“Who wants lemonade?” he asked, sticking his head back into the room.
“Me,” said Blue, so Logan raised his hand, too. Zoe didn’t answer; she was busy studying a wall of black-and-white family portraits over the fireplace.
“I’ll have some, too,” called a voice from over their heads.
Logan peered up and saw a skinny guy who looked about fourteen lounging on one of the rafters with a book, wearing khaki shorts and nothing else.
“I wasn’t offering you any,” Marco called back.
“That is not how we talk to each other in this house,” said the older boy in a singsong voice eerily similar to their mother’s.
As they argued, Logan saw Zoe take out her phone, snap a picture of one of the wall photos, and then tap a few buttons as if she were emailing it to someone. He went to stand next to her.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“My mom has a theory,” she said with a shrug. “We’ll see in a minute.”
“About Pelly’s killer? Did you tell her Marco’s family may have seen a werewolf? Does she agree a werewolf would make a better suspect than Scratch?”
“Maybe, but no, it’s about—”
“Please forgive our chaos,” Mrs. Jimenez said as she came back into the room, carrying the little girl in her arms. A slightly older girl, maybe seven years old, trailed behind them, wearing a long-sleeved purple wool dress and a crestfallen expression that still looked sort of moose-y to Logan. She was clutching a ripped shirt in her hands. Marco’s mom pointed to one of the armchairs, and the older girl sat down, opened a small basket labeled NINA by her feet, and pulled out a needle and a few rolls of thread.
“It’s not fair,” she said, poking at the needle with the end of the thread. “I was only trying to stop Carlos from making a mess.”
“And a fine job you did of that,” said her mother.
“Why doesn’t he have to sew his clothes back together?” demanded Nina. “I read about this for my biography report on Susan B. Anthony! You are making me sew things because I’m a girl! Carlos doesn’t have to do anything!”
“Carlos had the good sense to take all his clothes off before he turned into a bear,” her mother pointed out. “He will still, however, be doing laundry tonight as punishment for being an animal indoors and answering the door to strangers that way.”
“What?” hollered Carlos. He marched out of the girls’ room with a Dora sheet wrapped around him like a toga. Now that he was in human form and not shambling about on four paws, Logan guessed he was around ten years old. “Marco said they knew all about us! I was just having fun! Although I thought they’d be more scared. Lame.”
“It’s your puny roar,” offered the boy in the rafters. “It’s so obvious you don’t really mean it. It sounds like: ‘roar, hey, what’s up,’ not ‘ROAR, I’M A REAL BEAR AND I’M GOING TO EAT YOU NOW.’ You should work on that.”
“Oh, thank you, great and mighty bird of wisdom,” Carlos said sarcastically. “You don’t know anything about bears! I should eat you for insubordination!”
“That is not how we talk to each other in this house!” their mother barked. “Carlos, go get your brothers’ hampers. And for goodness’ sakes, put on some clothes. Marco’s friends will think we are a house full of barbarians.”
Actually, Logan was thinking it must be fun to live in a house this noisy. On the other hand, he was glad he didn’t have to compete with four brothers and sisters for his dad’s attention; it had always been hard enough competing with his mom’s work. And he’d ended up losing that battle—or so her last postcard had made him think.
“You must be Zoe,” said Mrs. Jimenez, coming over to the fireplace. She shifted the little girl to one hip and held out her hand for Zoe to shake. “And are you Blue or Logan?”
“Logan,” he said, shaking her hand, too. The little girl’s dark eyes watched through a curtain of hair, and he recognized the outraged expression from the squirrel that morning.
“Can I ask you who this is?” Zoe asked, pointing at the oldest-looking photo on the wall. All in sepia tones, a man in a cowboy hat stood on a rock with his hands on his hips. Behind him, the land sloped down into a valley with a lake in it. The man looked a bit like Marco, but the landscape looked even more familiar. Logan squinted at it.
“That’s the view from the—” he blurted, but managed to stop himself right before he said “dragon caves.” None of the Menagerie buildings were there—no Aviary, no Reptile House, no unicorn stable—but the lake was the same shape, only missing one of the islands. And a log cabin filled the space where Zoe’s house stood now.
