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Chapter 1
A Captain’s Treasure
“I want you all to walk in an orderly manner along the corridor,” Miss Simone told the curious group of shapeshifters as they clustered outside her research room. “Stop when you reach forty paces.”
“How intriguing!” Emily cooed.
Fenton shrugged. “Beats going back to school.”
Thomas rolled his eyes. “Sounds lame to me, whatever this is.”
“Everything’s lame to you,” Robbie retorted. “Including you.”
Darcy shushed them. “Focus. There’s a point to this.”
Hal wished he knew what that point was. The moment Miss Simone had greeted them outside the doorway to her lab, she’d urged them to spread out and face back the way they’d come. “No shuffling,” she ordered. “Just normal, evenly spaced steps. Count to forty. And . . . go.”
The corridor stretched before them, lit by loosely hung and occasionally flickering overhead bulbs. The sprawling science laboratory was the most modern building in the town of Carter, and right now it was filled with the dull thuds of nine pairs of feet as the shapeshifters marched back toward the entrance.
“Quit counting aloud,” Fenton muttered to Abigail. “You’re making me lose my place.”
“Then keep up,” she shot back. “Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen . . .”
“Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,” Fenton growled, raising his voice above hers.
Hal tuned them all out, concentrating on his own two feet. Not that he really needed to. Emily was in front, and she could be relied upon to do the counting for them all. When she stopped, they could all stop.
They passed several rooms, one with a patient laid out flat and a nurse standing over her, another with a couple of goblins unloading a wheelbarrow full of geo-rocks into a cabinet. A white-coated technician stood aside as the shapeshifters marched past, then continued on his way.
“. . . Forty!” Emily announced, stamping her feet to make her point. Everyone else shuffled to a halt alongside.
“Thirty-eight,” Robbie muttered
“Forty-three,” Dewey said.
Emily shouted along the corridor to where Miss Simone paused in the distance. “This is exactly forty paces right here!”
They all turned to face the blue-eyed, blond-haired scientist, who stood with her arms folded and her green, silky cloak pulled around her shoulders.
“According to scientists in Old Earth,” she called to them, “that’s about how long the very biggest of the giant squids might grow—maybe ninety to one hundred feet.”
She waited for everyone to digest that information.
“They don’t have feet,” Robbie whispered under his breath.
Lauren giggled.
“But in reality,” Miss Simone continued, “the biggest specimen ever found was only about half this length.”
After a pause, Robbie yelled back to her, “That’s nothing compared to what we saw!”
Miss Simone smiled and gestured for them to approach. She disappeared into her research room, and the shapeshifters broke into a run to be the first in after her.
The room smelled of something strong, acrid, perhaps like vinegar or a pickle juice of some kind.
“Nobody really knows for sure how large they can get,” Miss Simone went on as the group clustered together. She stood next to a table, on which a white sheet covered a rounded lump the size of a sleeping potbelly pig—or maybe two of them lying side by side. “Giant squid live in the blackness of the deepest oceans, and most studies have been extrapolated from carcasses found in the stomachs of dead whales. But cephalopods are hard to measure. Even if you find a well-preserved squid and lay it out flat, its arms are too soft and stretchy to obtain accurate measurements. It’s largely guesswork.”
She absently laid a hand on the white sheet, giving it a gentle pat.
“Is that what I think it is?” Lauren said, a tremor in her voice.
Robbie nudged up closer to her. “This is gonna be cool,” he said with obvious glee.
Miss Simone smiled. “I wanted to give you an idea of the size of a normal giant squid in Old Earth. Scientists studied and dissected one famous dead specimen and estimated its length at thirty-three feet—quite a bit longer than this room, but only a third of what you just paced in the corridor. It weighed in at seven hundred and seventy pounds, about the same as Dewey when he’s a centaur.”
Dewey blushed when everyone turned to stare at him.
“The squid’s eyeball,” Miss Simone went on, “measured about thirteen inches across.” She spaced her hands apart as if boasting about a fish she’d caught.
Her point became clear when everyone returned their gaze to the huge covered mound on the table. The bottom of the sheet was wet, the table glistening from some kind of clear goo.
“I don’t want to see this,” Lauren said, turning toward Robbie and closing her eyes.
Miss Simone gently pulled back the sheet.
“This squid’s eyeball,” she announced, “didn’t fit through the doorway until we turned it on end.”
Despite a number of disgusted exclamations and a couple of squeals, Hal was immediately intrigued. The eyeball wasn’t as spherical as he’d expected. It lay there, mostly round but a little flattened, pure white in color, with a huge black disk in the center staring lifelessly at the ceiling. He’d imagined the eyeball to be glassy and perfect, but instead it resembled the bulbous head of a hideously deformed mushroom. It was so big that it hung over the edges of the table on two sides, dripping on the floor.
“I need to put it back in the tank soon,” Miss Simone said, gesturing toward a glass container half filled with murky water. “But for now, take a good look. This, my dears, is the eyeball of a kraken.”
“We know,” Thomas said gruffly. “We saw the kraken.”
“I know you did, and I’m envious. Judging by the size of this orb, I would estimate the monster to be—”
“At least twice as long as a ship,” Hal interrupted. “Yeah, we know that too. But why are you studying it?”
Miss Simone raised her eyebrows at him. “Because it’s the eyeball of a kraken. Ask yourselves who stole it and why.”
Darcy spoke up. “Four dead sailors in a lifeboat. They were found at sea with this nasty thing dangling in the water behind them. Obviously crazy.”
“Ah, but why did the captain of their doomed ship risk everything to gouge out the eyeball in the first place? Do you know what it must have cost to hire a captain, his ship, and his crew to carry out a mission that involved tracking down a kraken and attacking it?”
“What does it cost?” Fenton asked.
Miss Simone threw up her hands. “I have no idea! But I’m sure you can imagine that the reward for such a rare prize must have been huge. Why else would a captain risk everything? And look what happened—the enraged kraken sank the ship and killed everyone on board. Well, everyone but four sailors, who died later, stranded at sea with their precious treasure.”
Hal suddenly understood why they’d been called to the science lab. “Is this our new mission? To find out why someone would want a giant eyeball? Surely we just need to figure out who’s rich enough to pay for it, and go from there?”
Miss Simone covered the eyeball. Everyone let out a relieved sigh.
“Naturally, the council has considered such a question, and subtle inquiries have been made. Nobody has turned up any suspects. Count Balefor in the Magma Mountains is an obvious choice. So is a young man named Ted Braxton over in Old Earth. He was recently suspected of capturing faeries and selling them on the black market.”
Hal glanced at Abigail. Her eyes had grown wide.
“But being wealthy or sinister isn’t enough of a reason to interrogate someone,” Miss Simone said. “Besides, the bigger question is why? Why would anybody want a kraken’s eyeball?”
“It’s not even a kraken.”
Everyone turned to Dewey, who seemed to quail under the weight of the stares.
“I mean, it was called something else,” he went on.
“Koromodako,” Abigail said with a nod.
