The Menagerie #2 (24 page)

“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 beauty? 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.”

M
atthew 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 their 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 flamingo-looking judge sat behind a card table, facing the lawyers. His long neck twisted as he followed the ping-pong argument Ruby and Runcible were having from their separate tables. Off to the side, the jury sat with expressions ranging from bored (Firebella) to extremely bored (Sapphire). And on the other side was Scratch, laden with chains and drooping gloomily. Zoe's dad stood beside him, holding an electric shock wand and wearing most of a fireproof suit, apart from the helmet.

And standing ominously next to the prosecution's table was a masked figure, all in black, with the hood of his coat pulled up. Even seeing him from a distance made Zoe shiver.