The Secret Zoo, page 3
“Drastic measures for dire circumstances—I can’t avoid it.”
“But you can’t close the portals!” Ella said.
More noises in the closet, and then a young teenage girl stepped out. She had wild blond hair clipped to different lengths, wore purple leather boots that stopped near her knees, and was chomping a piece of gum. Hannah. She casually nodded at the scouts and then followed Sam out into the hall and down the stairs.
Noah turned his attention to the closet. From his angle, he couldn’t see into it. “How…”
Zak said, “Remember the velvet curtain that Charlie Red used to get into your closet? The one that you gave to us?”
“Of course,” Noah said.
“Your coordinates were still locked in. Me and a group of Tekkies were able to reengineer it.”
Mr. Darby looked at Zak and said, “Most resourceful, these young men.”
Though Noah couldn’t see into his closet, he knew what was now at the back of it—a velvet curtain attached above a large hole in the wall where the heating vent had been.
Something small shot out of the closet. A bright blue bird flew around the room and then landed on Noah’s shoulder. Marlo.
Noah positioned his head for the best view of the kingfisher. “You okay?”
Marlo chirped once to show that he was.
Noah turned to Mr. Darby and said, “The other animals—are they all right?”
“Some,” the old man said. “But things are very uncertain at this point.”
Another person walked out of the closet—an attractive girl with long dark hair that looped her ears and trailed down her back. She wore a blue leather jacket and fingerless gloves—gloves, Noah knew, that could sprout ten-inch quills. Solana. She winked at Noah and ran into the hall, followed by three Descenders Noah didn’t recognize.
A big man with a shiny bald head and mounded muscles stepped into the room. Tank. When he got close to Noah, he held his massive fist out toward him, and Noah lightly fist-bumped Tank’s walnut-sized knuckles.
Six new Descenders came out of the walk-in closet, one after another. Two Specters, Elakshi and Lee-Lee, appeared. They nodded at the scouts as they headed into the hall. Noah went to the window and looked out. Keeping to the shadows, the Secret Cityzens were heading off in different directions.
“Has he taken over the Clarksville Zoo?” Mr. Darby asked.
“Huh?” said Noah.
“The animals—has DeGraff gotten to them with his magic?”
Noah told Mr. Darby about the giraffes.
“And the security guards?”
Noah nodded.
“That means the sectors are his, too. Most, at least.”
The scouts told Mr. Darby about the tarantulas at their school. Looking worried, the old man simply listened.
“How did this happen?” Richie asked.
“A storm,” Mr. Darby said. “DeGraff conjured a storm to infect us with his dark magic.”
“Is the City of Species safe?”
Mr. Darby shook his head. He gestured to the Descenders still coming from Noah’s closet, saying, “We managed to escape into the basement of an old museum in the City of Species, the Institute of Light. Some animals did, too—Gifteds, mostly.” He motioned to Zak and added, “Our young friend had a brilliant idea. The curtain that once opened to your room was being kept in the museum. He did some work with it, and hung it in the basement. Now”—Mr. Darby gestured around him—“here we are. And now we must close the portals to your world before DeGraff and his growing army can use them.”
“But why not fight?” Megan asked. “The Descenders can track down DeGraff and—”
“The storm’s dark magic is too powerful. Our Descenders would only become DeGraff’s minions if they stayed in the shadows of the clouds for long.”
Noah looked at the closet again. A man with a shaggy beard stepped into his room, and then a woman with short spiked hair. Noah watched them pass. Then he took a few steps forward, and on his shoulder, Marlo chirped, as if warning Noah to be careful. Noah peered into the long narrow closet and saw a curtain the size of a beach towel dangling along the wall. Crushed drywall lay beneath it. As Noah watched, the curtain bulged outward and then slipped off the body of a teenage boy in a hooded jacket. The teenager brushed past Noah on his way out of the room. Then Evie, the leader of the Specters, appeared.
Noah backed away from the scene, which was suddenly too much to believe. The portals, the magic, the Secret Zoo. A polar bear was sleeping in his shed, and people were entering his world through a portal in his closet.
