Playing Hooky (Paranormal Investigations)

by Rita J Webb

  “Where are we?”

  “Come inside. You’ll see.”

  “Why is there a barn in Chugach State Park?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe they teleported it.”

  I roll my eyes. Cattle in Alaska are kept indoors about six months out of the year, and nothing about this old and run-down barn could keep animals warm enough.

  He helps me out of the car and leads me to the door. The wind drives against us, pushing and shoving us back, and I hunch my shoulders and push through. Jason fights the wind to open the barn door, and we stumble in.

  Inside is a room that must be five times the size of the barn I saw outside. The ceiling is so high, I can’t see it in the shadows. Strings of lights crisscross above our heads like an intricate web and then climb up the walls until they disappear in the darkness.

  And it is surprisingly hot in here. I peel off my coat, gloves, hat, and wish I could strip to take off the thermals beneath my jeans. I’m wearing a purple, long-sleeved T covered with a blue and green fleece button-up (Angelina would blanch if she saw my wacky color combo) and well-scuffed water-proof rubber boots that have trekked every deer path on Kodiak Island.

  In the center of the room, a striped tent, about three stories tall and twice as big around as my house, dominates the space with smaller tents surrounding it.

  Above the entrance, a sign reads Michael Magnificent and the Magician Magellan’s Magical Menagerie of Malicious and Monstrous Misfits. The word Misfits was smaller than the other words most likely because the painter almost ran out of room. Someone got a little carried away with the alliteration.

  Carrying loads of boxes and pushing wheelbarrows, people bustle from tent to tent, and nobody pays any attention to us.

  I blink as I stare at the sight before me and then glance at Jason.

  He gives me a smile. “Welcome to a whole new world.”

  “A circus?” I make a high-pitched noise, that is not a squeal. Because I do not squeal.

  “Calm down.” Jason rubs his ears. “Not just any circus, Miss Acrobat.”

  I’m normally not the squealing type, but I love the circus. As a kid, I dreamed of being an acrobat and pestered my parents until they finally got me into gymnastics. They stopped complaining about the cost when I got a full athletic scholarship.

  “We’re a little early, but I thought you’d like to wander around and explore with me. The animal tents are . . . well, you’ll like it.”

  “Jason, you’re the best friend a girl could ask for.” I give him a big bear hug.

  “I know.”

  “And geez, humble too.”

  “I know.” He grins.

  Inside the closest tent, stalls filled with white horses line the center aisle. Tack hangs along one wall in the entry way, and stacks of hay and barrels of oats fill the other side.

  White horses with long horns protruding from their foreheads.

  “How did they glue the horns on?” I lean in close to inspect.

  “They’re real.”

  I raise an eyebrow, and he grins.

  “Seriously?”

  “Would I lie to you?”

  “There was that time you told me the mud pies would give me flying powers if I ate them.”

  “Not my fault. I really thought they would.”

  Growing up, he concocted the craziest schemes: trapping leprechauns and hunting for the pot of gold at the rainbow’s end, building our own invisible clubhouse far from where hikers and tourists would trek, or inventing flying bicycles. When the flying bicycle, version umpteen-thousand, failed to fly, he mixed up his own batch of mud pies.

  We ate them (ick!) and jumped out of our favorite climbing tree. I broke my leg, and he didn’t even get a scratch. The next day, he picked me magical wild flowers that if I sniffed them would make the pain go away.

  I threw them at him and said I never wanted to see him again . . . not that it lasted long.

  Now I stand in a circus tent with my insane best friend with seven white unicorns. One snorts, tossing his mane, and paws the ground. The long dagger protruding from his head doesn’t even wobble. He rubs it against the wood of his stall as if it itches, and I’m reminded of narwhals and that tidbit I learned in science class about how sensitive their horns are.

  Then he stabs at the wood in a playful battle.

  Either really good glue or it must be real.

  Maybe I’m hallucinating.

  “Can I touch one?”

  “Maybe.” He raises an eyebrow. “You know the old myths about unicorns and virginity, right?”

  “I told you: Troy made an ass of himself, and I changed my mind. We never did anything prom night.”