One of the yokai from Haven, Hal thought, an idea forming. And we have another yokai locked up in a barn. “How about we ask Kitsune? Maybe she knows?”
Miss Simone clapped her hands and beamed. “Very good. I can’t get a word out of her, but maybe you can.”
* * *
“No school today!” Robbie said, grinning as he took Lauren’s hand and dragged her off into the crowded streets of Carter.
“See you over there,” Hal called to his friends before they vanished from sight.
The others had zigzagged off, too. Miss Simone had simply told them all to head over to the big barn in the woods on the south side of the village and wait for her. She’d be along shortly after. That meant they had time to pop by the market square to sniff out some of the delicious fresh-baked pastries and pies they’d missed out on for the past month.
They’d taken a voyage to the Sea of Legends, as Emily called it, where a mysterious people known as the yokai lived in the wondrous land of Haven. A mission fraught with danger, Hal and his friends had been forced to take a prisoner—Kitsune, a very powerful shapeshifter.
Returning from that voyage on the back of a giant turtle on Friday, they’d sailed into Brodon and spent the night there, finally arriving home to Carter late Saturday afternoon.
Sunday was quite literally a day of rest, with most of the shapeshifters confined to their houses by relieved parents. Not even Miss Simone had been able to pop by and see them. “Not today,” Hal’s mom had said in a stern voice, holding up the flat of her hand to Miss Simone’s face in the doorway. “Today, Hal stays here. Please go away.”
He hadn’t minded. Sleeping in his own bed, kicking around in the living room, raiding the pantry . . . He’d enjoyed every minute of it. At least until mid-afternoon, when he’d grown restless. But his mom and dad had kept him home anyway, demanding more tales about the yokai.
And now here they were, on a Monday morning, excused from school yet again so they could go interrogate Kitsune.
They all wound up at the big barn in the woods within minutes of each other. Fenton and Thomas were still munching on pastries, and Darcy had a caramel-coated apple on a stick. Even though he’d already had breakfast, Hal felt he could have managed a strawberry crepe on his own, but Abigail had insisted on eating half of it. “I don’t want a whole one,” she’d said between mouthfuls. “It’ll make me too heavy to fly.”
In fact, it was more likely a pocketful of coins that made her too heavy to fly, so she rarely carried any. They were downright impractical when she was only six inches tall.
“Is Miss Simone here yet?” Lauren asked Emily.
Emily stood by the huge barn door, grasping the handle of the smaller door within. “It’s locked, so I guess not.”
They hung around a minute or two, enjoying the fresh air and watching the sun rise higher in the cloudless sky. On their journey to the edge of the world and back, the ocean wind had been relentless, but it had felt reasonably warm for the most part. Here in Carter, the air was biting and crisp, and their breaths puffed in front of their faces. Stand still for too long and the cold would creep up from the ground into their feet.
“It’s quiet in there,” Darcy whispered.
They all listened for sounds of Kitsune inside the barn, but the yokai woman was silent.
The barn belonged to Blacknail and other goblins. Today, it was a prison. A small room in the science lab would have done the trick to keep Kitsune in her place, but Miss Simone wanted the yokai to ‘spread her wings,’ so to speak—literally if need be.
“Here she comes,” Emily said, nodding toward the trees.
Miss Simone marched briskly with goblins at her side. Blacknail wasn’t among them, but Gristletooth was, and the grumpy fellow pulled out a large key to unlock the door.
“Don’t provoke her,” Miss Simone suggested. “Just talk.” She eyed Thomas. “In fact, why don’t some of you stay out here while—”
“No way,” Robbie answered for them all, and he darted through the door the moment Gristletooth pushed it open.
Following him in, Hal was surprised to find himself surrounded by bars. It was like a prison cell had been erected against the inside of the giant barn doors. The visitors were caged, while Kitsune had the run of the enormous building.
The barn had to be twice the height of a house with six times the floorspace. Much of the flattened earth was covered with straw. Sunlight streamed in through small, barred windows high up, and dust floated lazily in the rays.
“Where’s Kitsune?” Robbie asked, his voice loud enough to echo about the place.
Nobody answered. Several small enclosures lined the sides of the barn, and a hayloft stretched across the far end. She could be sleeping.
“Rise and shine!” Thomas yelled suddenly, making everyone jump.
They all watched and waited.
“Hello?” Abigail shouted.
Movement in the hayloft drew their attention. A woman appeared. She had long, straight black hair, and was wearing a silky robe much like the kind favored by the shapeshifters. And no wonder—she was a shapeshifter herself.
She peered down at them, a small figure standing to one side of a wooden ladder. But rather than swing herself onto the first few rungs, she approached the edge of the loft and stood dangerously close, her toes protruding into thin air.
Kitsune sprouted huge, white-feathered wings and a fine coat of white fur across her face and neck. Her black hair turned white, and her eyes gleamed yellow. Crouching low, her feet morphed into the powerful talons of a bird right before she leapt from the hayloft and fluttered down to the barn’s floor with a draft strong enough to stir up the dry hay.
“Show off,” Lauren muttered.
Everyone knew Kitsune was deliberately mimicking Lauren’s harpy form. Hal wouldn’t be surprised if the yokai shifted into one of the others next—
He groaned. The prisoner was already busy changing form again, this time into a manticore. Her silky robe melted like liquid and reformed into a band around her throat. With red fur covering her lion body, and a segmented scorpion’s tail ending in a deadly stinger, she was an exact copy of Thomas . . . except that she kept her own face. She smiled, showing three rows of teeth.
“We need to ask you something,” Abigail said.
But Kitsune wasn’t done. She shifted again, this time expanding outward into a dragon. Hal watched, fascinated. It was a pretty accurate copy only much, much smaller, no bigger than a horse. Still impressive and fearsome, but nowhere near a match for him.
Finally, Kitsune switched to her most familiar form—a pure white fox with nine tails that swished gently from side to side. Trotting closer, she sniffed around the bars for a moment, then sat and stared at them.
“Are you done?” Fenton growled.
Abigail gripped the bars and spoke clearly. “We need to ask you a question. Some sailors attacked Koromodako and stole one of his eyes. Do you know anything about that?”
The white fox tilted its head. Then, abruptly, the black-haired woman rose up out of the white fur, morphing in the blink of an eye.
“It is unfortunate that those sailors died.”
A few of the shapeshifters muttered under their breath. Apparently, opinions were divided. Hal heard comments like “Horrible!” and “What did they expect?” and “Poor idiots.” Personally, he thought the captain of the ship was both brave and heartless—not only for gouging out an eyeball, but also for endangering an entire crew in the pursuit of riches! Then again, the crew had probably wanted the treasure as much as their captain.
“Unfortunate, yes,” Abigail agreed. “They should never have attacked a poor, defenseless creature, even one as big and dangerous as a kraken.”
