Krakens and Lies (5 page)

“How could they have done any of that?” Blue asked. He pointed back at the dragon caves in the cliff. One of them glowed with a small, eerie red light—the fire of whichever dragon was on duty tonight, Logan guessed. “I mean, you know I don't trust the dragons, but surely at
some
point they would have sounded the intruder alert if the Sterlings kept coming into the Menagerie.”

“Not the night Pelly was stolen,” Zoe reminded him. “There was no alarm. Scratch was out eating sheep, remember?”

“But he could only do that because someone had already tampered with his chain and the electric fence,” Blue argued back. “The Sterlings couldn't have done that.”

Zoe fell silent.

“So if the Sterlings are the saboteurs,” Logan said slowly,
“then either they found a way around the dragons' intruder alarm, or . . .”

“Or someone inside the Menagerie is working with them,” Zoe finished.

“It's not me,” Matthew said, popping out from behind the Doghouse. Zoe shrieked and jumped back, nearly knocking Logan over.

“Sorry, sorry,” Matthew said. He held up his hands with a grin. “I just wanted to put that out there, since you always think it's me. I swear I am not working with the Sterlings.”

The ground shook as Captain Fuzzbutt came barreling up the hill, trumpeting anxiously. He threw his trunk around Zoe and lifted her off the ground.

“I'm all right! It's okay, Captain, put me down,” she said.

Grudgingly he set her on her feet and patted her all over with his trunk.

“What did Mom and Dad do to Ruby?” Zoe asked Matthew, rubbing the mammoth's forehead.

“They were still discussing it when they kicked me out,” he said, shaking his head. “I heard them say something about sticking her in a SNAPA OOPSS course during all her school breaks for the next three years.”

“No
way
,” Zoe said in a voice that was equal parts awe, delight, and horror.

“What's an oops course?” Logan asked.

“Official Overview of Protective Security Standards,” Zoe said.

“Essentially the most boring thing associated with mythical creatures
ever
,” said Matthew. “It's, like, remedial ‘don't tell anyone about the animals' classes. Shut Your Yap 101. You're stuck in an underground facility for months on end, reading long boring articles about the rules and what happens when people break the rules. Ruby would haaaaaaaate it.”

“Perfect,” Zoe said firmly. “I hope they really do it.”

“I voted for sending her to the Tanzania menagerie to work with the Giant Mythical Insect research team,” Matthew said. “I think feeding enormous talking cockroaches and cleaning out monster spider dens would serve her right.”

“That's a good one, too,” Blue said. “I guess SNAPA will have to decide.”

“As long as it's awful,” Zoe said, shaking her head. “I still can't believe what she did.”

“I'm going to head out front,” Logan said. “My dad will be here soon, and I'm guessing nobody wants him ringing the doorbell right now.”

“All right,” Zoe said. To his surprise, she came over and gave him a hug. “Thank you for your help. And for finding that map. I don't know what's going to happen, but I know it would have been a lot worse if you hadn't found it.”

“I'll be back in the morning,” Logan said. “If that's okay?”

“You better be,” Blue said, punching his shoulder.

Nobody was in the kitchen as they went through, but they could hear the murmur of voices from upstairs. The Halloween candy bowl sat abandoned on the table. But as Logan went past it, he could have sworn he saw a Three Musketeers bar suddenly . . . disappear from the bowl. He stopped and blinked at it.

I'm just tired and imagining things
, he told himself.

He slipped out the front door and found his dad's car parked in the driveway, its front windows rolled down.

But his dad was nowhere to be seen.

“Dad?” Logan said, glancing around at the dark woods that surrounded the Kahn property. “Dad?” he called, a bit louder.

Is this what happened to Mom? Did she just vanish like this?

A bolt of fear shot down Logan's spine. He reached into the car and grabbed a flashlight from the glove compartment. The light did hardly anything to illuminate the spaces between the pine trees, but he stepped closer to the wall, sweeping it around.

“DAD!” he shouted.

Twigs cracked in the woods off to his right. Logan whirled around and caught his dad right in the beam of the flashlight.

Jackson Wilde threw up his hands to shade his face. “Whoa, buddy. Spare an old man's eyes.”

Logan lowered the light and frowned at the darkness
behind his dad. “What were you doing out there?”

“I thought I saw something moving,” his dad said. “Some kind of animal, maybe a coyote. You know we've had something eating the sheep around here. I figured I should investigate. Wildlife department and all.” He tapped his shirt, although he wasn't wearing his badge.

“Without a flashlight?” Logan said skeptically. “Or a weapon? You may be taller than a sheep, but you could be just as edible.”

Logan's dad laughed and slung an arm around Logan's shoulder, a little awkwardly given how tall Mr. Wilde was. “I'd like to meet the coyote who'd dare to try and eat me.”

How about a dragon? Or a kelpie?
Logan thought. He glanced back at the woods as they climbed in the car. Had his dad really seen something? Or was he trying to snoop around the Kahns' house?

“Those are some tall walls,” his dad said. “What do they keep in there? Cattle? I don't recall seeing a license for them in our files. . . .”

“I'm sure they have one,” Logan said, evading the question. He knew SNAPA would have given them some kind of cover story and paperwork to guarantee no one from any other government agency came poking around.

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.

“E
xplain 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.”