Jennifer Scales and the Ancient Furnace Read online

  “What, is there a newolf taking a mud bath in there?”

  “No, look! Right in the middle!”

  Jennifer peered more closely at the puddle and saw, a bit left of center, an indistinct impression in the mud. Her father and grandfather had taught her a bit about tracks when they hunted deer, and this one looked strange. It might have been the print of a newolf. Or it might have been the print of a drunken timberwolf. Or it might have been a crater left by a small, bouncing stone . . .

  “Um, Catherine . . .”

  “They can’t be too far! Come on, this way!”

  Half-dragging her younger friend, Catherine pushed through the brush, making quite a racket and (Jennifer was certain) scaring anything outside of a cement bunker away. After a few moments, just as the last few rays of sunlight drifted through the wet leaves around them, she gave an incredibly loud hushing sound and pointed.

  “Oh, Jennifer, look! Over there!”

  Jennifer would never be able to put into words the sight that met her eyes as she followed her friend’s finger. This was largely because she didn’t see much.

  “That was a fox, wasn’t it?”

  “No, no, no. Behind the fox.”

  “Oh for—Catherine, tell the truth. Have you actually ever seen a newolf?”

  “Of course I have!” The older girl seemed hurt by the implication. “Plenty of times. I just think they’re being shy around you.”

  “No, the missing link is shy. These guys are positively antisocial.”

  “It’s getting late.” Catherine sighed. “The crescent moon’s only got a couple hours left in it. I’d like to get back home before then—it’d suck to morph halfway there and then have to walk in the rain.”

  “Okay. Well, thanks for the nature stroll.”

  With a sour glance, the trampler turned and lifted herself off the ground a bit, before whomping her way through the forest. Jennifer glided up above the trees and headed back for the cabin.

  When she returned, Joseph was waiting on the porch for her. He had already morphed back, and had a suspicious look on his pale face.

  “Where have you been?”

  “Out in the forest.”

  “Doing what?”

  Jennifer decided the truth would do. “Absolutely nothing. Since when is this any business of yours?”

  “Your grandfather’s out looking for you. He’s worried. Your mom called.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She says your dad left for here this morning. He should have been here hours ago.”

  Just then, the phone rang inside. Jennifer pushed Joseph aside, lumbered over to the phone, saw the incoming number, and knocked the receiver off with one claw as the other clumsily pressed the speakerphone button. “Mom?”

  Her mother’s voice was very faint.

  “Your dad’s in trouble, honey.”

  “Mom, what’s going on?”

  “Come home, sweetheart. Please. Right now.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Investigation

  Elizabeth Georges-Scales had never looked so old to her daughter. Tears clouded her green eyes, and her shoulders slumped over the kitchen table. In her quivering hands was a single scrap of paper, which had been crumpled and smoothed multiple times.

  She didn’t look at Grandpa Crawford or Jennifer as they entered in human form. Handing her father-in-law the note, the woman barely moved her mouth and did not make eye contact.

  “Someone slipped this under the door early this evening, after I called the first time. I didn’t hear or see a car in the driveway.”

  Crawford looked at the scrap, read what was on it, and walked out immediately. His anger was obvious. Elizabeth did not even try to make him stay.

  “I’d say we have until the new moon’s over before your grandfather goes out and does something rash,” she explained as the door slammed.

  “What, three days away?” Jennifer was aghast. “What do we do until then? And why is he so angry?”

  Elizabeth held up the paper so that her daughter could read the single word scrawled there:

  Prophecy.

  Jennifer felt a numbness slide down her spine. The sounds and sights of her dream with Ms. Graf filled her mind. Justice. Law. Prophecy. You die, worm. She leaned against the table and sat down quickly.

  A few moments passed. Jennifer took a gulp.

  “So he’s dead, then. That’s what beaststalkers do, right? Kill dragons?”

  Elizabeth crumpled the note again. “We don’t know it was a beaststalker, honey. And we certainly don’t know that he’s dead. He may have been taken alive.”

