EVERYONE STOOD PERFECTLY STILL for a moment. The pond bubbled softly in its corner. Green fronds nodded around them.
“We shouldn’t stay here,” murmured Tommy. “Too many windows.”
Eliza glanced around. The darkness outside and the light from within turned the windowpanes to mirrors. All she could see was a bunch of tense, pajama-clad people in a forest of plants. Anyone—anything—could have been staring straight in.
“Let’s move into the workroom,” Mrs. Carroll suggested weakly. “Then we’ll explain everything.”
Eliza looked up at her mother.
Mrs. Stahl gave everyone else the kind of look that could have peeled the bark off a pine tree. “All right,” she said, slowly setting down the cactus. “But I’ve got the police on speed dial.”
Inside the workroom, Mrs. Carroll sagged against the table, looking like a flower beaten to the ground by hard rain. Tommy and Mr. Carroll and Moggie stood protectively beside her. Eliza and her mother stayed side by side, close to the door.
“Well, I guess we should begin at the beginning,” said Mr. Carroll, in a voice that boomed a lot less than usual. “As I’ve said, we bring in plants from all over the world. Most of our growers and dealers are one-hundred-percent aboveboard. But a few of them are a little…underboard.”
“A very few,” added Mrs. Carroll limply.
“We’ve worked with one dealer for years. He’s a part-time fisherman, part-time explorer, part-time treasure hunter. He brings us samples from his travels. Things nobody else has.” Mr. Carroll’s voice got even softer. “Because nobody is supposed to have them.”
Her mother sucked in a breath. “I see.”
Eliza glanced back and forth between Mr. Carroll’s guilty face and her mother’s hard one. “What do you see?”
“He’s a poacher,” said her mother sharply. She looked down at Eliza. “There are strict regulations regarding imported plants. Foreign species can become invasive. They can carry pests or diseases. They can be endangered or protected in their own lands. And the Carrolls, apparently, have been working with this poacher to smuggle rare plants into this country and to sell them on.”
“It’s true.” Mr. Carroll, in his huge T-shirt and shiny shorts, looked like a half-deflated parade balloon. “Leif makes his deliveries in secret, to the basement door. We pay him under the table. He disappears again.”
“So that’s what you were doing in the basement the other night,” Eliza blurted.
Mr. Carroll’s yellow eyes flicked to her. There was no surprise in them, only guilt and exhaustion. “That’s right.”
“We truly didn’t think this was so wrong,” said Mrs. Carroll. “The plants Leif brings us are carefully contained and monitored. Many of them we sell to laboratories, places that will use them for good….”
“The missing plant was one of Leif’s deliveries, I assume?” said Eliza’s mother. “What else do you know about it? Why would someone steal that plant and no others?”
The Carrolls traded a look.
“I’m going to let Tommy answer that one,” said Mr. Carroll. “I’d better go check the rest of the building.”
“By yourself, Win?” said Mrs. Carroll worriedly.
“It’s all right.” He gave her a small smile. “If anyone’s still here…I’ll sniff them out.”
With one more look at his family, Mr. Carroll and his shiny basketball shorts swished through the door.
“So. Um.” Tommy cleared his throat. Eliza had seen Tommy look uncomfortable plenty of times, but now he looked like if he could have folded himself into a ball tiny enough to disappear into his own belly button, he would have. “I…um…I like botany. Not that I’m a botanist or anything. But when Uncle Win and Aunt Camila get new things in the shop, sometimes I try to study them. I had a little space set up in the attic, where I could concentrate and do experiments and stuff. In private.”
“So it was you making noise in the attic!” Eliza burst out. “How come nobody told us?”
“Nobody knew. I didn’t want anybody to know.” Tommy’s face was flushed. “Because—I just—I wanted to keep it to myself. At least until I knew what I was doing.”
Eliza couldn’t help nodding at this. She understood how Tommy felt. If you knew 99 percent of people wouldn’t understand your interests anyway, it was easier to keep them to yourself.
“Anyway,” Tommy resumed, “I’d taken some samples from that plant with the red fruits. A couple of leaves. Some berries. Then one night, when I was working in the attic, half of one of the berries rolled off my table onto the floor. And before I could pick it up…Moggie ate it.”
Everyone’s eyes flashed to the dog. Moggie panted happily at all of them.
“I was so scared that she would get sick. And it would be all my fault.” Tommy rubbed the dog’s ear. “So I watched her really closely. I took notes on everything she did. What she ate. When she drank. When she…used the fire hydrant. And she was totally fine. Totally normal. So…” He took a breath. “After I did the skin test, and the lip test…I ate one of the berries myself.”
Eliza’s mother’s eyes narrowed. “And what were the effects?”
“At first, nothing. It tasted fine. I felt fine. But then…” Tommy’s voice got even mumblier. “Um…well, I found out why the berry didn’t do anything to Moggie.” He said the next words directly to the floor. “I woke up in the middle of the night, and….um…I was a dog.”
It was so quiet in the workroom that Eliza could hear each of Moggie’s panting breaths.
“What?” Eliza asked at last, because no one else did.
“My bed’s by a window.” Tommy rubbed his own shaggy head. “Later, with a little experimenting, I figured out that it was because of the moonlight. Moonlight, plus the berry, made me a dog.”
Everyone was quiet again.
“Tommy,” said Eliza’s mother as kindly as she could, “do you think that perhaps you were dreaming? Maybe you watched a werewolf movie and then you had some of your aunt’s dream-inducing gumbo, and—”
“No.” Tommy shook his head. His voice grew clearer. “It wasn’t a dream. And there’s proof. I changed back when I got out of the moonlight, but my eyes didn’t.”
