Tommy laughed. And what? Take on the entire oni army?
But then again, this wasn’t one of his aunts. This was elf domi. If Tommy could free her, then she could take on the oni army herself.
Still, it was dependent on Spot finding Jewel Tear without getting caught. Tommy hated the idea of sending him down into the camp. The oni wouldn’t just kill him if they caught him; the oni were too cruel for anything so merciful.
Tommy’s nose wasn’t keen enough to pick up Jewel Tear’s scent. If he didn’t send Spot, then Tommy would have to search all of the camp.
He shook Spot awake.
Spot thought Tommy was insane — it was clear in his gaze. His eyes would slowly slide off Tommy’s to the oni-choked camp, and one eyebrow would climb in confusion. And then he’d look back at Tommy, the other eyebrow cocked.
Tommy didn’t sugarcoat it, but he didn’t want to scare Spot either. “You can do this. You know how when I bring you home a chew toy? You know how you have to act so the big kids won’t steal it off you? I’ve seen you do it. You hide it in your pocket and just pretend you’re doing chores and walk around the warren, looking for someplace you can chew on it without anyone seeing?”
Spot thought and then nodded slowly.
“You’re going to go down and walk through the camp like you have a chore to do. No one will stop you.” Tommy hoped and prayed that they wouldn’t. “You just need to find out where they have her and come back to me. I know you can do this. You just have to be brave. Okay?”
“Okay,” Spot whispered.
The hardest thing Tommy had ever done was to sit and watch Spot slip out of the shadows and walk toward the oni camp. Fear was roaring through him — a small, cold certainty that the boy was heading for a painful death. Tommy blanked Spot from the guard’s vision so his cousin could walk in unchallenged.
Spot paused only slightly just inside the gate, nose working, and then set off in a determined walk.
Tommy lost sight of him among the taller, shifting bodies.
He frantically scanned the oni, looking for the small boy. There were other small oni moving through the camp, their size making Tommy think he’d found Spot only to realize he was wrong.
“Shit, shit, shit. Where is he?”
Time crawled. Half an hour. Then an hour. The small, cold certainty grew until it filled him. What was he thinking? Oni ate their own children if they found one that seemed too weak.
Then the mass shifted, and there was Spot, walking determinedly toward Tommy again.
“Yes!” Tommy blinded the guard, and when Spot reached him, hugged him hard. “Good boy. Good boy.”
Spot grinned up at him, nearly vibrating with nerves.
“Did you find her?” Tommy asked. “Is she still alive?”
Spot shook his head but continued to grin.
Tommy’s stomach roiled. “She’s dead?”
Spot shook his head, his grin slipping.
“You didn’t find her?”
Spot cringed from Tommy’s scowl. “They took elf to whelping pens.”
Tommy swore but rubbed behind Spot’s ears in apology. “Good boy.”
30: CODEX MOMENT
Tinker was still in healing mode, which meant she slept whether she wanted to or not, usually without warning. One minute she was talking with Esme in the courtyard, and the next she was asleep, dreaming about playing as a child on Neville Island as evil danced underfoot, pretending innocence.
She bolted out of her nightmare to find herself back in her own bed.
“You are safe.” Pony wrapped arms around her. “We are all safe.”
“This was almost as bad as the oni in the enclave.” Tinker clung to him tightly, using his warm, strong presence to force away the skittering fear. “We couldn’t see the danger. It was right there in front of us.”
“Stormsong will see through the shadows.” Pony’s voice was full of trust at her Second’s ability.
“I’ve got to stop this. I have to find a way to stop this.” Tinker disentangled herself from the sheets and stumbled out of bed. “I think what Providence really meant was that the Skin Clan are going to do something big to take over Elfhome again. Once they do, they could use it to attack Earth from two sides. Obviously the oni are another army of monsters they’re going to use. Oilcan’s kids work into this somehow—”
Pony winced at the mention of Oilcan.
“What? Is he okay?” Tinker cried, suddenly afraid.
“He is. . unhurt.”
“What then?”
“Prince True Flame has ruled that nagarou is to be considered Stone Clan since he can tap their Spell Stones.”
“He can?” It amazed her that they’d gone this long without knowing that. She realized that if Oilcan didn’t know the connection spell, the one that opened him up to the stored power of the Spell Stones, the rest of the spells would be inert.
That was all? But judging by Pony’s look, it was not as harmless as it sounded.
“This is bad how?”
“He is no longer automatically under Windwolf’s protection. It is unclear what will happen once the Stone Clan sends new domana to help fight the oni.”
“They wouldn’t try to hurt him, would they?”
Pony looked unhappy. “There are many ways to bring harm without drawing blood.”
She didn’t like the sound of that. “How soon before they arrive?”
“The Wyverns do not like our situation here. We are spread dangerously thin. They have demanded that the sekasha of the Stone Clan act. There will be more domana here shortly, whether they want to come or not.”
“But any one of them could be the ones working with the Skin Clan.”
“We have no choice. We must accept them as trustworthy until they prove otherwise.”
Another raid on Stormsong’s wardrobe later and she headed down the street to find out what was so special about Oilcan’s kids. They seemed completely normal to her, but she was starting to think maybe she was clueless about constituted as “average.” It wasn’t as if she and Oilcan had ever lived a “normal” life before saving Windwolf’s life. Since then, both of their lives had gone off track into completely strange. All manner of inexplicable things had happened to them both. She had become an elf, accidentally stranded Pittsburgh on Elfhome, and fallen into space to save a spaceship that had been trapped in time for her entire life. Oilcan had befriended a dragon, derailed the Skin Clan’s collection of the children by adopting Merry, and now was considered head of Stone Clan in Westernlands.
All of that was made even odder because, by rights, neither of them should even be in Pittsburgh. Her father died childless long before the first Startup; her entire existence was an anomaly. Her grandfather once said that he’d brought Oilcan to Elfhome only because he couldn’t move Tinker to Earth. If Tinker hadn’t existed, then Oilcan wouldn’t have been in Pittsburgh. Given those two points, everything that followed was even more improbable. Someone of religious bent — say Riki — might even say everything was miraculous.
Tinker paused on wide stone front steps of Sacred Heart.
Why couldn’t her grandfather take her to Earth?
At the time, she had thought it was because she would have fought like a hellion to stay on Elfhome. She realized now that the temper tantrums of a six-year-old wouldn’t have swayed her grandfather from doing what was best for his grandchildren. They were his sun and his moon — he would have killed to protect them.
Had Leo warned her grandfather that Jin was tengu and there were oni on Earth? Then again, how did Leo know about the oni? The war had broken out after her ancestor left Elfhome.