Chapter 3

By the time Cordelia and her father made it back to Beacon Hill, the sun was just breaking over the Boston Harbor, like the yolk of an egg spilling over the wide bowl of the sea. In the morning light, Clay Manor—rising to the sky, vast and stately, surrounded by a wild nest of tangled growth, like a large ship sailing through a froth of dark waves—struck Cordelia as very beautiful. A single light was burning in the kitchen window, and it looked like a fire seen from a distance, across a dark plain.

Cordelia hopped over the large cracks in the paving stones and dodged the brambles that were reaching out to snag her jacket, taking the crumbling stone steps in one easy jump. It took several tries to get the door open. Everything at Clay Manor was just a little bit crooked. For a time, she and her father had done their best to keep up with repairs. But there were too many monsters, and never enough money, especially now that they had to Tighten Their Belts.

Inside, Cordelia and her father were greeted with a quiet chorus of thumps, bumps, growls, and snuffles.

“Not again.” Cornelius sighed as they passed inside, directly into the snug warmth of the kitchen. Several jars had been smashed on the floor, and a large puddle of what looked—and smelled—like fish oil was seeping out from underneath the old wooden table. Two pixies, both females and coated in heavy brown fur, were perched on the woodstove, chattering excitedly, and a diggle was sleeping in the corner, its spikes rising and falling gently with its breath.

“Out of here! Out of here!” Cornelius shifted the dragon carefully into the crook of his left arm so he could shoo away the pixies. They took flight, still chittering, and disappeared into the darkness. “You too.” Cornelius nudged the diggle with the toe of his boot. The diggle stretched, yawned, and continued sleeping.

“It’s okay, Dad,” Cordelia said quickly. “I’ll clean up. You take care of the dragon.”

Cornelius patted her on the shoulder. “I think a few stitches and a splint ought to do it.” He grabbed a matchstick from the mantel and used it to light a new lantern. “I’ll be in the office if you need me.”

Hefting the lantern high, he set off down the hallway. Cordelia watched the light fade, like a star into the darkness. After a minute, she heard a muffled curse, and then another burst of happy chittering. She repressed a smile. Pixies. They were always causing trouble.

She had just finished sweeping up the glass and disposing of it in the dustbin, when the ancient bell above their door gave a weak jingle. At first she barely spared it a glance, telling herself that the wind must have set it dancing. No one ever came to the house besides creditors, demanding payment for overdue bills—and creditors, she knew, didn’t bother ringing the bell. They pounded on the door. They screamed and pressed their red faces against the windows, like gigantic blowfish.

Ring-ring-ring. This time, the bell rang more insistently. Cordelia was so surprised, she dropped her dustpan with a clatter. Ring-ring-ring. The ancient bell jumped on its string.

There was no denying it. Someone was ringing the bell.

Cordelia debated going to her father, but she knew he hated to be disturbed when he was operating. Instead she hefted herself onto the wooden counter so she could peer through the windowpanes. She swiped at the smudgy glass with a sleeve; even so, she could barely see through the clutter of withered wisteria growing outside.

Standing outside her door was an enormous, overgrown mushroom.

She soon realized she was merely looking down at the top of a floppy hat. Whoever had rung the bell must be even shorter than she was, so she could make out no individual features: just the hat, and a lumpy coat, and a bit of straw-colored hair protruding around a pair of large ears.

Ring-ring-ring.

She knew she wasn’t supposed to let strangers into their home, but curiosity won out over caution. Quickly, she hopped down from the counter and shooed the sleepy diggle out into the hallway, closing and locking the door to the hallway once the monster was safely out of sight. She tidied the kitchen as best she could, shoving anything mysterious or unusual—her father’s dingle clips, the jars full of exploding phoenix feathers, a large glass filled with frothy pink hufflebottom milk—into the pantry. She glanced at her reflection in the bottom of a copper pot, combing a few leaves from her hair, then took a deep breath and opened the door.

