“They really think I’m limping?” Goggy the HobGrackle asked. “That’s why they brought me here?”

Goggy and I sat in exam room three (formerly occupied by the Troll babies), waiting for Aunt Emma, who was still chipping the glass off Missy’s horn. Goggy was considerably calmer, in part because Dreadbatch wasn’t in here, but mostly because he was exhausted from the chase around the clinic.

“That’s what it says here on your chart,” I said, nodding toward the clipboard. “You aren’t limping?”

Goggy looked miffed. “I am learning ballet.”

“You aren’t hurt at all?”

“I’m hurt they didn’t appreciate my interpretation of Swan Lake,” Goggy sighed. He put his head down on his coiled-up tail. I took the opportunity to study him and finish the addition I’d made to the HobGrackle entry in Jeffrey Higgleston’s Guide to Magical Creatures.

It wasn’t the first sketch or note that I’d added to the Guide. The foreword of the Guide said, “a good researcher will continue to study and discover magical creatures across the globe.”

I very much wanted to be a good researcher.

The exam room door swung open and Aunt Emma walked in.

“Pip, your hair’s gotten longer! I’m sorry about all that nonsense in the waiting room. Mrs. Dreadbatch … well … she doesn’t have a very good energy with animals.”

I thought that was a very nice way for Aunt Emma to put it.

Aunt Emma caught sight of my Guide. “I like your addition. I guess the HobGrackle chapter doesn’t mention that tail, does it?”

She rubbed her head as she said this. Her hand had purple Goggy sweat on it and now her head did too, but she didn’t appear too upset.

“I’ve never seen a HobGrackle before,” I said quickly. “No one keeps them as pets in Atlanta, since they need so much space. I can’t wait to see other magical creatures face-to-face.”

“Oh, yes, your mom told me that you still really love them,” Aunt Emma said. In a wistful voice, she added, “I wish Callie would take more of an interest—too bad there isn’t a musical about magical animals, huh? Oh, well. I’m sure you’ll learn a lot here.”

“I really want to be helpful,” I said. “Like Goggy, for instance. He’s not actually limping! He was doing ballet! He told me.”

Aunt Emma didn’t respond right away. She didn’t give me the look that meant, This child is crazy. But she did tilt her head a bit. Probably she was thinking about the Unicorn Incident.

Finally, she put a hand on my shoulder, leaving a small purple mark of HobGrackle sweat. “Pip. Kiddo. I know you love animals—especially magical ones. So do I! And I know sometimes it really does feel like they’re talking to us. But do try to remember that it’s only in your imagination. Animals need people like us precisely because they can’t talk!”

“But, Aunt Emma, they talk—”

The exam room door opened and Callie walked in, looking about as friendly as a bag of Parisian Sparkle Vipers. She held a bucket of water and some purple-stained rags.

“Having a nice chat, I see? I could use some help,” Callie said. “I’m not a miracle worker. I’m only one girl. One very overworked girl, forced to slave away every day in her mother’s place of business, barely getting an allowance, never getting a break to even spend the allowance, basically giving up her childhood so that her mother can—”

“Okay, okay, Callie, that’s a bit theatrical, don’t you think? What do you need?” Aunt Emma interrupted.

“Bubbles,” Callie said. “He needs to be walked.”

“I’ll do it!” I piped up. I didn’t know what Bubbles was, but I was willing to take any excuse to make sure the conversation about talking animals was done. I wanted to be believed, but I wanted Aunt Emma to like me more.

Both Aunt Emma and Callie frowned at me. Well, Callie was already frowning; she just frowned even more.

Aunt Emma said, “Maybe … I suppose I could call Angelina and ask her son to join you. He’s your age—we thought you two might make good friends.”

Callie snorted. “Good luck with that.”

“Oh, I can go by myself,” I said quickly. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to have friends. I was just so much better at talking to animals than people. I didn’t know what Bubbles was, but I knew it would be easier to talk with him than a human stranger.

“I think you’ll have more fun if you go with Tomas,” Aunt Emma said firmly. “Besides, I don’t like the idea of you walking around the block by yourself. I don’t want you to get … misplaced.”

“Lost,” translated Callie. “Forever.”

I had just come from Atlanta, which was a lot bigger than Cloverton, so I really didn’t think I would get lost just walking around a block. But since I wasn’t very good at talking to people, I definitely wasn’t very good at arguing with them. So instead of trying to change Aunt Emma’s mind, I asked, “What’s Bubbles?”

Callie snorted again. “Come on.”

Bubbles turned out to be a Griffin. To be more specific, he was a Miniature Silky Griffin.

To be more specific, he was a very old Miniature Silky Griffin who didn’t like people, animals, or loud, soft, and medium noises. Callie pointed him out on top of a bookshelf in the record-keeping room. From the look of the shredded files around him, he’d been making a nest there.

