“And what?” Louise asked, confused. “I really didn’t get the entire story. It was like walking into the middle of a very weird soap opera. Something horrible happened to these elf kids from the Stone Clan and Oilcan is their dad now or something…”
Jillian was staring at her with hurt and anger.
“I can’t help it that our family is weird!” Louise shouted. “All of us! Just look at us!”
“Leave me out of this conversation,” Red Jawbreaker said. “I’m not weird. I’m going to see what else I can find.”
Red’s mouse went silent.
Louise threw up her hands. “I really don’t understand everything that happened in Pittsburgh since the last Shutdown. The last news reports that we had were from July’s Shutdown and that was just that Windwolf survived the attack on him.”
Jillian visibly struggled to keep her temper. “And he married our sister — after turning her into an elf.”
“Exactly!” Louise said. “Our sister is now a full elf! Esme is back from Alpha Centauri — and she’s the same age as when she left eighteen years ago. That doesn’t make any sense! Dufae’s father is still alive after hundreds of years — and he’s here in Pittsburgh, wanting to be grandpa to anyone descended from his son. And Oilcan is dad to a bunch of elf kids in some way that I totally don’t understand. So much weirdness happened in a few months. We really need to be brought up to speed. Fast.”
Jillian narrowed her eyes and studied Louise for a minute. “They’re going to make us choose between them — aren’t they?”
“Yes.” Louise felt better for getting it out in the open.
Jillian threw up her hands. “How are we supposed to pick? We don’t know them. None of them. Not really. How soon?”
“I don’t know. There was a lot of stuff I didn’t understand. Something about us being Stone Clan, not Wind Clan, and some scary people called Harbingers. What Tinker and Oilcan are most afraid of is that the Stone Clan might try to use us as pawns.”
Jillian gave a short evil laugh. “Oh, they can try all they want but we’re not going to be pawns.”
“I don’t think it’s what we should be focusing on,” Louise said. “Based on the rest of this summer, just about anything can happen the next week or so. We need to figure out Dufae’s shield.”
Green Jawbreaker’s and Chuck’s mice both suddenly stirred to life.
“I found a printer for Tesla!” Chuck reported. “It’s plenty big enough and it’s just sitting idle. No one has used it for a couple of weeks, probably since the gate fell.”
“I found Tinker’s secret base!” Green squeaked with excitement.
“Really?” Nikola asked.
“Where?” Chuck cried.
“I’ll show you!” Green said. “Follow me!”
“Wait!” Louise cried. “You can’t go breaking in on her private stuff.”
“We’re not breaking in,” Green said with labored patience. “Someone put this massive backdoor into her system. Her security is wide open. Since the door is hanging open, we should be able to go in and look around — right? She’s got very nice computer systems with a very helpful AI. She named it Sparks. I had lots of fun playing with him. You should see some of the things she’s invented. Talk about mad-scientist genius! She’s got detailed schematics and print files and everything — though Sparks says there’s no devices attached…”
“Show us! Show us!” Chuck and Nikola squeaked.
“Who hacked her system?” Louise cried before all four could virtually run off.
“I don’t know,” Green said as if it was little importance. She cocked her head as if listening to some distant voice. “Sparks says it was someone using an IP registered to a company called Midas Exploration, L.L.C. Is that like LOL? It has lots of employees. Any one of them could have hacked her system.”
Chuck was frantically waving her paws in impatience. “Show me Tinker’s secret base! I want to see.”
“Come on!” Green said even as Louise and Jillian both cried out, “No!” The mice both went still again as the babies went off to explore Tinker’s computer systems.
“We really need to find a way to put them into time out without mentally traumatizing them,” Jillian said.
Crow Boy returned with a small flock of winged tengu children and a basket full of food. The three older kids were dressed as warriors even though they were probably only seventh or eighth graders. They wore sharp metal claws on their crow feet, and war paint. They were obviously trying to look fierce despite their age. Louise would have thought it a joke except she had seen Crow Boy fight for his life. The two boys in normal street clothes were younger, one about the twins’ age and the other looked like a kindergartener — if kindergarteners had large black crow wings.
“Why did you bring them?” Louise whispered to Crow Boy as he unloaded several pork cutlet bento boxes out of the basket. The twins didn’t deal well with normal kids; they’d been social outcasts at school. Things had improved during the class play but that was more because of the other kids changing their attitudes after they found out that the twins were Lemon-Lime JEl-Lo. The twins had their hands full just dealing with the babies. They didn’t need more chaos. At least the tengu kids were not bouncing off the walls or picking through the clutter on the floor. They stood in a line and stared at the twins with dark brown eyes.
For some reason, Louise could only think of barn owls, but those were the mortal enemies of crows. It was interesting to note that the tengu wings scaled to the child’s size as the spell that triggered the magical constructs seemed identical on all the children.
“They have been on Elfhome all summer,” Crow Boy whispered in reply. “I could ask them about what they know and report to you what they said, but I might not ask them the right questions.”
“Fair enough,” Jillian said, although she didn’t look any happier than Louise felt.
It had been a whispered conversation and the tengu children’s faces didn’t change but Louise had a feeling that they had heard every word. It meant that the twins had to be careful not to leak out their secrets while trying to learn all they could from the children.
“Do they know anything useful?” Louise realized how rude that sounded. “I mean, what we need to know is complicated magic stuff and what our family is like.”
One of the teenage girls snorted. “She’s right. Even Riki couldn’t keep up with Tinker domi. I should be out fighting with the other warriors, not babysitting.”
“Suit yourself.” Jillian made shooing motions. “We don’t need babysitters.”
The girl made a face and glanced meaningfully at the kindergartener. She hadn’t meant the twins when she complained about babysitting duty.
“The Chosen are leaders, Keiko, before they are warriors,” Crow Boy said. “Else they could never lead us to peace.”
Keiko took a deep breath and growled it out. “Yes, I know. Not all the Nestlings have their wings and they’ll need practice flying. Until everyone can flee Haven safely under their own power, someone of the Chosen bloodline needs to stay to coordinate an evacuation.”
The other girl looked a little surprised that Keiko had backed down so easily. “Only you could have gotten away with saying that to her face, Daffodil.”
Crow Boy frowned at the girl for using his hated nickname. “We should mind our manners.” He gave a slight bowing wave toward the twins. “These are the Chosen of Joy, daughters of Jin Wong’s savior, Esme Shanske, and sisters to our domi: the honorable Jillian and Louise Mayer.”
He turned to bow and wave toward the teenage girl, the boy who seemed to be the twins’ age, and the kindergartener. “These are the Chosen of Providence, nieces and nephews of our leader, Jin Wong: the honorable Keiko, Mickey, and Joey Shoji.”