“You’re kidding! She’s been gone for—”
“For a few weeks.” Lain overrode Tinker. “For Esme, she’s was only in space for a few weeks, not eighteen years. According to the nurses, she didn’t realize at first that she’s basically jumped forward in time nearly twenty years. It apparently sank in yesterday morning.”
And Esme promptly checked herself out. “Oh.”
“You didn’t tell her?” Lain leveled a hard gaze at Tinker.
Tinker could deliberately misunderstand and pretend she thought Lain meant about the time difference, but she knew what Lain really was asking. “No. That didn’t come up. We were kind of busy.”
Lain snorted and released Tinker from her Medusa gaze. “You two are entirely too much alike. God have pity on me, having to deal with both of you at the same time.”
Tinker focused on raiding the cookie jar. It was filled with her favorite — thin, crunchy sugar cookies. Lain had known she was coming. Apparently both sisters could see the future. It explained how Lain had always managed to stay one step ahead of Tinker when her grandfather couldn’t.
“So, what’s this puzzle that you can’t figure out that you’ve brought me?” Lain proved that she was two steps in front of Tinker.
Stormsong had loaned Tinker a canvas messenger bag to carry the DNA spell sheets. Tinker spread them out on the butcher block — topped island as she explained how the oni had kidnapped the Stone Clan children.
“I’m afraid that the oni might have done something to the kids. It’s horrible to say this, but the best thing we can hope for is that the oni simply bred them with an animal. The hospice made sure that’s not a worry anymore. Considering what the oni did with the tengu — transforming an entire generation of humans into half-crows — I’m afraid of what the worst could be.”
Lain picked up the first sheet and studied it intently. “These look like DNA scans.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Lain picked up another and studied the two side by side. “It’s against the treaty to cull any genetic samples from elves.”
“I don’t think the oni care.”
Lain gave her a dark look. “I have nothing to compare these with. Are you even sure these are from the children?”
“Um, no.”
Lain sighed. “First you’re going to have to get DNA samples from the children and see if these are indeed matches. And it has to be you — I can’t do it.”
Tinker decided not to point out that the treaty no longer existed. If someone was going to get in trouble for this, she wanted it to be her.
“While you’re at it, any other baseline samples you can get me would be good. I would have to build an entire index to see what is normal before I can tell if there’s anything abnormal.”
Tinker winced. The elves were not going to like that. “I’ll see what I can do.”
15: SACRED HEART
If Oilcan really hadn’t wanted to move, he probably could have sicced Tinker on his condo board, but to be truthful, he had a three-bedroom condo because he liked having space for himself. It would be only a matter of time before having the five kids crowded in with him would drive him nuts.
He needed a much bigger place. He needed someplace like the abandoned hotel that he grew up in. Last time he checked, it was still standing empty. Nothing, however, could get him to brave the spring floods on Neville Island again. He had the barn in the south hills where he often did art, but it was very isolated. He didn’t want to drag the kids out where they’d be vulnerable to oni. The remote barn would probably give them nightmares.
If they were going to open an enclave, then it would probably be best to be out by the other enclaves. He knew it was the custom of incoming elves to go from one enclave to the next until they found one with space still available.
Once he started to actually think “enclave,” the type of building became clearer in his mind. It would need a large public dining room, a hefty kitchen, multiple bathrooms, sleeping rooms for guests, and separate sleeping quarters for the kids. Too bad he couldn’t just move the hotel from Neville Island out to Oakland.
There was a building, though, in Oakland, that had always reminded him of the hotel.
The oni had launched an attack on the enclaves from a house across the street from the faire ground. The elves had evacuated all the buildings and proceeded to level the block. The last building on the street had been a private high school before Pittsburgh first traveled to Elfhome. The lack of high school — age kids had forced the school to close, and it had been turned over to the EIA. It seemed to Oilcan that someone had been squatting in it over the years, but they would have been evicted along with the rest of the street.
“Blue Sky, have they torn down Sacred Heart High School?”
“Not yet.”
The elves were tearing down the buildings to keep the oni at arm’s length. Surely they wouldn’t mind if someone they could trust moved in.
Oilcan was less sure about his decision as he drove up to Sacred Heart. The east side of the street had stayed on Earth; it had been replaced by virgin forest that pressed up against the edge of the ruined sidewalks. The ironwood trees had been cut back for over a mile to create a wide-open field that made up the faire grounds and doubled for safe tethering for the living airships. Flocks of indi, Elfhome’s near cousins to goats, were out grazing, splashes of white against the green. When he thought of this street, the idyllic faire grounds were what came to mind.
Less than a month ago, the west side of the street had been lined with stately brownstone townhomes. The houses had been reduced to rubble, making the street look like a war-zone. He never realized how much this street meant to him until he gazed at the ruin. The juxtaposition between faire grounds and brownstones had been visual perfection of the humans of Pittsburgh living beside the elves of Elfhome — and the war had torn it to shreds.
Baby Duck tumbled out of the Rolls, pointed excitedly at the indi and took off running. The others got out, milled about, and then reluctantly followed. The indi had laedin warriors keeping watch over them to fend off wargs and oni. Blue Sky was along to make sure the Wind Clan adults behaved toward the Stone Clan children.
Oilcan was glad that the kids would be distracted as he checked out Sacred Heart.
The high school was a solid three-story brick building. The first-floor windows were narrow as arrow slits, but higher floors had huge bay windows that promised lots of natural light. Wide stone steps led up to an arched doorway. At one time a stout oak door had protected the opening, but it was lying in pieces in the foyer.
Apparently the previous occupants had been oni. Bullet holes peppered the plaster in the foyer. The stone floor was smeared with blood, showing that the oni had been killed and their bodies pulled from the building. Judging by the amount of blood dried on the carpet in the cavernous room to the right of the foyer, a sekasha had beheaded two or more oni and their bodies had gushed out all of their blood. Flies buzzed lazily through the air, and the bloodstain writhed with maggots.
Oilcan steeled himself against the blood and explored deeper into the high school. The building was everything he hoped, although hip deep in garbage. How did the oni live here without attracting notice? Were some humans this disgusting that no one noticed what animals the neighbors were? The volume of work needed to make the place livable was daunting. Still the bones were good. The first floor had three huge rooms that been a gym, library, and dining room, a small warren of offices, two bathrooms, and an industrial-grade kitchen. The large backyard was already fenced in by a high brick wall, although piled with garbage. The twenty classrooms on the upper floors were large and littered with clothes but had sunshine streaming in through big, dirty windows. While the urine-soaked bathrooms lacked showers, there were enough of them that he could easily turn one into an elfin bathing room. The roof showed no signs of leaking. No one had gutted the cooper pipes. The hot-water tanks were sound. The heating system had been upgraded in the last quarter century. The only glass that needed replacing was in the lower, smaller windows — they’d been smashed outward during the fight.