“Mr. Darby!”
Noah flinched at the voice, which had come directly into his ear. Sam was talking over the radio waves everyone shared. “We got a problem. We’re at the Clarksville Zoo. The gateways…we can’t close them!”
Mr. Darby touched the transmit button on his earpiece and said, “What do you mean you can’t—”
“The curtains won’t come down!”
“How many have you tried?”
“Four. Five, maybe.”
Mr. Darby seemed to think about this. He shared a look with Noah, Tank, and a few Descenders. “Keep trying. Go to every one, and do it quickly.”
“Yes, sir,” Sam said, and then the radio waves went silent.
“We had the same problem!” Megan said. “At Giraffic Jam!”
Mr. Darby raised an eyebrow and stared at Megan. “Then DeGraff has done something to cause this,” he said. “He altered their magic.” Mr. Darby stared at a spot on the floor. Then he said, “Sam, get back to Noah’s. The rest of you—I want you to surround the Clarksville Zoo. If you can’t bring down the portals, stay and guard them. If you see anything, let us know immediately.”
“Roger,” Sam said. Then, to the Descenders, he added, “Everyone—we clear?”
A few Descenders responded that they were. Then the radio waves went silent again.
Noah shook his head, barely able to believe all the things going on around him. Descenders were surrounding the Clarksville Zoo, where the portals were being kept open by the Shadowist. Fear washed over Noah as he realized the Secret Zoo was going to war—and it was doing so in his neighborhood.
*
“Are you sure about this?” Noah asked.
Mr. Darby raised an eyebrow over his dark sunglasses. “No. Not at all. But I’m at a loss, Noah—you must understand that.”
Noah nodded. Then he glanced at the clock on his desk. His parents wouldn’t be home for at least another twenty minutes.
The Secret Cityzens had stopped coming through the portal, and the only people in the house other than the scouts were Mr. Darby, Tank, Evie, Zak, and Sam, who’d come back inside. Marlo was still perched on Noah’s shoulder. Mr. Darby had just shared his idea for keeping the scouts safe. He wanted to post someone at each of their houses.
“DeGraff could attack your world at any moment,” Mr. Darby said. “My first priority is your protection.”
Noah glanced at Sam, the person Mr. Darby had ordered to stay at Megan and Noah’s. “Sam can stay in my closet,” he said. “And he can step into the portal if he needs to hide.”
“And Evie’s coming to my house?” Ella asked.
Evie looked out from behind her long bangs with one eye and softly nodded.
“It shouldn’t be too hard to conceal her from your mother,” Mr. Darby said, referring to the Specter’s power to camouflage. Then he looked at Richie and added, “Are you comfortable with Tank staying with you?”
Richie nodded.
“Is there a place he can hide from your parents, if needed?”
“Yeah,” Richie said. “My room. It’s really that messy.”
Mr. Darby walked toward the middle of the group, saying, “Okay, it’s decided, then. I’ll head back to the City of Species with Zak—the Teknikals have work to do.”
“On what?” Noah asked.
“Our best hope for stopping the animals from invading your world,” Mr. Darby said. “I’ll explain later. Zak—come with me.”
As the pair began to walk toward the closet, Noah said, “What about the portal in my room?”
“It opens to the Institute of Light. We’ll keep it guarded.” Mr. Darby took a few more steps and then added, “Use your headsets to communicate, but remember…the airwaves can’t pass through the portals.”
Noah nodded. “If we need to tell you something, I’ll send a note with Marlo.”
Mr. Darby paused at the open doorway to the closet and looked back at the scouts. “If nothing happens tonight, see if you can find out how those tarantulas got into your school. A portal, maybe? It might mean DeGraff is using his new powers to open secret gateways to more places.”
Noah nodded.
“If you find a portal, try to take it down.” Mr. Darby turned to leave, and Ella called out his name. The old man looked back, saying, “Yes?”
“Our friends…Podgy and Little Bighorn…all the others. Are they safe?”
