. “Come on, Blue, where are you? I’ve texted him like forty times.”

  “He’s trapped inside Jasmin’s house,” Logan reminded her. “Where we left him.” They’d called their friend Blue to distract Jasmin while they snuck out of her house with the last missing griffin cub. But given her crush on Blue, Logan wasn’t entirely sure Jasmin would ever let him leave. “We might have to mount a follow-up rescue mission,” he tried to joke, but Zoe looked too devastated to smile.

  Logan shifted uncertainly—he was no good at comforting people—then glanced up at the house. A large, furry shape was lumbering down the hill toward them. “Here comes someone who might cheer you up,” he said.

  “No one can cheer me up right now,” Zoe said. “Nothing and no one and—” She let out a little shriek as the mammoth came up behind her, wrapped its trunk around her waist, and lifted her off the ground.

  “Well, Captain Fuzzbutt is willing to try,” said Logan.

  Zoe patted the Captain’s trunk until he put her down, and then she turned and hugged him. “All right. Maybe you,” she said. “I can’t believe Pelly’s really gone. Do you think it’s our fault? We should have protected her better—but from what? I can’t even imagine. . . . It doesn’t seem real.”

  She leaned into the mammoth’s thick brown fur. “What if SNAPA decides we’re terrible caretakers and shuts down the Menagerie? Fuzzbutt, if they revoke our license and relocate all the creatures, I might never see you again.”

  Her pet mammoth gently wrapped his trunk around her again and patted her on the back.

  “They wouldn’t do that,” Logan said, almost more to reassure himself than her. Not that he knew anything, really, about the SuperNatural Animal Protection Agency. He’d learned about it only in the last two days, despite the fact that apparently his mother had worked for them as a mythical creature Tracker his whole life. Or at least she had up until six months ago, when she disappeared into thin air.

  “They definitely would,” Zoe said. “They closed that Amazon menagerie not too long ago. SNAPA’s whole job is to make sure we keep the animals safe, and obviously we just failed. This, on top of the jackalope my sister’s boyfriend nearly ran off with and the Chinese dragon that went missing on its way here . . .” She trailed off.

  “The one they think my mom stole,” he finished for her.

  “I know she didn’t,” Zoe said. “We’ll prove them wrong. But the point is, SNAPA has a lot of reasons not to like us. I bet they’d love to shut us down.”

  Logan didn’t know what he would do if he lost the Menagerie now. Zoe Kahn and Blue Merevy were the only friends he’d met since moving to Xanadu, Wyoming, and helping them find the griffin cubs had made him feel happy for the first time in months. The fact that he was the only one who could hear Squorp and the other griffin cubs also made him feel like working with these creatures was his destiny—like he was born to be a Tracker or a Menagerie caretaker.

  Most important, if Zoe’s theory was right, this place might be his only chance to find his mom.

  “I need you to sign these,” said a voice behind him.

  Logan turned and saw that Melissa Merevy, Blue’s mom, had followed Fuzzbutt down from the house. She was holding out a silver pen and a clipboard full of papers. Her blond hair was as smooth as shiny metal and in her pressed suit, she looked, as usual, ready for a business meeting, never mind that it was breakfast time on a Sunday morning.

  “Um,” Logan said. “Me?”

  “Of course you,” said Melissa. “Unless there’s someone else I’m supposed to conjure up an entire set of paper
s for out of nowhere.”

  Earlier that morning, Zoe’s dad had told the SNAPA agents that Logan was a new hire, which was probably one of the coolest things that had ever happened to Logan. The agents had asked to see his paperwork before they left—but in the chaos of Pelly’s murder, surely they’d forget, wouldn’t they?

  Then again, it probably wasn’t a good idea to argue, given the look on Melissa’s face.

  He took the pen and flipped through the papers, signing at each of the little sticky tabs without reading any of it. There was an awful lot of small print.

  “Did you hear about Pelly?” Zoe asked Melissa.

  “Yes, your father radioed us. Your mom’s on the phone with SNAPA headquarters right now,” Melissa said. “It’s awful. A complete disaster. To make matters worse, I have no idea how we’re supposed to run this place without a weekly golden egg to keep us solvent. Dragons don’t exactly eat dandelions, you know. And don’t get me started on how expensive certain fish people are.” Melissa raised an eyebrow at the gathered mermaids, all of whom were loyal to her ex-husband, King Cobalt.