The boy standing on the stoop was indeed several inches shorter than Cordelia, though he looked to be about her age. He was as dark as she was fair, and she knew him at once for a street urchin—likely, from the reek of shoe polish he exuded, one of the many orphans who made their living blacking boots for the lawyers, doctors, and merchants of the North End. His clothing was filthy and seemed to have come from a variety of eras and styles. He wore too-large boots with a hole in one toe, a too-small jacket with patches at the elbows, a striped undershirt that could only have come from a fisherman at the docks, and a pair of bow-legged riding pants. In his arms, he carried a puppy wrapped in a blanket.

“Are you the vegetarian?” the boy asked, as soon as she swung open the door.

This was a decidedly strange beginning to the conversation. But the boy didn’t seem the slightest bit embarrassed. “What?” Cordelia said.

“Are you the vegetarian?” he repeated patiently.

Cordelia realized he must mean veterinarian. “My father is,” she said.

“I need to see him,” the boy said, lifting his chin, which was quite pointy and gave his whole face the look of an inverted flame. “It’s urgent.”

“He’s busy right now,” Cordelia said. She added, “Can I help you?”

“It’s my dog,” the boy said, and angled the bundle he was holding into the light for Cordelia’s inspection. “I think he’s sick.”

It was clear, at first glance, that the boy’s dog was worse than sick. His eyes were glassy and unseeing. A stiff black tongue protruded from his mouth. His whole body was rigid, his tail ramrod straight, as if he’d been frozen in place in the middle of running after a squirrel.

“I’m sorry,” Cordelia said gently. “My father’s a vet. He’s not a miracle worker.” She started to close the door.

The boy jammed a boot in the doorframe before she could get it closed. Cordelia yelped and jumped backward. The boy was starting to irritate her.

“I’m not an idiot,” he said. “He’s not dead, even if he looks it. Here. See for yourself.” And he shoved the bundle into Cordelia’s arms.

She started to protest—the dog was freezing cold, like a block of ice—but then she felt, to her absolute surprise, that the dog was breathing. Underneath his skin, his ribs were expanding in and out. She heard, too, the faintest whimpering sound. There were dim points of red light barely shining in the center of his eyes, like dying embers.

Cordelia was so stunned, she nearly dropped the puppy.

“See?” the boy said.

“Where—where did you find it?” Cordelia croaked out. She knew now that what she held in her arms was extraordinarily special, and extraordinarily rare. Not a puppy. A zuppy.

A zombie puppy.

“Him,” the boy corrected crossly. “His name is Cabal. And it’s none of your business where I got him.” There was that chin again, quivering proudly in her direction. “The question is, can you help?”

Cordelia hesitated. The zuppy was very sick—anyone could see that. He had likely only just died, and it was safe to assume that the boy had no idea how to care for a recently turned zombie puppy. If she didn’t help, the zuppy would suffer greatly; eventually, he might die again, this time for good.

On the other hand, it might be irresponsible to treat the zuppy and then release it back into the boy’s care. Although zuppies were distantly related to regular dogs, the mechanism that allowed reanimation made them completely dependent on a human caretaker—and came with whitening of the zuppy’s fur and the reddening of its eyes. The boy couldn’t hope to keep Cabal concealed for long. And then what? The zuppy might be killed. Or hauled into a scientific laboratory for experimentation, poked and prodded with needles.

People are afraid of what they don’t understand.

Could she contrive a way to keep the zuppy here, at home, where he would be safe?

As if sensing the direction of her thoughts, the boy spoke up. “Please,” he said. This time he spoke quietly, earnestly, and his pointy chin began to tremble. “He’s a friend. He’s my only friend.”

Cordelia felt a wrenching twist of pity. She knew better than anyone what it was like to have only monsters for friends.

“Stay here,” she told the boy, and retreated into the kitchen, latching the door behind her, just in case the boy got it into his head to follow her. She would have to move quickly, before her father finished repairing the dragon’s wing and came to find her. She was sure Cornelius Clay wouldn’t allow her to return the zuppy to the boy’s care. He would tell her it was far too dangerous—for the boy, but mostly for the zuppy.

Fortunately, Cordelia knew just what to do. She had read all about zuppies in her mother’s book, A Guide to Monsters and Their Habits, whose publication had launched Elizabeth Clay to prominence in the monsterologist and naturalist communities. She had even, a year after its publication, been the first woman invited to lecture at Harvard University.

