“Uh-oh.” Khepri clicked in alarm.
Hidden behind the barrel, Miu and I stared at each other.
“I don’t believe it,” I said. “Another crown prince just slipped out of our paws?”
Miu hung her head. “What are we going to tell the crocodiles?”
“Shhh!” Khepri said. “Listen to what the Keeper’s saying.”
The Keeper was talking to Ahmose. “I’m telling you, that little crocodile was here when I went to bed. This morning, his cage was still locked, but he was gone.”
Ahmose’s cheeks were pale. “Did he slip through the bars?”
“I thought he was too big for that,” the Keeper said, “but I guess I was wrong. Crocodiles can be tricky that way.”
“And other ways, too,” I added under my breath.
“Shhh!” Khepri said again.
Ahmose looked up at the Keeper. “Did you tell my mother that the crocodile is missing?”
The Keeper gulped. “Er…no. I thought maybe we’d keep that news to ourselves for now. Your very gracious mother seems upset this morning, so I thought I would look around first before I bother her. Starting here in the zoo.”
“A wise plan,” Turo agreed. “Lady Satiah has enough to worry about right now.”
Ahmose stepped up to the gate in the archway. “How about we help you search for him?” he said to the Keeper.
“Good idea,” I murmured. It would save us a lot of trouble if Ahmose found him.
“Maybe he’ll even find Dedi, while he’s at it,” Khepri agreed.
Actually, I wanted to be the one to find Dedi. But to do that, we had to get past the gate and into the zoo.
“Ahmose, he’s a very sweet baby crocodile, but he does have teeth,” the Keeper warned. “I’m not sure about having you search for him.”
“He won’t bite me.” Ahmose lifted the latch. “He knows I’m his friend. It’s kind of like you and elephants.”
The Keeper got a dreamy look in his eyes. “Oh, elephants are wonderful creatures, Ahmose. Did I ever tell you that the first zoo I worked in had one?”
Ahmose swung the zoo gate open. “You mean the one who curled his trunk right around your hand?”
“That’s the one,” the Keeper said, walking into the zoo with Ahmose. “Sweetest baby elephant you ever did see.”
“With thick black lashes, right?” Ahmose said.
“Thickest I ever saw,” the Keeper said. “I decided, then and there, that I was going to have my own elephant one day.”
“That’s just like me and my crocodile,” Ahmose said.
Yawning again, Turo followed them through the gate, letting it fall shut behind him. “Now, Ahmose, you need to be careful…”
“Quick!” Khepri tugged my ear. “Turo didn’t latch the gate. We can get in!”
As Miu and I pawed the gate open, we heard Ahmose say to the Keeper, “You never got an elephant of your own, did you?”
“Not yet, Ahmose, but I haven’t given up hoping…”
It only took us a moment to squeeze through the gate. Avoiding the humans, we dashed down the first row of cages, then came to a stop. The place was packed, and everyone seemed due for a cage cleaning.
“It’s more crowded than I expected,” Miu said.
“And smellier,” I added.
The smell didn’t bother Khepri, though. “Now let’s see if we can find Sobek Junior,” he said into my ear. “And Dedi, too.”
“And maybe some breakfast,” I said faintly. I knew finding Dedi was important—every hour he was gone, my spirits sank a little more—but that game of tag in the storeroom was catching up with me. “All this running around on an empty stomach isn’t good for me.”
“Well, we’ve come to the right place.” Khepri sniffed the air, then crawled over to a scrap of dung on the stone floor. “Wow! Gazelle dung. This sure is a classy café.”
“Only if you’re a dung beetle,” I said miserably. “If you’re a cat, not so much.”
“Speak for yourself,” Miu said beside me. “I smell fish.” Poking her head into some pots that were lined up for feeding time, she emerged with a silvery tail sticking out of her mouth. “Mmmmmmm!”
“Yuck.” I turned away, disgusted. I was hungry, all right, but Pharaoh’s Cat has standards. I’d never stoop to eating food that Pharaoh and his family considered unclean.
As Miu slurped her fish down, I stalked a little farther into the zoo. The farther I went, the worse it stank, and no wonder. There were at least twenty cages here, wedged into a courtyard that wasn’t much bigger than Lady Satiah’s great hall. The ceiling was a patchwork of nets, which let some of the stench rise but did nothing to block the glare of the sun.
Despite the heat and the smell, I was hungry. Ducking into a tiny patch of shade beside an ibis cage, I licked my lips and surveyed the zoo again. There had to be something here that I could eat.
“My babies!” the white-feathered ibis shrieked.
I took a close look at her three tiny hatchlings. Was she offering her young for my hour of need…?
The ibis’s curved black beak sliced through the gap between the bars of the cage. “You’ve eaten my babies!” she screamed.
I drew myself up in my most dignified pose. “My dear lady, I didn’t touch your babies.” Though I wouldn’t mind a little roast ibis in pepper sauce…
She turned a hysterical eye on me. “Not you. It’s those greedy lion cubs. Though now that you mention it, I don’t like the look of you, either.” She spread her black-tipped wings over her hatchlings. “Stay away from my babies! Stay away!”
“Oh, give it a rest, why don’t you?” the lioness growled from her cage across the way. “I’m tired of listening to your lies.” She nuzzled her four cubs. “My darlings couldn’t care less about your gawky little hatchlings. Who wants a mouthful of feathers and beak?”
“They ate my babies!” the ibis shrieked again. “I had five, and now I only have three.”
“Maybe you miscounted,” the lioness sniffed. “You silly thing.”
“There were FIVE,” the ibis insisted. “Five before we were captured, and five after. One, two, three, four, five. Until your nasty cubs slipped out of their cage and came looking for a meal—”
“Nasty?” the lioness growled. “You take that back, you flimsy bag of feathers! My sweet cubs never touched your wretched hatchlings. If you want to know who was to blame, it was probably that baby crocodile. He could gobble up your lot in one bite.”
“The baby crocodile?” I darted over to the lioness’s cage. “You saw him get out?”
Miu joined me, Khepri riding on her back. “Did he escape last night?” she asked the lioness.
“Did you see where he went?” Khepri wanted to know.
“We’re looking for a boy, too,” I added. “Not Ahmose. Another boy, even taller, with skinny legs.”
The lioness ignored us. “I’ve had enough of these stupid accusations,” she growled at the ibis. “Between you and that moaning gazelle over there, my darlings can hardly get a wink of sleep.”
“My babies!” The ibis was screaming again. “You ate my babies!”
“If you could just answer our questions,” I said to the lioness.
“Please,” Miu told her. “It’s terribly important—”
“Shut up, all of you!” the lioness roared.
The air shivered with the ferocious sound. We all took a big step back.
“Uh-oh.” Khepri gave a nervous click from Miu’s back. “I think the Keeper noticed that. He’s coming over. We’d better move fast, or he’ll throw us out!”