Concerned, the coyote thing reached down to help me, and I saw a paw where there’d formerly been fingers. I choked back a fresh scream, and in an eyeblink it was Raphael again, bending over me, looking concerned. “Are you okay?”
I lowered my hands, panting a little, staring at him in disbelief. “Am I okay? You—you just changed into a coyote!”
“I’m sorry, but it was the only way I could think of to show you so you’d believe me.”
He had a point.
I looked at him again, and saw only my BFF, my Raphael. I pulled myself back up onto the bed. “So that was you in the park . . . ?”
“Yeah. And it was me in your backyard the other night.”
“How long have you been . . . uh . . . a were-coyote?”
Raphael smiled and sat cross-legged on the floor below me. “It’s not exactly like that—I don’t change into some monster at the full moon. I’ve always been able to do it, just by thinking about it. I can transform a little, or all the way, and I’m still me when I’m the coyote.”
I thought I knew everything about him, so this hit me like a sucker punch. “You’ve always done this? Why didn’t I know before?”
“Because my mom—who’s the only other person who knows—made me promise when I was a little kid that I would never tell anyone I could do this. And I kept that promise . . . until now.”
That made me feel a little better. “Okay. Why now, then?”
“Because I think Vanessa is in trouble.”
“Vanessa? Why? Can she become a coyote too?”
He laughed. “No. There are other people around who can become animals, but there aren’t very many. I don’t exactly understand how it works; just that some of us are born being able to do it, and we can recognize other people who can do it.”
“You can? How?”
Raphael shrugged. “I’ve only seen a couple of them, but it’s like you look at them, and you can see this outline of an animal, almost like lines under their skin.”
“So how does this relate to Vanessa?”
Standing, Raphael pulled his phone out of a pocket. “It’s Parker Madigan. He’s the reason I didn’t come to the quinceañera. I’ve seen him, but I don’t think he’s seen me, and I want to keep it that way.”
“Why?”
“Just watch this . . .” Raphael scrolled through his phone, thumbed something, and held the screen up before my eyes.
I was watching a video of a large docked boat, an elegant sailing vessel at least forty feet long and obviously the property of someone with serious money. It was night, the boat was docked, and voices came from within it. I asked, “What is this?”
“Parker Madigan’s dad owns this boat. It’s docked in Marina del Rey.”
“How did you get this?”
“I followed him there last night.”
I gaped, almost more shocked by that than a coyote-boy. “You followed him? Like, in coyote form?”
“I got my brother to drive me. Just watch.”
I did. Finally, a figure emerged from the boat’s cabin—Parker, wrapped in a beach towel. He glanced around and then dropped the towel and stood poised for a second on the edge of the boat. “Is he wearing anything at all?”
“Nope.”
I was glad the screen was too small to really make out details. This was, after all, my sister’s not-really-boyfriend.
Parker jumped from the boat into the water. But what came back up from his dive was nothing human.
It was a shark fin.
I gasped as I looked up at Raphael, astonished and frightened. “Is Parker . . . ?”
He nodded. “I first saw it two weeks ago, when I was coming to your house, and Parker was just leaving with Vanessa. Your sister’s dating a shark.”
“She says they’re not really dating. . . .”
Raphael rolled his eyes. “Whatever. That’s not the deal here. Think about it, Miki: a shark. . . .”
I didn’t have to think very long before it hit me like a gut punch. “The news reports . . .”
Raphael nodded excitedly. “I mean, we don’t know for sure, but we got a guy here who’s a shark, who’s rich and has a boat, and who Dani Martinez was visiting just before she was attacked.”
I’d never liked Parker, but I’d never thought of him as somebody who bit people for fun.
“There’s something else, too. . . .” Raphael was staring at me hard.
“What?” I asked.
“His dad’s a hot deputy DA. Who better to cover up for a shark-kid?”
The bottom fell out of my world. For a few seconds my brain just ground to a halt, like an overheated engine that’s given up. When I could think again, I reached for my phone.