Kitsune narrowed her eyes. “No, I meant unfortunate that they did not succeed in killing Koromodako while they had the chance. Instead, they took his eye and let him go. That was their mistake. Koromodako returned and crippled their ship, and it drifted into Haven and smashed on the rocks before they could be saved.” She sighed. “All those lives wasted.”
Thomas scoffed. “Wasted? You mean they could have ended up your slaves? Well, it’s a good thing they went quickly, then.”
“Thomas,” Emily murmured, giving the redheaded boy a nudge.
“Tell us about the eyeball,” Hal said, getting impatient. “Why would that captain want to steal it?”
Kitsune’s robe was long enough that it hid her feet, which made it seem like she glided toward them. Abigail took a step backward, releasing her grip on the bars.
“I assume the captain was paid handsomely?” Kitsune suggested.
Robbie spoke up. “Yeah, but why would someone pay the captain for an eyeball? What’s so special about a giant peeper?”
“There’s nothing in the books about a kraken’s eyeball granting special powers or anything,” Hal added. “But someone must have had a reason to send a ship after one.”
They all waited as Kitsune gazed at them with her large brown eyes. Her round face, with skin so clear it had a porcelain quality about it, seemed to glow in the subdued light of the barn. Perhaps it did. Magic oozed from every pore of this demure but deadly sorceress. Not only could she morph into any shape, she could project utterly convincing illusions.
Only now she had no source of magic. In Haven, she’d had an ample supply of ‘sparkle’ from the mines. Here, she had nothing.
Kitsune smiled. “That yellow-haired woman asked me the same question more than ten times. I don’t like her. She smells of seawater. Why is that?”
“She’s a mermaid,” Robbie blurted.
Lauren nudged him.
“A mermaid,” Kitsune repeated. “That would explain it.”
“So you have no idea why someone would take a giant eyeball?” Hal prompted.
When Kitsune annoyingly clammed up, Thomas clicked his tongue and rolled his eyes. “She doesn’t know anything. Let’s get outta here.”
“Let me go,” Kitsune said. She pressed up to the bars and gripped them much like Abigail had earlier. “Release me, and I will help you solve the mystery. I can already conjecture as to what kind of person would want it.”
“Tell us,” Abigail said. “If you want out of here, you have to prove you’re of use and on our side. Bargaining isn’t the way to go. Give us something for free, and if it’s helpful, maybe the people in charge will reward you.”
Kitsune frowned. “What is the difference?”
“The difference is—”
But what Abigail would have said next was forgotten when the prisoner suddenly morphed again, this time becoming a squid with a lively mass of tentacles that curled through the bars and wrapped around several wrists and waists.
Yelling and screaming, the shapeshifters fought to clamber backward out of Kitsune’s reach, but her somewhat squishy head pressed against the bars so hard it seemed she might squeeze all the way through. Meanwhile, her appendages—eight arms and two extra long feeding tentacles—thrashed and whipped about as Hal and his friends beat at them to get loose.
A kraken, he thought. Of all the—
Just a small kraken, though. Despite being a versatile shapeshifter, she couldn’t deviate too far from her own mass. This resulted in an undersized dragon, a pitifully puny ogre, a tiny kraken . . . and, conversely, a faerie too big to fit through the closely abutted bars of the small windows high on the wall.
Everybody ended up stumbling against the huge barn door, finally getting free of the sticky squid tentacles. Kitsune fell back in an oozing heap on the hay-strewn floor, glaring at them all with one of her huge eyes. Her mantle, rather like a tall hat, drooped to one side, and the fin on the top hung limp and useless.
Hal had just a moment to study the enormous eyeball before Kitsune reverted to her human form and climbed to her feet, brushing herself down and smoothing her black hair.
“That is a rather difficult form to manage out of water,” she said.
“Gross!” Darcy exclaimed, rubbing vigorously at her arms as though she were covered in slime.
Robbie turned to her. “Not gross at all. Pretty amazing, actually. Did you know that squids—”
“Oh, shut up, you nerd,” Thomas interrupted. He pointed accusingly at Kitsune. “Annoy me again and I’ll stick a few poison quills in you.”
She glared back. “Annoy me again and I’ll stick a few poison quills in you.”
Fenton headed for the door. “This is a waste of time.”
Darcy and Lauren were right behind him, with Dewey and Thomas next. They were gone in a second, leaving the door wide open and letting in a stream of welcome sunlight.
Hal, Robbie, Abigail, and Emily remained inside, though at a safe distance.
“So you won’t help us?” Abigail pressed.
Kitsune stood there a moment, staring at the floor. Then she studied Abigail with a faraway gaze. “I will help you . . . when you let me out.”
Hal saw Abigail’s shoulders slump.
Emily sighed and turned away. “Well, that’s that. Come on, guys—back to school, I guess, since we completely failed here.”
“I’d rather be tied up in knots with sticky squid tentacles than go back to school,” Robbie muttered.
They rejoined their friends outside and closed the door. Miss Simone waited there with the goblins, and it was clear from her expression that she was both disappointed and unsurprised. She shrugged and offered a smile.
“Kitsune is a handful, isn’t she? It was worth a try, though. Well, the truth about the eyeball will come out eventually. Maybe I’ll go to the docks and ask the fishermen. There could be some kind of legend among sailors, an old tale of the seas or something like that.”
“So now what?” Robbie asked. “Anything else you’d like us to do? We could go with you to the docks and—”
Miss Simone shook her head. “Off to school, please. I know you’ve missed a lot of classwork over the past month, and we need to get you back on track. I’m sure Mrs. Hunter has plenty of homework for you.”
The shapeshifters groaned.
Chapter 2
The Stolen Eyeball
“Hal, wake up.”
The voice cut into his dreams. “Just a few minutes more,” he murmured. “I’m not used to getting up so early . . .”
Monday class had been torturous after a month at sea. It almost seemed Lauren’s mom, Mrs. Hunter, had relished piling on the work. They’d spent the half-day puzzling over math problems and then reading a dull story about a boy and his kestrel.
Tuesday had been worse. Chemistry without lab equipment was nothing more than strings of numbers and symbols, utterly pointless. Mrs. Hunter had dumped more math on them, too.
It couldn’t be Wednesday morning already.
“Hal, you have a visitor.”
His mom’s words filtered through to his brain at last, and he blinked awake, staring at the ceiling. It was still barely dawn judging by the feeble light. He sat up.
“Mom?”
She stood in the doorway, beckoning to him. “Come on. Miss Simone sent a goblin with a message.”
Suddenly interested and nervous at the same time, Hal clambered from his bed and rushed to follow her. But then he paused, realizing he still had pajamas on. He quietly closed the door, got dressed, rubbed sleepy dust from the corners of his eyes, and absently smoothed his hair. Then he hurried after her.
“She needs yer nostrils,” the goblin said without preamble.
The gnarly fellow loitered in the kitchen, leaning against the counter where Hal’s mom fussed over a pot of slowly boiling water. Ever since the survivors of the Old Earth virus had emerged from bunkers and found their feet after thirteen years, some of her favorite things had become available again—including coffee. She had a couple of mugs ready, though Hal doubted a goblin would care for it, or even wait around long enough for the water to boil.