  “Then scratch him under the chin in that tuft of curly hair. They like that.” He nudges me forward, and the unicorn stretches his neck out toward me.

  I inherited my father’s cop sense of reality. I’m seeing a unicorn, but I still can’t believe this is real. Jason, on the other hand, pets the unicorn as though this is the most natural occurrence in the world.

  I can’t believe I’m really touching a unicorn.

  The fur is soft like a kittens rather than coarse like most horses. He makes a mewling noise and then purrs. Purrs! He rubs his face in my hand, forcing me to keep petting him.

  “Unicorns are more like big cats.” Jason strokes the soft fur on his cheek.

  I watch him scratch it behind the ear. “You are so full of crap. You tell me only a virgin can pet a unicorn, but the man who dates anything with breasts can still touch one. You can’t possibly still be a virgin.”

  “Never found the right one.” He shrugs.

  The tent flap on the other side of the long walkway swings open, and a dwarf hobbles in, pushing an empty wheelbarrow. An iron band circles his thick ankle, which he drags slightly. His long red beard, snarled and full of twigs, hay, and things I’d rather not figure out, is tucked into his belt to keep from dragging on the floor and tripping him.

  “Ah, Jason.” The dwarf nods at my friend and then grabs a pitchfork and opens a stall door. Whinnying and tossing her mane, the unicorn shies to the back of the stall, prancing to avoid the dwarf and his pitchfork.

  “Yes, and I brought a friend.”

  The dwarf glances at me and sniffs, curling his lip slightly. “A human.”

  “Oh, she’s better than a human. You have a note for me?”

  I’m better than a human? I’ve known Jason since kindergarten. He’s a year older, but his mom held him back due to his inability to sit still.

  We shared every adventure. We raced our bikes up and down Pillar Mountain. Climbed every tree to search for faeries. Fished for magical trout that fulfill wishes. Got lost in the woods zillions of times when hunting purple three-headed monsters.

  Here he found the most amazing adventure yet, the magic we’d been looking for, and he left me out all this time.

  The dwarf grunts and tugs an envelope out of his pocket. Pink and covered in hearts.

  A love letter. He told me he broke up with his latest, and he didn’t even hint about someone new. An odd feeling squeezes my heart. An emotion I can’t even name.

  But it’s dark and angry and rumbles inside me.

  I ball my fists as my sides to keep from grabbing the dwarf’s pitchfork and poking Jason with it. Closing my eyes, I take a deep breath. This is silly. What’s wrong with me? I push the emotion aside and focus on enjoying the moment.

  Dwarves and unicorns. A circus. I mean, what’s not to enjoy?

  As much as I love the circus, I’m even more crazy about making friends with interesting people. And a dwarf is certainly out of the ordinary.

  Butt crack showing (blech, I did not need to see that), the dwarf leans forward to scoop a pile of manure—unicorns poop like every other animal—and farts loudly before hitching his pants up and dumping the manure into a wheelbarrow. He doesn’t even apologize.

  Turning my back on Jason, I step forward and lean my arms on the top of the stall, prop
ping my chin on my hands. “So you don’t like me because I’m human?”

  He casts a surprised look my way and turns back to his work.

  “What’s wrong with humans?”

  “The stench,” he grumbles. He doesn’t even look at me.

  I turn my voice to honey. “I bet I can make you like me by the end of the day.”

  He snorts.

  “I’ll clean your stalls for a week if I lose.”

  Leaning on his pitchfork, which is twice as tall as he is, he turns to look at me, studying me as if I were an interesting bug that just did a jig. “And if you win?”

  “You’ll let me ride one of your unicorns.”

  “Ain’t my unicorns.”

  “But you’re taking care of them, aren’t you?”

  “They belong to the Ring Master.”

  “Can you let me sneak a ride when the master isn’t looking?” I give him my most dazzling smile.

  His lips press together in a grimace, but a light shines in his eyes. “I could arrange that. T’won’t be easy, but my name ain’t Gruff for nothing.”

  I’m not sure what the name Gruff has to do with him getting me a ride on a unicorn, but I offer him my hand to shake on it. He spits in his own and shakes mine and then wipes it on his beard.

