Dr. Stevens is still furiously scribbling into a small green notebook when I pull up to the double-wide at Hicks Chicken Farms. She hadn’t seemed stoked about my plan, but she hadn’t tried to talk me out of it, either, not really.

“You do know it’s five hundred miles to the supe refuge, right?” she’d asked, not taking a break from her note-taking.

“I know,” I’d said. She didn’t look up to see my shrug.

“And we can’t exactly stop over at a Motel Six or anything on the way,” she’d added, about a minute later.

And image flashed in my head of the mama hellhound curled up on one of those flimsy mauve and turquoise motel bedspreads, nostrils quietly smoking in a tiny room full of wood paneling, shitty prints of watercolor seascapes, and pay per view. I snickered.

Dr. Stevens glanced up, one eyebrow raised.

“I know,” I said again. “We’ll be all right. We’ll be real quick. You won’t even have to stop writing if you don’t want.”

And she doesn’t.

Not even when I put the truck in park, pull the key out of the ignition, and open up my front door to greet Tate and Emmakate, who are waiting for us on their front porch.

“Hey, there,” I say, mostly to Emmakate, who’s standing in front of her father, positively vibrating with energy. Tate is resting his hands on her shoulders, possibly to keep her from running toward my truck as we approached.

I only walk up the first two steps to the pork, so that I’m eye level with Emmakate. I reach up to shake Tate’s head again, but then direct my attention back to his kid.

“All right,” I say, my voice stern. “This is how it’s gonna go. We’re going to very calmly, slowly, and quietly, walk over to the back of the truck, you, me, and your daddy. Calmly and quietly.”

I pause and wait for her to respond. She nods, furiously at first, but then slowly and solemnly, as if to show me she can do it.

“Then, you and your daddy are going to stand several feet back while I open up the truck so you can see the hounds, okay?”

She nods again, once. Her mouth is a straight line, but her eyes are dancing with joy.

“They’re still a little groggy from the sedative we used, but I don’t want to take any chances, okay? So you won’t get to touch them at all, just look, and from a distance.”

Her face falls a bit, but she says quietly, “Okay.”

Then Tate clears his throat and says, “I’m sorry, did you say hound-z?” He emphasizes the hard s at the end of hounds.

I grin.

“Sure did.”

Once I’ve got Emmakate and her father positioned a good distance from the back of the truck, I hear Dr. Stevens’s car door open. She comes round the back of the truck and asks if I need any help.

“Nah, I’m good,” I reply. I turn back to Tate and his daughter. “This is my colleague, Dr. Stevens.”

She strides over to them and offers out a hand to shake.

Emmakate looks up at Dr. Stevens, confused. “Doctor? Are you a monster vet?”

Dr. Stevens lets out a little chuckle. “Not that kind of doctor. It just means I went to school for a long, long time to try and find out new things about supernatural animalia.”

Emmakate quirks up an eyebrow.

“Monsters,” says Dr. Stevens.

“Oh,” Emmakate says brightly. “What did you find out?”

Dr. Stevens raises her eyebrows. I suppress a smile, and imagine trying to translate the thesis of an entire dissertation down into a few sentences that a ten-year-old could understand.

“Well, I was trying to find out why scientists only found out about monsters recently. We only discovered them a few decades ago, did you know that?”

“I did!” Emmakate beams.

“Do you know why?” asks Dr. Stevens, and Emmakate shakes her head. “Most scientists don’t know either!” Dr. Stevens cocks her head in mock disbelief, and Emmakate laughs. “But we’re all trying to find out why. Do you want to know what I think?”

“Yeah!” says Emmakate.

“I think that they come from another world—”

“Like aliens?!” asks the girl.

Dr. Stevens laughs. “Not exactly. I think this other world is connected to ours, and something about our world changed, and it opened up a bunch of little doors and let these monsters in.”