  “Here comes Blue,” Zoe said, sounding relieved. Logan found that he also felt a bit calmer at the sight of their part-merman friend strolling down from the house with a garment bag slung over his shoulder. Blue never seemed to get stressed about anything. Even the six griffin cubs escaping from the Menagerie hadn’t rattled him.

  “That should do it.” Melissa scooped the clipboard out of Logan’s hands as he signed the last form. She headed straight back to the house, patting Blue’s shoulder briefly as she went by. Logan rubbed his head, hoping his forms weren’t going to cause more trouble for the Menagerie. They had enough to deal with.

  “You owe me big-time,” Blue said, pointing at Zoe and Logan. “Thanks to you, I’m now going to Jasmin’s Halloween party as a knight. In a suit of armor.” He tossed the garment bag down and it clanked as it hit the ground.

  Captain Fuzzbutt jumped, then cautiously circled the bag.

  Blue turned to Logan. “And you are coming with me, whether you like it or not. Also, I get to choose your costume, and heads up, it is probably going to involve bunny ears or fairy wings or whatever is the most embarrassing thing I can think of.”

  “But your great sacrifice was worth it,” Logan pointed out. “We got the cub back here, and SNAPA never knew any of them were gone.”

  Blue poked the garment bag with his toe. “Oh, good. From all of Zoe’s frantic texts, I thought they’d figured it out. So if everything’s fine with the cubs, then what’s wrong? Why did I have to HURRY BACK OMG 911 END OF THE WORLD?”

  “Blue . . .” Zoe’s voice wavered and she stopped.

  “What’s going on?” Blue looked back and forth between Zoe and Logan, his annoyance fading as he noticed their expressions.

  Zoe took a deep breath. “It’s Pelly. She’s dead—or, or missing, or—no, she’s probably dead.”

  Logan thought of how the nest had looked and had to agree.

  “What?” Blue exclaimed. “How?”

  “We don’t know. Dad and the SNAPA agents are inside looking for clues.”

  “Wow, that’s just . . .” Blue shook his head, unable to finish the thought. “What do we know?”

  “Not much.” Zoe filled him in on what they’d seen. She rubbed her eyes and sighed. “I just can’t imagine who would want to kill Pelly.”

  “You mean, apart from anyone who’s ever met her?” Blue said.

  “Blue!” Zoe cried.

  “Well, it’s true. I mean, it’s still sad and awful, but you have to admit she was not the nicest bird. Always demanding stuff and going on about how important she is to the Menagerie. Didn’t she once make you spend two hours fluffing up the pillows on her nest only to decide they were the wrong color?”

  Pelly had seemed like kind of a diva to Logan. But still, she was a mythical creature. A talking goose who could lay actual golden eggs . . . who would destroy something that rare?

  “I can’t handle just standing here,” Zoe said. “We have to do something. Maybe we could look for witnesses. Or check the security footage. Or—”

  “We have to let SNAPA do their job,” Blue interrupted gently. “This is the kind of thing they investigate all the time.”

  “Is there another way into the Aviary?” Logan asked. “Could we at least go check on the roc and make sure she’s okay?”

  Zoe smacked her forehead. “That is absolutely what we should do. We’re doing that right now. Blue, go get my iPod and meet us in the Aviary.”

  Blue nodded and took off toward the house. The mermaids called his name and whistled as he went past, but he ignored them.

  Logan followed Zoe around to the back of the Aviary, where a narrow metal ladder went straight up the side of the dome. Zoe looked at it for a moment, then kicked off her shoes and climbed in her socks. Logan did the same, guessing this way the adults inside the Aviary wouldn’t hear them.

  “Maybe Pelly’s not dead,” Logan said, trying to distract himself from how high they were about to climb. “Maybe someone took her for the golden eggs.”

  “Then where did all the blood and feathers come from?” Zoe asked. “Those aren’t ordinary goose feathers. They were definitely hers. I wish I could think of an explanation where she might still be alive, but I can’t.”

