THE GHOST STOOD VERY still. Water dripped from the cuffs of his coat. In his squelchy human state, he looked far less intimidating than a moment ago. He looked wet and uncomfortable and real.
Nudging Moggie aside, Eliza stepped closer. The man watched her, keeping perfectly still. He didn’t even move when Eliza reached out and, very gently, touched his arm.
It was solid. Wet. Warm.
Alive.
“You’re not a ghost,” Eliza whispered.
“No,” the man murmured back in that low, old-fashioned voice. She should have recognized it before. “I am not.”
“But…” Eliza looked up into his flickering yellow eyes. “You’re not really human, either. Are you?”
“No,” said the man again. “Not anymore.”
Eliza’s mother seemed to snap out of an observational trance. She charged into the greenhouse, wrapping an arm around Eliza and planting herself firmly in the man’s path. “I take it you’re the one who’s been terrorizing us,” she said, the hedge-trimmer voice out in full force. “Stealing from us.”
The man’s face seemed to flicker. Not just to flicker, but to shift—becoming longer and more pointed in places, flatter and darker in others. When he spoke, Eliza could see the flash of a wolf’s long teeth.
“It is you who have stolen from me,” he growled. His burning eyes swiveled to Leif, who was trying to hide behind the trio of dogs. “It was you who came to my home. Who uprooted the plant. Who brought it here, endangering all of its kind, endangering all of my kind, endangering the world at large.”
By the time he was finished, his voice was a roar. His form had shifted into something between wolf and human, hulking, huge, and terrifying.
Leif let out a squeak and dove behind Mr. Carroll.
“All right, everyone,” said Eliza’s mother much less sharply. She held up both hands. “Let’s proceed calmly and logically. First things first. Who are you?”
“My name is William,” the wolf-man said through clenched fangs. “Or it used to be.”
“Can we assume that you have the missing plant?”
Slowly, William opened his coat, revealing a shaggy chest and a bundle of gold leaves thrusting up from an inner pocket. “I do. And I will bring it safely home, or destroy every trace of it.”
Eliza swallowed. The Carrolls shifted nervously.
“And where is ‘home’?” Eliza’s mother went on.
“The island where the plant was taken from, of course.”
“Hang on.” Leif’s head poked up behind the bulldog. “You’re telling us you lived on that little deserted island? All by yourself?”
“No.” William’s face was shifting again, the canine muzzle shortening, although his teeth remained long and sharp. “With my family. Others like myself.”
“How long have you inhabited the island?” Eliza’s mother asked.
“For a very long time.” William’s voice softened slightly. “We live on fish and game, and on the fruit of this plant.”
“So you all eat the fruit,” said her mother. “And you all…change?”
William smiled a fanged half-smile. “The longer one eats of the fruit, the more powerful one becomes. With that power comes size. Strength. Control. I myself can change at will, as you see. Unless I am temporarily overcome,” he added, pouring a dribble of water out of one sleeve.
Eliza looked at that old-fashioned coat, and then at William’s shifting, inhuman, ageless face. “How old are you?”
“In human or dog years?” boomed Mr. Carroll.
“Oh, Win!” giggled Mrs. Carroll.
Eliza’s mother rolled her eyes.
But William gazed steadily down at her. “I am older than even I know.”
“Will that happen to us?” the shaggy brown mutt asked, in Tommy’s anxious voice. “Will we get more powerful over time, too?”
“How much of the fruit have you eaten?”
“Um…one berry?”
William’s teeth flashed again. “Happily for all of us, the effects of an amount that small should wear off quickly. Perhaps within a week.”
The Carrolls let out yips of joy. The Boston terrier snuggled up to the bulldog and gave a relieved sigh.
“A single berry is nothing compared to eating the fruit for a lifetime.” William closed his coat gently over the golden leaves. “This plant is not just part of our diet and key to our survival. It is at the root of our way of life. You might even call it sacred to us. We have our own name for it: Canis mirabilis.”
“Ah!” Eliza’s mother brightened. “A play on the Latin phrase annus mirabilis, miraculous year. Miraculous dog. Very clever!”
“When you stole this plant from us”—William leveled another burning yellow glare at Leif—“I was compelled to follow you and retrieve it. If I did not, the effects would be disastrous.”
Eliza’s mother cocked her head. “How so?”
His eyes flashed to her. “You know how so. My family would be hunted and captured. Our island raided. Its ecology destroyed. The plant brought to the wider world, where it would be cultivated, studied, sold to the wealthiest among you, used by those who had enough money and power to control others or to enrich themselves further. It would mean destruction and chaos.”
Eliza pictured armies of wolves racing into battle, and then tubby, pampered, ageless dogs in gleaming city penthouses. She pictured a little forested island turned to a stripped chunk of rock. Maybe it was because she was still soaking wet, but suddenly her entire body felt cold.
“Like Tibbles the cat,” whispered Tommy.