Then, suddenly, scathing articles began to flood the prominent newspapers. Elizabeth Clay was a sham, and her methodology was sloppy. Elizabeth Clay was an anarchist, bent on the destruction of the natural order. Elizabeth Clay wanted to normalize monsters, wanted monsters in our parks and forests, in our gardens and even in our homes. She wanted monsters stalking our playgrounds and schools. She had more interest in protecting monsters than in protecting people.

Then death threats came, in a trickle, and then a flood. The book was pulled from the shelves, and her second book contract was canceled.

Even so, Elizabeth Clay had only been more determined to prove that there was nothing monstrous about monsters at all. Two years later, deep in the work of a second book she was sure would redeem her to the scientific community, she set sail for the jungle, and vanished.

By now, Cordelia’s copy of The Guide to Monsters and Their Habits was so old and worn that the yellowed pages had come loose from the binding, and the whole thing was held together by ribbons. It didn’t matter. Cordelia had read it so many times, she had practically memorized the whole thing.

For the first several weeks of the zuppy’s new life-after-life, Cordelia’s mother had written, it is critical that its diet be regular and uniform.

Which, Cordelia knew, was a fancy way of saying that newly turned zuppies ate one thing, and one thing alone.

She placed the zuppy on the kitchen table. His eyes flickered, just barely.

“Hang on, little guy,” she whispered. She went to the ice chest and dug past frozen hunks of meat and jars of rare ingredients, labeled in her father’s neat script: praying mantis eggs, sap milk, tails of electric eels. At the very bottom of the ice chest, she found several vials filled with a rich, purplish-red liquid, each bearing identical, handwritten labels.

Blood.

Cordelia warmed the vial by rolling it quickly in two hands, then reversed a little into a pipette, used most commonly to give eye drops to the filch, who suffered frequently from infections. With one hand, she eased open the zuppy’s jaw, revealing the stiff black tongue. With the other hand, she squeezed several drops of blood into the zuppy’s mouth.

For a minute, nothing happened. The zuppy didn’t stir.

“Come on, little guy,” Cordelia said, and brought the pipette once again toward the zuppy’s open mouth.

All at once, he blinked. In one fluid motion, the zuppy sat up, latching onto the pipette so fiercely he nearly tore it from Cordelia’s hand. She laughed out loud as the little zombie puppy began to wriggle. He wagged his tail. He blinked at her expectantly, and then pawed her hand. “Not too much now,” she said, as he drained the eye dropper entirely. “You’ll make yourself sick.”

A sharp red gleam had returned to his eyes, burning bright as coal.

“There’s a good boy,” she said, and hefted him into her arms. He was still cold—he always would be—and when he licked her face, his breath smelled a little like dirt.

The boy was still standing on the stoop, pacing. His face lit up when he saw the zuppy wiggling in Cordelia’s arms.

“Cabal!” he cried. The zuppy leapt straight for the boy, nearly knocking him backward on the crumbling steps. The boy accepted several licks to his face and then set Cabal down, where he ran in happy circles around the boy’s boots.

“You did it.” The boy looked wonderingly up at Cordelia. She was reminded of a flame, as if the boy were lit up from within, once again. She wondered where he had slept the night, whether he had had to make a bed above a heating grate, or in one of the stable yards, where he might nest in the straw with the animals. She had a momentary desire to tell the boy to come inside, to sit by the fire, to talk a while. But of course she couldn’t. “You saved him. How did you save him?” the boy asked.

“It was no big deal,” Cordelia said, avoiding the question. She wasn’t sure how the boy would react to finding out that the dog running circles around his feet was neither technically a dog nor technically alive. “Here,” she said, passing him several glass vials and a pipette filled with blood. “Make sure he takes some three times a day.”

The boy made a face. “What is this stuff?”

“Medicine,” she said evasively.

The boy shrugged and stuffed the vials and pipette into the pockets of his too-small coat. For a second, they stood there awkwardly, staring at each other.

Be my friend. The words were pressing at the back of Cordelia’s throat before she knew that she had thought them. But just then the boy gave an awkward wave. “Well, thanks a lot. See you around.”

“Okay. See you.”

