The Menagerie by Tui T. Sutherland

were still there; he’d forgotten to put them back.
    â€œTry this,” he said, handing them to Blue.
    â€œOh,” Zoe said, sounding a little exasperated. “Of course you have keys to the library. You didn’t think that was worth mentioning before?”
    â€œI just found them, I promise,” Logan said as the key clicked in the lock. Blue pushed open the door, and they ran out and down the front steps. Logan grabbed the keys from Blue and slipped them into the book drop box at the edge of the sidewalk.
    Footsteps crunched on dry leaves around the corner of the library. Whoever it was must have heard the front door and was coming fast.
    Someone was about to catch them with the griffin cub.

FIFTEEN
    L ogan, Zoe, and Blue took off down the street.
    Zoe clutched the griffin cub to her chest. She didn’t dare look back. She’d had almost this exact nightmare too many times before. Whenever she looked back, that was when they always got her—and all the Menagerie animals—and everything was ruined forever.
    But this time it was real.
    She threw herself on her bike, leaving her helmet hanging from the handlebars, and flew out of the alley, nearly knocking over Blue and Logan. Flurp wriggled in protest, but Zoe wasn’t going to stop until she was safely home.
    She took a back route, just in case the person chasing them had a car, although she hadn’t heard one. She zipped through a narrow alley and detoured through a playground and around the elementary school. Flurp’s claws dug through her shirt in little stabs of pain, but Zoe just gritted her teeth and kept going.
    Finally she was pedaling up the hill to her own house. Now she let herself look back. The tall orange lights lit an empty street behind her.
    The trees along her driveway felt like warm arms welcoming her in. The garage door was open, and as she rolled her bike inside, Matthew stood up from one of the golf carts, wiping his hands on a rag.
    â€œHey,” he said. “I am so telling that you’re not wearing your helmet.” He squinted more closely. “Yikes. You look terrible.”
    â€œAlways the best way to say hi,” Zoe said. She dropped her bike and loosened the sling so Flurp could poke her head out. “But look who we found in the library!”
    â€œAwesome!” Matthew bounded over and helped disentangle Flurp. His strong hands ran gently over her fur and wings, and not for the first time, Zoe wondered how he had ever made a griffin angry enough to claw his arm up. Matthew was great with the animals, a born Tracker, and the scars he’d brought back from training camp this past summer made no sense.
    â€œGreat work,” Matthew said, tousling Zoe’s hair. “You’ll be running this place soon.”
    Zoe just barely managed not to shudder. She loved most of the animals, but she wasn’t at all sure she wanted to be the next Kahn caretaker. If the Menagerie stressed her out this much now , how much worse would it be if she were in charge of everything? And if she did have to inherit it—if Ruby followed her dream of being an actress and Matthew became a Tracker—then she’d really never get to have a normal life, not for one minute.
    It wasn’t fair, being the youngest.
    â€œShe’s hungry,” Zoe pointed out as Flurp nipped at Matthew’s zipper. “She hasn’t eaten all day, so make sure she gets something.”
    â€œI’ll go reunite her with her delighted parents,” Matthew said. “Well, her delighted parent and her semicomatose parent anyway.” He carried Flurp out the back door of the garage just as Logan and Blue came riding up the driveway on their bikes.
    â€œWere you followed?” Zoe asked. She peered out at the dark road behind them, beyond the trees. No headlights; no dark figure that she could see. But uneasiness clung to her thoughts like cobwebs.
    â€œDoubt it,” Blue said. “We