Krakens and Lies

by Tui T. Sutherland

  It was a quiet drive back to their house. Logan’s dad asked a few halfhearted questions about the party, but Logan could tell he was thinking about something else.

  Whatever it was, he seemed to make a decision as they opened the front door.

  “Logan—” he said.

  “I’m really tired, Dad.” Logan didn’t want to have another argument about Zoe and her family tonight. He wanted to go back to his room, wash off the werewolf makeup, curl up with his cat, Purrsimmon, and think about who might be helping the Sterlings sabotage the Menagerie.

  “Okay, just . . . I want to give you something,” his dad said.

  “A puppy?” Logan joked. That was his line, the joke they always ran through whenever his dad gave him anything.

  His dad reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a necklace. Logan raised his eyebrows at it as it dangled from his dad’s huge hands.

  “Really?” he said. “Jewelry? Is it our anniversary?”

  “I think it’s important that you have this,” said his dad.

  Hanging from the black cord of the necklace was a small glass square, and inside the square was something that glinted green and gold. Logan took it in his hands and peered closer at it. It wasn’t a jewel. It was a beetle.

  “Yikes,” Logan said. “Which one is the insect anniversary?”

  “It’s cool, isn’t it?” his dad said.

  It was really cool looking. The beetle’s hard folded wings shimmered like sunlit green stained glass with layers of dark blue and gold underneath. Six little black legs stuck out from its sides and tiny black antennae-like jaws protruded from its head.

  And then, as Logan was staring at it, he saw one of the legs move.

  “AAAAAH!” he yelped, nearly dropping the necklace. His dad reached out and grabbed it from him. “Dad! It’s alive! It’s alive in there!”

  “I know,” his dad said. “Like I said, cool, right?”

  “But HOW IS IT ALIVE, Dad?” And then, of course, Logan realized how.

  It was magic. His dad was giving him a mythical creature.

  “I don’t know,” his dad said with a shrug. “Your mom gave it to me a long time ago, when we first got engaged. She said—she said it would protect me.”

  “By scaring the daylights out of anyone who tries to mug you?” Logan asked. Or with magical creature powers? Do you know what you’re holding? Does anyone know you have this? Surely not; SNAPA couldn’t possibly let mythical creatures like this float around being worn as accessories. So if Mom had broken the rules by giving him this, she could have broken them some more by telling him everything about her job.

  “The thing is, I think it’s worked so far,” his dad said, twisting the cord between his fingers. “And now—I really want you to have it.”

  “Why?” Logan asked. “This is Xanadu, Dad. We’re not in Chicago anymore. What could I possibly need protecting from out here?”

  He waited. This would be a good time for his dad to say something like, “I don’t know, maybe grumpy unicorns?”

  But instead he said, “Please take it, Logan. If you’re—I just want to know you’re safe.”

  If I’m going to be hanging out with the Kahns, Logan guessed. Inside the Menagerie. He does know.

  He took the beetle necklace and slipped it over his head. The glass square with the beetle inside rested over his heart like a warm hand. It glowed like there was a sunbeam trapped inside it, casting a soft light over his brown skin.

  “Weird,” Logan said. “I do feel safer.”

  A look of relief spread across his dad’s face, and Logan suddenly felt guilty. He remembered the surge of fear he’d had when he thought for a moment his dad might be gone, too. Of course his dad was worried about him. Neither of them knew what had happened to Mom.

  But if his father met the Kahns, he’d see there was nothing to worry about.

  Maybe it was time for the truth.

  “Dad—” Logan said as his dad turned toward the kitchen.

  “Yeah?”

  Logan’s phone buzzed, and then buzzed again, and then a third time in rapid succession.

  “Hold on.” He pulled out his phone and saw that it was a text from Blue. Three texts from Blue, all in a row.

  LOGAN.

  911!

  DO NOT TELL YOUR DAD ANYTHING.

  What? Logan blinked at the screen.

  The phone buzzed again.

  We think he’s the one sabotaging the Menagerie.

  FIVE

  “Explain this,” Logan said, holding up his phone as Zoe answered the door Saturday morning.