Cordelia watched as the boy retreated down the overgrown path, with the newly revived zuppy trotting at his heels. The urge to call him back was suddenly overwhelming. But what would she say? She knew how to calm a growrk, and catch a pixie, and cure a hufflebottom of asthma. She knew a thousand things. But she didn’t know how to tell the boy that she was lonely.

She started to close the door. “Wait!” the boy called out to her.

She opened the door again, her heart hammering. “Yeah?”

The boy was now standing at the end of the path, near the crooked gate that led onto the street. “I’m Gregory, by the way.”

“Cordelia,” she said. Then: “Would you like to come in for—?”

But the boy had already disappeared into the smoky light of a new dawn, leaving Cordelia alone.

Cordelia shut the blinds against the daylight, which was starting to seep across the cluttered countertops like the drool of a Mattahorn salivus. She very carefully spooned a half tablespoon of powdered chocolate from the inch or so that remained, then heated it on the stove, thinning it with water and adding a dash of milk only at the end. Once, she would have used two tablespoons of chocolate for each cup. Once, she would have used only milk. But that was before Hard Times.

When the chocolate was heated, she divided it into two mugs: hers, a pale blue; her father’s, a vivid red. The third mug, a pretty lavender color, had been her mother’s, and still sat on the shelf above the stove, where it had always been. It comforted Cordelia to see it there, as if someday her mother might return, shaking rain out of her hair, bubbling over with the excitement of her discovery.

I found it, she would say, before she had even removed her boots. The missing link. Proof that monsters are as natural to the world as we are.

Cordelia had just set the mugs on the table when she heard her father’s footsteps coming down the hall. He reentered with the dragon. Now unmuzzled, the dragon blinked sleepily at Cordelia. She saw that its wing had been repaired and splinted carefully with pencil-thin pieces of birchwood.

When he noticed the twin mugs on the table, he smiled. “Ah, Cordelia. You’re a mind reader. Hot chocolate will be just the thing. Open the oven for me, will you?”

The oven hadn’t been used for cooking in years. Instead Cornelius and Cordelia had transformed it into a pen, fitted with blankets and a covering of clean straw. It was warm, and dry, and cozy, and would be perfect for the baby dragon.

Once their newest monster was happily settled in his new home, Cordelia’s father took a seat at the table. Cordelia slid into her customary place across from him.

“Was it my imagination, or did I hear the bell ring?” he said, taking a sip of hot chocolate and watching Cordelia carefully over the rim of his cup.

“It was just the wind,” Cordelia said quickly. She knew she couldn’t tell her father about the zuppy. And she didn’t want to tell him about the boy, Gregory. She wanted to keep him her own little secret.

Cornelius set down his mug and reached for Cordelia’s hand. “Are you lonely here, Cordelia? With just your old father and a bunch of smelly monsters for company?”

Though she had been thinking exactly that only a few minutes ago, her father’s face was filled with such an open worry that she shook her head. “I love it here,” she said. “And the monsters don’t smell. Not all of them, anyway.”

Cornelius smiled feebly. “I fear I’ve been a terrible father,” he said. “Too wrapped up in my work. Too wrapped up in the past—”

“Don’t say that,” Cordelia said. “You’re the greatest father in the world.”

An expression passed across Dr. Clay’s face that Cordelia couldn’t identify—sadness, almost, but deeper than sadness, as if Dr. Clay was staring out at her from the bottom of a well. But when he spoke, he sounded normal. “I want you to know I’m very proud of you.”

“Okay.” Cordelia fidgeted in her chair. She didn’t like when her father got mushy. She didn’t like the way he was looking at her, either—as if there was a secondary meaning behind his words, if she could only decode it.

“I’m proud of you, and I love you very much. You have to promise me that if anything ever happens to me—” His voice hitched, and he cleared his throat, spinning his mug between his hands. “If anything ever happens to me, you’ll take good care of yourself. And you’ll remember what I told you—we all grow up sometime. It’s only right.”

“Nothing’s going to happen,” Cordelia said. But even after her father kissed her forehead and bid her good night, she stayed at the table, wondering what could have made her father—her fearless, monster-loving father—so sad.