The Menagerie #2 (19 page)

“Hi, Keiko!” Marco blurted loudly.

She glanced up, narrowed her eyes at him, and went back to reading.

“That doesn't look like homework,” said Zoe.

“It's more important than homework,” Keiko said. “I'm choosing a costume for the Halloween party.”

“Jasmin's party?” Marco said with a little too much enthusiasm. “I'm going to that, too! On Friday! In costume! I'll totally be there!”

“As what?” Keiko said, flipping a page without looking up. “A chicken?”

“HA-HA-HA!” Marco said. “Uh, you know there's a difference between a chicken and a rooster, right? Roosters are much tougher.”

“Right,” Keiko said, yawning. “And they're a little saltier, too. Still delicious, though.”

Marco opened and closed his mouth a few times, looking equal parts horrified and fascinated. Logan took his elbow and dragged him up the stairs behind Zoe.

Matthew's room was at the end of the hallway, beyond Blue's room and opposite the bathroom. The door was always closed, as far as Logan had seen, and it was covered with sketches of stern-looking griffins and fierce dragons and a few creatures he couldn't even name. The drawings were pretty great, actually; Logan wished he could draw like that.

Zoe hesitated outside the door, then knocked.

“Go away!” Matthew's voice yelled, making them all jump.

“Guess we're not sneaking in there,” Blue whispered.

“Matthew,” Zoe called. “Logan wanted to ask you a question about Tracker camp.” She signaled to Blue that he should take Marco into his room and the two of them ducked out of sight.

The door creaked open and Matthew looked out at Zoe and Logan, frowning. He had dark rings under his eyes and smelled like coffee and damp leaves.

“I'm not speaking to either of you,” he said. “I've showered twice and I'm still finding glitter in my ears and armpits and between my toes. Even my sneezes are sparkly. It is NOT. COOL.”

“Please?” Zoe said. “Isn't there a deadline for applying?”

Matthew raised his eyebrows. “You want to apply to Tracker camp?” he said to Logan.

“Uh, yes,” Logan said, although he hadn't thought about it seriously. “I mean, I think so. Did you like it?”

“Yeah,” said Matthew, not very convincingly.

“Matthew was the star of Tracker camp,” Zoe said.

“False,” Matthew said. “Now go away.”

“Oh, please,” Zoe said. “The first couple of weeks, it was like we got an email every day from the counselors talking about how you're so great with the animals and you're working so hard and you've inherited the Kahn touch and all that.”

“Yeah, well,” said Matthew. “After a while they figured out they were wrong.” He started to close the door and Zoe stuck her foot in the way. “Zoe, stop annoying me.”

“Can you just show Logan your application?” she asked. “Please? I'll do your Reptile House chores tomorrow.”

Matthew pointed at her. “And take my turn cleaning out the unicorn stable.”

“All right,” she said with a grimace.

“Fine.” He gestured into his room. “Come in, but don't touch anything.”

Logan's first impression was that Matthew's room was a huge mess. Clothes were scattered across the dark green rug, on top of the desk, over the rolling desk chair, and basically everywhere except in the laundry hamper. Pine-green sheets were tangled with a white-and-green-striped comforter on the bed; no sign of a pillow anywhere. Giant corkboards covered two of the walls, and about a million sketches of mythical creatures were pinned to them, plus a map of Xanadu with several red X marks all over the surrounding woods. The only clear spot in the room was on the desk, where a box of colored pencils sat neatly on a blank sketch pad.

Zoe looked around in surprise. “Where's your Tracker dreamboard?” she asked.

“It was stupid,” Matthew said.

“No, it was cool,” Zoe protested. She turned to Logan. “When Matthew was ten, he made this awesome dreamboard about how he was going to be a Tracker when he grew up, and he put it on the wall to keep himself focused.”

“Lame,” said Matthew, tossing clothes off his desk chair.

“Is it in the closet?” Zoe asked, opening the closet door.

“Don't go in there!” Matthew yelled.

Zoe blinked at the piles of clothes and shoes on the closet floor, then tilted her head at Matthew. “Why are you acting weird? There's nothing in here. Except this.” She reached up and gently touched a set of tiny wind chimes that were hanging from the otherwise empty bar. The small jade tablets of the chimes tinkled, sending strange ripples along Logan's skin. Matthew shivered as well, frowning, but Zoe didn't seem to feel it.

