The Menagerie #2 (12 page)

Zoe got up, pulling out her phone. “Let me check with my parents.”

Logan guessed she was going to ask how much she could reveal about the Menagerie. He figured a werefamily had to know a thing or two about keeping secrets, even—or maybe especially—with a loudmouth like Marco in the mix.

He just hoped for Scratch's sake that they really had seen a werewolf . . . and that they could lead the Menagerie right to it.

M
arco's house was set off by itself, far back from the road. It was tall and painted dark red, with a wide porch across the front and along one side. Toys littered the porch and the yard. Logan stepped carefully over a space blaster, a Barbie with teeth marks all over her arms, a punctured basketball, and several discarded costume hats, including a princess tiara, a cowboy hat, and a purple beret.

On the path leading up to the door was a chalk outline of hopscotch, decorated around the edges with what appeared to be vampire bats and drooling zombies, which were themselves embellished with flower headdresses in a different color of chalk, which were then scribbled out. Little word bubbles came out of the zombies with notes like:
STOP DRAWING FLOWERS ON ME OR I WILL EAT YOUR BRAINS!
and
NINA'S BRAINS ARE MY LUNCH!
and
NINA, STOOOOOP!
and
AAAAAARGH!

Logan, Zoe, and Blue followed Marco up the steps. Marco kicked aside a couple of newspapers and a toy trumpet and reached for the doorknob.

The front door flew open.

A black bear stood in the frame, up on its hind legs, baring its teeth at them.

“
ROAR!
” it bellowed.

Even though it was no bigger than Logan, and even though he immediately knew this must be Marco's brother Carlos, Logan still felt his heart thump in his throat for a moment.

Marco picked up one of the newspapers and flung it at the bear, bonking it on the nose. “Carlos, go away! Nobody here is scared of you!”

The bear dropped to all fours and shambled back into the house, grumbling.

“MA!” Marco hollered, leading the way inside, into a cluttered living room that was twice as crowded with stuff as the yard and the porch. Taylor Swift music thumped from a room down the hall and a vacuum cleaner droned upstairs. “Carlos is answering the door as a bear again!”

The vacuum cleaner stopped and a short, plump, dark-haired woman wearing bright parrot green came clattering down the stairs. “Marco!” She grabbed Marco's shoulders and smushed him into her for a giant hug.

“Mooooooom, you already hugged me this morning when you dropped off my bag,” Marco complained.

“I will hug you as many times as I want to,” Mrs. Jimenez said sternly. “I am the mother. It is one of my privileges.” She gave Logan and the other two a suspicious look.

“MAMI!” shrieked a female voice from the room down the hall. “Carlos is poking his nose in my garbage can! Gross! Stop that!” There was a series of thumps.

“Nina, stop throwing shoes at your brother!” Marco's mom shouted. “And don't you dare—”

There was an even louder thump and the sound of furniture overturning.

“Oh, you
did not
!” hollered Marco's mom, letting go of Marco and storming down the hall.

“MOOOM! MOOOM! MOOOM!” screamed a different female voice. “She's stepping on my clothes! MOOOOOOOOM, SHE SQUISHED MY LADYBUG BOOTS AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!” The voice escalated into a full-blown wail.

Marco chased after his mom. “You'll want to see this,” he called back to the others.

When Logan reached the doorway of what turned out to be a small back bedroom, he nearly ran straight into the long, serious face of a giant moose. Behind the moose, a bookshelf had been knocked over and books were scattered across the Minnie Mouse rug. The moose had one antler caught on the top rail of a bunk bed, where a little girl, maybe three or four years old, was sitting up close to the ceiling, hugging a
Dora the Explorer
pillow and bawling. The edge of a red rain boot stuck out from under one of the moose's giant feet. The black bear was backed into a corner beside a tipped-over trash can and a pink karaoke machine, growling at the moose.

“ENOUGH!” bellowed Marco's mom. “We do not fight as animals in this house! We use our words! Everyone back to human
right now
.”

The moose gave Logan a pointed look. He'd never seen a moose up close before; he couldn't even remember seeing one in a zoo or anything. It was absolutely gigantic.

Marco's mom eyeballed the moose. “What are you waiting for, young lady?”

“She can't change back in front of boy-oy-oys,” sobbed the girl on the top bunk. She pointed to a ripped pile of clothes under the moose's feet.

“Oh, right,” Marco said. He shepherded Logan and Zoe and Blue down the hall to the living room. “Sit, sit,” he said, waving at the sagging couch, which was shrouded in a sheet that was so covered in fur that Logan couldn't tell at first whether it was gray, black, or brown, and then he figured out that it was actually green under all that. Marco whisked the sheet away, revealing a slightly less fur-covered mustard-yellow couch, and bounded off to the kitchen. A few clanging noises suggested he was stuffing the cover into a washing machine.

“Who wants lemonade?” he asked, sticking his head back into the room.

“Me,” said Blue, so Logan raised his hand, too. Zoe didn't answer; she was busy studying a wall of black-and-white family portraits over the fireplace.

“I'll have some, too,” called a voice from over their heads.

Logan peered up and saw a skinny guy who looked about fourteen lounging on one of the rafters with a book, wearing khaki shorts and nothing else.

“I wasn't offering
you
any,” Marco called back.

“That is not how we talk to each other in this house,” said the older boy in a singsong voice eerily similar to their mother's.

As they argued, Logan saw Zoe take out her phone, snap a picture of one of the wall photos, and then tap a few buttons as if she were emailing it to someone. He went to stand next to her.

“What's up?” he asked.

“My mom has a theory,” she said with a shrug. “We'll see in a minute.”

“About Pelly's killer? Did you tell her Marco's family may have seen a werewolf? Does she agree a werewolf would make a better suspect than Scratch?”