  “Where?”

  Her mother just shrugged.

  “Who was the last person to see him? Where on the road did it happen? What do the police say?”

  “Good heavens, Jennifer, we can’t involve the police. They wouldn’t take this seriously. We’ll have to do this ourselves.”

  “What about Grandpa? Shouldn’t he help?”

  “I think your grandfather would rather be alone. He’ll send word to the elders. By the time the waxing crescent comes, they’ll know what they want to do next.”

  “But I don’t just want to sit here and do nothing!” It was almost a scream. Elizabeth looked up at her calmly, but Jennifer could see her fingertips trembling.

  “We will not do nothing. We will think through this. Together. Then tomorrow, we’ll be better prepared to take in whatever evidence we find on our own.”

  Geddy nestled on Jennifer’s shoulder, and Phoebe (with a wary eye toward the lizard) nuzzled Elizabeth’s belly.

  “We start with what we know,” Elizabeth began. “Your father left just before noon. It takes about two hours for him to fly up to the cabin. An ambush would have to be reasonably certain of the path Jonathan was taking, and the closer one got to the cabin, the more certain the path would be. We’ll search the road close to the cabin first, and move slowly southward.”

  “This could take days!”

  “It will take however long it takes. In any case, we can be pretty sure the note tells us your father didn’t meet with an accident. For someone to have taken him, and link him to some prophecy, they would have to know what he is and where the farm is. That suggests a certain amount of preparation.”

  “Okay, so they were after him. Why? I mean no one in the human world would be after him, would they? What about the military? For experiments?” She shuddered. If the military wanted him for some strange research project . . .”

  “It’s not the military,” Elizabeth assured her. “First, they don’t go around leaving notes on doors. Second, your father and friends have contacts there. Please recall your grandfather served in the U.S. Navy Special Forces, in his youth.”

  “All right, so it’s gotta be beaststalkers, or werachnids.”

  “Or other weredragons,” her mother reminded her. “Good and evil are not always so clear-cut, dear. I’m sure there are werachnids who disagree with each other, or beaststalkers as well. After all, have you always gotten along with your father?”

  Jennifer returned the wry smile. “I only ever got angry at him for those interminable lectures. And missing my soccer games.”

  “Silly girl. He never missed a single one.”

  Jennifer felt the color drain from her face. “Never? Wha . . . what about his business trips?”

  “Haven’t you figured this out yet? There were no business trips—at least none that he’d take when you had a game. He was always on the edge of the school grounds, camouflaged of course, within sight of the soccer field, watching you. Every minute. Of every game.” The tone was gentle, but the words hit Jennifer like bricks. How had she not realized this before?

  “He saw the championship game?” How she had torn into him for that, behind his back! She was not sure she could stop the tears she felt building.

  “Nothing could have kept him away from that.”

  Jennifer couldn’t speak. She had been so completely wrong about so man
y things. And it was possible she would never be able to make it right. “He always said he thought I was a great soccer player. But I never believed him, because I didn’t think he ever saw me play.”

  Elizabeth’s hand ran through Jennifer’s hair. “He’ll see you again, sweetheart.”

  “Yeah.” Jennifer blew her nose. “I guess. You really think we’ll find him?”

  “I know that nothing will stop the Scales girls, if we work together.”

  She smiled. “That’s pretty good, Mom. You actually sound sure of yourself.”

  Her mother didn’t return the smile. She grabbed Jennifer’s chin and stared into gray eyes with determined green ones. “Nothing will stop us, if we work together.”

  They continued talking for a little while longer. It turned out that Elizabeth knew a great deal about dragons and their world, which didn’t surprise Jennifer, since the woman had been married to one for years. Given the prominence of the Scales family, it made sense that Jonathan would be a target. He was not an elder—Crawford had that title for their family—but had the respect of weredragons. Because of his status, Elizabeth guessed, Jonathan would be in an excellent position to hear of an upcoming attack.