“I mean, it's a little crazy to have wind chimes in your closet, but I won't call any authorities on you, don't worry,” she joked. “Oh, here it is.” She pulled a large white foam square from the back of the closet and propped it on the bed for Logan to look at.

In the center of the board was a photo of Logan's mom with her arm around a ten-year-old Matthew. Her warm brown eyes crinkled over her huge smile, and Logan felt his own eyes prickle alarmingly. He was so not going to cry in front of Matthew.

“Oh, so you
do
know your mom's a Tracker,” Matthew said curiously from behind him.

“Only because I told him,” Zoe said. “These are some of the other Trackers who have brought us animals.” She pointed to a few other photos on the board; in each one, Matthew stood beaming beside a grown-up, most of whom looked like they'd just leaped off a safari truck, rolled through the mud, wrestled a hippo, and dragged it all the way home with their bare hands.

There were also words cut from magazines pasted all over the board, like
BRAVE
and
ADVENTURE
and
CARING
and
CLEVER
and
AMBUSH
and
FAST
. Each one made Logan think of his mom. There were also more animal sketches and an ancient-looking map of the world with
HERE BE DRAGONS
written in the oceans.

“Anyway,” Zoe said. “I thought you'd like to see that. Matthew, did you find your application?”

Matthew unearthed a file folder from the mess under his desk and tossed it to Logan. “It's not as fun as it sounds,” he said. “You learn a lot, but it's hard work.” He crossed to a table Logan hadn't noticed before and lifted a towel off a giant glass cage that looked like an ant farm.

“Because of all the animals there, right?” said Zoe. “You have to help take care of them in between training. I heard Camp Underpaw has a manticore.”

“No way,” said Matthew, looking at her like she was crazy. “Those are really dangerous.” He pointed to a sketch on the wall beside him of a red lion creature with a creepy man's face, sharp teeth, and nasty-looking spines poking out of its tail. “SNAPA never puts them anywhere near minors, and Camp Underpaw is for ages thirteen and up.”

Maybe I
could
go next summer
, Logan thought.
If we can find Mom by then. I bet she could talk Dad into it.
He opened the folder and saw a brochure with a bunch of grinning, dirty teenagers in the woods, looking exhausted and happy. There were no photos of the mythical creatures—that was against SNAPA's rules—but Logan could still get an idea of the place from the photos of kids studying tracks with a magnifying glass, climbing a rocky mountainside, and pointing at the sky. It looked like more fun than tennis camp, that was for sure.

“So what animals do they have?” Zoe asked casually, perching on the edge of Matthew's bed.

“Some of the same things we do,” Matthew said. “Griffins, unicorns, halcyons.” He picked up a small jam jar that seemed to be seething with movement inside. Logan squinted at it and realized it was full of ants. “Plus a pegasus, a chimera, a bunch of selkies and yawkyawks, a hippocamp, stuff like that.” He shook a few ants into the top of the ant farm and sighed. “And a bonnacon.”

“What's a bonnacon?” Logan asked, watching the ants curiously. Why were they in a jar instead of in the farm?

“That,” Matthew said, pointing to another sketch. The dark blue creature looked like a bull, but with a horse's mane, fierce red eyes, and two sharp, curving horns that pointed in toward each other. “It smells awful and it hates everyone in the world. But the worst part is that it poops fire. I mean, not just fire—giant poop that's
on fire
. It is
the worst.
”

“Oh, that's the thing that caused the accident this summer,” Zoe said. “Right? It burned down some fences or something?”

Matthew flushed and glared at his ant farm. “That's right,” he muttered.

A sudden movement inside the cage caught Logan's eye. Something was tunneling rapidly up through the sand—something bigger than your average ant.

An insect as long as Logan's pointer finger erupted from the sand below the ants and gobbled them all in ten seconds flat. It licked its lips and gave the glass, and Matthew beyond the glass, a golden-eyed
Is that it?
look.

“Whoa,” Logan said. He crouched and peered in at the insect. It had the body of an ant—but the head of a tiny lion. The lion's face snarled at him, shaking its mane. “What on earth is that?”

