Krakens and Lies (7 page)

Zoe laughed. She did remember how Jasmin's mom was about her furniture—the girls weren't even allowed to have popcorn if they watched movies in the den, and Jasmin had once lost her bike for a month because she scuffed a wall by throwing her crayons at Jonathan.

Jasmin smiled at her, then ducked her head and looked down at her shoes.

“I'll go get him,” Zoe said. “We were just, um—”
This is it
, she realized.
This is our chance! If we can get her to drink something, we can slip her the jackalope milk!
She glanced at Logan, who was giving her a wide-eyed look like he'd had the same thought.

“Making smoothies,” she blurted. “We were making smoothies. Be right back.”

She bolted into the kitchen and found Blue sitting on top
of Sheldon, pinning him to the floor. The hellhound wagged his tail furiously at Zoe, his glowing red eyes shining with delight, and wriggled toward the door even with Blue on top of him.

“Why is she here?” Blue whispered. “Sheldon, stay! Chill out!”

“Go be nice to her,” Zoe whispered back. “Give me two minutes and then offer her a smoothie.
Do not let her say no
.”

“Oh, man,” Blue said. He stood up and Zoe grabbed Sheldon's collar, leaning all her weight into holding him back. Blue brushed fur off his clothes and then ran his hands through his hair. “How do I look?” he asked.

Zoe stared at him as if he'd grown an extra fish tail. “You look the same as you always look. Don't be weird!”

“All right, all right,” he said, sauntering out into the hall. Sheldon tried to lunge after him and Zoe yanked him back.

“Logan!” she called. “A little help in here?”

“Hey, Jasmin,” she heard Blue say. “Great party last night.”

“Like you would know,” Jasmin joked. “You were there for what, three nanoseconds? You completely missed Cadence and Violet accidentally pushing Aidan into the pool. It was so funny.”

Logan ducked into the kitchen and saw Zoe struggling with Sheldon. He glanced around, grabbed the giant cookie jar next to the toaster, and pulled out one of the monstrous dog biscuits Zoe's parents had made the night before.

Sheldon immediately sat down and gave Logan his full slavering attention.

“So, anyway,” Jasmin said, “I found this jacket after the party and I wondered if it might be yours, so I figured I'd bring it over and check.”

Zoe shook her head sympathetically. She was sure Jasmin remembered exactly what Blue was wearing at any given moment, and whatever jacket she'd found was clearly not his. What it was, in fact, was a convenient excuse to come over and see Blue.
Smart, Jasmin
. And brave; Jasmin had been flirting with Blue for years, but she'd never risked looking ridiculous before.

“Oh, thanks,” Blue said, “but it's not mine.”

“Okay,” Jasmin said, and Zoe could hear her courage failing. “Sorry, I'll just—go.”

“No, wait,” Blue said quickly. “Uh—I want to hear more about Aidan falling into the pool.”

“Really?” Jasmin said.

“Yeah, totally.” Zoe peeked around the corner and saw Blue lean sideways against the doorframe, closer to Jasmin. He grinned down at her. “Was he wearing his cowboy hat?”

Jasmin giggled. “He
was
.” She launched into the whole story.

Zoe turned back to Logan, thinking. The look on Blue's face . . . he wasn't that good an actor.
Blue and Jasmin? Could it actually happen?
In some ways, that would be awkward for
Zoe, but in all the ways that it would make Jasmin happy, it would be worth it. Given the Ruby-Jonathan debacle, everyone could take their ban on dating and shove it up a harpy's nose.

“Come on,” Logan whispered, waving the dog biscuit just out of Sheldon's reach. He backed toward the glass doors in the living room, with the hellhound trotting after him and Zoe close behind. Carefully Logan eased one of the doors open and threw the dog biscuit out into the dew-covered grass.

Sheldon bolted after it, but at the same time, three more giant black shapes came tearing out of the Doghouse, snarling hungrily.

“Oops,” Logan said.

Zoe ran into the kitchen, grabbed three more dog biscuits, ran back into the living room, and flung them at the squabbling hellhounds. Logan slammed the door shut.

“Did you hear that? Zoe's dog sounds kind of like twelve dogs,” Jasmin said, out in the front hall. “Or, like, seven bears.”

“Yeah, he's a character,” Blue said.