“Maybe, but no, it's about—”

“Please forgive our chaos,” Mrs. Jimenez said as she came back into the room, carrying the little girl in her arms. A slightly older girl, maybe seven years old, trailed behind them, wearing a long-sleeved purple wool dress and a crestfallen expression that still looked sort of moose-y to Logan. She was clutching a ripped shirt in her hands. Marco's mom pointed to one of the armchairs, and the older girl sat down, opened a small basket labeled
NINA
by her feet, and pulled out a needle and a few rolls of thread.

“It's not fair,” she said, poking at the needle with the end of the thread. “I was only trying to stop Carlos from making a mess.”

“And a fine job you did of that,” said her mother.

“Why doesn't
he
have to sew his clothes back together?” demanded Nina. “I read about this for my biography report on Susan B. Anthony! You are making me sew things because I'm a girl! Carlos doesn't have to do anything!”

“
Carlos
had the good sense to take all his clothes
off
before he turned into a bear,” her mother pointed out. “He will still, however, be doing laundry tonight as punishment for being an animal indoors and answering the door to strangers that way.”

“What?” hollered Carlos. He marched out of the girls' room with a
Dora
sheet wrapped around him like a toga. Now that he was in human form and not shambling about on four paws, Logan guessed he was around ten years old. “Marco said they knew all about us! I was just having fun! Although I thought they'd be more scared. Lame.”

“It's your puny roar,” offered the boy in the rafters. “It's so obvious you don't really mean it. It sounds like: ‘roar, hey, what's up,' not ‘ROAR, I'M A REAL BEAR AND I'M GOING TO EAT YOU NOW.' You should work on that.”

“Oh, thank you, great and mighty bird of wisdom,” Carlos said sarcastically. “You don't know anything about bears! I should eat you for insubordination!”

“That is
not
how we talk to each other in this house!” their mother barked. “Carlos, go get your brothers' hampers. And for goodness' sakes, put on some clothes. Marco's friends will think we are a house full of barbarians.”

Actually, Logan was thinking it must be fun to live in a house this noisy. On the other hand, he was glad he didn't have to compete with four brothers and sisters for his dad's attention; it had always been hard enough competing with his mom's work. And he'd ended up losing that battle—or so her last postcard had made him think.

“You must be Zoe,” said Mrs. Jimenez, coming over to the fireplace. She shifted the little girl to one hip and held out her hand for Zoe to shake. “And are you Blue or Logan?”

“Logan,” he said, shaking her hand, too. The little girl's dark eyes watched through a curtain of hair, and he recognized the outraged expression from the squirrel that morning.

“Can I ask you who this is?” Zoe asked, pointing at the oldest-looking photo on the wall. All in sepia tones, a man in a cowboy hat stood on a rock with his hands on his hips. Behind him, the land sloped down into a valley with a lake in it. The man looked a bit like Marco, but the landscape looked even more familiar. Logan squinted at it.

“That's the view from the—” he blurted, but managed to stop himself right before he said “dragon caves.” None of the Menagerie buildings were there—no Aviary, no Reptile House, no unicorn stable—but the lake was the same shape, only missing one of the islands. And a log cabin filled the space where Zoe's house stood now.

Marco's mom stared at Logan. “You know this place?” she said.

Zoe's phone buzzed. “‘Horace Winterton,'” she read off her screen.

“That's right!” Mrs. Jimenez waved at the photo. “Our ancestor. The family legend is that he woke up in the woods around these parts one day with total amnesia—he couldn't remember where he'd come from, who his family was, or how he'd gotten there. All he had were the clothes on his back and this photo, but he could never find the place it was taken, although he searched the surrounding area for years before he met a weresparrow and got married and settled down. It was like his life started over that day.”

“He worked with my great-great-great-grandparents,” Zoe said. She slid her finger across the screen and showed a picture to Marco's mom. Logan leaned in and saw Horace standing with a smiling couple. “He was their dragon tamer, and a werejackrabbit. He's a legend to us, too, because he just disappeared one day. Mom thinks one of the dragons slipped him some kraken ink, trying to get rid of him.”

“Jerks,” muttered Blue. “Almost as bad as salamanders.”

Are dragons really that devious?
Logan wondered.
If they could do that
. . .
what if Scratch
did
figure out how to disable the cameras and set off the mist so no one would see him eat Pelly? But if he is that smart, why didn't he clean the blood off his teeth or come up with a story about what happened on his watch?

“I'm glad Horace turned out okay,” said Zoe.

“How did you guess they were related?” Logan asked.

“Well, my mom thought it was a little weird that a whole family of unregistered werecreatures were living down the road from us, most likely for generations. The good news is that means I can tell you and Marco all about us. Nobody else, though.” Zoe glanced around at the little girls and the boy in the rafters.

“Victor, take your sisters out to play,” ordered Mrs. Jimenez, setting Elena down.

“Yay!” cried Nina, flinging down her sewing.

“PIRATE BARBIES!” Elena shrieked, scooping dolls off the floor. “Pirate Barbies on the owl ship in the sky with lollipop treasure!”

“
Mom
, I'm
reading
,” Victor objected. “And Elena's lollipops make my
wings
all sticky. And if I have to make
one more Barbie
walk the plank, I will literally die of boredom.”

“I will literally worry about that when it literally happens,” said Marco's mom. “Go. Now.”

Victor huffed and sighed and slammed his book shut. He tucked the book into the corner of the rafter and closed his eyes. A moment later, feathers shimmered across his skin, his face flattened and shrank, and his legs sprouted sharp talons. Soon a large owl sat on the rafter, pinning the shorts to the wood with its claws. Using its beak, the owl rearranged the shorts neatly where they were, and then flew down and out the door. Nina and Elena shrieked happily and chased after him.