Mr. Darby frowned. “I don’t know, Ella. They’re not in the Institute of Light, and I don’t know how much of the Secret Zoo is now under DeGraff’s control.”
“But they could be safe somewhere else, right?” Richie said. “A building? Another basement?”
“Yes,” Mr. Darby said. “But let’s not make that our concern now. We have the world to consider—yours and ours.”
The room went quiet, and the scouts traded worried glances.
“This is it,” Mr. Darby said in a heavy voice. “The final fight.”
Chapter 4
Secret Sleepovers
Tank walked into Richie’s oversized closet and began clearing a spot on the floor.
“You’re not thinking about building another portal, are you?” Richie asked.
Tank looked at Richie, realized he was joking, and went back to work, saying, “Give me a hand. Your parents could be home any—” He picked up a white toy robot with blue markings. “What the heck is this?”
“R2-D2.”
“Are too what do?”
“Star Wars, you know.” Then Richie realized Tank didn’t know. He slowly shook his head, saying, “You really miss out on some stuff.”
Tank raised one eyebrow, seemed to consider this, and then tossed R2-D2 into the corner.
Richie helped move things around, and before long, a spot was clear. Tank took a seat, his back against the wall. Richie did the same opposite him.
“Will your parents come in?” Tank asked.
“Not without knocking,” Richie said. He stared at Tank—his bald head, his broad shoulders, the web of scars on his hands. “You’re in my room,” Richie said. “Do you have any idea how weird that is?”
Tank nodded. As he looked around the closet, Richie followed his gaze: stacks of clothes, board games, old toys and electrical gadgets. “So this is Richie’s life?”
“Yeah. Sort of.”
Tank smiled. “Being a kid is good to you, huh?”
Richie shrugged. “Sometimes. Sometimes Wide Walt puts me in a locker.”
“Who? That bully at your school?”
Richie nodded and looked at his feet to avoid Tank’s gaze. “But other than that, it’s pretty good. I have Noah. He’s my best friend.”
Tank smiled. “Yeah. I kind of noticed.”
“Is Mr. Darby yours?”
“Mr. D? I guess so. He’s best friend to a lot of people. Animals, too.”
The two became quiet. Richie remembered the security guards in the Clarksville Zoo—what DeGraff’s magic had done to them. Then he pictured the giraffes.
“Tank,” he said, “I’m scared.”
Richie, expecting to be told not to worry, flinched when Tank said, “I am, too, bub.”
The front door to the house creaked open and Richie could hear his mother whispering to his father. He quickly got out of the closet, turned off the lights, and crawled into bed with his Specter pants still on.
“Try to sleep some, kid,” Tank whispered.
“Will you?”
“Not likely.”
Richie realized something. The Descenders, Tank—they sometimes went days without sleeping.
“See you tomorrow,” Tank added. “If not sooner.”
And Richie, knowing what that meant—knowing that DeGraff’s army could strike at any moment—closed his eyes and worried about what the rest of the night would bring.
*
“Evie…” Ella said. She looked around her bedroom, adding, “Where are you?”
Over by the dresser, Evie seemed to take form—her arms, her legs, her black boots. That meant her chameleons were crawling into her pocket. Once the last chameleon was gone, Evie appeared fully. She crossed her arms and looked around at Ella’s pink bedsheets, pink pillows, and pink drapes.
“Cool, right?” Ella asked.
Evie shrugged. “Pink. Where’s my spot if I need to sleep?”
Ella realized how messy things were. She walked beside her bed and kicked through the stuff on the floor—clothes, cleats, her grass-stained soccer uniform. After a few seconds, a space opened on the carpet. She went to her closet, grabbed her sleeping bag (pink), and unrolled it on the floor. “Ta-da.”
Evie nodded. Then she stood by the window and asked, “Can you see the zoo from here?”
“No,” Ella said. “My house is too far back.”
Evie looked in one direction, then another. To Ella, it seemed like she was scanning her neighbors’ yards. Maybe she was looking for the tarsiers, the zoo animals that hid in the trees.
