“Coming right up.” The woman disappears from the window, and when she returns a few minutes later, she’s holding two large boba teas. They’re more expensive than the rest of the teas, but luckily, I have the money Hattie grabbed from the swear jar. We pay, and she passes the drinks over to us with a wink. “And if you speak a word of this to the council, I will hunt you down.”

The woman gives us a beaming smile and we scurry away with our teas. Who knew infusers were working with the Horangi and selling illegal potions on the black market? And in broad daylight, no less.

We carry our drinks over to the tiger enclosure and stand there taking long sips of the creamy goodness. Mine tastes like taro milk tea mixed with the sweet banana milk you can get from the H-Mart. Yum. We chew happily on the sweet little balls of tapioca, enjoying the momentary respite from the Cave Bear Goddess’s assignment.

“So what now?” Emmett asks.

“I’m not sure. I—”

I frown. Something is off. I scan Emmett’s body from top to toe. And that’s when I see it. Or in this case, don’t see it.

Emmett’s right foot is gone.

“Ahh, your foot!” I shout, pointing at the empty space between his shin and the ground.

Then, before my eyes, more of Emmett starts disappearing. It’s as if someone has taken an eraser and started to rub him out. His other foot goes poof! and then the invisibility spreads up his legs and torso, engulfing poor Boris along the way. Soon, Emmett is nothing more than a floating head.

“OMG, it’s happening to you, too!” Emmett shrieks. I look down to see my limbs have gone AWOL, and my boba tea is floating in midair.

As Emmett turns from a weird bobbing head into nothing at all, I find my eyes blurring until the tiger enclosure and the zoo have faded to black.

When my vision clears again, dense forest surrounds me on all sides, and the sounds of cicadas and birdsong fill my ears. The sun is drooping in the sky, painting a warm golden hue over the trees, and the smell of pine is strong in the air. We aren’t in the zoo anymore—we’re in the mountains. It reminds me of where my family went on a camping trip in the Angeles National Forest a few years ago.

Emmett appears next to me, looking stunned. “I know she said it’d be a trip, but I didn’t think she meant it literally.”

I shake out my limbs, grateful I can see them again. “Be on guard, Em. We don’t know where the Horangi might be hiding.”

“Or what they might do to us,” he mumbles.