  Zoe stepped off the top of the ladder onto a rusted platform that seemed entirely too small, considering how high in the air it was. She reached up to a large crank on a wheel right over her head and then paused.

  “That’s weird,” she whispered to Logan, pointing.

  He peered awkwardly over her shoulder without relaxing his death grip on the ladder. Now he could see there was a large panel of the dome that could roll open, like a garage door. It was big enough for a small house to fit through. A house the size of Logan’s, for example.

  “What’s weird?” he whispered back. “What is that door for?”

  “This is how we get the roc in and out if we ever need to,” Zoe said. “We installed it when she was brought here.” She pointed at the door again. “But look. It’s already a little bit open.”

  Logan saw what she meant. A gap at the bottom of the door was just wide enough for them to slip through.

  “Maybe this is where whoever it was got Pelly’s body out,” Zoe said. She crouched and studied the door. “I don’t see any blood, though.”

  “We shouldn’t touch it,” Logan said. “There could be evidence here.”

  Zoe hesitated, and they both heard another tragic gigantic-bird noise from inside the Aviary.

  “I really want to check on Aliya,” she said. “We’ll squeeze through—just try not to disturb anything.”

  She crouched and ducked through the gap, disappearing inside before Logan could argue. He glanced around at the Menagerie. From up this high he could see almost the entire place. He could see the distant shapes of the griffins, now sprawled on their boulders sunning themselves. He could see the house and a couple of black hellhounds playing chase around it. He could even see the dark shape of the kraken coiled below the lake’s surface, and what he guessed were the dragons’ caves in the cliff at the back of the Menagerie. No sign of any dragons themselves, though.

  “Come on,” Zoe’s voice whispered from inside.

  Logan ducked and stepped cautiously through the gap in the rolling door. His socks touched smooth, dark brown wood. He nearly slipped, caught his balance, and looked up—and found himself face-to-face with a wickedly hooked beak the size of a school bus.

  “Don’t move,” Zoe said. “She’s hungry.”

  TWO

  Logan froze in place, half-crouched just inside the rolling door. He was on a ledge high up in the Aviary, surrounded by treetops and greenery. Next to him was a huge, messy nest built from piles of scattered branches.

  But mostly what he noticed were the sharp black eyes pinning him to the ledge, the giant talons only a few feet away, and the sleek white feathers of the world’s
most enormous bird of prey.

  “It’s okay, Aliya,” Zoe said soothingly. “This is Logan. He’s a friend. He works here now.”

  Aliya clacked her beak, once, with a loud snap that reverberated off the dome overhead. Then she stepped back and settled into her nest, although her gaze stayed fixed on Logan.

  “She’s just rattled today,” Zoe said. “Normally she’s really calm, but the strangers and all the noise around Pelly’s nest must have freaked her out. And we usually bring her breakfast at sunrise, so she’s hungry and confused, too.”

  Logan peered over the edge, but he couldn’t see Pelly’s nest from up here—there were too many trees in the way. A spiral staircase wound down from the roc’s ledge into the greenery below. Zoe’s dad and the two SNAPA agents had stopped shouting, but their voices were still loud and angry. He spotted several birds perched in the branches with their eyes closed, so the tranquillity mist must have worked.

  “It’s all right, Aliya,” Zoe said. She reached into the tangled nest and pulled out a small set of speakers. “There was a—um, an accident of some kind. Something’s happened to Pelly.”

  The roc let out a kind of “awk” sound and made a face that to Logan looked hilariously like Well, that bird had it coming.

  “How much does she understand?” he asked Zoe.

  “It’s hard to tell,” said Zoe, “but I think she’s very intelligent.”

  “Me, too,” Logan said. The roc blinked slowly, as if she were trying to look wiser. “Did my mom bring her in?”

  He knew his mom had found Zoe’s mammoth. He kind of liked picturing his mom flying an enormous bird into the Menagerie. At the same time, it made him pretty mad that she’d never told him the truth about her amazingly cool job, when Zoe got to know everything about it. But then whenever he thought about what might have happened to her, he started to worry, and then he felt guilty about how angry he’d been after the last postcard she’d sent . . . but he still wasn’t sure he’d forgiven her for that, and anyway he had no idea what the truth was, so maybe it was better not to think about Mom too much for now.