“Things will happen quickly now,” Evie said. “The animals—they’ll march across your world.”
“Not if we stop DeGraff,” Ella said.
“Stop?”
“Kill,” Ella said, not liking the word even though it was the right one.
“How do you kill someone who’s already dead?”
Ella had wondered the same thing—all the scouts had. They’d seen DeGraff up close—his empty eye sockets and decaying flesh. DeGraff was more than a hundred years old, kept from death by a dark magic.
Silence. After almost a minute, Evie asked, “What’s it like?”
“What’s what like?”
“Your world.”
Ella shrugged even though Evie was still looking out the window and couldn’t see her. “Not so bad. We have problems, I guess.”
“Is it worth dying for?”
“Huh?”
“Your world,” Evie said. “Is it worth dying for?”
“I….” Ella couldn’t think of a thing to say.
“You may need to,” Evie said. “We all might.”
Ella still wanted to say something, but words felt impossible.
Evie turned to Ella and frowned. “You should call your friends. Tell them to leave their Specter pants on in case the fight begins tonight.”
Ella thought of her friends, her family, and how badly she wanted to keep everyone safe. Then she reached up and touched the transmit button on her earpiece.
*
“You leaving those on?” Sam asked.
“Huh?” Noah said.
Sam gestured to the Specter pants Noah was wearing.
“Oh,” Noah said as he glanced down at his legs. Ella had just given the scouts instructions to wear their Specter pants to bed. “Yeah. What’s wrong with that?”
Sam shrugged. “Nothing, I guess.”
“You guess?”
“I just have a problem with the way Specters do things. They hide. Descenders fight.”
“I’ve seen Specters fight,” Noah said. In Creepy Critters, he’d used the chameleons to build a mirage to hide the portal to the City of Species and nearly trapped DeGraff, who’d escaped into the shadows at the last moment. “Besides, I’m going to do whatever I can to protect myself, and it’s not like we have a spare set of Descender gear lying around.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that.” Sam tipped his head toward the closet. “The portal. Tameron’s in the Institute of Light. He’s still injured from when DeGraff held us prisoner, and that frees up his gear.”
Tameron’s backpack contained a powerful tail that could smash through concrete walls and thick panes of glass. In the Secret Creepy Critters, Ella had used his tail to fight off the Shadowist.
“DeGraff’s coming for your world,” Sam said. “Do you want to hide or fight?”
Noah thought of all the times he’d fled from his problems. Charlie Red, the sasquatches, DeGraff, even Wide Walt, the bully at his school. How often had Noah not fought back?
“Leave ’em on, if you want,” Sam said. “But let’s go get Tameron’s gear.”
Noah looked at his pants again. Wouldn’t it be easier to be a Specter and just fade away? “I don’t know…”
“C’mon,” Sam said, and he took a step toward the closet. “The Institute of Light—it’s just over there.”
Noah looked toward Megan’s room. “What if something happens while we’re gone? What if DeGraff attacks?”
“We’ll be gone fifteen minutes—thirty minutes at the most.”
A Descender. Someone who ignored the rules and lived by his own code. What would it be like to fight back against Charlie Red and DeGraff’s growing army? What would it be like to win?
“Wait a minute,” Noah said. He scooped up a wad of dirty clothes from his floor and stuffed it under the covers of his bed.
“What are you doing?” Sam asked.
Noah opened a pocket on his Specter pants and chameleons crawled out, one after another, their bodies filled with the magic of the Secret Zoo. They made their way onto the mattress and spread out along the pile of clothes. Noah shut his pocket once twenty chameleons were out, enough for what he wanted to do.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He concentrated on controlling the chameleons with his thoughts, just like he had in Creepy Critters. He imagined himself lying on his bed. What would his body look like beneath the covers? How would his head rest on his pillow? Would his lips be closed or parted?
He opened his eyes and witnessed the magic of the Secret Zoo. The chameleons had made his wad of clothes look exactly like him—Noah in bed, a dull expression on his face. A perfect mirage of Noah sleeping.
