Disclaimer: see Chapter 1
Chapter 4
3:30 p.m. We were all in Cassie's barn, waiting for Tobias to arrive. Jake had called a meeting because of two very disturbing pieces of intelligence. One he said he wouldn't reveal until Tobias arrived. But he didn't have any reservations about telling us exactly what he thought of the other piece…
"Look, Jake, how was I supposed to know that Debbie would take off her shirt before opening her locker?" I asked, trying not to look smug and failing miserably. I couldn't help it. The entire episode had turned out better than I had dared to hope. Debbie Wallace, the stealer-of-confidence, the mocker-of-the-modest, and the crusher-of-pride had been so terrified of lil'old me in rat morph that she had run straight out of the change room, through the gym, across the hall, and into the bathroom. Only then, as she stared at herself in the mirror, did she realize her mistake. It was the perfect revenge.
Except for the fact that Jake found out. I could have lived without that.
Rachel looked up from her math book and rolled her eyes. " Marco, you were in the girls change room. As in changing clothes? Or do you do something else when you go into the boys change room?" Her eyes narrowed speculatively. "Of course, considering it's you we're talking about…"
I couldn't think of a properly scathing response, so I ignored her. " It's not like it looks suspicious. I had to think long and hard to find the proper animal- one that was small and gross enough to do the job, and yet still something that you would expect to find around the school."
Jake just looked at me with that General look he gets sometimes, when he's really ticked off at someone. Needless to say, I have a great deal of personal experience with it, even though he's my best friend. Perhaps because he's my best friend. I started to squirm and looked past several cages filled with animals to the open barn door, just in time to see Tobias come swooping in, narrowly avoiding the rafters. He zoomed past Cassie, did a neat one eighty, and touched down lightly—squarely on Rachel's math text.
"Hello, all. Just wandered into town and thought I'd drop by." He sounded abominably cheerful, I thought grumpily, but soon was pacified by a private thought-speak message in considerably more worried tones.
"Does he know?" Tobias asked, staring at me and jerking his head at Jake. I glanced around to see if anyone but Jake was looking, and then gave a casual yawn and allowed my head to nod slightly. Y'see, thought-speak is the method we use to talk when we're in morph and have a beak or a proboscis instead of normal mouthparts. It's the natural way that Andilites speak, and it's easy enough in morph, but when we're in our normal forms it is impossible to use.
Jake glared at us, knowing full well what was going on. "Look, Marco, we were lucky this time. But you know that every controller in the city is on the alert for unusual animal behaviour. You're the one I can usually trust to remember all the possible security risks!.." He ran a hand through his hair and broke off, a puzzled look on his face. "What's that sound?"
We all tensed.
What sound?
Ah, yes, my first cliffhanger. (sniff) Such a sentimental moment...Next chapter will be up soon!