“My nostrils?” Hal queried.
“And yer sharp eyesight. And yer wings.”
Hal frowned. “What’s going on?”
Abruptly, the goblin stalked from the kitchen and headed for the front door. “Get to the lab,” he growled. “Quick.”
And with a slam of the door, he was gone.
“No coffee, then?” Hal’s mom muttered. “May I see you out, Mr. Goblin? No?” She sighed and slid one of the mugs to the back of the counter before pouring boiling water into the other. “Guess you’d better get going, my dear.”
“Do you know what’s happened?” he asked.
“I do. And if I were like one of Miss Simone’s sour-faced, short-tempered henchmen, I’d rather annoyingly neglect to tell you and instead keep you guessing all the way to the lab.” She stirred her coffee and shot Hal a smile. “But I’m not one of Miss Simone’s goblins. I gather the eyeball has been stolen.”
“What?” he gasped.
The eyeball has been stolen. The eyeball! Stolen!
He stood there a moment, his mind reeling. Why on earth—or rather, who —would do such a thing? But the answer was obvious. The thief had to be the same person who’d paid the captain to gouge it out of the kraken in the first place.
He wasted no time getting ready, which was to say that he raced from the house without brushing his teeth or even using the bathroom. He cursed his foolishness the moment he stepped outside and the cold air hit him, and he raced back in, took care of business, and tore off again.
It annoyed him that he couldn’t easily launch in the yard. Too many overhanging trees. He ran along the forest path, and to his delight found Abigail waiting at the intersection as usual, even though school had apparently been cancelled.
“Did you hear?” she called long before he reached her. “The eyeball’s been stolen!”
“And Miss Simone needs my nostrils!” Hal said, panting.
Abigail didn’t allow him to pause; she simply matched his pace through the forest. “Yeah, she’s probably sending us after the thief, like dogs tracking a scent.”
This reminded Hal of the time he and his friends had put their shapeshifting talents to use trying to locate the villainous faun that had plagued the nearby forest with her deadly blue-smoke magic and turned people to dust. He remembered all too clearly using his dragon senses to sniff her out.
“We’ll find the eye thief,” he said, feeling confident as they hurried from the woods into the open. “Get on my back. We’ll be there in no time.”
He transformed and spread his giant dragon wings with a roar of enthusiasm. Going on a hunt was way better than sitting in class!
Once Abigail had climbed aboard, he launched into the air and headed for Miss Simone’s laboratory complex. He barely rose above the rooftops before it was time to descend again, and he thumped down on the grass by the front entrance where Darcy and Emily were already waiting.
He reverted to human form a little too quickly and rushed to help Abigail where she’d tumbled off. Robbie and Lauren arrived then. More than half the team was ready to go.
Good enough, he thought. The others will catch up.
They dashed inside and along the corridor. Hal absently counted forty paces again, thinking how pitifully small an ordinary Old Earth squid was compared to a New Earth kraken.
“Do you think they rolled it away?” Robbie called from behind as they arrived at Miss Simone’s research room.
Hal blinked at him. “The eyeball? Well, maybe. Gives a whole new meaning to rolling your eyes, doesn’t it?”
Miss Simone stood in the room staring at the empty tank of murky water by the wall. She swung around as the shapeshifters thrust themselves through the doorway. “Quick—get a sniff of this water, then head out. We can’t lose the scent. We must find that eye and catch the thief.”
Hal and the others crowded the tank, standing on tiptoes to lean over the glass walls. They all recoiled at the same time. The water was pretty pungent and sharp.
“It’s like the pickled eggs Old Ma Pumpkin sells,” Darcy said with a grimace.
“Formaldehyde,” Miss Simone said. “Hurry. Get a good waft up your nose.”
“No need. I won’t forget it anytime soon.”
“I should think anybody could follow a scent like this,” Emily commented. “Where did the thief break in?”
Miss Simone’s expression darkened, and it seemed like a small draft swept in and ruffled her hair. “Back door. Brute force. Must have been as strong as an ogre. There’s a trail of formaldehyde. This door was locked too, but whoever it was just wrenched the handle and walked in.”
Glancing back, Hal noticed the damage for the first time. “And this was when?” he asked. “How long ago?”
“In the last hour,” Miss Simone said. “One of the night guards left that way before dawn and locked up. Someone must have been waiting for the shift change.”
A moment of deep contemplation followed.
Then Emily cleared her throat. “Did you send goblins out?”
“Yes, yes, everybody is searching already,” the scientist grumbled. “But I need some stronger noses. And I need Hal and Lauren in the air. If I were to steal an eyeball, I think I would hoist it away in a net or something, carried by a roc or some other airborne creature. I can’t imagine anybody dragging it along paths, and there’s been no sign of horse-drawn carts this morning.”
“Centaurs?” Abigail asked.
“Don’t know.” Miss Simone looked more impatient than he’d ever seen her. She bustled them toward the door. “Don’t stand here asking questions. Go! Find that eyeball, and don’t come back without it.”
“Eye-eye, cap’ain,” Robbie said, unable to stop himself breaking into a grin. As the shapeshifters were herded into the corridor, he laughed quietly. “Get it? Aye-aye? I’ll bet that’s what all the sailors were shouting after they finished attacking the kraken.”
It seemed nobody could muster the energy to tell him how lame his pun was.
Outside, they found Fenton, Thomas, and Dewey waiting on one of the wrought-iron bench seats.
“Hey!” Thomas complained. “We thought we were the first here! Have you been inside already?”
Emily brushed past him. “Been inside, sniffed the tank of formaldehyde, and are now off to hunt down the thief. Are you coming?”
“Sniffed the what?”
Hal felt the urge to track down the eyeball before anyone else. He grinned at Abigail. “Shouldn’t be too difficult to follow a scent that strong. Shall we go?”
She smiled. “I’m with you. My sniffer’s not so hot anyway.”
Transforming again, Hal waited for Abigail to climb on and watched his friends as they split up. Robbie gave Lauren a quick hug, shifted to ogre form, then blundered away. Lauren flung out her white-feathered wings and flapped into the air, quickly disappearing over the trees. Emily morphed into her land-dwelling naga form and slithered away, her dark, scaly coils thick and shimmering.
Thomas the manticore sniffed the air with disdain. “What are we looking for, exactly?”
“The smell of pickles in the lab,” Darcy told him, already invisible. Her voice floated on the air, seemingly from all around.
Hal launched, noting that Dewey and Fenton acted a little lost, seeking inspiration as to which way to head first. Dewey’s olfactory sense was probably no better than a human’s—and Fenton, even if he were in lizard form picking up a nasty smell, wasn’t exactly the fastest tracker.
We’ve got this, Hal thought with glee as he circled the science buildings and drew in deep breaths through his flared nostrils. All I need is one tiny whiff . . .
Who or what would be strong enough to smash their way through two sturdy doors? What about picking up that hideous eyeball and carrying it? It must weigh quite a bit, not to mention being awkward to handle.