  “It’s an advanced technological device,” Zoe said, yawning. “People use it to communicate over long distances and to take pictures. But its primary use is for watching videos of sloths being tickled. So I hear.”

  “Ha-ha,” Logan said. “My dad? Sabotaging the Menagerie? Are you crazy?”

  “Come in,” Zoe said. “You’re up really early.”

  “I haven’t exactly slept,” he said, following her into the kitchen.

  “Me neither.” She got out two mugs with rainbow unicorns on them. “I went out and did half my chores at five a.m. because I couldn’t lie in bed anymore. Tea or cocoa?”

  “Cocoa if you have mini-marshmallows,” he said.

  “Of course we do,” she said. “What are we, savages? Also the baku is kind of obsessed with them.”

  “The what?” Logan said. “Wait, no. Don’t distract me. Tell me on what planet you think my dad would ever be working with the Sterlings to steal golden geese and frame Scratch.”

  “I don’t know if he has anything to do with the Sterlings,” Zoe said. “But come look at this.” She stuck the two mugs of milk in the microwave and led the way into the living room. They passed Captain Fuzzbutt snoring softly, flopped out on one of the giant orange pillows. At the far end was the door to Melissa’s office. Zoe tapped on the door lightly and listened.

  “I think she went out early,” she whispered to Logan, “but just in case.”

  There was no answer. After a moment, Zoe pushed the door open and headed straight for the bank of video screens in the corner. Logan had been here once before, when they were checking the video feeds for the night the griffin cubs had escaped.

  “Remember the security updates SNAPA wanted us to install last week?” Zoe said. “The ones Matthew swears crashed the system, but Melissa thinks someone else came in and hacked us? Well, SNAPA finally got us new versions of the software, so Matthew installed it all again yesterday. And last night we didn’t want to go upstairs while my parents were still fighting with Ruby, so Blue and I came in here with Matthew to check on everything.”

  She leaned over and typed something quickly. One of the screens blipped and started zipping backward.

  “Part of the upgrade is that SNAPA insisted we put a new camera in the Dark Forest,” Zoe said. “We used to have one there, but the mapinguari and the baku never do anything interesting, so when it broke, we just left it that way. But now it’s up and working again, which means we’ve got footage from this last week.”

  She hit a button and the video stopped, then started playing at a regular speed. The screen showed a thick tangle of vines and leaves woven around a small grass hut. It was night, so the video had that blurry night-vision grayness. Something furry and huge shuffled out of the hut, its eyes glowing. It scratched its back on a nearby tree and shuffled back in.

  “What was that?” Logan whispered.

  “Not the important part,” she said. “Look back there.” She pointed at the top left corner of the screen, beyond the creature’s hut. When Logan squinted, he realized there was a wall there, through the vines—the outer wall of the Menagerie.

  A head suddenly appeared over the wall.

  Followed by an arm, and a leg, and a whole body, as someone pulled himself over the wall. Whoever it was scrambled down, using the vines like climbing ropes, and hopped to the ground.

  He looked around furtively,
touched his chest, and then edged away from the hut, into the trees, and off the screen.

  Zoe looked up at Logan. “Still think we’re crazy?”

  Logan sat down in the nearest chair, his head spinning. “But maybe—I mean, we couldn’t clearly see his face—” He stopped and rubbed his eyes. There still wasn’t any doubt. Xanadu wasn’t exactly teeming with six-foot-two bald African-American men, and Logan recognized that nose.

  That was his dad on the video, sneaking into the Menagerie.

  “When was this?” he asked. “Last night?”

  “Last night?” Zoe said. “No, what? Should we be checking last night’s feed, too? This was from Monday night.”

  “Monday.” Logan tried to remember the crazy week that had just passed. “That was the morning you came over and he realized we were hanging out. Maybe he was just checking up on me. Maybe he wanted to see what you guys were like.”

  “By climbing over our wall and sneaking past our enormous mythical sloth in the middle of the night?” Zoe said. “Maybe they do things differently in Chicago, but here most parents would, just hypothetically, call up the other kid’s parents and say hello.” She touched Logan’s hand to stop him from protesting. “There’s more. After we saw this, we went back through the tapes. We found him climbing over in the same spot at least two other times before.”