“It's an ant-lion,” Matthew said. “Obviously.”

“Obviously,” Logan echoed.

“There are two more in here somewhere.” Matthew bent down to look inside the glass as well.

“Hey, didn't something escape during the fire?” Zoe asked. “Dad told us something got loose. It wasn't a golden goose, by any chance, was it?”

Matthew turned slowly and gave her a sharp look. “Zoe,” he said. “Now you're asking weird questions. And your weird questions often lead to weird behavior, like throwing glitter up my nose. So what are you up to?”

Zoe fidgeted with his comforter for a moment before blurting, “We think Pelly's still alive.”

“How—” Matthew started.

“Those aren't her feathers at the crime scene,” Zoe said. She told him about Marco and checking the SNAPA agent's computer. Logan watched the ant-lion stamping around inside the farm, roaring hungrily. Another lion face poked through the sand and growled at it, and the first ant-lion growled back, and they stood there growling at each other and wriggling their ant butts fiercely for a while.

“So we thought maybe you had access to the camp goose's feathers . . .” Zoe trailed off.

Matthew sat down heavily in his desk chair. “Zoe, what is up with you suspecting me of crazy things? First I'm a werewolf, now I'm a goose-napper?”

“Well, obviously I don't think you're much of a suspect, since I'm telling you about it,” Zoe pointed out.

“I didn't kidnap Pelly,” Matthew said. “Camp Underpaw's goose is only about sixty years old.”

“So why are you acting so weird?” Zoe cried. “You've been different ever since you got back from camp, all moody and secretive.” She pointed to the scar on his arm. “I don't believe a griffin gave you that. You are awesome with griffins. And you keep disappearing so even Mom and Dad don't know where you are. What's going on?”

Logan shoved his hands in his pockets and studied the pictures on the wall, wondering if he should slip out of the room. There was a long pause as Matthew ran his hands through his hair and stared at the floor.

“Fine,” Matthew said finally. He got up, unpinned a sketch from the corkboard with the Xanadu map, and handed it to Zoe.

She blinked at it. “A qilin? A qilin didn't give you that scar. They're really gentle.” She passed the sketch to Logan. The slender creature Matthew had drawn was shaped a bit like a deer, but with horse hooves, blue fish scales all along its back, and one long horn pointing backward from its head instead of forward like a unicorn horn.

“A qilin is what escaped from Camp Underpaw,” Matthew said. “Because of me.”

He opened his computer and pulled up an email with a video attachment. The email was from a Geoff Landers with the subject line “The Great Matthew Kahn rides the Bonnacon Rodeo.” The message just said: “Worst cowboy ever. Watch whenever you need a laugh.” Logan noticed that it had been sent to a whole camp list.

“Who's Geoff Landers?” Zoe asked, leaning over his shoulder.

“A huge jerk,” said Matthew. “Him and Bryson Polo. Every time I screwed up, they'd be there laughing at me. I felt like an idiot all summer. Turns out I was an idiot, because when they dared me to ride the bonnacon, I said yes.” He hunched his shoulders. “I didn't want them to think I was a coward as well as a terrible Tracker.” He clicked on the video, which expanded to fill the screen.

The video was blurry and jumpy, as if it had been taken by a camera phone at night. The primary sound was two guys laughing their heads off, but in the background there was also a bellowing ox-like noise, crashing, and the high-pitched shrieks of other animals. A large shape bolted across the screen, pooping fireballs in a long trail behind it. If he squinted, Logan could recognize Matthew in the figure clinging to the bonnacon's twisted horns.

“Whoa,” Zoe said.

“Yeah.” Matthew exhaled slowly. “See that fence it's running toward? The qilin lived on the other side of it.” As he spoke, one of the bonnacon's fiery poops went tumbling toward the fence and instantly set it ablaze.

In the video, Matthew twisted around, saw the fence on fire, and threw himself off the bonnacon. Logan couldn't tell whether he'd hurt himself getting on the animal in the first place, or if he was slashed by the horns on the way off, but Matthew got up with blood streaming down his face and one arm. He staggered over to the fence and started beating at the flames with his jacket, yelling for help.

“Geoff!” he called. “Bryson! Come on, we have to put this out!”