“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m nervous. I haven’t ever gone to the zoo with my dad before. What if I do it wrong?”
He walked along next to me for a second, and then I felt his fingers brush against my hair gently. “I’m pretty sure this isn’t something you get right or wrong.”
Which would make sense, if I didn’t have to worry about turning into a complete spaz if things got too big and loud. “What if … I don’t know. What if I set something on fire?”
“Maybe we’ll roast some marshmallows,” he said.
Which was the kind of goofy thing you’d expect a grown-up to say, but it was nice to hear him say it. “You’re weird.”
Mouse leaned against me with a little huff of a breath that he used when he thought something was funny. He was clearly pleased, though I thought he was a little distracted, too. Must be because Dad was here, and he really, really liked Dad. Dad saved him from a monster when he was a tiny puppy, and then Mouse grew up and helped Dad fight monsters, and then Dad gave him to me to be my protector.
Mouse was good at that. The creeps mostly didn’t bother me—and the particularly old and nasty underhide that had moved into the space beneath my bed had found out the hard way that you don’t mess around with Maggie and Mouse Dresden.
Dad was talking to me about how he had saved a gorilla once, and was leaning over me to pet Mouse when we all but walked right into an entire tribe of haunts.
These had taken a bunch of kids, and you could see it in their eyes—they were entirely black, no color, no whites, no nothing. Just these hollow, empty spaces that were full of the kind of nothing that wanted to suck you into it and watch you spin helplessly and scream. The kids walked around like well-behaved children from a boarding school—but I saw their eyes, suddenly fastening onto me, maybe a dozen sets of them. The eyes stared at me, and they had a horrible power. I suddenly remembered my last nightmare, not just the details of what happened, but the way it made me feel when I was having it, and my legs got weak.
Dad was paying attention to Mouse and vice versa, and neither of them saw the way that the haunts all stared at me for a good second as they went by. I felt each gaze and knew what was happening.
The haunts were marking me for prey.
Oh, great. This was all I needed.
I folded my arms against my stomach and took slow, deep breaths that were supposed to help me not spaz out as much. My dad couldn’t see the haunts. He couldn’t really interact with them. But they were able to hurt him, and he wouldn’t even know what was happening.
I was pretty sure that it was probably a terrible idea to go into the zoo with a bunch of hungry, hunting creeps. Haunts could be dangerous if you didn’t know how to handle them—which was bad enough, all by itself.
I glanced up at him for a second. He was watching me with that concerned look adults get before they carry me off to a dark, quiet room. All I had to do was say something, and he’d do it. I’d be safe and it would be quiet.
And then that would be the end of our first real day together.
Stupid haunts. Stupid, creeping haunts.
I wasn’t going to let them and their stupid faces ruin this for my dad.
I would deal with them myself.
BUT FIRST, I would see a bunch of superawesome animals. I mean, Mouse was cheating, which he does all the time. He’s a Foo dog, and he has a bunch of weird powers. Most of his powers generally relate to telling monsters to back off, and then they do it, but having him around makes everything a little easier. When Mouse is there, there’s always a seat in the restaurant when you’re hungry, and you get the good waiter. TV commercials always have the good movie trailers mixed in them. Cartoons show funnier episodes. If you go to a game, the people around you are always really nice. It doesn’t work at school, because Mouse won’t cheat there, but everywhere else he just makes things happen a lot nicer than they otherwise would.
Nobody seemed to notice it but me, but that was okay. Mouse was the only one to notice when I needed a big furry hug sometimes.
Mouse was using his powers to make the zoo more awesome. The animals were all being super cool. The otters were running and playing, and the monkeys were swinging and making noises, and even the lion roared for us while we were there.
If it hadn’t been for the haunts, it would have been perfect.
They were following me. I mean, they weren’t obvious about it or anything, but their group had split up into pairs and there were always a couple of them within thirty or forty yards, keeping track of me and staring.
Always, always staring.
That was what haunts did. They followed you, sometimes for days and days, and they stared and their empty eyes made you relive the bad things from your life. If they did it long enough, you’d just wind up in a ball on the ground—and when you got up, you’d have big black eyes and the haunt would be telling you what to do from then on.
I thought about telling my dad about them, but … he may have been nice and a wizard, but he was also a grown-up. If you started talking to grown-ups about things they couldn’t see, let’s just say that you didn’t get to go chase fireflies near dark very often.
Besides.
What if he thought I was, you know? Broken. What if he didn’t want a daughter who was all funny in the head?
So I kept quiet and close to Mouse. The haunts didn’t dare get very close as long as he was there. Mouse could sort of see the creeps, if they got close enough and weren’t careful to be super quiet and lowkey. Even though he’s an adult, he’s a grown-up dog, and that makes him a lot like a kid. So far, they’d kept their distance to avoid his notice, and as long as they stayed that far back, their Scare Bear Stare couldn’t do much more than make me grumpy—and the awesome factor in the zoo was kind of countering that.
Maybe today would go smoothly after all.
And then my dad’s head shot up like Mouse when he smells lighter fluid at the Carpenter’s house, and his eyes flicked around him like a big, hungry bear looking for something to tear into.
“Um. Dad?” I asked
He looked down at me, and he did not look like a dad. He looked like the hero of a revenge movie—tense and alert and maybe even a little angry.
Oh.
Oh, wow. There must have been a monster or something for him to look like that. I didn’t see anything, but it seemed like a good idea to get between Mouse and my dad before asking, “Is there something bad?”
He looked away from me and the little muscles in his jaw jumped a bunch of times. I wasn’t sure if maybe I’d made him angry. I didn’t think so. I didn’t think I’d done anything that he could get mad about.
But I didn’t always realize it when I did.
“Maybe,” he said, finally. He looked at me, and his face got softer for a minute. “Maybe nothing. I don’t know. I need to look around and see what’s going on. I need to put you in a safe spot before I do that.”
Sometimes safe spots were nice and safe, and sometimes they were a room with a locked door. Did he think I was about to have an attack or something? Or maybe he was just being careful.
Grown-ups are always being careful.
But how could I be sure which it was?
“It’s important, isn’t it?” I said.
My dad couldn’t have understood what I was asking. “Maybe,” he said. He nodded toward the café that served the zoo. “How about we go get a booth and order some food. You and Mouse sit, and I’ll go look around and be back before the food gets there.”
I needed a big furry hug, and Mouse was right there. I hugged him and thought. If he was going to stay here instead of taking me somewhere, then he probably didn’t think he had to take care of me. So, you know. That’s good, I thought.
But it would leave me on my own, with creeps all over the place.
Well. That was my problem. And I’d have Mouse with me. Mouse always helped.
I looked up at my dad and nodded. “Yeah. I guess that’s okay.”