“Who are you calling?”
I started to punch the picture of my sister. “Vanessa, of course.”
Raphael held out a warning hand. “And say what? That her cool, rich friend could star in a remake of Jaws? You think she’s going to believe that?”
He was right. I lowered the phone. “No. She’s going to say something about how I’m jealous.”
“Right. We need to get some kind of proof first. And then we need to show it to someone who is not Parker’s dad.”
“Right.” That made perfect sense . . . until I realized it sounded impossible.
It wasn’t impossible. Well, at least not totally.
Raphael and I are geeks; it’s one of the things that bonds us. We both love games and gadgets. Raphael had a camera that could stream live video to his phone and go a week between battery charges. He remembered a light pole where he thought he could place the camera high enough overhead to be unnoticeable and away from the water, but pointed right at the Lucille, Davis Madigan’s boat. If we got anything, we figured we’d just throw it online for the whole world to see.
The night that Raphael went to the pier to place the camera, Parker came to our house. He was sixteen and had his driver’s license already, and he was taking Vanessa to a concert. Classical music, you know; Parker didn’t rock.
Although I was glad he was here and not at his boat, I was still nervous to be near him, knowing what I did now. But I thought maybe I could put it to use—throw him off-balance or something.
He sat in our living room while Vanessa finished getting ready; my mom offered him a glass of water or iced tea, then left when he ever so politely declined.
“Hey, Miki,” he said as I wandered in, trying to look casual.
“Hi, Parker.” I stood there, abruptly realizing I had no idea what to say next.
He saw me looking perplexed. “Is there . . . is there something I can help you with?”
I grabbed at whatever came into my head. “I was just wondering—do you want to be a lawyer like your dad?”
Parker laughed. “Not even my dad wants to be a lawyer; he’s just doing this DA stuff until he runs for mayor.”
My body chilled about five degrees. “Your . . . dad . . . the mayor?”
“Yeah. I know—crazy, huh? But he can probably do it. Me, I’d rather go into investing. That’s where the real meat is.”
I felt the last heat drain from my face.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine, just . . .” Go for it, Miki, my inner devil whispered. “I just read another article about those girls who’ve all been attacked by a shark.”
Was there something slightly fake about Parker’s frown? “Oh, I know. Awful stuff.”
“Who do you think could be doing it?”
For the first time he actually seemed to stumble. “Why would you ask ‘who’ and not ‘what’? I mean, it’s a shark, right?”
I shrugged. “I guess, but . . . four girls in a row bitten, months apart, by the same shark? Doesn’t that seem weird?”
Parker looked at me carefully. . . .
His eyes flashed pure black, no whites or blue iris left, all black—like a shark’s.
Then they were normal again, clear and blue, as he flashed his killer gri
n. “The world’s a weird place, Miki.”
Just then Vanessa walked in, looking more adorable than I ever could, in an iridescent blue dress with her hair falling around her shoulders in dark curls. I loved my sister fiercely right then; I wanted to jump up and put my arms around her and scream at her, “Can’t you see what he is?”
Instead, I sat there, numb, confused.
Parker got up, they both said good-bye to me, and I hated myself for letting my sister walk away with a shark.
My sister did come home later that night. I was texting Raphael when she walked in; I’d already told him about my encounter with Parker earlier in the evening. Now I heard Vanessa tell Parker she had a great time and loved the music.
Raphael texted, She didnt kiss him, did she?
Not sure, I wrote back.
Well, he responded, sis is prolly safe—hes not gonna attack somebody hes hung out with so much.
I asked, You sure? You didnt see his eyes.
No. Not sure at all. Dani Martinez hung out with him too.
I offered only a final, sarcastic, Thx before signing off for the night.
Two nights later I was in my bedroom reading a blog on game design when my phone rang. It was Raphael. I’d barely answered before he started talking, sounded uncharacteristically panicky.
