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.”
TWENTY-ONE
Miss 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.
“But Pelly, we’re here to rescue you,” Zoe said.
“No,” Pelly said. “I decline. Go away.”
Zoe was already pulling out her phone to call her parents. “I’m sorry, but you don’t have a choice. You have to be under SNAPA supervision. You can’t just be some random person’s pet.”
Uh-oh, Logan thought.
Pelly drew herself up with an incredulous HONK. “PET?” she cried. “PET?! I shall never be anyone’s pet! I am Sameera’s beloved guest. No one has ever loved me the way she does. You never fed me grapes from your own hands. You never stayed up all night rearranging my blankets, buying me a new heater, using a hair dryer on my cold feet, and singing me show tunes. You never bought me Once Upon a Time on DVD so I could watch the special features on my favorite episodes. You never brought me peppermint cocoa every morning at sunrise! I am only the most important animal in the whole Menagerie, but no one would ever guess it from the bare modicum of appreciation I have ever gotten from you people. Sameera adores me, as I deserve. She understands how unique and adorable I am and would never, say, make me share my space with a hundred other twittering nitwits. Hrrmph.” She pointed her beak in the air and fluffed her feathers.
“I don’t have time to argue with you,” Zoe said, dialing. “We have to get you home before the trial is over and Scratch is exterminated and the Menagerie is shut down.”
“Oooo,” said Pelly. “You didn’t tell me they might exterminate Scratch.”
“It’s true,” said Logan. “He’s been accused of your murder. He could be dead by the end of today if we don’t show SNAPA you’re alive.”
“Even more reason to stay here,” Pelly said, plunking herself down on her makeshift nest of blankets and spangled denim cushions. “Oh, I’m sure nobody missed me. I’m sure my death was met with yawns or cheers. I’m sure you haven’t even had a touching memorial service for me, no, no, why bother, it’s only Pelly, the entire reason our organization is financially solvent. Would anyone cry for such a paragon of feathered beau
ty? But if that dragon is taken out of the world because of it, then all my tremendous suffering becomes worthwhile.”
Suddenly the sliding glass door behind Logan began to move. With a yelp of fright, he jumped away, then froze as Miss Sameera stepped out onto the patio.
They stared at the librarian. She stared at them.
We are in so much trouble, Logan thought.
“Sameera!” Pelly cried. She waddled over and butted Miss Sameera’s hands imperiously with her head until the librarian began scratching the goose’s neck. “You’re just in time to save me again. Behold, my horrible captors have arrived to drag me away!”
Miss Sameera’s head shot up. She looked at Zoe with a glimmer of something in her eyes—desperation? Or . . . was that hope?
“You want her back?” she said.
“In the fuzziest sense of the word want,” Blue answered.
Zoe held out her phone. “My brother is listening to this whole conversation,” she warned. “So you’d better hand over that goose and let us go.”
“I told them you would never part with me,” Pelly declared, flinging her wings around Miss Sameera’s waist. “I told them how we have bonded for life and this is my home now and you will fight them to the death before you’ll let me go.”
“Right,” Miss Sameera said. “Of course. But look, there are three of them. I’m quite outnumbered. It’s a terrible shame, but I’m afraid you’ll have to go with them.”
“But these three are PUNY!” Pelly barked. “Together we can defeat them! We can run off into the sunset together and find even better peppermint cocoa somewhere far away! We don’t need anyone else! I’ll be with you till the day you die!”
Miss Sameera got a despairing, haunted look in her eyes.
“Pelly,” Logan interjected. “You’ll never be safe out in the world. Miss Sameera may treat you kindly, but there are lots of people who wouldn’t, and if you fall into their hands, you’ll have much worse problems than wanting another yeti-fur blanket. The Menagerie can protect you. That’s their whole purpose.”
The goose made a huffy sniffing noise. “Oh, I see. Leave my only friend in the world and go back to a place where I am not appreciated and that arsonist phoenix threatens my nest every day. Of course, that does make brilliant sense. Why didn’t I think of it myself? I mean, I do so love conversing with hummingbirds and being fed only four times a day.”
“You only feed her four times a day?” Miss Sameera asked Zoe. “Not eight?” She turned to Pelly. “You told me you had to be fed eight times a day or you would literally die.”
“Did I?” Pelly said, giving Zoe a shifty look. She shuffled closer to Miss Sameera and started absentmindedly nibbling one of the gold threads on her skirt. “Oh, I may have implied as much . . .”
“What about requiring the most expensive swordfish in the supermarket?” the librarian demanded. “Was that a lie, too? The lavender salts and daffodil petals for your bathwater? The hours of dancing kittens you had to watch on YouTube?” Miss Sameera yanked her skirt out of Pelly’s beak and stepped back. “You made all that up! I thought you were a delicate mythical creature with unusual magical needs!”
“Nope,” said Zoe. “She’s really just a giant goose with an even more giant ego.”
“See how nobody loves me!” Pelly squawked. “Oh, everyone wishes I were dead!” She flung herself down on her back with her wings outstretched and flapped around on the stone. Then she sat up abruptly and gave Miss Sameera a beady glare. “What about the Dreadful Experiments they were doing on me? You promised to save me from those!”
Miss Sameera hesitated.
“There are no dreadful experiments, Miss Sameera,” Zoe promised.
“But you’re the government,” Miss Sameera said, tugging at her sleeves. “In all the books, supernatural things must be kept out of the hands of the government. Or else there will be top-secret facilities and dreadful experiments! That’s what they’re really doing at Roswell, you know.”
Blue smothered a laugh.
