26

Jordan awoke to find himself in a cozy little bed. For a moment he thought he’d had a horrible nightmare. With some effort, he lifted his head and looked past his feet. He was in the library room, and it was packed with kids in their Badger Runt uniforms. They crowded around his bed, staring silently at him. Doris stepped forward, gently reached out toward his face—and jammed her thumb into his eye.

“Ow! Hey!” Jordan tried to pull his head away as Doris forced his eyelid open with her thumb and forefinger, but was stopped by a sharp, sudden throbbing pain behind his eyes. He suddenly remembered slamming his skull into a tree branch, and he lowered his head back onto the pillow. It hurt too much for it to have been nightmare.

“Help me up. I need to see Bernard.”

Doris didn’t help him up. She reached down and placed a large, rubber hot-water bottle over his head. It smothered him in warmth, and felt nice for a second. But he tossed it off.

“Cut that out! Did you hear me? We need to save Eldon! Where’s Bernard?”

Doris turned to the crowd. “He’ll be okay.”

“YEAAAAAAAHHHHH!” The entire Creature Keeper central-command crew erupted into cheers, hugging one another and enthusiastically shaking Doris’s hand.

“All right, everyone. Back to your stations,” Bernard’s voice sounded from behind him. “Local team, keep eyes and ears on the perimeter and inner swamp. International team, keep me posted on the water levels of the Celtic Seas in the UK.”

Everyone exited, smacking Jordan on the legs and giving thumbs-ups as they passed. Doris was the last to leave, but not before awkwardly leaning down and giving Jordan a peck on the cheek. “Glad you’re feeling better, dearie.” Then she ran out of the room.

Bernard stepped up to Jordan’s bedside. He’d shed his tight-fitting Badger Ranger uniform, and his natty, black fur was already growing back in many places. He looked awful, and yet Jordan had never seen a more welcome sight.

“Bernard,” he said. “Eldon’s okay. He’s being held hostage, but I don’t think he’s badly hurt—”

“I know,” the Skunk Ape said. “You mumbled all about it on our walk home.”

“Thank you for saving me from— What was that thing?”

“You can thank me by telling me how we can save Eldon—and what happened in Scotland.”

“Nessie’s gone. We’re not sure where. Loch Ness is going crazy.”

“Not just Loch Ness. It’s spreading to surrounding waters, too. The Irish and Celtic Seas. Without her keeping things in balance, it could spread through the English Channel, out to the North Sea, even to the North Atlantic. By then, even she might not be able to make things right.” Bernard sighed. He looked more worried and serious than Jordan had ever seen him. “There’s not much time. We need to get Eldon back. He’ll know what to do.”

“They’ll give him to us, but only in exchange for something called the Puddle of Ripeness. They said you’d know where I could find it.”

Bernard’s expression changed. “Who? Who asked you for this?”

“There’s a mystery guy,” Jordan said. “Gusto. Señor Areck Gusto. I never saw him, but he’s clearly the leader. They’re building a zoo, just up Ponce de Leon Bay. A zoo for cryptids.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad. I’d love to be able to visit a zoo.”

“No, Bernard. Not a zoo for cryptids to visit—a zoo for cryptids to be visited.”

“Oh. That’s different. And explains why they’d take Nessie.”

“The intruder who visited her cave the night she went missing, this crazy old man, left clues that led us back to the burrow of the giant jackalope. It seems Peggy’s keeper, Harvey Quisling, has abandoned her. We don’t know where he is, either.”

“Quisling. I never liked that kid.”

“We didn’t find him. At this zoo it seems to be just the old man and this Gusto guy, along with some nasty creature they keep, probably for protection. As for Nessie, Eldon says the zoo is far too small to hold her. But it’s a tricky place, with lots of surprises.”

Jordan thought back to the look of fear on Eldon’s face as he was engulfed in that brown smoke. “We’re losing time. Can you get this Puddle of Ripeness they want or not?”

Bernard seemed lost in thought. Finally he said, “I can. But I can’t.”

“What does that mean? What are you talking about? Think about Eldon!”

“I am thinking about Eldon,” Bernard said slowly. “I’m thinking about what he would do in this situation. We have to find another way.”

Jordan couldn’t believe his ears. But Bernard seemed conflicted and very worried suddenly. Jordan thought for a moment. “What was that thing that attacked me?”

The Skunk Ape got up and pulled A Field Guide to Cryptids from the bookshelf. He opened it to the very first page and handed it to Jordan. There it was again—the Latin American Chupacabra, snarling at the camera. Jordan recognized its face instantly. He slammed it shut.