  “So an invasion is coming?” Jennifer deduced after hearing her mother lay out these details. “Of Crescent Valley? And they took Dad because he heard about it?”

  “That is one possibility. There are others. For example, your father is a weredragon in his prime. He would be suitable for study, if his captors wished to know more about how . . . about weredragons.” Elizabeth tried to sound clinical, but her voice broke toward the end.

  Jennifer shivered. She thought about Grayheart’s Anatomy, that beautifully illustrated book in her grandfather’s library. It was hard not to imagine the gorgeous images of skin peeled back, bones cracked, and organs revealed. They didn’t seem so gorgeous anymore.

  “Also,” her mother went on quickly, “some enemies are aware of weredragons’ capabilities. They may see creepers, and your father in particular, as possible spies. They may assume dragons are planning their own attack. In that case, they would want to question your father about what he knows about them.”

  Jennifer studied her fingernails for a while. “Mom, even if they wanted to study weredragons, it would be more useful to keep one alive. At least for a while. Right?”

  Elizabeth shuffled down the couch and held her tightly. When the phone rang, they were both tempted to ignore it, but Jennifer had to answer.

  It was Joseph, calling from the farm. “Your grandfather just got back. He told me about the note. Is there anything I can do?”

  “Thanks, Joseph. I don’t think so. Listen, I’m a bit worried about Grandpa. Maybe you could just . . . be with him?”

  “Of course.” She heard the young man’s voice break on the other end of the line. “I’m so grateful to him, and to Jonathan, for taking me in. If you need anything, let me know.”

  “Thanks again. Good-bye.”

  No sooner did she hang up than her mother was up and off the couch.

  “Listen, honey.” Elizabeth’s voice brooked no argument. “Sitting here dwelling on this is not going to help you. And we’re not going to get any magic phone calls. There’s nothing we can do during nighttime—at least not until you’re in dragon shape—and it may be a while before you can go out with friends again. Maybe you’d like to go out tonight? With your friends?”

  “But that’s dangerous! And you’d be here home alone!”

  “I didn’t say you wouldn’t have a chaperone! We both need to get out of this house.”

  It was a hard night, but not because of any chaperone interference. In fact, Jennifer was amazed at how well her mother blended in with the mall scenery, several yards behind her and her friends.

  Rather, it was difficult because Eddie wouldn’t come. He had been Jennifer’s first phone call.

  “Um, I don’t think so,” he had said in a distracted voice, before she could even finish the invitation.

  “Eddie, I’m sorry I’m not around so much anymore. But Susan and I mended fences, and—”

  “That’s not it. Not really, anyway. I guess things are just . . . changing.”

  And then he had hung up.

  “He’s a twit,” Skip explained to her later as she and Susan eyed designer shoes in the mall’s department store. “He’s been like that to us lately, too. Hasn’t he, Susan?”

  “Ever since about a week ago,” Susan agreed, obligingly bulging her eyes as Jennifer showed her the price tag on a pair of “discount” loafers. “His dad drives him to school and picks him up, so we can’t go anywhere together. Not that he even sounds sorry about it. He just mumbles stuff about how there’s extra work for him around the house, that kind of garbage.”

  “I’ve never seen a kid so enslaved by a parent,” Skip added. “I mean, my dad tells me to do stuff I don’t want to, and my mom was always a bit strict, but . . .” He coughed a bit, and reached into his windbreaker. “Speaking of which, I know I haven’t said much about Mom. She was part Sioux, and she took me all around the world while she studied native cultures—western Africa, Australia, South America. Anyway, she gave me this a couple years ago. I figured it would look nice on you.”

  He pulled out a rawhide necklace with a wooden circle hanging off the front. Carved into the disc was the image of a large elm leaf.

  “It’s the Moon of Falling Leaves,” he explained as he reached around her neck to put it on. “It represents October. And November, too, sort of. Um, anyway, since we met in October, I thought—”

  Jennifer kissed him squarely on the lips.