An ogre. But not a full-sized one. Maybe one like Robbie—a shapeshifter who could only partially transform.
Just for a second, he wondered if his best friend could possibly have . . . He shook his head. Ridiculous! Anyway, there were plenty of strong creatures that might not be as huge. Trolls, for example. Minotaurs. And who was to say it had been only one intruder? It could have been a legion of gnomes. They were pretty robust, hard-headed creatures.
“I wonder if Kitsune escaped,” Abigail called from behind his neck.
Hal almost fell out of the sky with the realization. Of course! She’d broken into the lab. She could be any form she wanted—something strong to break in, something dextrous to maneuver that giant eye through narrow doorways and outside, and then . . . heck, she could have flown away with it!
Hal immediately veered left and set his sights on the approximate location of the barn where she was supposedly locked up.
Abigail was right. Kitsune was the culprit.
To his surprise, he found the barn door intact when he landed. Just a ruse, he thought as he waited for Abigail to climb down. Then he reverted to human form. She pulled the door shut after her so nobody would raise the alarm.
It was not only shut but still locked. No damage, either.
Clever. She escaped another way. Could she have fit through one of those high windows? They don’t have glass, but they do have bars . . .
No, he already knew she couldn’t shrink down that small no matter what form she took.
Since the door was locked, Abigail shifted to her tiny faerie form and buzzed up to one of the windows. It became clear then just how tiny they were even without the bars; there was no way Kitsune had exited that way.
Abigail disappeared inside to investigate.
Hal pressed his ear to the door when he heard muffled voices.
“Another visit?” Kitsune said. “I feel blessed.”
“Where’s the eye?” Abigail demanded. She had to be full size again, otherwise her voice would be a high-pitched squeak. “Did you hide it up here?”
Kitsune sounded puzzled. “In the hayloft? What do you mean?”
Hal couldn’t see through the door, but he guessed Abigail was rummaging around trying to find the eyeball. Kitsune made comments here and there, but Abigail ignored her.
After a while, he heard a soft clang, then her voice high up as though she were standing on top of the cage inside the door.
“Hal,” Abigail said softly, “I’m not sure it was her anymore. There’s no way in or out except through this cage and the barn door, and neither one has been forced.”
He stepped back and scowled at the sturdy wood and solid hinges. “Yeah, but—”
“And do you smell formaldehyde?”
He paused, then sniffed the air. “Well, no . . .”
Abigail sighed. “It wasn’t her. I’m done here.”
Moments later, she joined him in the sunshine.
“But it had to be her,” he complained as she retracted her wings.
“Be a dragon again. See if you smell anything. If not, we need to get back to the search.”
Hal felt like he was lagging two steps behind her as usual. But as he transformed and carefully sniffed the air and the ground by the barn door, he slowly came to the conclusion the eyeball hadn’t been here at all. Maybe she’d hidden it somewhere else, though . . . ?
“Go,” Abigail urged as she climbed onto his back.
The idea of Kitsune being the thief crumpled around him, and he launched into the air, feeling a little deflated. Back to square one.
He flew high above Carter. The thief had either lifted the giant eyeball into the sky . . . or had snuck it away through the trees. Most of the others were already searching the surrounding forest, so it was up to him and Lauren to scour the sky.
Sighing, he had the distinct feeling clouds were about all he was likely to find in the sky. He spotted a harpy in the far distance—Lauren swooping around above the treetops—so he went off in another direction, squinting and looking for the slightest movement, grumbling when he spotted harmless birds.
Whoever or whatever had taken the eyeball had too much of a head start. And he or she had to be fairly small to fit inside the lab corridors, which ruled out a griffin or a roc. Someone or something small and dextrous that could squeeze through a doorway, yet was strong enough to lift the stolen goods in the air?
If it were a winged creature of some kind, maybe it had flown just a short way and then dropped into the trees to a waiting horse and cart. Or, maybe someone had ridden in on the back of a roc. There were just too many possibilities.
Then again . . .
He sniffed. Just for a second, he thought he’d caught the scent of formaldehyde on a current of air. But it faded, and he flew aimlessly once more, his nostrils flaring as he tried to pick up the smell again.
There!
Sniffing furiously, he latched on—then lost it—then caught it again. It faded, and he twisted his head from side to side, slowing to a hover. There it was! And . . . gone again.
A little frustrated but excited, he flapped around in a slow circle, trying to figure out a direction. It was only when he’d gone almost all the way around that he caught the scent, and this time he snapped his head in that direction and set off.
He lost the trail once more, but he flew a little while longer and circled around. As before, the foul whiff of formaldehyde tickled his nostrils, and he quickly turned toward it.
“Call the others,” Abigail said. “You’re obviously onto something. Shout for the others so we’re all heading the same way.”
Hal twisted around and roared for all he was worth. The noise he made carried across the treetops, and in the distance, Lauren spun around. Though just a tiny figure, her white feathers were in sharp contrast to the deep blue sky when the sun hit her a certain way. He couldn’t see if she waved or acknowledged him, but after a moment, she started flapping in his direction.
Sniffing furiously again, Hal realized the scent was strong now. It drifted away and returned, over and over, a little more pungent each time. Whatever was carrying the eyeball hadn’t got very far. Or it had stopped to rest. Either way, it was down below, among the trees.
He peered closely, looking for clearings. Much farther north, the forest petered out and eventually became open plains, dry and dusty. It seemed the smell was closer than that.
Somewhere here, Hal thought. In the forest.
Knowing he needed some shifters on the ground, he spun around and headed back, making a beeline for Lauren as she flew toward him.
Abigail read his mind again. “Lauren!” she yelled. “Hal picked up a scent. He thinks the thief is in the woods back there.”
“We should get the others, then,” Lauren yelled back as she swooped closer. “Follow me—I know exactly where they are.”
Hal hated leaving the scent behind, but he felt confident he’d pick it up again. Trailing after Lauren, he flew low and dropped into the woods where a suitable gap in the trees offered a safe landing spot. He then just had to wait for Lauren to fetch the others.
Come on, come on, he grumbled, swishing his tail from side to side. He spotted a centaur peering at him from the trees and for a second thought it was Dewey. Then he wondered if it were the thief. But no, there was definitely no formaldehyde around here. This was just an innocent centaur, and judging by the way he hid behind a sturdy tree, he was simply a passerby trying not to be seen by a ferocious dragon.
Hal turned his back on the centaur.
Minutes later, his friends came tramping out of the woods.
“You found the thief?” Darcy called.
Hal grunted, impatient to get going.
Once they were all on board—all in human form and chatting excitedly—he launched into the sky and set off to pick up the scent. Thankfully, he found it soon after, and he veered this way and that until he felt confident about his direction.
The thief has to be somewhere around here. Somewhere on the ground. Whoever it is—
He sucked in a breath, and all his friends fell silent.
Directly ahead, a figure had just risen from the forest, flapping hard. Man-shaped, dark-grey in color, a mixture of fur and feathers, huge wings—and dangling a giant eyeball within a net.