“What they’re doing at Roswell is breeding dragons,” Zoe said. “It’s difficult and messy and hard to keep quiet, but it’s not sinister. The dragons are very happy there. And our creatures are happy at our Menagerie, too.”
“Oh, if you ignore my misery, I suppose,” Pelly said. “As everyone always does.”
“We have to take her back,” Logan said to the librarian. “There’s a dragon’s life on the line. Everyone thinks he killed her, and if we don’t get her home quickly, he’ll be executed for it.”
Now Miss Sameera looked horrified. “Why didn’t you say so?” she demanded. “Take her and go! Now! Hurry!” She spun around, patting her skirt although it clearly had no pockets. “I’ll drive you. Quick!”
“On your Vespa?” Blue asked curiously.
“Oh, right,” she said. “I’ll call you a taxi!”
“Good lord, no,” said Zoe. “My brother will be here in a minute with our van.”
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” Pelly wailed.
Blue covered his ears. “Haven’t your neighbors wondered about all the noise?” he asked Miss Sameera.
“They think my demanding, partly senile great-aunt is visiting,” she admitted.
“OH NOW I AM BEING MOCKED AS WELL AS TORTURED,” Pelly howled.
“Do you have any extra tranquilizer darts?” Zoe asked the librarian. “It’ll be easier to get her home that way.”
Miss Sameera looked puzzled. “I don’t have anything like that,” she said.
“Then how did you get her here?” Zoe asked. A frantic car horn started beeping outside. “Never mind, we’ll ask you later.” Logan knew Zoe was picturing a conversation over a nice cup of kraken ink tea. “Blue, go get a dart from the van.”
“I WON’T GO!” Pelly squawked. “You can’t make me! I know nobody cares and nobody has ever cared but I am the most important goose in the whole world and I—”
Matthew fired a dart into her neck from the garden gate, and the goose immediately slumped over, her beak still wide open as if she intended to keep complaining even while unconscious.
“People on the street are giving this house weird looks,” Matthew said. He jumped up onto the patio, flung a blanket over Pelly, and neatly wrapped her into a bundle. Logan hurried to pick up one end, and together they carried her out and stowed her in the van.
Miss Sameera followed them out to her driveway, wringing her hands as they all lifted their bikes in. “Am I doing the right thing?” she said. “I don’t think the other Free Rangers would approve, but they haven’t had to deal with her for three long, awful days—”
“Three days?” Zoe said, pausing with her hand on the van door handle. “Don’t you mean five? Since Saturday night?”
“No,” Miss Sameera said, shaking her head. “I liberated her on Monday afternoon from your cabin in the woods.”
“Our what?” Zoe said. “We don’t have a cabin in the woods.”
“Yes, you do,” Miss Sameera insisted. “I followed your partner there.”
Logan and Zoe exchanged glances.
Miss Sameera was never inside the Menagerie, Logan realized. She rescued Pelly by accident from someone else. Pelly’s real kidnapper.
“Wait, who did you follow?” Zoe asked. “What did they look like? Was it someone you know?”
Miss Sameera raised her eyebrows, started to say something, then stopped with a mischievous, canny expression.
“I’ll tell you everything I know,” she said, “if you take me to meet a unicorn.”
TWENTY-TWO
Matthew pulled into the garage with a squeal of tires. His phone buzzed as he turned off the engine.
“Uh-oh,” he said, checking the screen. “Mom says they’ve started closing arguments.”
“Already?” Zoe cried. She pulled out her phone and saw the same message. She’d expected them to take the whole afternoon on the trial, but it was barely past four. Neither of her parents were answering t
heir phones, which was why she’d called Matthew from Miss Sameera’s house instead.
“Does it matter?” Logan asked. “We have Pelly—so he’s obviously innocent, no matter how the trial turns out.”
“I don’t trust that Exterminator, though,” Zoe said, her skin prickling. “He looks like he’s itching to execute a dragon as soon as possible.” She jumped out of the van and pulled open the back doors.
“Exterminator?” Miss Sameera said in a wobbly voice.
“Only in extreme circumstances,” Blue said, patting her shoulder.
Logan and Zoe wrestled the blanket-wrapped Pelly out of the van, through the door to the Menagerie, and onto a golf cart that was waiting for them. With Matthew behind the steering wheel, there was room for only two more people.
“You two go,” Blue said. “I’ll take Miss Sameera into the main house.”
The librarian was staring around the Menagerie with her mouth open. “This place is huge!” she said. “How has nobody noticed it before? Don’t airplanes fly overhead and spot you?”
“We have a thing,” Zoe said, fighting the mental drag that always came with mentioning the deflector. “We don’t talk about the thing.”
“INTRUDER! INTRUDER! INTRUDER!” the dragon alarm bellowed.
“Oh, brother,” Matthew said, unclipping a walkie-talkie from the front bar of the golf cart. “Mooncrusher, tell Clawdius we know!” he yelled into it. “We brought her in!”
“BLAAAAARGH!” agreed the walkie-talkie, and a few moments later the bellowing stopped.
Zoe held on tight to the side rail as the golf cart zipped down the hill, around the lake, and up to the yeti’s area. The crowd around the trial seemed bigger than she would have expected, and she realized several of the merpeople had decided to come watch the proceedings. King Cobalt stood in the middle of them, towering and majestic-looking as usual, spinning a trident slowly between his hands.
“Blue’s dad thought he should get to judge the trial,” Zoe whispered to Logan. “Since he’s ‘the most royal personage on the continent,’ apparently. He wasn’t too pleased when SNAPA said no.”
The Menagerie #2 Page 17