Marco’s mom stared at Logan. “You know this place?” she said.
Zoe’s phone buzzed. “‘Horace Winterton,’” she read off her screen.
“That’s right!” Mrs. Jimenez waved at the photo. “Our ancestor. The family legend is that he woke up in the woods around these parts one day with total amnesia—he couldn’t remember where he’d come from, who his family was, or how he’d gotten there. All he had were the clothes on his back and this photo, but he could never find the place it was taken, although he searched the surrounding area for years before he met a weresparrow and got married and settled down. It was like his life started over that day.”
“He worked with my great-great-great-grandparents,” Zoe said. She slid her finger across the screen and showed a picture to Marco’s mom. Logan leaned in and saw Horace standing with a smiling couple. “He was their dragon tamer, and a werejackrabbit. He’s a legend to us, too, because he just disappeared one day. Mom thinks one of the dragons slipped him some kraken ink, trying to get rid of him.”
“Jerks,” muttered Blue. “Almost as bad as salamanders.”
Are dragons really that devious? Logan wondered. If they could do that . . . what if Scratch did figure out how to disable the cameras and set off the mist so no one would see him eat Pelly? But if he is that smart, why didn’t he clean the blood off his teeth or come up with a story about what happened on his watch?
“I’m glad Horace turned out okay,” said Zoe.
“How did you guess they were related?” Logan asked.
“Well, my mom thought it was a little weird that a whole family of unregistered werecreatures were living down the road from us, most likely for generations. The good news is that means I can tell you and Marco all about us. Nobody else, though.” Zoe glanced around at the little girls and the boy in the rafters.
“Victor, take your sisters out to play,” ordered Mrs. Jimenez, setting Elena down.
“Yay!” cried Nina, flinging down her sewing.
“PIRATE BARBIES!” Elena shrieked, scooping dolls off the floor. “Pirate Barbies on the owl ship in the sky with lollipop treasure!”
“Mom, I’m reading,” Victor objected. “And Elena’s lollipops make my wings all sticky. And if I have to make one more Barbie walk the plank, I will literally die of boredom.”
“I will literally worry about that when it literally happens,” said Marco’s mom. “Go. Now.”
Victor huffed and sighed and slammed his book shut. He tucked the book into the corner of the rafter and closed his eyes. A moment later, feathers shimmered across his skin, his face flattened and shrank, and his legs sprouted sharp talons. Soon a large owl sat on the rafter, pinning the shorts to the wood with its claws. Using its beak, the owl rearranged the shorts neatly where they were, and then flew down and out the door. Nina and Elena shrieked happily and chased after him.
“What about Carlos?” Marco asked as he set two glasses of lemonade on the coffee table.
Marco’s mom pointed up the stairs just as the sound of a TV popped on, loudly clashing with the Taylor Swift still playing from the bedroom. “Asking your brother to do chores always involves at least half an hour of stomping around in front of the TV first. So we have a moment. Tell me about the place Horace came from.”
Zoe explained the Menagerie, SNAPA, and the rules about Mostly Humans. Logan loved feeling l
ike an insider—like someone who knew what was going on and how to help. Although he wished he had more ideas for Scratch’s trial. Thursday was way too soon.
“Well, perhaps it would be nice to join an official community,” said Marco’s mom. “I’ll talk to my husband about it. Thank you for being so honest with us.”
“We need to ask you about something, too,” said Zoe. “Marco said you saw some kind of predator in the woods last night.”
“Was it a werewolf?” Logan asked.
“Absolutely,” said Mrs. Jimenez with a shudder. “Carlos has the best sense of smell of any of us, and he confirmed it—it looked like a wolf, but it smelled half-man. Marco, when he told us that, I was so worried for you. I’ve heard that werewolves are much nastier than other werecreatures. He might eat you even if he could tell you were part human. But don’t worry, your dad has a wonderful idea.” She got up, went to the sideboard, and started rummaging through a pile of plastic shopping bags.
“I have a wonderful idea, too,” said Marco. “DON’T MAKE ME TURN INTO A ROOSTER IN THE FLIPPING WOODS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT.”