  Then he nods his head and turns back to his work. I wipe my hand off on my jeans. Rule of thumb, don’t strike deals with dwarves until you know all the protocol.

  Great. How do I befriend a dwarf?

  Beside me, Jason furiously reads his note before crumpling it and stuffing it in his pocket, a scowl on his face. So his new girlfriend already broke it off?

  “You want to tell me what that was all about?” I point at his pocket.

  He looks at me and blinks. “What?”

  “Your love letter.”

  He blushes. “It’s not—”

  I cross my arms and arch an eyebrow.

  “Your friend is perceptive for a human.” Gruff scoops up more manure.

  Ignoring the butt crack, I grin at Gruff’s back. “Does that mean you like me?”

  “Don’t get your hopes up.”

  The flap swings open again and a thin boy, cheeks so angular they could cut glass, ears pointing up in a delicate spire, strides into the room. His blue hair is plaited down his back in three long braids, and he’s tall—at least six foot three—but his face looks young.

  “Gruff, where are you?” His voice squeaks as he tugs one of his braids. “The siren is—”

  He stares at me, his eyes wide in surprise. “Are you—are you human?”

  Human? Of course, I’m human. I offer him my hand, now dry from Gruff’s spit, and say the safest thing I can think of, “I’m Emma.”

  “A human!” He grasps my hand with both of his and dances me in a circle. Then he stops and pulls out his notebook and a pen, flips it open to a blank page, and poises his pen over the page. “Do you have dreams when you sleep at night? What do you dream about? What did you eat for breakfast? How often do you eat in a day? Omnivore, herbivore, or carnivore? Let me look at your teeth.”

  He steps close as if he would open my mouth for me and inspect it as if I were a horse for sale. I take a step back and bump into the stall door behind me.

  “Taylon, this is my friend Emma, and you’re scaring her,” Jason says. “Emma, Taylon is an elf, and he’s only ninety-six years old. He hasn’t been out much, and well—” He rubs the back of his neck and looks up at the ceiling. “Remember what I was like when I was twelve?”

  “You were annoying.” I roll my eyes.

  Jason had decided he liked pulling my braids or stealing my nail polish or teasing me about my small breasts or sneaking peeks at my diary, and I’d punch him in return. Which was every day.

  “Yes, well, that’s the equivalent for a ninety-six-year-old elf.”

  “Can I ask one more question? What color do you call this hair? I’ve never seen anything so pale.”

  “It’s blonde. I hate it.” I associate blonde with my prissy sister. I’d rather be a brunette.

  “What you really need is pink. It would go well with your blue eyes.”

  “I don’t think—”

  My hair begins to frizzle and snap. I put my hands to my hair, but it felt just the same. “What did you do?”

  “I forgot to mention that Taylon is also a wizard in training.” Jason chews his lip as he stares at the top of my head.

  Taylon smiles and holds his shoulders back self-importantly. “I have studied magic for eighty-nine years. I was top of my class.”

  “Put it back!”

  His smile crumples. “I can’t . . . You said . . . You don’t like it?”

  “Can I see a mirror?”

  He waves his hands and conjures a small mirror out of thin air. I peer at myself. It’s pale pink as opposed to the bright fuchsia color of my favorite author: Laini Taylor.

  I can’t help but grin. For the first time, I see me and not my little sister staring back. No one will ever mistake me for her again.

  My mom will love it and hope this means her daughter is finding a creative outlet, but my dad will swear I’m turning his hair gray and ask if I’m doing drugs.

  “Pink isn’t normal? I thought today was your human day for love. I studied all about it. Pink and red hearts everywhere. I thought you’d like it.” He sniffs and rubs at the corner of his eye.

  “I’m sorry.” I pat his shoulder. “It’s not so bad. I’ll get used to it.”

  “All right. Oooooh, what if I add some red hearts to it.” He smiles and raises his hands.

  “NO! No, no, pink is just fine.”

  Gruff snorts behind us. “Quit screwing around, elf. Some of us have work to do.”