The thief!
Hal could hardly believe it. Even though he’d been on the trail and confident they were close, it struck him as extraordinarily lucky to see the thief pop into sight right before his eyes.
“It’s a mothman,” Robbie said quietly.
The creature appeared to be struggling with his cargo. Perhaps that explained why he’d dropped into the trees—for a rest. Now he’d resumed his journey, carrying the eyeball to his lair.
What does a mothman want with a kraken’s eye?
Still, it somehow seemed fitting. Mothmen were known for catching glimpses of the future, for portending calamitous events and generally warning of doom and gloom. A mothman with a giant eye? Maybe he wanted to see farther, beyond his normal capabilities . . .
That’s ridiculous, Hal thought. It’s just a gigantic dead eye.
He kept his distance, curious to see where the somewhat creepy creature would lead them but afraid to be spotted. What if the mothman panicked and dropped the eye? Then the special orb would be gone forever, a huge mess on the forest floor below.
But the mothman never once glanced back.
The smell of formaldehyde wrinkled Hal’s snout and made him wish his olfactory senses weren’t quite so acute. He’d follow the thief a little longer, but he knew his patience would wear thin soon. Plus, it was difficult flying at such a slow, ponderous pace.
“Guys, we’ve been here before,” Lauren said quietly. “Isn’t this where . . . ?”
She trailed off, but some of the others muttered their agreement. Hal thought so, too. As forests went, this section looked familiar.
“Oh no,” Abigail groaned. “I’ll bet the mothman’s heading to Madame Frost’s house.”
Chapter 3
The Witch in the Woods
They passed over the so-called Swamps of Misery. Hal shuddered, remembering the depressing, dense forest filled with orange-furred squonks that dissolved into puddles of tears at the slightest glance. A journey into that awful place would have them all crying their eyes out in no time.
There was no need, though. Hal grumbled with satisfaction at the sight of the mothman dropping below the treeline right about where he expected to find Madame Frost’s dismal home.
It all made sense now. Who else was macabre enough to want a giant eyeball in their home? Witches had all kinds of uses for severed body parts, strands of hair, and gouged-out eyes. All would end up in her cauldron as part of a sinister potion.
A kraken’s eye, though? No cauldron was large enough!
A one-story, stone-walled cottage came into view. It stood in a clearing on an island in the middle of the swamp, and had a steep slate roof and a tall, twisted chimney. An iron fence surrounded the cottage, its bars black and pointed. Hal looked for the gargoyles at the gate, but this time, none perched atop the stone columns on either side.
There was no sign of the mothman. He’d probably entered the house to deliver the ghastly treasure.
Hal thumped down just inside the gate, landing on the path that led to the house. Once everyone had dismounted, he reverted to human form. He had a feeling of déjà vu as he wandered toward the front door. The first time he and his friends had visited, the witch had been extremely unhelpful. Not long after, dragons had torn the place apart, and he’d later seen her trudging about picking books and bottles up off the ground.
She’d repaired the damages to the structure—probably with magic, since he couldn’t imagine her hiring builders.
“I don’t like it here,” Darcy whispered.
“Nobody in their right mind likes visiting a witch,” Fenton murmured. “Especially this witch.”
“The place is different,” Robbie said, studying the cottage. “Not so many windows? The roof is lower? It’s all just a bit . . . different.”
Thomas sighed. “Robbie, do we look like we care?”
“He’s right, though,” Emily said. “I think the island is bigger, too. Or maybe the swamp water is drying up.”
Hal absently glanced beyond the fence and frowned at the shoreline, which did indeed seem a little farther out than he remembered.
“Ooh, what’s this?” Lauren said, approaching the front porch.
A huge bowl of strawberries sat on a small table. A rocking chair and an open book suggested Madame Frost had been sitting here recently. The strawberries looked delicious, freshly washed judging by the sparkling beads of moisture. The little green leaves had been neatly cut off.
Lauren popped one into her mouth and closed her eyes as she chewed. “Oh my,” she said with her mouth full. “That’s gorgeous.”
“They’re not yours,” Emily whispered fiercely.
Thomas promptly stole one too.
Then Fenton.
“Best I ever tasted,” Robbie said as he bit one in half and studied it. “I wonder if witches put spells on their gardens to help them grow?”
Since everyone seemed to be helping themselves, Hal took one as well. He had to admit it was pretty fantastic. Then again, he couldn’t help noticing the book was open to a page elaborately titled Spells of Persuasion. He felt pretty well persuaded right now—these really were the very best strawberries he’d ever tasted!
Emily sighed and gave in, then Abigail, Darcy, and Dewey. By the time they’d all had one, the bowl was half empty.
“That’s enough,” Emily scolded the group as she chewed. “We’re not here for a picnic. We’re here to find the eyeball and arrest the witch for being a thief.”
Abigail stepped up to the sturdy door and thumped on it.
Everyone gasped.
She glanced around, one eyebrow raised. “What? Emily, you just said we’re here to—”
“I know what I said,” she hissed. “I just—”
“We can’t stand here all day eating her strawberries. Let’s get this done.”
At first, Hal moved toward her to stand by her side in case the witch flew out in a rage and attacked. But then he edged away from the group, thinking he’d better be ready to transform if he needed to.
Nobody answered the door, so Abigail thumped again, harder this time.
The others shuffled closer with obvious reluctance.
“Madame Frost!” Abigail yelled.
Several seconds later, she opened her mouth to yell again—then backed up in a hurry as the handle rattled and the door creaked open.
Madame Frost stood there, glaring at them from the threshold. Her long, grey hair was wiry and tangled, her face lined and weathered like she was two hundred years old. Despite that, she stood straight and tall, showing no signs of frailty.
“What do you want?” she growled. Narrowing her eyes, she pointed accusingly at Hal. “You have a lot of nerve showing up here. If you’ve brought steamer dragons to tear up my home again—”
“I haven’t,” Hal broke in. “But it can be arranged. We came to collect the eyeball you stole.”
She tilted her head back, peering down her nose at them all as she gazed around the group. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Fenton snorted.
Thomas rolled his eyes and laid on the sarcasm. “Of course not. Oh, but wait, what’s that weird smell?” He sniffed the air. “Is that . . . is that formaldehyde? What an odd coincidence! That’s what the kraken’s eyeball was preserved in.”
“What of it?” Madame Frost snarled.
“We followed your mothman,” Abigail said calmly. “We know the eye is here. And now we’re taking it back. Don’t give us any trouble.”
The witch launched herself out of the doorway and grabbed Abigail around the throat. The old woman was shockingly fast, and everyone’s immediate reaction was to recoil in fright.
“Don’t threaten me, young lady!” she screeched in Abigail’s face. “You think being a shapeshifter prevents me from harming you? Do you have any idea how many different ways I can curse you? All I have to do is sneak into your bedroom one night and—”
Hal rushed forward and kicked the woman as hard as he could in the shin.