“Oh, no, this is a much better plan,” said his mother. “That werewolf will be in for a surprise if he comes after my little rooster.”
Marco snorted.
“So it was male?” Zoe asked.
Marco’s mom nodded. “Carlos and Elena and I all saw the wolf. And Nina thinks she saw him while he was still in human form.”
Logan sat up. “Did she say what he looked like?”
“She only saw him for a moment, and she wasn’t sure he was a werecreature, but how many other people could be running around the woods in the middle of the night?” asked Mrs. Jimenez. “I can call her in here to describe him for you. But let me show this to Marco first.” She pulled out a small vial half-full of sparkly silvery powder.
“Ma,” said Marco. “I can already tell you I hate this plan.”
“What is that?” Blue asked.
“Silver dust,” she said. “Werecreatures are powerfully allergic to this stuff.”
“Including me,” Marco pointed out.
“But listen,” said Mrs. Jimenez. “This will keep you safe. You just turn into a rooster a little before midnight, one of us sprinkles this all over your feathers—”
“NO MOST DEFINITELY NO,” said Marco.
“And no werewolf will want to come anywhere near you!” she finished cheerfully. “Safe and sound.”
“And sneezing for twelve hours straight!” Marco said. “And covered with hives the next day! No thank you!”
“It’s a wonderful plan,” she said again, tucking the vial into her purse.
“No means no, Ma!” Marco threw his hands up in the air. “And guess what? Regular wolves will still eat me! Also coyotes! Also bears! Why can’t I just stay here?”
“Because then your brothers and sisters will want to stay home, too, and your father and I can’t supervise you while we’re in animal form,” she said. “And I don’t like poultry indoors.”
“Maybe he could come to the Menagerie,” Logan suggested. “Isn’t there somewhere he could change safely there?”
“YES,” said Marco. “THAT IS THE PLAN I AM OKAY WITH.”
“I think that would be fine,” Zoe said distractedly. “Can we please talk to Nina about the werewolf? I’d like to know what she saw.”
“NINA!” Mrs. Jimenez bellowed out the door.
Marco’s sister came skipping up onto the porch. “WHAT?” she bellowed back.
“Tell Marco’s friends about the boy you saw in the woods.” Her mother patted her head.
“Well,” Nina said, “he was totally cute. He looked like he was in high school. And he was in a big hurry. And he kept looking around like he didn’t want to be seen. And he was carrying something. And he had a scar on his arm and his face.”
“Hang on,” said Zoe. “That’s not a werewolf. Apart from the totally cute part, that sounds like my brother.”
Nina shrugged. “That’s who I saw.” She skipped back down the steps.
“Zoe,” Logan said slowly. “Is there any chance . . . ?”
Zoe’s eyes widened as she realized what he was suggesting. “No!” she said. “No way!”
“Maybe way,” said Blue.
“Matthew is not a werewolf!” she cried. “That’s crazy! Someone would have noticed by now!”
“Not if he got bitten this summer,” Blue pointed out. “At Tracker camp. Where he got some mysterious scars.”
“That was a griffin situation,” said Zoe. “He said he made a griffin mad.”
“Maybe he made a werewolf mad instead,” said Logan. “Zoe, it’s possible, right?”
She bit her lip, thinking. “I guess it is possible he took those chains and the tranq gun for himself . . . ,” she said slowly. “But why wouldn’t he have told someone if he got turned? And if he is—well, there’s no way he would have hurt Pelly. That’s crazy talk. No, the werewolf has to be somebody else.”
“There’s one way to find out,” said Logan. He turned to Mrs. Jimenez. “Is there any chance we could borrow some of that silver dust?”
THIRTEEN
“Can’t I just put a tiny bit on his hand or something?” Zoe asked Marco.
“No!” he protested. “It has to be a lot of exposure so you can be sure.”
Zoe felt the weight of the ziplock bag in her jacket pocket. Was she really about to do this to Matthew?
They all stopped at a red light. Marco had retrieved his bike so they could ride to Zoe’s. She was really nervous about bringing home yet another random guy from school, but Mrs. Jimenez wanted him to report back on the werewolf situation, and Zoe’s parents had said it was okay for him to come see the Menagerie. They didn’t know about her Matthew suspicions yet.