“Don’t drag him,” Callie said, handing me a leash. “And don’t let people get close to him. He’s not friendly. Also, don’t sing around him. He hates singing. Mom said Tomas will meet you at his mailbox. It’s the one with the marigolds.”

She whirled away.

“Bubbles?” I called up to him. “I’m Pip. Aunt Emma’s niece. I’m supposed to take you for a walk.”

“Finally,” Bubbles said. His voice was crackly and old. He didn’t sound surprised that I was talking directly to him. Hopping off the shelf, he glided down to the floor. The fur on his head was silvery around the edges, and the feathers that covered his back and wings were all sorts of colors, like a pile of leaves in the fall. I wanted to touch him to see if he was as silky as he looked, but I guessed from the cranky set of his ears that he wouldn’t be very happy if I did.

So I just clipped the leash on to his harness and headed outside with him. I hadn’t ever really thought about the smell of places, but Cloverton smelled very different from Atlanta. The scent of honeysuckle and hay wafted from the direction of the small stable where the large magical creatures were housed. I could also smell cookies baking from one of the nearby houses. It was nice. My parents weren’t really the cookie-baking type—and it was pretty obvious Aunt Emma wasn’t, or, if she was, she was too busy to actually bake cookies—but I liked the idea of other people baking cookies nearby.

As we walked down the clinic’s long, flower-lined drive, I tried to make pleasant small talk with the Griffin. “Did you hear all the commotion with the HobGrackle?”

“HobGrackles,” Bubbles sniffed. “Purple.”

“Oh, he couldn’t help it. Do you really hate singing?”

The Griffin gave me a beady-eyed glare. “Mostly just Callie’s.”

He grumbled to himself as we passed the buildings next to Cloverton Clinic for Magical Creatures. The clinic used to be a house, so it was mostly surrounded by other houses, some of which were now also businesses. Grown-up sorts of things, like lawyers or accountants or antique stores.

Standing in the street outside one of the houses that was still a house was a boy. Judging from the marigolds by his mailbox, this boy was Tomas.

Tomas was wiry and slight, with hands and glasses that looked two sizes too big for his body. He was so clean he was really quite shiny, though his hair stuck up like he’d rubbed it against a balloon. Tomas looked at me, then down at Bubbles, then back at me. I thought about how I’d describe him in the Guide.

I wasn’t quite sure why my aunt and Tomas’s mom thought we’d make good friends. He was about my age, sure, but judging from the look he was giving Bubbles, he wasn’t a huge fan of animals. What would we talk about? I tried to think about Marisol and the sorts of things she would say to this boy.

“Why are you nervous?” Bubbles asked. I’d always heard Miniature Silky Griffins were particularly good at reading emotions, but I was still pretty impressed by how Bubbles hadn’t even had to glance at me to pick up on it.

“Aunt Emma says I’m supposed to be friends with that boy,” I said, nodding toward Tomas. “I’m not very good at making human friends.”

“That one?” Bubbles narrowed his eyes at the boy, who was watching us draw closer and closer. “I think he’ll work.”

“Really? Why?”

“Because you look like you’re the same sort of weird. Humans are friends with other humans who are the same sort of weird. Emma is friends with other people who like animals. Callie is friends with other people who annoy me. Yes. He’ll work for you. Matching weird.”

But Bubbles had to be mistaken. If anything, Tomas looked like he had more in common with Marisol. They were both so tidy. Bubbles grumbled in his throat, then dragged me closer.

“Well! Say something to him!” Bubbles growled.

I couldn’t believe I was letting myself get ordered around by a Griffin the size of a large toaster, but I asked the boy, “What are you doing?”

“Meeting you to walk around the block,” Tomas said.

“No, I mean, why are you standing out here in the street? It’s not very safe.”

“I have to avoid the marigolds.” He pointed at the flowers around his mailbox. “I’m allergic.”

“To marigolds?”

“To flowers.”

I looked around. A two-second survey confirmed that the neighborhood was full of flowers. “Shouldn’t you just stay inside, then? They’re everywhere.”

“My mom says I need to get some fresh air.” He sighed terribly. “She doesn’t understand that I’m allergic to air too.”

Bubbles abruptly lunged forward.

Tomas let out a sound like a bicycle tire losing pressure and leaped back. But the Griffin wasn’t attacking—he was just interested in taking a huge bite of the marigolds. He munched them, staining his beak yellow. Even though he was making little yum-yum sounds as if the flowers were delicious, his face still looked cranky.

“Griffins are hypoallergenic,” I offered, because Tomas still looked scared. The Guide had a section on pets recommended for people with allergies, and Griffins were in there. Even very sensitive people rarely reacted to Griffin dander. This was important because even though not many people were allergic to magical creatures, the ones who were had rather … magical reactions.