“But you can’t close the portals!” Ella said.
More noises in the closet, and then a young teenage girl stepped out. She had wild blond hair clipped to different lengths, wore purple leather boots that stopped near her knees, and was chomping a piece of gum. Hannah. She casually nodded at the scouts and then followed Sam out into the hall and down the stairs.
Noah turned his attention to the closet. From his angle, he couldn’t see into it. “How…”
Zak said, “Remember the velvet curtain that Charlie Red used to get into your closet? The one that you gave to us?”
“Of course,” Noah said.
“Your coordinates were still locked in. Me and a group of Tekkies were able to reengineer it.”
Mr. Darby looked at Zak and said, “Most resourceful, these young men.”
Though Noah couldn’t see into his closet, he knew what was now at the back of it—a velvet curtain attached above a large hole in the wall where the heating vent had been.
Something small shot out of the closet. A bright blue bird flew around the room and then landed on Noah’s shoulder. Marlo.
Noah positioned his head for the best view of the kingfisher. “You okay?”
Marlo chirped once to show that he was.
Noah turned to Mr. Darby and said, “The other animals—are they all right?”
“Some,” the old man said. “But things are very uncertain at this point.”
Another person walked out of the closet—an attractive girl with long dark hair that looped her ears and trailed down her back. She wore a blue leather jacket and fingerless gloves—gloves, Noah knew, that could sprout ten-inch quills. Solana. She winked at Noah and ran into the hall, followed by three Descenders Noah didn’t recognize.
A big man with a shiny bald head and mounded muscles stepped into the room. Tank. When he got close to Noah, he held his massive fist out toward him, and Noah lightly fist-bumped Tank’s walnut-sized knuckles.
Six new Descenders came out of the walk-in closet, one after another. Two Specters, Elakshi and Lee-Lee, appeared. They nodded at the scouts as they headed into the hall. Noah went to the window and looked out. Keeping to the shadows, the Secret Cityzens were heading off in different directions.
“Has he taken over the Clarksville Zoo?” Mr. Darby asked.
“Huh?” said Noah.
“The animals—has DeGraff gotten to them with his magic?”
Noah told Mr. Darby about the giraffes.
“And the security guards?”
Noah nodded.
“That means the sectors are his, too. Most, at least.”
The scouts told Mr. Darby about the tarantulas at their school. Looking worried, the old man simply listened.
“How did this happen?” Richie asked.
“A storm,” Mr. Darby said. “DeGraff conjured a storm to infect us with his dark magic.”
“Is the City of Species safe?”
Mr. Darby shook his head. He gestured to the Descenders still coming from Noah’s closet, saying, “We managed to escape into the basement of an old museum in the City of Species, the Institute of Light. Some animals did, too—Gifteds, mostly.” He motioned to Zak and added, “Our young friend had a brilliant idea. The curtain that once opened to your room was being kept in the museum. He did some work with it, and hung it in the basement. Now”—Mr. Darby gestured around him—“here we are. And now we must close the portals to your world before DeGraff and his growing army can use them.”
“But why not fight?” Megan asked. “The Descenders can track down DeGraff and—”
“The storm’s dark magic is too powerful. Our Descenders would only become DeGraff’s minions if they stayed in the shadows of the clouds for long.”
Noah looked at the closet again. A man with a shaggy beard stepped into his room, and then a woman with short spiked hair. Noah watched them pass. Then he took a few steps forward, and on his shoulder, Marlo chirped, as if warning Noah to be careful. Noah peered into the long narrow closet and saw a curtain the size of a beach towel dangling along the wall. Crushed drywall lay beneath it. As Noah watched, the curtain bulged outward and then slipped off the body of a teenage boy in a hooded jacket. The teenager brushed past Noah on his way out of the room. Then Evie, the leader of the Specters, appeared.
Noah backed away from the scene, which was suddenly too much to believe. The portals, the magic, the Secret Zoo. A polar bear was sleeping in his shed, and people were entering his world through a portal in his closet.