His action surprised him as much as the witch. Madame Frost yelped and released Abigail, then hopped and staggered on the doorstep while letting out colorful expletives.
Hal put himself in front of Abigail and stood as tall as he could—which wasn’t very tall—with his fists balled and his heart hammering in his chest. He fought to keep the flames from erupting . . . though if she tried anything like that again, he’d certainly let her have it.
Abigail looked a little shaken. “Please don’t give us any trouble, then.”
“We’re coming in now,” Fenton said, brushing past Hal and standing in such a way that Madame Frost would have to fight her way past him to get to the others. “This is, you know, official business and all that.”
“On behalf of Miss Simone and the Council of Carter,” Emily added loudly. “And she knows where we are, so don’t try anything.”
Actually she doesn’t, Hal thought, realizing that was probably a mistake on their part.
As the shapeshifters filed into the cottage, Hal glimpsed the witch’s furious and astonished expression over Fenton’s shoulder.
But his attention quickly switched to the inside of Madame Frost’s abode. He stopped in confusion. The place was definitely different from what he remembered. Redecorating was one thing, but this was something else entirely—walls that weren’t there before, living areas all turned around, a pantry or closet he didn’t recognize, the kitchen in the wrong place, a higher ceiling than it ought to be despite a lower roofline, and a fairly grand staircase leading down to a basement he never knew existed.
“How come it’s changed?” he asked the witch as she stomped past him.
She swung around to face them all. “Do you see an eyeball anywhere? Well, do you?”
They all peered about the place.
Hal recognized the smell of formaldehyde wafting in the air. It masked whatever might be brewing in the witch’s cauldron, which hung on a metal frame near the fireplace, as it had last time Hal had visited. Numerous bottles, leather pouches, books, trinkets, and wooden boxes crammed dozens of warped shelves on every available wall. Dusty drapes hung from windows, and the flagstone floor looked like it could do with a good sweep with a magical broom. Had it been flagstone last time? He couldn’t remember.
The staircase intrigued him. Had she built a basement recently, using powerful magic? Or had the way down simply been hidden until now? A witch’s basement . . . the most sinister of lairs!
“Is it downstairs?” Lauren asked, evidently just as intrigued. She, though, had the expression of someone who definitely did not want to investigate.
“Why don’t you all take a peek?” Madame Frost said, a smile creeping across her face. She stepped aside with a flourish. “Go ahead.”
Robbie gave a strangled noise. “Y-you want us to go down there? Are you nuts?”
“I’ll go,” Thomas said, sounding bored. “But some of you stay here, or we’ll end up locked in.” He shot the witch a glare. “Because obviously she thinks we’re idiots.”
He headed down the steps.
“Wait for me,” Abigail said.
Hal automatically followed.
“I think three’s enough,” Lauren called after them. “Shout if you need us.”
Thomas, Abigail, and Hal stamped down the wide, wooden steps. They started off nice and polished, but they degenerated lower down, becoming gnarled and twisted with nailheads sticking up. Darkness flooded over them, pooling around their feet and creeping up to their ankles and knees. The steps went on and on. Hal counted ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five . . .
Finally, in total darkness, they reached the bottom. Thomas stopped. Abigail bumped into him, and Hal bumped into her.
The floor was cold and hard. Abigail gripped Hal’s hand as they stood in silence.
“Light up,” she whispered.
“Can’t you see with your faerie eyes?” he asked.
“I’m not a faerie right now.”
Hal turned away from her and Thomas, and he reached out to make sure nothing would bounce the flames back at him. To his surprise, as he sucked in a breath and prepared to let loose with some fire, his fingers touched something flat and solid—a wall.
Carefully, he breathed a flickering jet of flames. Instantly, in the dancing shadows, he saw the wall in front of him and more walls to his side.
“Hey!” Thomas complained. “The basement is tiny! Let’s go back up.”
Hal had stopped breathing fire by now, and he glanced up the steps to see the glow of light from above. It looked inviting. But he was intrigued.
“I think the wall to the right is a door,” he whispered, not sure why he was keeping his voice low. “The basement’s through there. Can you feel for the handle?”
After a little fumbling, Abigail sighed with relief. “Got it.” She fumbled some more, twisting the knob, until she was able to fling the door wide open.
Daylight flooded in.
Hal, Abigail, and Thomas stumbled almost blindly into the light, aware that they had entered a large indoor room with windows. As they squinted, a cackling laughter pierced their ears.
“Oh, your faces!” Madame Frost screeched as she doubled up. “Oh, that’s just precious!”
Somehow, they were back upstairs with the rest of the shapeshifters, who stood right there in the living room as before, waiting at the top of the basement stairs, their heads turned toward Hal in amazement.
Confused, Hal looked at the door he’d just stumbled out of, recognizing what he’d earlier assumed was a pantry or broom closet.
“W-what . . . ?” he stammered.
Abigail and Thomas appeared just as perplexed.
“How did you do that?” Robbie blurted, pointing down the steps and then at the small closet. “How did you get from down there to—?”
The witch laughed harder.
Darcy huffed with annoyance. “She’s messing with us. Ignore her. Let’s just find the stupid eyeball and get going.”
“And take the witch to prison while we’re at it,” Thomas added.
His remark caused Madame Frost’s mirth to dry up. The smile faded from her face, and a frown developed. “You’re not taking me anywhere. You’re nothing but a group of big-headed, self-righteous kids with superpowers.”
“I’m not big-headed,” Robbie exclaimed.
Hal was getting tired of the bickering. It seemed the witch was deliberately distracting them. “Where is it?” he growled, allowing his voice to deepen and a puff of hot smoke to erupt from his mouth. “Enough messing about. We might be big-headed, self-righteous kids to you, but I’m still a dragon, and I’m going to fly you into the sky any minute now and hang you upside down until you start being helpful.”
To punctuate his point, he belched up a fiery breath in her direction, causing her to leap backward.
She brushed herself down while grinding her teeth. In the silence that followed, with everyone glaring at her, she finally sighed and rubbed her nose. “All right. I’ll show you. Maybe I can persuade you not to give it back to that Simone woman. She doesn’t understand what it can do, and if she did, she’d lock it up so nobody could ever benefit from its power.”
You’re not persuading me of anything, Hal thought in sudden alarm, thinking of the strawberries they’d eaten, and the book of witchcraft that had been open at a page related to persuasion spells. He vowed to stay on guard.
Madame Frost curled her index finger to indicate they should follow her, and she headed off toward a back room, ducking under a collection of creepy low-hanging necklaces, amulets, and trinkets made from wood, string, and hair. There were a few dolls, too—with pins stuck in them.
Hal couldn’t help feeling intrigued. He shrugged at his friends, then went after her.
The old woman, who moved like someone half her age, disappeared through a set of double doors that sprang back into place with a bang. Hal gave them a push and entered a surprisingly large room lit only by a few candles. The smell of formaldehyde hit him, and he knew in a flash the eyeball was right here.
