From the way the sheriff looked from Nancy to Conleth,hewas now wondering if he’d accidentally taken hallucinogens instead of medication that morning. “You have a mountain goat as a camp mascot?”
“Ahaha.” Conleth broke into a cold sweat. “She does look like one, doesn’t she? But I can assure you, we absolutely do not have a mountain goat as a camp pet. I mean, you’d probably need a special license. Just imagine the paperwork.”
“So you’re claiming that’s a perfectly ordinary goat.”
“I wouldn’t sayordinary,” Conleth hedged. “That might hurt her feelings.”
The sheriff stared at him. “Sir, are you on drugs?”
“No, but I’d like to be,” Conleth muttered, and then wanted to strangle himself. “Joke! I’m joking. Obviously.”
The sheriff wroteCamp appears to be under the charge of a complete lunaticin his notebook. Probably.
Before Conleth could attempt to rectify the situation—or, more likely, make it even worse—Paige reappeared, notably without either a bear or a brother. Reaching out with his pegasus sense, he found Archie safely tucked away inside the storeroom, no doubt under strict instructions to stay there until he was human.
“Officer,” Paige panted. Conleth prayed the sheriff wouldn’t notice the light dusting of bear fur on her t-shirt. “I’m so, so sorry for this. I take full responsibility.”
The sheriff turned on his heel, clearly eager to speak with someone who wasn’t Conleth. “You the whistleblower who called us about the bear?”
“No, but I know what happened.” Paige offered the sheriff her phone. “One of the campers stole my phone and used it to make a prank call. See for yourself. You can check my number against your records.”
Since Paige had yet to throw jazz hands or start babbling about goats, the sheriff seemed to decide that here, at last, was a credible witness. He dutifully inspected the device, cross-referencing details against his notebook.
“That’s the phone all right,” he concluded. He handed it back to Paige. “You say one of the kids took this?”
Paige nodded. “I think they must have been trying to get Conleth here in trouble.”
“I’m sure they didn’t intend things to go so far,” Conleth put in hastily. “Just participating in the fine camp tradition of practical jokes on counselors.”
The sheriff grunted. “Bit beyond short-sheeting the bed. I’d like to speak to the kid responsible.”
Paige hesitated, her gaze flicking to Conleth in a silent appeal for help. “That’s, uh, not really possible at the moment.”
“We don’t yet know for sure exactly who was involved.” Conleth spread his hands. “As you can smell, it’s not the first time I’ve been the butt of an ill-judged childish scheme. I am not universally popular among the campers.”
“Can’t imagine why,” the sheriff muttered. He tucked his notebook back into his pocket. “Well, when you find out who did it, make sure they appreciate how much trouble they’ve caused.”
“Don’t worry,” Paige said grimly. “I will.”
CHAPTER 27
Archie was in trouble.
In fact, he was in the deepest trouble of his whole life. Which was really saying something, considering the time he’d had to write a report on a scientific experiment for homework, and had decided to see what happened if you crumpled up a whole roll of aluminum foil and put it in the microwave (the answer was, you got a lot of fire trucks, and also grounded for a month).
First, Paige had dragged him out of the storeroom and yelled at him. She only stopped because stupid Conleth took two steps and fell flat on his face, which normally Archie would have enjoyed, yet somehow didn’t seem funny right then. Then there had been a whole lot of sudden activity, with Leonie ringing the bell and everyone coming out of hiding and Ragvald carrying Conleth off to the infirmary and Paige marching Archie away.
Since then, he’d been grounded. He was allowed out of the cabin for meals, which should have been a good thing, except that by dinnertime word had got out about what he’d done, so he sat there with an empty seat on each side while all around the other kids stared and whispered to each other behind their hands.
It was even worse at bedtime. The other boys got changed into their pajamas in strained silence, avoiding looking in his direction. No one wanted anything to do with a kid who’d nearly revealed the camp’s secret.
Archie was pretty sure that no one in the entire world, in all of history, had ever managed to get into so much trouble.
Even his bear was upset with him. Normally he could rely on it to be the one calm, quiet place in his head, but now his animal was agitated and confused. It didn’t understand why he’d deliberately broken the most important camp rule. This was a good place, filled with good smells. They could run and sniff and climb. There were grubs to dig up and friends to wrestle. Why would he want to leave?
He didn’t want to leave Camp Thunderbird. The thought of never coming to camp again gave him a hollow, awful feeling in his stomach. Next summer, he wouldn’t be playing shift-tag with Rufus or exchanging dares with Estelle. He wouldn’t get to wheedle Ignatius into a wrestling match or catch cool bugs so Finley could tell him their scientific names. Weirdly, he was even going to miss Beth.
But you had to put family first. No matter what.
