Upstairs, June found Dolph’s and Rudolph’s shredded clothing and checked every pocket. She’d left Brendan and Dr. Chase to guard the duct-taped wonders. The clothes proved useless. No vial. Just car keys, cash, and a pistol for each. She dropped the guns into the kitchen trash can. Hopefully she’d find Aunt Violet to warn her about the two hostages in her basement…and the giant hole in the back of her house. June rotated her ears and listened for any hint of another person in the vicinity. Nothing.


    Back downstairs, the two duct-tape mummies were still out cold, and it looked like Brendan and Dr. Chase were trying very hard to act as if the other didn’t exist.


    “I didn’t find anything in their clothes except guns,” she said to Brendan.


    He nodded. “I’m gonna need a rag, a paperclip, a rubber band, and kerosene.” He interlaced his fingers and turned them inside out to stretch them, like he was cracking his knuckles. “They won’t keep their secrets long when I bust out Detective Ollie’s interrogation methods.”


    “Did you just say Detective Ollie?” Dr. Chase asked. “As in the character from Blimey! Detectives?”


    “Yes...” Brendan rotated his head to the side and looked at Dr. Chase from the corner of his eye. “Do you read the books too?”


    “Pshh,” Dr. Chase replied. “Not even if my only other reading option was a phone book. What a shoddy bit of work that series is, isn’t it.” He turned his nose up.


    Horror and rage passed over Brendan’s face, and then he looked like he was considering how to best go about using Detective Ollie’s interrogation methods on Dr. Chase. But before he could act on his desire, one of the silver mummies snorted and startled him.


    June studied the two hostages, ears rotating and whiskers twitching. Neither moved, and they stayed silent, with shallow breathing and a slow, steady pulse. June grew more certain they were not waking anytime soon.


    She ground her teeth in frustration. Time was running out and they had exhausted the scientists’ houses without finding even a clue of where Mr. Moseley could be, let alone the ludicrous serum.


    What do we know for certain? she asked herself. What are the facts?


    They hadn’t found anything to indicate Dr. Crushov or Dr. Chase were involved. The two villains sleeping in front of her definitely knew about the serum and Cordelia’s work on it. They had probably come to Aunt Violet’s in the hopes of finding the missing research, based on the ransacked state of the house. They also knew who committed the robbery and took Mr. Moseley, if they hadn’t done it themselves. But the way Dolph had laughed when June accused him and said, “You certainly know the person who did it” felt weirdly truthful.


    They could be working with the person who robbed the lab, of course, but was it also possible they were trying to stop the robber? Although, judging from the duct-taped duo’s willingness to kidnap teenagers and harm them, the odds Dolph and Rudolph were good guys looked rather slim.


    The thought of Dolph about to hit Brendan made June’s jaw clench involuntarily. She needed to get answers. She growled, wishing she hadn’t knocked them out. Brendan and Dr. Chase both regarded her curiously.


    Wait, isn’t there some kind of smelling salt that snaps a person awake?


    As she was about to raise the question with Brendan—who undoubtedly would know whether such a salt existed and how to use it according to fictional books—another memory of their time in the kitchen with Dolph and Rudolph popped into her head. Her mouth went dry. Dolph had said Cordelia’s life might depend on whether June told him where to find the research. Surely Cordelia wasn’t in danger, though. She could have taken on the two Europeans easily…right?


    “I don’t think they’re waking anytime soon,” Brendan said, interrupting her thoughts. “Let’s search the house with the Geiger counter.” He slid the backpack off his shoulders. His pea-cloak swirled around him with the motion. She could never tell him that it actually looked cool—he would wear it constantly and she would never hear the end of it.


    June shook her head. “We need to get to my house and check on Cordelia.”


    “But June, we’re here, and it shouldn’t take long. We need to be thorough.”


    “Mr. Moseley isn’t here, and Cordelia could be in danger.”


    Brendan examined the two prisoners for a brief moment, then eyed Dr. Chase disdainfully. “After seeing these two, I think your mom would be okay. She’s smart and” —he made purposeful eye contact with her—“capable, right?”


    June hesitated. Cordelia hadn’t gone into detail last night—good grief, it felt like a lifetime ago—but for a while at least, Cordelia had trained to fight demons. Brendan was probably right. A bear and a badger would be no match for her. “Okay, let’s be quick though.”


    Brendan pulled out the Geiger counter.


    Dr. Chase rubbed his hands together excitedly. “A proper investigation. And I’m just the man for the job.”Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    June closed her eyes and tried to summon up some patience. Finding Mr. Moseley was already difficult enough. Having to babysit a grown man so he didn’t bungle something made it even worse. After Aunt Violet’s house, Dr. Chase would be going home, she decided. She turned and led the way upstairs.


    They expeditiously swept the first floor with the Geiger counter and found nothing that June had not already noticed. She was thankful Aunt Violet’s house had larger rooms and hallways than Dr. Chase’s home, so she didn’t have to squeeze around so much. Aside from the devastation left by Dolph and Rudolph in their savage searching, the house was just as June remembered it.


    As there was nothing radioactive on the first floor, June led the way to the second floor. The HVAC thrummed in the attic. The hallway ran dead straight, with three doors on one side and two on the other, all open, and finally, one closed door facing her at the far end—the master bedroom. They checked each of the open rooms—which contained nothing unusual aside from being ransacked—until only Aunt Violet’s closed bedroom remained. Their arrival must have interrupted the duct-taped duo’s search of the upstairs.