“Miki, we got trouble: the live feed on the camera just showed your sister at the boat with Parker—”
“Slow down, Raphael.” I tried to remember where Vanessa had said she was going tonight. “No, she’s out with her friends Olivia and Terry—”
“That’s what she told you, but I’m telling you—she’s at that boat. I’m watching her walk onto it right now.”
It was almost nine p.m. My parents would freak if they knew. “Is it just the two of them?”
“Yeah.”
Should I tell my parents? No—the first thing they’d wonder is why Raphael and I were spying on my sister. Should I call Vanessa? She’d just lie to me about where she was and what she was doing. No, this was up to me. “Raphael, I have to do something.”
“I know. I ordered an Uber on my dad’s credit card. It should be here in five. We can get you on the way to the marina.”
“Okay.”
He hung up, and I started pacing, not knowing what to do. I ended up putting on a jacket and sneaking out through the kitchen so my parents wouldn’t see me. If I had to explain tomorrow what I was doing, that was still better than the alternative—visiting Vanessa in the hospital. Or worse.
The car was there in five minutes; it was a beat-up, dusty sedan driven by a college kid named Ty, who had the biggest hair I’d ever seen, listening to reggae on his stereo. Raphael told him we had to get from the Valley to Marina del Rey as fast as possible. Ty grinned and hit the gas.
That was probably the first time in my life I was glad to be driven by a maniac. It was late enough that the freeways had cleared out, and Ty roared down them about as fast as his car would go. Raphael kept his eyes glued to his phone. Every few minutes I asked, “Anything?”
“No, not since they went up onto the boat.”
About the time we left the 405 and hit the 90 freeway, Raphael sat up straighter, his eyes wide. “Wait, hold on— They’re at the side of the boat now. . . .”
“What are they doing?”
“I don’t know—I can’t make out the audio, but I think they’re just talking.”
I turned to Ty. “How far away are we?”
“Maybe five minutes, maybe less.”
Four minutes later he pulled up at the docks. Raphael gave him a twenty-dollar bill as a tip. Ty’s grin got even bigger, and he took off.
Left alone I realized we had no plan; I only knew I had to reach my sister as soon as possible. “Which way?”
Raphael pointed and started running. “Down here . . .”
The place was empty this time of night; we jogged past sailboats and motorboats bobbing gently in the nighttime tide, the smell of brine filling our heads. We turned at one point, and the boats got noticeably bigger and more expensive. “Lucille’s the last one on the left,” Raphael said.
I saw it now, and could just make out two figures behind the railing around the edges of the boat. I ran toward them, not caring how crazy I was about to sound.
As I got closer I heard them talking, but they heard my footsteps on the wooden dock and stopped talking, turning to see who was coming. When I ran up to the bottom of the gangplank, I hesitated as Vanessa saw it was me. “Miki? What are you doing here?”
“Vanessa, you have to come with me, right NOW. Trust me—you’re not safe.”
Parker laughed and stepped between me and Vanessa. Peeking around him, Vanessa frowned. “What’s wrong, is everything okay at home?”
“It’s not home—it’s him.”
Vanessa realized I was glaring at Parker. She was about to respond when Parker stepped toward me. “Miki, what’s going on?”
With his back to Vanessa, she didn’t see how he grinned at me, his mouth splitting at the sides, going around the edges of his head to reveal huge, pointed, knifelike teeth. I bit back a reaction but held my ground, as scared as I was. Then I remembered Raphael, and I turned—only to see he wasn’t there.
I was alone with a shark-man walking toward me.
Just then a new voice interrupted, an older voice. “Parker . . . ?”
A man emerged from the boat’s cabin, a tall, good-looking man in his fifties, whose face I’d seen in news reports: Parker’s dad, and one of my city’s deputy district attorneys, Davis Madigan.
Parker’s face instantly rearranged itself into human form as he turned. “Yeah, Dad. . . .”
Davis stepped up and surveyed the scene casually. “Everything all right here?”