  “That doesn’t mean he’s sabotaging the Menagerie!” Logan said, standing up so fast the rolling chair banged into Melissa’s desk. “Why would he do that?”

  “We were hoping you’d have a guess,” Zoe said.

  Logan felt queasy. “He must have a good reason. I mean, this is my dad. Even when I’m mad at him, he’s kind of awesome, Zoe.”

  “I’m sure that’s true,” Zoe said. “But we have to figure out what he’s doing, right? Could he have broken Scratch’s anklet? Or cut that hole in the river grate?”

  “I guess maybe—but wait, why didn’t the intruder alarm go off when he came in?” Logan asked.

  “I have no idea,” Zoe said with a sigh. “Maybe we should ask the dragons. I’ll put it on my list for the day, along with figuring out how to get the jackalope milk to Jasmin. Mooncrusher was complaining already this morning about a weird smell coming from his yurt. I was able to sneak over, grab the bottle, and hide it in our fridge, but someone is definitely going to notice it there soon.”

  “Do you have a plan?” Blue asked from the doorway. He looked rumpled, as if he’d just woken up, in a blue-green shirt that matched his eyes and gray cargo shorts. “Hey, Logan.”

  “Hey,” Logan said. He leaned against the desk and rubbed his eyes again. Dad, what are you up to? Why would you want to take down the Menagerie?

  Zoe gave Blue a speculative look. “I might have a plan.”

  “I have a bad feeling about this,” Blue said. He crossed his arms and shook his blond hair out of his eyes. “You’re all ‘don’t toy with Jasmin’s feelings’ and then you’re like, ‘well, except when we need you to.’”

  “But we have to, don’t we?” Zoe said. She cleared the video screens and stood up. “She’s not going to drink anything I give her. I figure you can go over there, apologize for leaving early last night, and, like, make her coffee or something to make up for it.”

  “That is weird, Zoe,” Blue said, stepping aside as she went out the door. “Guys don’t show up at girls’ houses to make them apologetic coffee in their own kitchens. And definitely not apologetic coffee that smells like moose breath.”

  Logan followed them back through the living room, trying to concentrate on the conversation, when what he really wanted to do was run home and freak out at his dad. What would Dad say if Logan asked him about this?

  One of the hellhounds was sitting on the grass right outside the glass doors, panting and slobbering, with an enormous grin all over his shaggy black face. He saw them coming and wagged his tail. Zoe stepped around Captain Fuzzbutt and slid open the door.

  “Morning, Sheldon,” she said, scratching his head. The hellhound poked his nose into her neck, tipped his head at Logan for a considering moment, and then went to sniff around the sleeping mammoth. Captain Fuzzbutt made a grumbling noise and whacked the rhino-sized dog with his trunk.

  Sheldon yipped amiably and wandered into the kitchen, where he promptly sprawled out and took over most of the floor.

  Logan felt the weight of the beetle necklace under his shirt. Would it protect him from hellhounds? How could a little beetle do that? Not that Sheldon was much of a threat. He’d meant to ask Zoe about the necklace first thing, but he also kind of wanted to keep it to himself. If his mom had broken SNAPA rules by giving it to his dad, he didn’t want to get her in trouble—or have to give it back.

  “Have your parents figured out how to give the Sterlings kraken ink?” he asked. “Maybe you could slip the jackalope milk in the same way.”

  Zoe shook her head. She took the two mugs out of the microwave and climbed on the counter to reach the cocoa and marshmallows. “From what we can tell, the Sterlings are being really careful. They’ll only drink bottled water from, like, the Alps, or something. They even brush their teeth with it.”

  “How on earth did you figure that out?” Logan asked.

  “My parents can be very resourceful when the Menagerie is in danger,” she said. “What it means is that we won’t be able to fix this by slipping kraken ink into the town water supply, which is what SNAPA usually does.”

  The bag of marshmallows suddenly tipped over as Zoe was climbing down, even though she wasn’t touching it. A shower of mini-marshmallows cascaded to the floor and Sheldon sat up with a hopeful expression.

