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I shook my head and decided to take a nap. I had a feeling Odelia was going to ask us to tag along tonight on her zombie hunt, and I wanted to be fresh and alert. Zombies are not to be trifled with, and you never know when they’ll attack and try to eat your brains.

And I’d just dozed off when I became aware of a strange sound. When I opened my eyes I saw that a cameraman was filming me!

I practically jumped from the couch, and as I stared into the lens, suddenly Gran’s voice spoke in my immediate rear.

“That’s Max, and the small gray one is mine. His name is Dooley. The white Persian is Marge’s, and the black one is Chase’s, though he gifted him to Odelia, my granddaughter.”

I looked up, wondering who she was talking to, and saw that a woman stood holding a microphone under Gran’s nose. A fourth person was also present. He was dressed in a black silk shirt, red leather tie, and had wild electric hair sprouting from his head.

Next to me, my friends, also roused from their slumber, stared at the spectacle with as much wonder and surprise as me.

“Your family is really into cats, aren’t they, Mrs. Muffin?”

“Vesta, please,” said Gran, displaying an uncharacteristic full-toothed smile. “And yes, we all love cats. My daughter Marge and Odelia most of all. The men in our family, well, let’s just say they tolerate our peculiar predilection.” She laughed at her own joke, and the woman with the microphone laughed right along. She was very thin and young, with an abundance of dark curly hair and large-framed glasses. The cameraman, meanwhile, who was filming Gran, was a short and stubby individual with a round face and strange little beard that looked like a ring around his lips. He was munching on something.

“Thank you so much for inviting us into your home, Vesta,” said Microphone Lady.

“Oh, no, I’m happy to oblige,” said Gran. “It is, after all, something very special we’re doing here, and the world should be our witness.”

We all stared at one another, wondering what was going on.

The wild-haired man in the black shirt and red tie was pulling his nose now, and staring intently into the middle distance.“Are you sure there will be room for us?” he asked. “It’s a very small place you got here, Vesta.”

“Odelia has a spare bedroom upstairs,” said Vesta. “And we have another spare bedroom next door.”

“We could always stay at a hotel,” suggested Microphone Lady. “I’d be happy to.”

“No, we should be right here,” said the wild-haired one. “We need to follow Vesta day and night. So I suggest I stay next door, while you two share the upstairs bedroom.”

“Great idea,” said Vesta, though the cameraman and the microphone woman didn’t look convinced.

“Are you sure your family are on board with this?” asked Microphone Lady.

“Oh, absolutely,” said Vesta, displaying another toothy grin. “They’ll be thrilled.”

Chapter 10

Marge was thoroughly worried. It wasn’t just that Alec was in trouble, it was more that all of a sudden her entire world had been thrown out of whack. Alec wasn’t just her big brother, the one she could always turn to. He was also the town’s chief of police—the maneveryone turned to. And now all of a sudden he’d been turned into an outcast.

It was almost as if she’d suddenly fallen down into the upside-down version of her normal world. As if she were living her own worst nightmare.

When she arrived home that night, after fending off dozens of questions from her customers, some worried, others irate, like Bertha Braithwaite, she was happy to be home. Happy finally to find a respite from a world that had obviously gone mad.

So when she walked in the door and was greeted by a film crew and a man who looked like Doc Brown fromBack to the Future, it was frankly a little too much. And when her mother turned to her with a big smile and blithely announced,“I’ve decided to have another baby,” she dropped to the floor and promptly passed out.

Lucky for her there were not one but two doctors in the house: her husband Tex, but also, quite surprisingly, Doc Brown, whose name wasn’t Doc Brown at all but Clam.

So when she was quickly and efficiently revived, and found herself lying on the couch in a darkened room while muffled voices discussed her‘episode,’ she thought she must still be dreaming, and for the briefest of moments thought that maybe the whole thing was a dream: the fact that her brother was suddenly being accused of a heinous act, and the fact that her mother had invited what looked like a television crew into their home.

But when Tex walked in and sat down next to her, a cup of tea in his hand, which he handed her, and a grave expression on his face, she knew it hadn’t been a dream at all, but stark reality.

“Did I just pass out?” she asked.

“Yes, you did, darling. But nothing to worry about. Doctor Clam caught you the moment your knees buckled, so you didn’t even hit your head or anything.”

“Doctor…”

“Clam. Zebediah Clam.” Tex’s right eye twitched, something she’d never seen before.