Bernard took the book and set it aside. “Remember how I told you your grandfather hadn’t befriended all the cryptids he’d met over his lifetime?”

Jordan nodded.

“Well, there was only one that he actually feared. He never told me why, but after spending his whole life tracking cryptids, it seems that one of them was also hunting him.”

“But my Grampa Grimsley is dead. What would the Chupacabra want now?”

“I don’t know. But I know what it isn’t going to get.” Bernard put the book back on the shelf and pressed a panel, opening the bookcase door. “Rest up. When I return, we’ll pull together a strike force. You’re going to lead us—all of us—back to where this Gusto is holding Eldon hostage. There’ll be no exchanges. We’re going to break him out of there, and you’re going to lead us into battle.” The Florida Skunk Ape turned and lumbered out.

Jordan’s mind was reeling, but one thing was perfectly clear to him—it was his fault that Eldon had been captured, and so it was his responsibility to free him, without putting anyone else’s life in danger. To do that, he’d need this Puddle of Ripeness. And he had a feeling Bernard might lead him to it.

He threw off his covers and stood up. His head was throbbing. He looked down at the huge, rubber hot-water bottle on the floor. He squeezed the water out of it, folded it up, and walked to the bookcase. He thumped the panel and the bookcase opened.

Jordan snuck out of the Creature Keeper lair, finding his way up a winding staircase, through the knothole tree door, and finally out into the cool, swampy night air. He stopped and felt his finger. His grandfather’s ring was gone. He thought about the last place he had it and shuddered. He closed his eyes, swallowed his fear, and breathed in deeply.

Sniff. Sniff-sniff.

Standing at the base of the great lemon tree, Jordan picked up a trace of—

“Skunk Ape.” Jordan’s nose pointed him in the direction of the boathouse and Ponce de Leon Bay. With the empty rubber hot-water bottle under his arm, he began walking very carefully and very quietly, keeping his eyes on the lookout for the Chupacabra, and his nostrils on the sniffout for Bernard.

Jordan followed the Skunk Ape’s odoriferous trail toward Ponce de Leon Bay, then farther inland. As the sky began to lighten, so did the scent, until it suddenly disappeared. Jordan stopped and sniffed in every direction, but couldn’t pick it up again. All he could smell was the warm, woodsy fragrance of a nearby cypress-tree grove growing in a tight, circular cluster.

He tried to ignore the thick, piney smell the trees gave off as he sniffed around to pick up Bernard’s scent. He was very tired and his head was still aching. He sat down at the base of one of the larger cypress trees. They were clustered together so tightly they formed a round wall. It reminded him of the base of the crypto-zoo.

He was about to stand and keep moving when he felt something shift behind him. The tree trunk he’d been leaning on was rotating. Jordan rolled behind a nearby bush and peeked out. The rotating tree turned to reveal a large, cutout doorway. Out of that doorway stepped Bernard. The Skunk Ape looked around, then lumbered off, back toward the Creature Keeper lair.

As the cypress-tree doorway began to rotate closed, Jordan had no time to think. He scurried over to the narrowing cutout and jumped through just before it disappeared. Once inside, the hollowed-out tree moved around him. When it stopped, the cutout was open again, but now facing the inner circle of the grove. There was a clear, circular path leading out from the doorway, walled by the clustered trees. The fragrant smell of cypress was overwhelming as he followed the coiled path. It led him farther and farther inward, until he came to a clearing in the hub of the cluster. He kneeled down at the edge of a small, green puddle of very stinky goo. “The Puddle of Ripeness,” Jordan uttered. He studied the thick liquid. It looked perfectly still and harmless. He dabbed it with his fingertip. It felt oddly cool to the touch. Then he lifted his finger to his nose.

“Ugh!” He flung the nasty-smelling sample off like a booger.

Thanks to the cathedral-like ceiling of cypress branches intertwined above, both the Puddle of Ripeness and its awful odor were perfectly disguised to anyone walking by outside. But up close the puddle definitely earned its name.

“It’s just a nasty-smelling pool of stinky glop,” he said to himself. “If that’s what that weird old dude wants in exchange for Eldon, he can have it.”

Jordan dipped the mouth of his hot-water bottle into the Puddle of Ripeness. Glorp-glorp-glorp—the green goo oozed into the large rubber container. Once it was filled, Jordan secured the top, then snuck back out of the cypress grove, and headed straight for the boathouse.