It sat on a table. The net had fallen away and lay spread out like a tablecloth. Unlike in Miss Simone’s lab, someone had balanced the eyeball upright so the huge, black pupil stared across the room at the group clustered in the doorway. And that someone had to be the mothman, who lurked in the corner, silent and motionless. His eyes were closed, and he appeared to be asleep.
Madame Frost circled the table, her eyes glinting in the candlelight, her fingers twitching with anticipation. “Now this is a prize. I paid handsomely for it, and it’s mine.”
“You paid the captain and all those poor sailors?” Emily asked.
“Indeed. I paid them whatever they desired in return for fetching me this rare treat. A spell for each crew member. I demonstrated my power before they left, curing one man of scurvy and another of partial blindness. I promised a spell for each and every brave soul who sailed to the edge of the world and stole the eye of the kraken. I promised more than money could buy.”
“And did you pay them before or after they died at sea?” Abigail asked bitterly.
“After, of course.” The witch cackled in a way that only witches could. “And by that I mean I paid them nothing—because they never showed up to claim their reward.”
Hal heard several irked sighs, but he was too busy staring at the eyeball to care about the witch’s callous attitude toward the lost crew. “Why do you want this so bad?”
They all crowded closer. The eyeball was a little deflated, a sorry-looking orb that had forever lost the fearsome gleam it might have had at sea.
Madame Frost hunched over the odd treasure, apparently unaffected by the foul smell. “If you hadn’t all burst in here in such a hurry and interrupted me, I would have had it cleaned up and ready by now, in the throes of the greatest discovery of all. As it is, you’ll have to wait a minute.”
She turned to the mothman and snapped her fingers. The sharp sound woke the creepy figure, and his eyes opened, blazing red in the gloom.
“Your debt is paid,” she said curtly. “You may go.”
She fished in her pocket and pulled out a talisman, some sort of intricate carving on a triangular base. The mothman’s eyes widened, and he reached for it. The witch dropped it into his hand, and his fingers closed around it.
Whatever it was, it meant the world to the mothman. He bowed deeply, then abruptly left the room, his grey-furred wings brushing against Hal as he went.
“What was that about?” Darcy asked.
Madame Frost scowled. “At what point, young lady, did you decide you were important enough to be owed an explanation into the dealings of another person’s affairs?”
Fenton leaned toward Darcy and cupped a hand to the side of his mouth. “I think she’s telling you to mind your own business.”
“What I want to know,” Robbie demanded, “is how a mothman broke through a door in the lab like it was made out of paper?”
“Two doors,” Lauren added.
Madame Frost shook her head impatiently. “A simple and temporary strength spell. What of it? The potion lasted several minutes. He just needed to drink it when he arrived at the laboratory building—enough time to break down the door and retrieve the eye. Let’s not bore ourselves with petty details. You, boy—hand me that rag.”
Thomas handed her the rag before he could stop himself. A second later, he frowned as if realizing he should have offered a terse retort instead.
As everyone watched in amazement, the witch closed her eyes, whispered a few words, and breathed hard on the rag. Then she began wiping the giant eyeball—specifically the huge pupil, which stared lifelessly at Hal and the others as they shuffled backward in an effort to avoid its gaze.
“Eww,” Lauren murmured.
“That’s gross,” Dewey said.
Despite their disgust, the shapeshifters couldn’t help but watch as Madame Frost carefully polished the enormous black disk. Whatever spell she’d cast on the rag seemed to be working, because the pupil began to shine, reflecting the candlelight.
“It has to be nice and clean,” Madame Frost muttered as she worked. “We need our view to be free of smudges.”
Clearly she was talking about peering into the eye for some reason. She wanted their reflections untarnished by smudges? Why?
Hal found Abigail frowning at him. He could guess why. Somehow, they were losing their grip on the situation. The witch was so weird that she threw them into a puzzled, motionless state every time she opened her mouth. Well, no more!
“That’s enough,” Hal barked, making everyone jump. “Robbie, wrap the eye up in that net and carry it out of here. We’re going back to Carter. And you, Madame Frost, are—”
“I can see it already!” the witch gasped suddenly, pausing with the rag poised. She peered intently into the eye’s inky-black depths. “Look at that! Do you see?”
“See what?” Thomas complained.
They all surged closer.
The shiny black surface reflected their faces as clear as a mirror. Hal saw himself, and Abigail next to him, and Emily, and Dewey . . . and all the others standing behind . . . and the witch, who was doubled up with silent glee.
Hal swung around. “What are you cackling about now?”
Having been exposed, Madame Frost’s laughter exploded into the room. She staggered and swayed, pointing at them, hee-hawing like a donkey and screeching louder than a banshee.
The shapeshifters turned away from the table and stood there waiting, simmering with annoyance, rolling their eyes, and shaking their heads. Hal’s patience had run thin. “Let’s bag this up and go,” he muttered.
“You kids!” the witch wheezed between peals of laughter. “All of you bent over, staring like idiots at that ghastly monstrosity on the table! Oh, I had you good and proper!”
“Complete waste of time,” Fenton grumbled, helping Robbie pull the net up around the sides of the eyeball. While he stood on tiptoes to tie it at the top, he shot a glare over his shoulder. “You’re going back with us. Just because you’re a witch doesn’t mean you can break in and steal things. You’re going to jail.”
Madame Frost had tears running down her cheeks as she struggled to compose herself and wipe the smile from her face. “Oh, goodness. All right, calm down, I was just having a bit of fun at your expense. You owe me for all the damage you caused to my house last time you paid me a visit.”
With the net secured, Fenton, Robbie, and Thomas manhandled the eyeball off the table and onto the floor. Hal, standing well back, could have sworn the whole thing sagged as they set it down. But now it stood about chest height and was easier to get hold of.
Thomas stepped away as Fenton and Robbie grabbed the netting and lifted. They headed toward the door as the old woman stood aside and observed with an indiscernible expression.
“It’s not so much heavy,” Robbie grunted as they walked the eyeball through the doorway, “just awkward.”
It squeezed between the frames with inches to spare. Turned flat so the pupil was pointed upward, it wouldn’t have made it through the opening.
Madame Frost said nothing as her prized treasure was carried outside. Hal watched her carefully, expecting her to cast a spell that would freeze everyone in place—or worse, turn them into toads. But she did nothing except follow the rest of the shapeshifters.
In the brisk, fresh air, Hal felt a wave of relief. Now he could transform and fly everyone back to Carter.
Including the witch.
“No trouble,” he warned her. “You’ll climb on my back like everyone else, and you’ll sit still and quiet the whole way. If you cause problems, Lauren will carry you off.”
Lauren nodded. “Yeah, by the ankle.”
Madame Frost rolled her eyes. “So many warnings! I’ll be good, I promise.” She smiled and pushed her straggly hair away from her face. “But of course we’re not going to Carter. We’re going to the Broken Cliffs.”
Everyone stared at her blankly. Fenton and Robbie put the eye down with a soft thud.
“Huh?” Darcy said.
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