“Mr. Darby!”
Noah flinched at the voice, which had come directly into his ear. Sam was talking over the radio waves everyone shared. “We got a problem. We’re at the Clarksville Zoo. The gateways…we can’t close them!”
Mr. Darby touched the transmit button on his earpiece and said, “What do you mean you can’t—”
“The curtains won’t come down!”
“How many have you tried?”
“Four. Five, maybe.”
Mr. Darby seemed to think about this. He shared a look with Noah, Tank, and a few Descenders. “Keep trying. Go to every one, and do it quickly.”
“Yes, sir,” Sam said, and then the radio waves went silent.
“We had the same problem!” Megan said. “At Giraffic Jam!”
Mr. Darby raised an eyebrow and stared at Megan. “Then DeGraff has done something to cause this,” he said. “He altered their magic.” Mr. Darby stared at a spot on the floor. Then he said, “Sam, get back to Noah’s. The rest of you—I want you to surround the Clarksville Zoo. If you can’t bring down the portals, stay and guard them. If you see anything, let us know immediately.”
“Roger,” Sam said. Then, to the Descenders, he added, “Everyone—we clear?”
A few Descenders responded that they were. Then the radio waves went silent again.
Noah shook his head, barely able to believe all the things going on around him. Descenders were surrounding the Clarksville Zoo, where the portals were being kept open by the Shadowist. Fear washed over Noah as he realized the Secret Zoo was going to war—and it was doing so in his neighborhood.
*
“Are you sure about this?” Noah asked.
Mr. Darby raised an eyebrow over his dark sunglasses. “No. Not at all. But I’m at a loss, Noah—you must understand that.”
Noah nodded. Then he glanced at the clock on his desk. His parents wouldn’t be home for at least another twenty minutes.
The Secret Cityzens had stopped coming through the portal, and the only people in the house other than the scouts were Mr. Darby, Tank, Evie, Zak, and Sam, who’d come back inside. Marlo was still perched on Noah’s shoulder. Mr. Darby had just shared his idea for keeping the scouts safe. He wanted to post someone at each of their houses.
“DeGraff could attack your world at any moment,” Mr. Darby said. “My first priority is your protection.”
Noah glanced at Sam, the person Mr. Darby had ordered to stay at Megan and Noah’s. “Sam can stay in my closet,” he said. “And he can step into the portal if he needs to hide.”
“And Evie’s coming to my house?” Ella asked.
Evie looked out from behind her long bangs with one eye and softly nodded.
“It shouldn’t be too hard to conceal her from your mother,” Mr. Darby said, referring to the Specter’s power to camouflage. Then he looked at Richie and added, “Are you comfortable with Tank staying with you?”
Richie nodded.
“Is there a place he can hide from your parents, if needed?”
“Yeah,” Richie said. “My room. It’s really that messy.”
Mr. Darby walked toward the middle of the group, saying, “Okay, it’s decided, then. I’ll head back to the City of Species with Zak—the Teknikals have work to do.”
“On what?” Noah asked.
“Our best hope for stopping the animals from invading your world,” Mr. Darby said. “I’ll explain later. Zak—come with me.”
As the pair began to walk toward the closet, Noah said, “What about the portal in my room?”
“It opens to the Institute of Light. We’ll keep it guarded.” Mr. Darby took a few more steps and then added, “Use your headsets to communicate, but remember…the airwaves can’t pass through the portals.”
Noah nodded. “If we need to tell you something, I’ll send a note with Marlo.”
Mr. Darby paused at the open doorway to the closet and looked back at the scouts. “If nothing happens tonight, see if you can find out how those tarantulas got into your school. A portal, maybe? It might mean DeGraff is using his new powers to open secret gateways to more places.”
Noah nodded.
“If you find a portal, try to take it down.” Mr. Darby turned to leave, and Ella called out his name. The old man looked back, saying, “Yes?”
“Our friends…Podgy and Little Bighorn…all the others. Are they safe?”