“Cat?” Mrs. Carroll hopped up and looked eagerly around, then seemed to catch herself. “Oh. I’m so sorry. Hunting instinct.”
“Go on, Tommy,” Eliza’s mother commanded.
“Um…” The brown mutt blinked around at them all. “Stephens Island is this little island near New Zealand. It was the only place in the world that was home to the Stephens Island wren. In the 1890s, people started building a lighthouse there, and a few ships’ cats got loose on the island—people used to think it was just Tibbles, the lighthouse keeper’s cat, but there were probably others—and in less than a year, the wrens were extinct. The cats killed them. And then, because the cats reproduced like crazy without any larger predators, people had to start shooting the feral cats until all of them were dead.”
“Ew,” said Eliza sadly.
“Yeah, but it proves the point.” The mutt tried to shrug. “When you bring a new thing into an ecosystem—even if it’s just one plant, or one cat—the effects can be huge.”
Everyone was still.
“We are a small group, living on a small island,” said William at last. “We are part of our own contained and balanced world. But with just one seed of Canis mirabilis…any one of you could be Tibbles the cat.”
Quiet settled over the greenhouse once more.
“Well, I’m not interested in being Tibbles the cat,” boomed Mr. Carroll at last. “I’ve always been more of a dog person myself!”
“Yes,” agreed Mrs. Carroll. “William, if we had known all this, we would never have brought that plant here.”
Eliza looked up at her mother. “Mom?” she whispered. “Do you think he’s right?”
Her mother closed her eyes. “You know, I fully expect to wake up tomorrow morning and discover that all of this was an absurd dream, because there is simply no way in the real world that I am discussing returning an undiscovered plant with transformational powers to the island that it came from with a bunch of dogs in pajamas.” She opened her eyes again. “But I am. And as disappointed as I might be, scientifically, to have to say this…Leif should sail you and your plant home.”
Leif, who had started to look calmer, stiffened up again. “What? I don’t want to go all the way back to that creepy little island.”
“And I don’t want to go to the authorities about your plant poaching,” said the bulldog. “But sometimes we have to do what we don’t want to do.”
Leif rasped something under his breath, but he didn’t argue.
“We should get you on your way!” said Mrs. Carroll brightly. “Hurry, everyone!”
Everybody burst into action.
Mr. Carroll shut himself in the basement and jogged back out minutes later on two feet. Leif called his crew and grumpily told them to get ready for another long trip. Mrs. Carroll and Tommy sniffed around the greenhouse, surveying the fire damage, which turned out to be quite minimal. And Moggie trotted around everyone’s feet, tripping people and licking their ankles.
Eliza found her mother at the back door, gazing out into the night. She touched her arm. “Are you okay?”
Her mother let out a long, tight breath. “No. I would not say that okay is what I am.” She looked down at Eliza. “You’re a researcher, so perhaps you’ll understand. Do you know how it feels to discover something that clashes so completely with everything else you believe that it shakes those beliefs to their foundations? That it makes you wonder how many of your beliefs are based on incorrect premises? Or on nothing at all?”
“Actually, I usually feel the opposite,” said Eliza. “The things I discover just give me more possibilities to believe in.” She leaned her head on her mother’s shoulder. “But I guess that just means I need to keep looking.”
Her mother gave her a quick squeeze. “Good plan.”
“All right! All aboard that’s going aboard!” shouted Mr. Carroll, hurrying toward the van. Leif slumped reluctantly after him. Eliza’s mother, Tommy, and Mrs. Carroll followed them into the garage.
William glided past Eliza, his long black coat sweeping the floor. Then he stopped sharply and turned to face her. Even in the darkness, his eyes seemed to catch and burn with light.
Eliza felt the same icy gust that she’d felt before: the sense that told her there were supernatural powers here. Or maybe just supernatural powers.
“Oh,” she said. “I almost forgot. But I guess you didn’t.” Shivering, she held out the red berry on her palm.
William took it with fingers that were long and sharp-nailed, but very careful. Eliza watched the berry disappear between his teeth. “Thank you, Eliza,” he said in that deep, old-fashioned voice. “I have something to return to you as well.” Reaching inside his coat, he pulled out Eliza’s research notebook.
“Really?” Eliza hesitated. “I thought you had to take all evidence of the plant.”
William smiled. His teeth looked less vicious now. “I believe I can trust you with this secret. And I would hate for you to lose so much spectral research.”
Eliza’s cheeks burned. She grabbed the damp notebook, looking away. Was he mocking her? All her research had come to nothing, and he knew it.
“The world is full of wonders,” William said very softly. “This should give you more reason, not less, to believe that.” He touched her shoulder so lightly that she barely felt it. “Farewell, Eliza.”
He climbed into the back of the van. Then Mr. Carroll, a wolf-man, and one grumpy sailor whooshed out of the garage and away into the night.