“I suppose it’s possible that the berry changed your pigmentation,” said her mother, still very kindly, “but as for the rest, it’s far more likely that it induced some sort of hallucination. I’m sure it felt real, but what you’re describing is scientifically—”
“It’s scientifically impossible,” Tommy interrupted. “I know. But it happened. I tested it again the next night, once the moon came out. It was exactly the same.” He rushed on before anyone could argue. “After I knew what the plant did, I moved it up to the attic, just to keep it safe until I figured out what to do. But then you all were searching the whole place for it, so I knew I had to move it again, and Aunt Camila and Uncle Win kept asking me what was wrong, so finally, I just brought the plant down to the apartment and told them.” Tommy shared a glance with his aunt. “They didn’t believe me, either. Not until they tried it for themselves.”
Eliza’s mother turned to Mrs. Carroll. “You ate the fruit?”
Mrs. Carroll’s hands fussed with the silk belt of her robe. “I know it sounds impossible,” she began, “but there’s so much we have yet to discover about the natural world. Isn’t that what you said, Eliza? That the supernatural is just the natural that’s waiting to be understood?”
Eliza held very still. It did sound impossible. But she believed in ghosts with total certainty. Was it so impossible that werewolves—or weredogs—existed, too? Couldn’t the ghost, the plant, and this impossible effect all be tied together somehow? Didn’t they pretty much have to be?
“Mom.” She nudged her mother’s arm. “Don’t you think it might be true?”
Her mother gave a laugh with all the air squashed out of it. “Do I think this story might be true? Perhaps, in all the alternate universes and infinite timelines that theoretically exist, there is one where eating a berry turns a person into a dog. But I don’t believe that we are in it.”
Tommy exhaled hard. “Fine. We’ll prove it. There’s enough moonlight. Come on, Aunt Camila.”
Tommy and Mrs. Carroll—who looked extremely reluctant—headed out the workroom door. Moggie stayed beside Eliza.
“I’m not sure what we’re waiting for,” said Eliza’s mother after a moment. “Because we are not actually waiting for our hosts to turn into dogs.”
Eliza didn’t answer. A funny, tickling feeling ran up the backs of her arms. Was it a spectral presence? Mere anticipation? Before she could be sure, Moggie jumped up with a loud Woof! She barreled out the workroom door, with Eliza and her mother tagging after.
The shop lights had been turned out again. The Stahls followed Moggie through the darkness, around a rack of orchids, past the cacti, toward the silvery splotch of moonlight that fell through the front windows.
There, on the moonlit floor, one draped in baggy pajama pants and the other swamped in a pink silk robe, were two golden-eyed dogs. The dog in the robe was a Boston terrier, petite and bright faced. The dog in the pajama pants was the shaggy brown mutt Eliza and Moggie had chased through the streets the night before.
Eliza gasped.
Moggie bounded toward the dogs, snuffling their faces and bumping them off their paws.
“All right, Tommy and Camila.” Eliza’s mother folded her arms. “I don’t know where you’re hiding, or why you’ve decided to play this prank,” she said loudly and sternly. “I would guess it’s to cover up your own illegal activities involving the smuggled and now missing plant, but whatever the reason, I—”
“Oh, it’s not a prank, Rachel,” said the Boston terrier. Mrs. Carroll’s voice sounded almost natural coming out of the dog’s little mouth. “As I said, I know it seems impossible. But it’s real.”
“Science and magic,” mumbled the brown mutt.
Eliza’s mother let out a sound that Eliza had never heard her make before. “But…molecular…” She sputtered. “Can’t…physiological…berries…”
Eliza took a steadying grip on her mother’s arm. “Look at the evidence, Mom,” she whispered. “Just look.”
At that moment, a bulldog in shiny basketball shorts came trundling through the room.
“Well, looks like our secret’s out, huh?” it boomed in Mr. Carroll’s voice. “Hello, Eliza and Rachel. I was checking the greenhouse, accidentally hit a beam of moonlight, and bang—dog town.” The bulldog chuckled. “No sign or smell of any intruders, though. Whoever was here is gone.”
Eliza’s mother made a choking sound.
Eliza patted her mom on the back, hoping her smile wasn’t too smug. The natural and the supernatural were coming together right in front of their eyes!
“Well…,” her mother choked out at last. “I suppose my reaction doesn’t matter. These are the conditions. We’ll simply have to function within them.” She swayed dizzily. “The most important question here is: If it’s not with you, then who has that plant right now?”
“The ghost,” said Eliza immediately. Honestly, didn’t everyone know this already?
“Eliza, there is no ghost.” Her mother looked down at her. “The Carrolls are not possessed. They are berry-eating weredogs….” She stopped to rub her face with one shaky hand. “But they are not possessed.”
“But what about the ghost—or whatever it was—that I talked to in the shop? The one in the black cloak who’s been lurking around?” Eliza demanded. “What about the yellow eyes I saw in the backyard? What about my stolen research notebook and your stolen notes? The Carrolls didn’t take them, right?” All the dogs—except Moggie, who was sniffing Mr. Carroll’s backside—shook their heads. “What else could it be?”
“The most likely, most rational explanation is that the thief is just another person who knows about the plant’s powers.” Her mother turned to the Carrolls. “Besides the six of us, who knows that the plant was here?”
Mr. Carroll shook his jowly head. “Just Leif.”
“Let’s start there. Mr. Carroll, would you go and fetch him, please?” Eliza’s mother froze, realizing what she’d just said. Her eyes widened. “I mean…”
But Mr. Carroll had broken out with a jolly guffaw. “Fetch him!” he chucked, trotting toward the back of the shop. “That’s a good one! Maybe I’ll get you a newspaper and some slippers, too!”