Vanessa was angry now. “I’m sorry, Mr. Madigan, everything’s fine—it’s just my sister has some crazy ideas about me not being safe. . . .”
“Really? Where would she get that?”
Mr. Madigan stood behind Vanessa . . . and changed. His skin turned gray, eyes big and black as the night sky, his mouth filled with teeth—
He was a shark too.
I choked on a half scream as Davis Madigan loomed behind Vanessa, who was still unaware. “You . . . you’re . . .”
When he spoke, Mr. Madigan’s voice sounded rough, barely capable of speech. “Did you think it was my son attacking those girls? You got close to the truth . . . but too close. I’m afraid something needs to be done about that.”
It had never been Parker. It had been his dad biting people, biting victims provided by Parker. And no one would ever catch him. Now he stood behind my sister, opened his gigantic mouth, and started to bend down.
Before I could do anything (and what could I do?), a tan streak flashed by me and hurled itself at Davis Madigan. Snarling and frothing, the coyote hit the shark-man with enough power to knock him down. The shark head snapped at the coyote, who twisted to avoid the biting jaws. The coyote nimbly jumped to the side, and Madigan leaped up to lunge. Vanessa screamed and ran down the gangplank to join me, rushing past the stunned Parker. I stayed rooted, terrified, sure I was about to see my best friend get chomped by a shark.
Instead, the coyote barked and jitterbugged, and when the shark-man made another grab for it, he miscalculated and went overboard. We didn’t wait to see what happened next: I grabbed Vanessa’s hand, and we started running for shore. The coyote shot past us at one point, and I felt tears of relief spring to my eyes. “Raphael!”
Vanessa heard and gasped out, “What? Where?”
I didn’t answer, just kept moving.
We’d almost made it to shore when the water beside us erupted and a huge great white shark jumped up beside us, its mouth open, all of its teeth showing.
Vanessa and I both screamed, but we dodged and kept going. I didn’t look back, but I heard the huge splash as the shark hit the water again.
And then we made it to shore, where Raphael waited for us. He was just tugging on pants
and shirt, his feet still bare. He didn’t wait to put on his shoes; he just grabbed them and nodded up to the street. “Keep going!”
I glanced back once and saw we weren’t being followed—no crazy were-shark thing was coming after us.
We’d made it.
I almost felt sorry for Parker in the resulting fallout.
The video had gone live, just as Raphael had planned, but it mysteriously disappeared within an hour. However, Davis Madigan was arrested the next day and slapped with dozens of charges. The overall story was that he’d deliberately tried to feed his son’s friends to a shark. His career was over. Parker’s mom, meanwhile, decided to take him back east and she sold the LA house. The boat was impounded as evidence.
Vanessa bought Raphael’s story about having a new dog that was part coyote, and she stayed quiet about any of the rest of it, embarrassed about ever having been friends with Parker at all.
I was briefly a little mad at Raphael for leaving me alone when I first faced Parker, but he explained that he’d been trying to get out of his clothes so he could take coyote form, and I forgave him. Last week, Raphael and I launched a Kickstarter campaign for a new game we’re designing called Animen. The campaign looks like it’s going to fund. It’s going to be an awesome game.
After all, we know how to make ’em scream.
Rule Seven
by Ray Daniel
MY DAD SCREAMS LONG AND loud.
“Ha!” I say to Mikey. “I scared him good. I get a doughnut.”
My dad works in Hollywood making creepy scenes in horror movies. Because he scares people for a living, he’s almost impossible to scare himself. He bet me a doughnut that I’d never scare him. I got my chance when he turned the old Wagner place into a haunted house to raise money for an animal shelter.
My dad is really good at his job. He has all these rules for making things scary, and the Wagner place meets Rule One: start with a scary setting. It’s big and gray, set up on a hill, with scraggly trees all around it. It didn’t have a graveyard, so my dad installed one in the front yard.
I say, “He definitely owes me a doughnut.”