Zoe beckoned to Logan and darted back into the kitchen. “Smoothies,” she whispered, frantically hunting through the cupboards. “Find me stuff that can go in a smoothie. Come on, we have to have a blender in here somewhere.”

She started yanking pots and pans and mystery kitchen appliances out, leaving them scattered across the kitchen
floor. She knew they owned a blender. Matthew had once made himself a smoothie every day for a month after one of the visiting Trackers told him—jokingly, Zoe suspected—that kale and raw eggs would make him strong enough to wrestle a wampus cat.

“You have one banana,” Logan reported. “And three half-dead strawberries.”

“Here it is,” Zoe gasped, dragging the blender out from behind a bread machine wrapped in duct tape. She set it on the counter and dove back into the cabinet, looking for the top.

Logan grabbed the blender and rinsed it out in the sink, then dropped in the banana and the strawberries and a handful of ice. “You also have hardly any milk left,” he said. “Apart from jackalope milk, but it can't be all jackalope milk or she won't even try it.”

“Use this,” Zoe said, crawling out with the blender top and picking up her cup of cocoa. She dumped it in, milk and cocoa and marshmallows together. “What else? Honey? No, wait, I left the honey in the unicorn stables yesterday.”

Logan took the jackalope milk out of the fridge. Even with the top on the bottle, Zoe could still smell it from across the kitchen.

“How much should we put in?” he asked.

Zoe clutched her hair. “I have no idea!” she whispered frantically. A drop? The whole bottle? What would work?
They couldn't get this wrong. What would happen if someone drank too much jackalope milk?

“Want to come in and, uh . . . have a smoothie?” she heard Blue say.

“Oh—I shouldn't,” Jasmin said. “Zoe's cats, remember? I'd turn into Little Miss Sneeze, which is not my most glamorous look, by the way.”

“Cats,” Blue said. “Right. No, well, actually, the cats, uh . . . the cats are all gone.”

“Gone?” Jasmin echoed, startled. “All seven of them? What happened?”

“Um . . .”

“Please don't tell me her new dog ate them,” Jasmin said. “Because he sounds like he could.”

“No, no. Nothing terrible. They, uh, went to live on a farm in the country. That's all.”

“Hmm,” Jasmin said skeptically. “That sounds like code for ‘the dog ate them,' Blue. But okay. If you guys don't have cats anymore, then sure, I can stay for a bit.”

“Wait,” Zoe said, darting into the hall and blocking their way. “I have to—we just—um, let me clean up the dog hair. Just in case. Give us one second.” She bolted around them and up the stairs.

“Where is she going?” Jasmin asked.

“To get the . . . vacuum,” Blue said unconvincingly.

“You keep your vacuum upstairs?” Jasmin said. “Should
we remind her I'm not allergic to dogs?”

Zoe ran down the upstairs hall and pounded on Matthew's door.

No response.

She knew he would kill her, but she burst in anyway.

No Matthew. The room was empty, and a total mess, as usual.
Where is he?
Zoe scanned the room and spotted one of the walkie-talkies on the floor, under his jacket. She threw herself at it and pressed the call button.

“Matthew? Can you hear me? It's an emergency.”

There was a long, frustrating silence, and then the radio crackled.

“What's up? I'm on my way to feed the salamanders.”

Zoe took a deep breath. “Matthew. I have a really important question I need you to answer right now without giving me a massive big-brother hard time. Okay?”

Crackle. “That sounds . . . ominous,” he said.

“Suppose you were going to give someone jackalope milk,” she said, pressing her fingers to her forehead. “How much would you need to give them for it to work?”

Another long, long pause.

“ARE YOU KIDDING ME?” Matthew yelled into the walkie-talkie. “ZOE, ARE YOU SERIOUSLY OUT OF YOUR MIND? With everything that's going on with the Sterlings right now?”

“She's
here
, Matthew,” Zoe said, starting to cry. “And if
she's sick—can't you understand? I have to do this and I have to do it now.”

“For the love of krakens,” Matthew said. “Zoe, she's not really sick. Jonathan was totally lying.”

“We don't
know
that,” Zoe said. “She might be awfully sick, and I could save her. I
have
to.”

There was another pause, and then Matthew sighed. “One tablespoon. That's it. Any more than that and she might end up living forever and never getting zits or something.”

“Thank you!” Zoe cried. “Thank you, Matthew!”