Mr. Darby frowned. “I don’t know, Ella. They’re not in the Institute of Light, and I don’t know how much of the Secret Zoo is now under DeGraff’s control.”
“But they could be safe somewhere else, right?” Richie said. “A building? Another basement?”
“Yes,” Mr. Darby said. “But let’s not make that our concern now. We have the world to consider—yours and ours.”
The room went quiet, and the scouts traded worried glances.
“This is it,” Mr. Darby said in a heavy voice. “The final fight.”
Chapter 4
Secret Sleepovers
Tank walked into Richie’s oversized closet and began clearing a spot on the floor.
“You’re not thinking about building another portal, are you?” Richie asked.
Tank looked at Richie, realized he was joking, and went back to work, saying, “Give me a hand. Your parents could be home any—” He picked up a white toy robot with blue markings. “What the heck is this?”
“R2-D2.”
“Are too what do?”
“Star Wars, you know.” Then Richie realized Tank didn’t know. He slowly shook his head, saying, “You really miss out on some stuff.”
Tank raised one eyebrow, seemed to consider this, and then tossed R2-D2 into the corner.
Richie helped move things around, and before long, a spot was clear. Tank took a seat, his back against the wall. Richie did the same opposite him.
“Will your parents come in?” Tank asked.
“Not without knocking,” Richie said. He stared at Tank—his bald head, his broad shoulders, the web of scars on his hands. “You’re in my room,” Richie said. “Do you have any idea how weird that is?”
Tank nodded. As he looked around the closet, Richie followed his gaze: stacks of clothes, board games, old toys and electrical gadgets. “So this is Richie’s life?”
“Yeah. Sort of.”
Tank smiled. “Being a kid is good to you, huh?”
Richie shrugged. “Sometimes. Sometimes Wide Walt puts me in a locker.”
“Who? That bully at your school?”
Richie nodded and looked at his feet to avoid Tank’s gaze. “But other than that, it’s pretty good. I have Noah. He’s my best friend.”
Tank smiled. “Yeah. I kind of noticed.”
“Is Mr. Darby yours?”
“Mr. D? I guess so. He’s best friend to a lot of people. Animals, too.”
The two became quiet. Richie remembered the security guards in the Clarksville Zoo—what DeGraff’s magic had done to them. Then he pictured the giraffes.
“Tank,” he said, “I’m scared.”
Richie, expecting to be told not to worry, flinched when Tank said, “I am, too, bub.”
The front door to the house creaked open and Richie could hear his mother whispering to his father. He quickly got out of the closet, turned off the lights, and crawled into bed with his Specter pants still on.
“Try to sleep some, kid,” Tank whispered.
“Will you?”
“Not likely.”
Richie realized something. The Descenders, Tank—they sometimes went days without sleeping.
“See you tomorrow,” Tank added. “If not sooner.”
And Richie, knowing what that meant—knowing that DeGraff’s army could strike at any moment—closed his eyes and worried about what the rest of the night would bring.
*
“Evie…” Ella said. She looked around her bedroom, adding, “Where are you?”
Over by the dresser, Evie seemed to take form—her arms, her legs, her black boots. That meant her chameleons were crawling into her pocket. Once the last chameleon was gone, Evie appeared fully. She crossed her arms and looked around at Ella’s pink bedsheets, pink pillows, and pink drapes.
“Cool, right?” Ella asked.
Evie shrugged. “Pink. Where’s my spot if I need to sleep?”
Ella realized how messy things were. She walked beside her bed and kicked through the stuff on the floor—clothes, cleats, her grass-stained soccer uniform. After a few seconds, a space opened on the carpet. She went to her closet, grabbed her sleeping bag (pink), and unrolled it on the floor. “Ta-da.”
Evie nodded. Then she stood by the window and asked, “Can you see the zoo from here?”
“No,” Ella said. “My house is too far back.”
Evie looked in one direction, then another. To Ella, it seemed like she was scanning her neighbors’ yards. Maybe she was looking for the tarsiers, the zoo animals that hid in the trees.