I’ve heard this theory before—the Li-Schwartz hypothesis. There were several academic theories as to why monsters we’d until recently thought to be mythological were only now being documented as scientific fact, and this was only one of them. We’d covered this theory along with several others in both my undergrad and master’s level Intro to Supernatural Studies classes. As far as I know, however, the Li-Schwartz hypothesis was still that—just a hypothesis. No one has yet been able to prove it—or any of the other theories of origination, for that matter.

“Oh,” says Emmakate, taking in Dr. Stevens’ proclomation. She stares off into the middle distance for a moment, brows furrowed, considering. Then she looks up at Dr. Stevens. “Yeah, that makes sense.”

Dr. Steven smiles. “Thanks, kid! I think so, too.”

“Y’all ready?” I call out, trying to make sure I have their attention for the big reveal.

“Yep,” reply Tate and Dr. Stevens in unison, and Emmakate just claps her hands together in glee.

I gently pull up the camper’s hatchback and then try to bring down the tailgate as softly as I can manage. It’s not a new truck by any means, so sometimes the tailgate gets a little stubborn. Luckily, it only takes one quick little tug to release the latch, and then I lower the tailgate down as well.

The kennel is up against the cab of the truck, secured against the back wall of the truck bed with several bungee cords. We ended up putting the pups in with their mom, thinking that might make the trip easier for all of us, and so far, so good. It’s dark inside the back of the truck, so I turn on a small camping lantern and hang it from a hook in the roof of the camper. Then I motion everyone to step a bit closer.

The hounds are awake, but just barely. They’re cuddled up together in the kennel, the three pups kind of piling on top of each other up next to their mom’s belly. Well, we assume she’s their mama, since she’s female, but we really can’t be sure until we get them up to the supernatural wildlife reserve.

Mama hound lifts her head up from her pile of pups and watches us, ears pricked up. She doesn’t make any other sign of aggression, though, so the four of us just watch the hounds for awhile in a bit of awed silence. Their midnight-black fur shines beautifully in the low, harsh light of the camping lantern, and the mama hound’s eyes glow. She opens her snout, and I start to reach out my hand to motion everyone back, but the hellhound just lolls out her tongue and begins to pant, a bit of smoke wafting up from the corners of her mouth.

“Wow,” Emmakate breathes softly beside me.

I don’t reply, but inside, I quietly agree.

After a few minutes, I turn off the lantern and close up the back of the truck. We say our goodbyes in relative quiet, but once I start backing up the truck, the spell on Emmakate breaks and she jumps up and down on the porch as she waves us away.

I chuckle and say, “Maybe a future doctoral candidate, right there.”

Dr. Stevens laughs, but it’s a bit mirthless. “If she can get funding.”

I know that pain exactly, and it’s still a little fresh, so I change the subject as we pull off of the dirt driveway onto County Road 54.

“The Li-Schwartz hypothesis, huh? That’s what you did your dis on?”

“Yeah, so?” she asks, defensive. The Li-Schwartz hypothesis is one of the lesser-studied theories of supernatural animalia origination, in no small part because many researchers dismiss it as a mere fairy tale. Which I think is pretty ridiculous, considering we all thought hellhounds were fairy tales not three decades ago, and now I’ve got four in the back of my pickup truck.

I shrug. “I’m interested, is all. I’d love to hear more if you wanna chat about it. We do still have five hundred miles to go, and we can’t exactly stop off at a Motel Six.” I glance her way and offer up a smile.

She raises her eyebrows at me. “You sure? Most people get all glassy-eyed when I start talking about it, and you gotta keep your eyes on the road.”

“Sure as shootin’,” I say. “I want to hear everything. Start at chapter one. No, wait.” I hold up a hand before she can start. “Start at the acknowledgements.”

She laughs, but by the time I pull us onto the highway, we’re deep into conversation about her dissertation’s first chapter.

Despite the five hundred miles between us and the supernatural wildlife reserve, I don’t think it’s going to feel like that long of a drive.