“You are
never
hearing the end of this,” he said. “Both my sisters are cracked in the head.”

Zoe ran back down the stairs, around Jasmin and Blue, and into the kitchen.

“Where's the vacuum?” Jasmin asked.

“Couldn't find it!” Zoe called. “One more minute!” She dropped the walkie-talkie on the kitchen counter and took the bottle from Logan.

“One tablespoon,” she said, pulling out the measuring spoons. She poured an exact tablespoon out and dumped it in the smoothie. Logan re-capped the bottle and shoved it into the back of the fridge.

“Okay, you can come in,” Zoe called. She pressed the button on the blender and everything inside began to spin around with a deafening whirring sound as Blue led Jasmin into the kitchen.

And then, through the pass-through window, Zoe saw a huge furry head slowly rise up, flapping its ears.

The blender had woken Captain Fuzzbutt.

If she thought a hellhound would be difficult to explain, a baby woolly mammoth was probably going to blow up Jasmin's brain completely.

She shot Logan a desperate look and he followed her gaze to the living room, where the Captain was yawning hugely and swinging his trunk in an exploratory circle.

Logan sidled quickly out of the kitchen, giving Jasmin a manic smile. Jasmin still had her back to the living room, but if she turned around, she would have an excellent view of Logan trying to shove a mammoth out of sight. Zoe watched in petrified horror as he threw his weight against the Captain's side and Fuzzbutt grunted with amusement, poking Logan cheerfully with his trunk.

“So,” Blue said. “Smoothie? Zoe?”

“Right,” she said, snapping back to attention. “Here.” She shoved the blender toward them and grabbed a glass out of the cabinet.

“I can't believe I've never been in here before,” Jasmin said, setting the jacket on a chair and twisting her fingers together as she glanced around. “My allergies seem fine so far. What did you do with your fire alarm dog?”

“Ha-ha!” Zoe said. “I mean, he's around. Probably in the living room. Don't go in there!”

Jasmin started to turn toward the living room. Logan frantically grabbed Fuzzbutt's tail and tried to tug him out of sight. The mammoth snorted and swatted him away.

“Hey,” Blue said, reaching out and touching Jasmin's hand. She pivoted back toward him with a dazzling smile. He held out the drink, which was a hideous reddish-brownish-greenish color. “You can have this one.”

“Oh, thanks,” she said, and then, as she lifted the glass to her mouth, she stopped. Her nose crinkled and she lowered the glass again, eyeing the thick concoction inside doubtfully. “Um. Sorry . . . what's in this? It smells a little . . . unusual.”

“Wheatgrass,” Blue said promptly.

“Greek yogurt,” Zoe said at the same time.

“Uh-huh,” Jasmin said, raising her eyebrows. Zoe realized she was staring at Jasmin like a crazy person. She ducked below the island and started putting away the pots, trying to look casual. Her heart was thumping.
Please drink it. Please drink it
.

“You know, I don't really love Greek yogurt,” Jasmin said to Blue. “Maybe I'll skip it.”

“Oh, try it,” Blue said charmingly. “This is my favorite. I make them all the time.”

“Yeah?” Zoe heard Jasmin sniff the drink again. “You know what, then you should have it.”

“I want
you
to have it,” Blue said, a little too intensely.

“I'm okay, really,” Jasmin said, setting it on the counter. “I
mean, that's really sweet, but—well, my doctor said maybe I should eat less, uh . . . wheatgrass.”

Doctor?!

It
was
true!

Zoe leaped to her feet. “Jasmin, you have to drink it!” she cried.

Jasmin jumped back, startled. In the living room, Captain Fuzzbutt wheeled around to face Zoe, alarmed by her tone of voice. Logan frantically started throwing blankets over the mammoth's back, as if hoping that perhaps Jasmin would be like, “Ah, yes, just your average elephant-sized pile of blankets there, nothing remarkable.”

“It's only a smoothie, Zoe,” Jasmin said, glancing at Blue.

“Zoe, calm down,” Blue said. He had on his maddening “the universe will work itself out” face.

“It's
not
just a smoothie!” Zoe said passionately. “It could save your
life
!”

“What?” Jasmin took a step toward the door. “You know, maybe I should—”

“Blue, hold her down!” Zoe shouted. She charged around the island and grabbed the smoothie. Holy mother of dragons, it did smell completely disgusting.