  “Whoa there, tiger!” He backed up and tried to look calm, but the red flooding through his cheeks betrayed him. His eyes darted to Jennifer’s mother, but fortunately she was studying some purses a couple aisles away. “Er, you’re welcome. You must be going through a tough time at the clinic, and well, if there’s anything I can . . . well . . . er . . .”

  “Excuse me, third person here!” Susan called out with a look of disgust. “Are we going to the ice-cream store, or fudge store, or what?”

  “I have all the sweets I need,” Skip leered, regaining composure. Susan rolled her eyes as Jennifer chuckled.

  Then Jennifer remembered her father again and felt worse than ever that she forgot about him for even a moment.

  Two hours before daylight, she and her mother were on the road to Grandpa Crawford’s cabin. Jennifer insisted on bringing both Phoebe and Geddy for comfort, but most of the car ride was spent admonishing one pet to stop provoking the other.

  As it turned out, there was no trouble finding the site of the struggle at all. Less than a mile from where the driveway meandered away from the highway, there was a high dirt shoulder for about twenty yards, and nearby a small grove of trees. There were fresh tire tracks on the muddy shoulder, visible even from a distance. Elizabeth pulled over.

  “Keep the pets in the van,” she told Jennifer. “I don’t want them messing with any tracks that are down there.” So while the two of them carefully studied the shoulder and nearby ditch, Phoebe and Geddy glared at each other from opposite ends of the van’s interior.

  “Down here,” her mother called out after just a few moments. The fresh spring wind was not strong enough to sway the damp field grass down in the ditch, and it was immediately clear what she was pointing at.

  “Someone was lying down here.” Elizabeth then nodded at a larger indentation in the grass just south of it. “And this is where your father landed.”

  “Maybe he saw someone lying in the ditch, and stopped to see if they needed help,” Jennifer guessed. “It looks like there was some rolling back and forth.”

  “That would make sense. But there’s still something strange. Your father’s been on edge for the last few weeks, and I think he’d be cautious about someone lying on the ground, whether they looked hurt or not. It’s unlikely whoever it was could surprise him from that position.”

  Jenni
fer looked at the grove of trees nearby. One tall oak bent over the ditch where they stood, and its heavy branches swayed in the breeze. A small bird nest was nestled in the lower branches, but she heard no song.

  “Hang on a sec, Mom.” Effortlessly, she leapt up the tree trunk and onto the thickest branch that overhung the ambush site. The nest had small bluish eggs in it, even though no parent seemed to be around.

  “Sparrows,” she called down. “They ought to be dive-bombing me, like they do when Phoebe or I poke around that nest outside our garage. But something’s spooked them away, for good I’ll bet.” Perched over her mother, she looked straight down into the older woman’s eyes. “If I knew you were going to be standing there, this would be a great place to jump on top of you.”

  Elizabeth nodded. “So there were at least two.”

  Jennifer didn’t respond. She was staring at the brush just twenty yards away, behind her mother. Something was in the bushes, watching them.

  It was a wolf, but more than that. The size of a small bear, and the color of warm sunset, its bulk was nearly invisible behind the cluster of birches. Two ashen eyes looked back and forth at the two humans with a mixture of judgment and desperation. Immediately, Jennifer knew two things: First, that she was looking at a newolf; and second, that this was only a chance meeting. This creature did not know any more than she did about what had happened here—it only knew something had come close to its territory, and was here to investigate. Just like them.

  The eyes stopped darting and settled on this strange girl, high up on the branch. Jennifer could feel its gaze pierce her human skin and examine the shape it saw inside. It recognized her.

  Perched precariously on a tree branch, with soft pale skin and fluttering gold and silver hair, under broad daylight with no sign of a crescent moon, Jennifer had never felt more like a dragon. A piece of her world stood before her, quiet and accessible. She ached to reach out and touch it, even though it was far below. As she lifted her hand, it opened its mouth and seemed nearly ready to speak, if that were even possible . . .

  “Honey, what are you looking at?” Elizabeth’s clarion voice disturbed the quiet connection. “What’s back there?”