Tommy Chang, however, had returned Jewel Tear to Oakland during the latest round of chaos. Jewel Tear discovered that her people had abandoned her to her fate, taking all that she owned with them except for a few pieces of large furniture. The other Wind Clan enclaves were full, either with incoming Harbingers or displaced Wind Clan elves. Jewel Tear had ended up at Sacred Heart while no one was home. She had picked out an empty room on the third floor and had moved her furniture in.
Windwolf was paying for Jewel Tear’s room and board. Oilcan’s kids were ecstatic that they had an additional paying guest. Oilcan was glad the female had been rescued, he just wasn’t happy that she had picked out a bedroom on the family level. It wasn’t like he needed the space — until today. It left only three empty bedrooms on the third floor. Two if he gave one to Thorne Scratch. She had been sleeping in Oilcan’s room since Ginger Wine had been attacked and the rest of her Hand killed. He wanted her to have a space to call her own now that she had accepted to be his First.
It left two big bedrooms on the third floor. The twins could share one and the other could be prepped to be a nursery. It didn’t leave room for Esme or Gracie or any odd “other” that the twins might have in tow. They could get creative with room dividers, splitting the nursery into two spaces, but that wasn’t a good long-term answer.
There were five mystery rooms that had either been huge closets with windows or small offices with nice views. While they were much smaller than the classrooms, they could still be respectable-sized bedrooms. They could hold a double-sized bed and still have space for a dresser and a desk. They needed to be deep cleaned, the many bullet holes in the plaster patched, and then painted. Oilcan started a list of supplies to get the rooms ready just in case they needed to house Esme or some other not-yet-identified twin ally.
The big classrooms were painted in a cheerful buttery yellow called “Pure Joy” but were completely empty. Merry was the only one of his kids with a real bed; the others only had the mattresses that the hospice donated. His old condo had a big walk-in closet, so he only had one small dresser left over from his childhood. His clothes were overflowing onto all flat surfaces.
If he was going to win over the twins, he would need to do better than empty rooms. If the twins were like Tinker then they would want desks, computers, tools, and all the bells and whistles of modern technology. If he was buying them furniture, he should also get some for his kids.
He needed to go shopping.
10: ARE YOU MY MOTHER?
A certain irrefutable logic led Tinker to Lain’s house. The only way that the twins could have unlocked Dufae’s box was with the proper key word. The only way they could have learned it was if they had a copy of the Dufae Codex. Tinker could have asked the twins where they got it, but they scared her.
Her grandfather had given highly edited digital copies to Tinker and Oilcan, but he couldn’t have known about the twins. He would have fought for legal custody of them if he’d known that they existed.
Esme saw bits and pieces of the future. She had created Tinker to protect Pittsburgh. She could have foreseen the twins’ existence but she had left Earth shortly after Tinker’s birth, eighteen years ago. She wouldn’t have been able to interact with the twins directly. She could have, though, placed a copy of the Codex where they would be sure to find it.
Tinker wanted to see Esme’s face when she explained how Esme’s little experiment with frozen treats had unintended side effects. Tinker was still a little miffed that Lain had lied about their relationship for eighteen years just because Esme asked Lain to. It was some nonsense about evil empires or something.
It reminded Tinker to ask Lain about her mother’s involvement in all this. Tinker’s grandmother. The one she never even knew that she had. The one she would probably never get to meet. Grandmothers were supposed to be like fairy godmothers of love; at least everyone she knew acted like it. She’d never actually met a real grandmother in the flesh. Blue Sky didn’t have one. Nathan’s grandmother lived in Florida. Roach had never introduced Tinker to his grandparents.
Forge’s appearance made Tinker hyperaware that grandparents were a mixed bag of gifts. It still pissed her off, though, that Lain hadn’t trusted her to be smart enough to keep her mouth shut. Tinker could keep secrets if she understood the reasons. Even now she wasn’t sure why Lain felt constrained to keep it a secret. What did it matter if people knew?
Tinker mulled over the question all the way to Lain’s place. Jin had said that the twins’ parents had been killed and they ended up in the custody of Lain’s mother. How did that happen? Did it have something to do with the reason that Lain had kept Tinker hidden?
Tinker stomped up the front steps and rang the ancient hand-cranked doorbell. Lain usually dead-bolted her front door; she didn’t trust her neighbors. Tinker expected Lain to answer the door.
Esme calling “I’ll get it!” was the only warning Tinker got before the door was opened by her mother. Esme kept surprising Tinker by popping up in odd places — like in her dreams or the city morgue. Part of the surprise was the fact that she looked nothing like what Tinker imagined her mother to look like: tall, thin, and white-blond hair with a purple dye job. Today she had added mysterious streaks of red, pink, blue, and green on her cheeks like war paint. Esme was in her early thirties but something about the way she moved suggested that she was only a few years older than Tinker’s eighteen. It made her seem more like an older sister who would compete with Tinker for Lain’s affection. It did not help that Esme wore a set of khaki shirt and pants that Tinker recognized as Lain’s favorite outfit.
“Scarecrow!” Esme smiled brightly, although not looking surprised that it was Tinker at the door. “And your guard dogs.”
“Don’t call them that,” Tinker said. “And don’t call me Scarecrow.”
“Okay, Princess!” Esme grinned widely.
“Don’t call me that either!” Tinker brushed past Esme. She could smell sugar cookies; it might explain the war paint on Esme’s face. Was getting frosting on your face a genetic trait? “Where is Lain?”
“Come. Sit. Talk,” Lain called from the kitchen. “We have news.”
“News?” Tinker headed for the kitchen.
“Alexander?” Esme called after Tinker, still searching for an acceptable name.
“Tinker!” Tinker shouted back.
“Tinker domi,” Stormsong said as she drifted in Tinker’s wake. The sekasha hadn’t totally forgiven Esme for invading Tinker’s dreams; it had nearly driven Tinker mad.
The rest of Tinker’s Hand was quietly moving through the house, upstairs and down, checking for monsters. They would make themselves scarce after being sure that the house was safe. Stormsong was the only sekasha fluent in English; she would report to the others what was covered in the conversation.
Lain’s house was a big Victorian mansion on Observatory Hill that served as her home and her workspace. It had been built in the late 1800s when the neighborhood was all homes of wealthy and influential families. A small forest had been used to decorate it with wood paneling, wainscoting, and carved molding, all stained to a rich cherry hue. A sage green damask wallpaper with woodland animals hidden within its elaborate design covered the few walls that weren’t paneled. It had always been a warm and welcoming place of refuge for Tinker while she grew up.
Lain sat at the kitchen table with a plate of sugar cookies decorated with frosting. Tinker’s favorite. Was it because the sisters had foreseen her arrival? There were two cups of tea for the sisters and a tall glass of cold milk for Tinker. Yes, they had.