    “You know, I’ve already checked in there and nothing was out of the ordinary,” Dr. Chase volunteered, pointing to the final door. He rattled the stinky duffle bag on his shoulder. “It’s where I found clothes for you, remember? I think I''d have noticed something amiss.”


    If she hadn’t been inclined to search the room, that comment settled it—now they had to check it. June motioned Brendan inside. Even with the plantation shutters closed, moonlight leaked in. Brendan walked around the edges of the room while June scrutinized it from the doorway. Aunt Violet hadn’t changed anything since June had last been here: the vast four-poster bed and large dresser remained in their same spots, as did the full-length mirror on the side wall, opposite the bed.


    Brendan completed his search. The Geiger counter remained slow and steady. As he came back toward her, past the bed, a faint but familiar odor suddenly hit her, then disappeared in the mingle of other smells in the room. She sniffed deeply. The rank mothball stench of the duffel bag with Dr. Chase didn’t help matters, and it was tempting to pull the bag off his shoulder and throw it out the window. But she closed her eyes, and picked at, separated, and sorted the scents like a knotted ball of yarn in her mind, until she singled out the familiar smell that had caught her attention.


    Comprehension struck her: it was the scent of snake, like at Cordelia’s lab. While Aunt Violet loved her reptiles wholeheartedly, she did not bring them home. Following the direction of the odor, June opened her eyes and caught something in the darkness just under the bed. Moving closer, it looked like a copious amount of flaky plastic. She hoped it was an old, battered drop-cloth.


    As June tugged some of it out and lifted it, her mind struggled to make sense of what she held. It couldn’t be what it looked like. It was too wide, too long, even in her giant paws. So much of it remained under the bed as she continued to pull it out.


    In the doorway, Dr. Chase muttered, “What the bloody…” He flipped on the lights.


    June blinked in pain, growled in his direction, and waited for her eyes to adjust. Brendan and Dr. Chase both huddled at her sides now. They all studied the object in her paws. Black in color, with pale stripes, evenly spaced. And it wasn’t plastic at all.


    She continued to tug it out from under the bed and it just kept coming. Understanding flashed in her mind, brighter and more painful than the light Dr. Chase had flicked on seconds ago: it was a snakeskin, but with jagged, spike-like edges, and it was so big it could have spanned the room and continued on down the hallway.


    “Why in the blazes does Dr. Langley have such a large snakeskin under her bed?” Dr. Chase asked. “That’s got to be even larger than her Burmese, and her Burmese isn’t black.”


    “Woah,” Brendan breathed.


    It felt, at that moment, like a deep, dark hole had opened up beneath June. While she didn’t actually fall, she might as well have, because she lost all sense of being tethered to anything solid. The room threatened to spin around her violently. She closed her eyes tight and sat back on her haunches, pulling herself into a compact ball, but still the inevitable conclusion dawned before she could stop it.


    “June, something that big isn’t natural. It has to be—”


    “Yes,” she said, eyes still shut, and her voice shook.


    “So that means your aunt is—”


    “Yes,” she whispered. Some small part of her mind told her she should be angry—she should be furious, it screamed—but the rest of her couldn’t manage anything except a frosty numbness. That numbness covered the screaming part of her mind like a blanket and smothered it.


    This night wouldn’t have a happy ending, no matter what she and Brendan accomplished. Someone she cared about would have to leave her life forever. Aunt Violet had to die, or she would likely kill Mr. Moseley, and many more people in the future. June’s very soul felt punctured with holes.


    She turned to Brendan as tears dribbled through the fur on her cheeks. “She’s a demon.”


    Brendan chewed his lip.


    “What?” Dr. Chase sputtered. “Did you just say demon? A bit outlandish, that statement, isn’t it? It’s just a giant snakeskin we’ve got here, not proof of a boogeyman. Perhaps she’s obtained a specimen even larger than the Burmese.”


    June barely heard him because saying the word “demon” out loud somehow breathed life into the screaming part of her she thought had suffocated. Only it hadn’t, because the numbness caught fire and melted away. Now fury burned within her, unhindered, and betrayal fanned the flames. She ripped off a six-foot segment of the snakeskin and handed it to Brendan.


    “Put it in the backpack,” she said. “We’re going to check on Cordelia.”


    “I can take that if you want,” Dr. Chase volunteered. “Plenty of room in my bag.”


    June strode out of the bedroom and down the hall without a word. They eventually caught up to her while she waited in the hallway by the front door, heaving in cool, fresh air to help calm down.


    “Dr. Chase, can I trust you to stay here and keep an eye on Dolph and Rudolph?” She figured someone should, and it would be a situation that even Dr. Chase couldn’t screw up.


    He stammered something about how they should stay together for safety reasons, but June cut him off with a growl. “You want to be helpful? Just stay here and try not to do anything stupid. They can’t escape that duct tape on their own. If you hear them wake up, you call Brendan.”


    “What?” Brendan cried. “But I’d have to give my number to—”


    “Just do it,” June rumbled. Seeing the look on his face, which she imagined might be the same face he’d make if he had to eat a live cockroach, she added, “Please.”


    After Brendan exchanged numbers with Dr. Chase and June listened to the sounds of the world outside the front door, she crouched on the front porch. Brendan was at her side when she noticed he wasn’t wearing his goggles. “No Scooby Doo?” she asked.


    His eyes shot to Dr. Chase then back to hers. “No, not right now,” he replied, then climbed up.


    She glanced back at Dr. Chase, nodded to him, and then launched herself into the night.