“Even if they’re hypoallergenic, they still bite,” Tomas said. “The bacteria in their mouths can take down a full-grown man, you know. And I am not a grown man. And I’m predisposed to even minor infections. And that Griffin looks like he already wants to bite me.”

“That’s just the way his face looks,” I said, making a mental note to remember that bit about the bacteria in Griffins’ mouths so I could add it to the Guide. I was pretty impressed that Tomas knew something I didn’t know about Griffins. Not many people did.

Tomas suddenly sneezed so hard his hair waved back and forth on his head. He looked at the marigolds accusingly, then said, “Callie told my brothers about you. And they told me. Did you really cause a Unicorn stampede at your school?”

I sighed and said, “Yes.” It was easier to say yes than it was to explain everything. Well, maybe not easier, since it made me really sad that everyone thought I’d just decided to hop on a Unicorn that day. But at the very least, saying yes made things a lot less complicated.

Tomas asked, “And is the other part true too? Do you really think you can talk to magical creatures?” He lifted his eyebrows, which made his glasses slide down his nose.

Well! Tomas got straight to the point, didn’t he?

I frowned. “I don’t think I can do it. It’s not pretend. I really can talk to them.” I braced myself to be laughed at, or pointed at, or maybe eyebrow-raised at.

Instead, Tomas said, “That’s unbelievable.”

Before I had time to protest, he added, “I’m allergic to three hundred forty-seven things so far. And I have brittle bones. And my blood doesn’t clot right. And I’m prone to concussions. People are always telling me, ‘That’s unbelievable.’ ”

Bubbles had finished eating the marigolds. He’d left nothing but the little green stubs sticking out of the ground like spikes. I asked Tomas, “Wait, so does that mean you believe me?”

Tomas shrugged. That wasn’t a yes, but, for the first time, it also wasn’t a no.

Bubbles suddenly tugged at his leash and told me, “I’m done eating. Let’s go.” He dragged me a few feet. For an old, rickety Griffin the size of a toaster, he was quite strong.

“We’re going now? Right now?” Tomas asked. He took an inhaler out of his pocket and puffed on it a few times, looking a bit terrified that the moment to leave had finally arrived.

“You don’t have to if you’re really scared,” I said, even though I did want him to come along now. “I could come visit you in your front yard again.”

“I never get to do anything,” Tomas said. “Everything is too dangerous. All my brothers get to play football, and go to camp, and eat dairy products. I never get to do anything.”

So Tomas took one step, then another. Every step we took, Tomas got a little prancier, until finally, about halfway around, he burst out, “I’m walking! I’m walking around a block! I haven’t had a migraine or a stomachache or a seizure or reacted badly to the dandelion pollen! We should do it again. Are you going to be here long?”

“All summer,” I said.

Bubbles suddenly stopped in his tracks. I accidentally hauled on his leash, and he grumbled, “Hey!”

“Sorry,” I said. “What are you doing?”

“What?” Tomas asked.

I pointed to the Griffin. “I was asking Bubbles.”

Tomas raised his eyebrows but didn’t tell me I was being strange. He said, “Carry on.”

“Okay, what are you doing?” I asked Bubbles.

“Smelling,” he grunted. Hedges lined this part of the sidewalk, and he rooted around in the ivy growing beneath them. “This is weird. Look.”

Tomas and I both paused to observe Bubbles as he investigated the ivy. The patch Bubbles sniffed was … smoking. The leaves were darkened and curled. It was as if they were trying to catch on fire but were too damp.

I’d never seen burning plants before, but I figured my reaction should be the same as when I saw anything else burning.

In other words, it was time to get a grown-up.

“We need to tell someone,” I said. “Even though it’s not really on fire, it—”

A thin spray of water interrupted me. It was coming from a large bottle of saline eye drops that Tomas had pulled from his pocket. He squirted the saline solution all over the leaves until they stopped smoking. Then he snapped the top back on and returned it to his pocket.

I was impressed.

“Do you always have that with you?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Pretty much. I might get dry eyes.”

We both studied the now-damp leaves. Bubbles, who had gotten saline solution in his ear, looked peevish.

“Why do you think those leaves were smoldering?” I asked. “I didn’t see anything that would light them on fire.”

“I don’t know,” Tomas said. “I don’t like it, though. Also, if you inhale the smoke of a burning poison ivy plant, you can get a rash in your lungs.”

I found a stick and poked the ground. “This isn’t poison ivy.”

“I know. I was just telling you that if it was.”

I tapped my chin. “I think this is interesting, Tomas. I like interesting things.”

Tomas hurried to catch up with me as I started to walk again. He said, “I’m pretty sure I’m allergic to interesting things.”