  I turn to look at him. His wheelbarrow is full, and he stands scowling behind us with the handles in his hands. I scuttle out of his way.

  “Gruff! The siren is missing. Her cage is open and her collar is on the floor.” Taylon pulls on his braid again.

  Gruff grits his teeth. “What have you gone and done, you fool elf? Where’s the keys?”

  “I don’t know. They were right here on my belt, like they always are. I used them when I fed the manticore, but when I got to the weretigers’ cage, they were gone.”

  “And did you look in the manticore tent?”

  “Yes, but I didn’t see them anywhere.” His voice squeaks on the last word.

  “If the Ring Master finds out . . . ”

  Taylon yanks his braid harder and wails.

  “None of that.” Gruff thumps him on the back of the head with the shovel handle—he was too short and Taylon too tall for him to reach on his own.

  “We’ll help, Taylon,” I promise.

  “Really? They say humans have a special power all their own. They can make anything happen, even without any magic.”

  I clamp my mouth shut to keep from snorting with laughter. Humans? Power? But I don’t want to dash his hope to pieces.

  Jason pats the elf’s shoulder. “See, it will be all right, Taylon. We’ll have your keys and the siren back in no time. Why don’t you show us the siren’s cage?”

  Chapter 4

  ~ EMMA ~

  IN THE CENTER of the tent, the siren’s cage holds a pool of water surrounded by a rocky embankment. The water is crystal clear and as blue as emeralds. A black iron chain lies on the floor by the open door of the cage.

  No siren anywhere.

  I really wonder what a siren looks like. I can imagine mermaids, fishy tale and all, but the only thing I know about sirens is that they tempt sailors to their deaths with their songs.

  Taylon stares at the empty cage. “Her name was Thelxiepeia—we called her Thelxie, for short. She wrote it down in my notebook for me. She was very kind.”

  “What’s the collar for?” I ask.

  “The collar keeps her within a hundred yards of her cage and prevents her from singing. That way, she can’t seduce some unsuspecting male into freeing her. Of course, it also m
eans she can’t talk.”

  “Why keep a siren in the first place?”

  Taylon shrugs. “The Ring Master wants her to perform for the final act . . . once she has been trained to use only a little magic in her song.”

  “I take it she’s not here on her own free will.” Anger burns inside me. Maybe it’s good that she’s free. If I hadn’t given Taylon a promise, maybe I wouldn’t bother finding her.

  “None of us are,” Gruff grumbles.

  What kind of place is this? I glance over at Jason, but for once, I can’t read the dark expression on his face as he stares at the open cage. I know his every mood, and he can’t hide his thoughts from me. Or so I thought.

  Then again, he knows all these people. He has secret messages from mysterious lovers, and he’s friends with dwarves and elves. All this time, we’ve known each other, and he’s never told me about any of this.

  They didn’t treat him like he was human.

  Maybe I’ve never known him at all.

  I pace the floor studying every footprint, piece of hay, mud puddle. It seems like the proper Sherlock Holmes thing to do. I did promise the elfin wizard that I would find his missing siren, and he trusts in the non-existent human ability to make miracles happen.

  I spot a piece of paper on the floor, wedged under a barrel of hay, and pick it up. A grocery list: cinnamon, white sugar, confectioner’s sugar, baking chocolate, flour, baking soda, butter, Valentine’s candy, heart-shaped cake pan, catnip.

  Someone is baking a cake and drugging sweet kitties.

  “Hmm, a love potion.” Jason peers over my shoulder.

  “No, it’s a grocery list for a Valentine’s cake.”

  “And the catnip?”

  “Maybe they also have a cat.”

  “When mixed with catnip, the siren’s blood will coagulate into a thick, red paste that will mix nicely with frosting. Great for topping a Valentine’s cake.”

  “How do you know this?” I clench my teeth.

  “I once picked up a book of spells and read all about love potions. I planned to make your sister fall in love with me but decided you’d get angry about that.”

  “You don’t need a love potion to make her or any other girl fall in love with you, you moron.” The last few years, since I left for college, Jason has dated one girl after another, leaving behind a long string of broken hearts.