“Things will happen quickly now,” Evie said. “The animals—they’ll march across your world.”
“Not if we stop DeGraff,” Ella said.
“Stop?”
“Kill,” Ella said, not liking the word even though it was the right one.
“How do you kill someone who’s already dead?”
Ella had wondered the same thing—all the scouts had. They’d seen DeGraff up close—his empty eye sockets and decaying flesh. DeGraff was more than a hundred years old, kept from death by a dark magic.
Silence. After almost a minute, Evie asked, “What’s it like?”
“What’s what like?”
“Your world.”
Ella shrugged even though Evie was still looking out the window and couldn’t see her. “Not so bad. We have problems, I guess.”
“Is it worth dying for?”
“Huh?”
“Your world,” Evie said. “Is it worth dying for?”
“I….” Ella couldn’t think of a thing to say.
“You may need to,” Evie said. “We all might.”
Ella still wanted to say something, but words felt impossible.
Evie turned to Ella and frowned. “You should call your friends. Tell them to leave their Specter pants on in case the fight begins tonight.”
Ella thought of her friends, her family, and how badly she wanted to keep everyone safe. Then she reached up and touched the transmit button on her earpiece.
*
“You leaving those on?” Sam asked.
“Huh?” Noah said.
Sam gestured to the Specter pants Noah was wearing.
“Oh,” Noah said as he glanced down at his legs. Ella had just given the scouts instructions to wear their Specter pants to bed. “Yeah. What’s wrong with that?”
Sam shrugged. “Nothing, I guess.”
“You guess?”
“I just have a problem with the way Specters do things. They hide. Descenders fight.”
“I’ve seen Specters fight,” Noah said. In Creepy Critters, he’d used the chameleons to build a mirage to hide the portal to the City of Species and nearly trapped DeGraff, who’d escaped into the shadows at the last moment. “Besides, I’m going to do whatever I can to protect myself, and it’s not like we have a spare set of Descender gear lying around.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that.” Sam tipped his head toward the closet. “The portal. Tameron’s in the Institute of Light. He’s still injured from when DeGraff held us prisoner, and that frees up his gear.”
Tameron’s backpack contained a powerful tail that could smash through concrete walls and thick panes of glass. In the Secret Creepy Critters, Ella had used his tail to fight off the Shadowist.
“DeGraff’s coming for your world,” Sam said. “Do you want to hide or fight?”
Noah thought of all the times he’d fled from his problems. Charlie Red, the sasquatches, DeGraff, even Wide Walt, the bully at his school. How often had Noah not fought back?
“Leave ’em on, if you want,” Sam said. “But let’s go get Tameron’s gear.”
Noah looked at his pants again. Wouldn’t it be easier to be a Specter and just fade away? “I don’t know…”
“C’mon,” Sam said, and he took a step toward the closet. “The Institute of Light—it’s just over there.”
Noah looked toward Megan’s room. “What if something happens while we’re gone? What if DeGraff attacks?”
“We’ll be gone fifteen minutes—thirty minutes at the most.”
A Descender. Someone who ignored the rules and lived by his own code. What would it be like to fight back against Charlie Red and DeGraff’s growing army? What would it be like to win?
“Wait a minute,” Noah said. He scooped up a wad of dirty clothes from his floor and stuffed it under the covers of his bed.
“What are you doing?” Sam asked.
Noah opened a pocket on his Specter pants and chameleons crawled out, one after another, their bodies filled with the magic of the Secret Zoo. They made their way onto the mattress and spread out along the pile of clothes. Noah shut his pocket once twenty chameleons were out, enough for what he wanted to do.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He concentrated on controlling the chameleons with his thoughts, just like he had in Creepy Critters. He imagined himself lying on his bed. What would his body look like beneath the covers? How would his head rest on his pillow? Would his lips be closed or parted?
He opened his eyes and witnessed the magic of the Secret Zoo. The chameleons had made his wad of clothes look exactly like him—Noah in bed, a dull expression on his face. A perfect mirage of Noah sleeping.