  “I got it,” Logan said, coming around the table to help pick them up.

  A small creature was sitting on the floor, gobbling up marshmallows as fast as it could. Logan caught a glimpse of honey-colored fur and enormous dark eyes when it looked up at him, and then it vaulted onto the table, up to the top of the doorframe, and out of the room before he could even blink.

  “What was that?” Logan asked.

  “What was what?” Zoe said, picking up the bag.

  “That thing eating the marshmallows,” Logan said.

  She gave him a quizzical look. “Thing eating the marshmallows?”

  “Didn’t you see it?” Logan said. “Was it the baku?”

  “No, the baku is nocturnal and moves very slowly,” Zoe said. “We’d know if it was in the kitchen. You must be seeing things.”

  “Yes, I did,” Logan said. “One actual thing, eating marshmallows. Seriously, it was right there!”

  “Anyway,” Zoe said. “My parents have gone to meet with the SNAPA agents this morning to tell them everything. Actually, they’re making Ruby tell them, which I kind of wish I could be there for. They decided we’ll need SNAPA’s help, and for once, I kind of agree. Stopping the Sterlings is a bigger problem than we can solve, but SNAPA cleans up potential disasters like this all the time. I think. I hope.”

  “Wait,” Logan said, struck by an awful thought that chased the mystery creature right out of his head. “Zoe, what if . . . what if the Sterlings know something about my mom? What if SNAPA gives them kraken ink and they forget everything?”

  Zoe set down the cocoa and stared at him with wide brown eyes. “Oh my gosh, Logan.”

  “Hang on,” Blue said. “There’s no reason to think there’s any connection between what happened to Abigail and that map in Mr. Sterling’s office.”

  “But there could be,” Logan said. “Right?”

  “What if the Sterlings have her?” Zoe said. “Maybe they tried to grab the Chinese dragon and ended up getting Abigail as well.”

  “Jasmin’s parents aren’t kidnappers,” Blue said, but Logan thought he didn’t sound so sure. “They wouldn’t . . .”

  “They might at least know what happened to her, or where she is,” Logan said. “And if they do—”

  “Logan’s right,” Zoe said. “If they have Abigail and the Chinese dragon, and we
dose them, they might forget where they’re keeping them. We might never find them.” She pulled out her phone. “We can’t risk it. I’ll text my parents right away.”

  Logan looked down at his hands, clenching them into fists and then opening them again. His stomach felt like a yawning pit full of angry dragons.

  Was it possible? Did the Sterlings have his mother trapped somewhere?

  “I feel like I’m in a Hardy Boys book,” Blue said.

  “Well, I’ve been in Narnia all week,” Logan said. “It’s not that big of a jump from there.”

  The doorbell rang.

  Zoe and Blue blinked at each other. Neither of them moved.

  “What?” Logan said. “Why do you guys look so spooked? It’s just the doorbell. Most people find those less scary than man-eating hellhounds.” On the floor, Sheldon thumped his tail twice as if to say, Yup, that’s me, I’m terrifying!

  “The doorbell never rings,” Zoe said. “Nobody ever comes over. Who is that?”

  “Can’t be SNAPA,” Blue said. “Leftover trick-or-treaters?”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t answer it,” said Zoe.

  “Oh, come on,” Logan said. “It’s probably a delivery or someone selling Girl Scout cookies. I’ll go get it, if you want.”

  “Wait, Logan,” Zoe said, hurrying after him.

  Logan pulled open the front door.

  And found himself face-to-face with Jasmin Sterling.

  SIX

  Zoe froze in her tracks. Jasmin was here. At her house. This never happened even when they were friends. As far as Jasmin knew, Zoe owned at least seven cats, which Jasmin had to stay far away from because of her crazy allergies.

  “Hi, Logan!” Jasmin said brightly. She had her dark hair swept up into a cute messy ponytail and she was wearing a soft sage-green shirt that flared at the wrists, plus jeans with sneakers. She was carrying something dark blue draped over one arm. No tall boots, no fancy jacket, no expensive jewelry. She looked like she always had when she was Zoe’s best friend.