“And we mixed it with glitter because—?” Logan said.
“Glitter bomb!” Marco cried. “Awesome, and then if he gets mad, you can be like, oh, sorry, I was just glitter bombing you, which is obviously hilarious. Glitter bomb is totally the way to go.”
Zoe had never heard of glitter bombs, but apparently it was a thing, throwing glitter all over people to protest something. She thought it sounded kind of cool—like, a sparkly way to make a point without violence—but she was pretty sure Matthew wasn’t going to be thrilled about it. That’s if he wasn’t a werewolf; if he was, and this exposed him, he’d be even less thrilled.
But why wouldn’t he have told his family? There couldn’t be anyone in the world more understanding of mythical-creature stuff than the Kahns. Was he worried that being a werewolf meant he couldn’t be a Tracker?
Zoe didn’t know if that was true. In some ways, having wolf abilities would probably make tracking easier. But there might be some SNAPA rule about it, and being a Tracker had been Matthew’s dream his whole life. He wouldn’t let anything get in the way of that.
But if he’s a werewolf, we really need to know so we can help him, she thought. She pictured him alone in the woods, wrapping himself in chains and shooting himself with a tranq gun. Poor Matthew! There had to be a better way to deal with it.
Then again, when Mrs. Jimenez saw the wolf, there were no chains and it wasn’t tranq’d. So what happened?
Maybe it wasn’t Matthew after all.
“Keiko!” she blurted suddenly. “If Matthew were a werewolf, Keiko would have smelled it.”
“But would she have told us?” Blue pointed out. “She didn’t tell us about Marco. It’s more likely she’d keep that in her back pocket to blackmail him with whenever she wanted something.”
“True,” Zoe said with a sigh.
“Keiko with the long braids who plays soccer?” Marco asked hopefully. “She’s a werecreature, too?”
The light changed and they set off again.
“No,” said Blue. “Different kind of shape-shifter, sorry.”
“Still,” said Marco. “That practically makes us soul mates, right?”
“Oh my gosh, Marco,
” Zoe said. “You are so barking up the wrong tree.”
“Or crowing,” said Logan. “Crowing up the wrong tree.”
“Ha-ha!” Marco chortled.
“I’m confused about something,” Logan said. “How much do you remember when you’re a werecreature? And how much can you control what you’re doing?”
“It depends on which kind you are,” said Marco. “With us, because it’s genetic, we’ve been practicing since we were born, so we’re still pretty much ourselves and can remember most stuff. But newly bitten werewolves have much less control.”
Poor Matthew, Zoe thought again. But I still can’t imagine him hurting Pelly.
They rounded the corner into the Kahns’ driveway and Zoe saw a strange car parked in front of the house, behind the sleek black one that the SNAPA agents drove everywhere. As they got closer, she saw that it was a rental car.
“Who’s that?” she said to Blue, nodding at the car as they rolled their bikes into the garage next to the old blue van. “Do you think SNAPA sent more investigators?”
“Maybe,” he said.
Marco stayed on his bike, glancing at the cars. “Um,” he said. “You know, actually, maybe I should stay off this SNAPPER’s radar for now.”
“SNAPA,” Zoe corrected him. “They’re not all so bad . . . well, Agent Dantes can be nice . . . but they are pretty strict about rules.”
Marco made a face. “I think I’ll go home. Call me when you know about the werewolf thing?” He nodded at Logan. “I put my number in your phone when I borrowed it before.”
Logan looked surprised and pleased in a way that made Zoe want to hug him. It was as if people being friendly startled him every time.
Marco rode off, and Zoe took a deep breath, steeling herself for the serious grown-up frowns that might be waiting inside the house.
But the new visitor was much, much worse than more SNAPA investigators.
Zoe heard her voice as soon as she opened the door to the kitchen.
“—shouldn’t be surprised this place fell apart without me. Dad, what are these? Are these nonorganic strawberries? I only eat organic strawberries now. And you’ll have to hide those cookies. I don’t eat carbs anymore, but you can’t expect me to have any willpower when so many stressful things are happening. ZOE!”
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