Alexander glared at the woman, who danced away from a halfhearted kick.
Roach took a couple of steps out of reach, too. “A week later, we all had hoverbikes. And of course, the most natural thing in the world is to race them.”
There was a long silence after Roach came to the end of his story. Wyatt waited for more but none was coming. Judging by the looks Roach was giving Alexander, he was vaguely afraid of saying anything else.
“You’re Team Tinker,” Wyatt broke the silence. “Is Tinker the one that invented the hoverbikes? I’ve heard all sorts of wild rumors about Tinker.”
The racing team all froze in place at the question.
“What wild rumors?” Alexander had been in the middle of licking melted ice pop off her fingers.
“Umm.” The camera bobbed as Wyatt accessed his notes. “Umm. The half-elf that runs the general store in McKees Rocks said that Tinker lives in the middle of the river and hands out magical swords to future kings.”
“What?” the entire team half-shouted, half-laughed.
“Yeah, it sounded really Arthurian to me,” Wyatt said. “I talked to a few elves, and they all said that Tinker is a baby wood sprite, which apparently is a race of very clever but dangerous elves or a very clever but dangerous raccoon. My Elvish isn’t that good.”
Roach was making little snorts as he tried to hold in his laughter.
Orville scooped up Alexander as she started to sputter and carried her off-camera.
“One person, an EMT, by the name of Johnnie Be Good, claimed that Tinker fathered most of the half-elves in Pittsburgh and is Blue Sky Montana’s real father.”
Roach lost control of his laughter. After a full minute of laughing, he wiped tears out of his eyes and stated, “That one is utterly true.”
There was a howl of anger and the video went black. Captions explained that Roach had ducked a helmet thrown at him, and it hit the unsuspecting Wyatt instead. His only camera broken, he was unable to continue filming. The team reimbursed him for his camera. There was no indication, however, that they ever told him the truth.
Louise played the interview with Team Tinker over and over again. This was her older twin sister. Their cousin Orville, who obviously was loving and protective and caring. Their close friends that they could count on. A warm and bright happy moment that Louise wanted for herself.
The babies, however, quickly grew bored of it and started to add mini-windows to the screen to show off clips of Alexander and Orville racing on hoverbikes. The mice stood on her shoulders, tugging at her hair and pointing, squeaking excitedly.
“Maybe we can make mini-hoverbikes!” Nikola stated. “They use a gasoline engine only because they need to lift the weight of an adult. If we can figure out what spells Alexander used, we could just stand on top of a magic generator and fly.”
The thought of the four mice zipping around the bedroom like hyper bats felt dangerous. Louise knew that the mice bodies were merely remotely run puppets for the babies, but mini-hoverbikes just seemed to have “will not end well” written all over it. (Even though she had to admit — quietly to herself — that she didn’t know it would. Surely common sense overruled precognition.)
At least they had a completely tested prototype of the robotic mouse. While the babies were still focused on some newly added racing videos, Louise ordered ten thousand mice from the Indonesia factory. Not that they needed that many; it was the smallest number that the manufacturer would take on rush order.
“Lou!” Chuck Norris tugged on Louise’s hair to get her attention. “What does this mean?”
The babies had found a new video. Someone had splintered down the documentary and picked out only the frames of Alexander sucking on the cherry ice pop. They looped the few seconds to prolong the action for two minutes and then ended with her licking her fingers. The title of video was “Why Prince Yardstick loves Tinker.”
She winced. “I’m not sure, but it probably has to do with sex.”
“What’s sex?” the babies asked in chorus.
Louise blushed hotly. “It’s icky stuff that adults do.”
“What kind of icky stuff?” The babies started into a barrage of questions. “If it’s icky, why do they want to do it? Is it like eating Brussels sprouts?”
Brussels sprouts? “I don’t want to have to explain it. It’s icky. Don’t ask.”
The babies were working systematically through the postings. Louise noticed that one post further down was generating thousands of shares per second. It was titled “Announcing Prince Windwolf and Princess Tinker.” She clicked it and discovered someone had used the documentary to do a 3D rendering of Alexander and then paired her with a scale model of Windwolf. The animator had dressed the male elf in a white tuxedo with his long black hair falling loosely over his shoulders. Alexander wore a skin-tight elfin gown of fairy silk in Wind Clan blue. They stood holding hands, looking like two teenagers about to go to the prom. They bowed to the camera and then turned to look into each other’s eyes. Music started and the two started to waltz. During the documentary, Alexander hadn’t gotten down off the truck bed, so she never seemed overly short. But if the render was correct, Louise and Jillian weren’t going to get much taller.
Louise realized that the animation on the waltz was very good quality. She checked the credits and squeaked with surprise. A real animation studio had created the piece.
With sudden foreboding, Louise closed the Jello Shots forum and did a general search on the title. There were a hundred pages of hits. Apparently frustrated by the lack of pictures of Alexander and Windwolf together, one of the tabloid new feeds had paid for the animation. “What is a Wood Sprite?” had also become a meme with various odd animals PhotoShopped onto the flat bed, licking the cherry ice pop. Red pandas. Koala bears. Gibson monkeys. And most alarming, one featuring Disney’s version of Tinker Bell. Whimpering, Louise typed in “Princess Alexander Graham Bell” and Alexander’s picture came up complete with a small bio explaining that she was the daughter of Leonardo da Vinci Dufae. The information apparently had been supplied by the EIA Director, Derek Maynard. Unlike all the pictures of Alexander covered in mud, the bio had frames from the documentary. The family resemblance between Alexander and the twins was unmistakable.
Yves was going to find the photos. Yves was going to see the family resemblance and realize what Esme had done. He was going to know what the twins were.
“We need to go.” Louise told Jillian when she woke her twin. She fought to keep her voice calm and level even though the enormity of what was ahead of them scared her. They still hadn’t figured out how they were going to get away from the mansion without getting caught or where they were going to go or how they were going to stay hidden. “Let’s get packed to leave.”
“Huh?” Jillian sat up, rubbing at her eyes. “Now? What happened?”
“The Jello Shots dug up a bunch of videos of Alexander and they’re getting plastered everywhere. Sooner or later, Yves is going to figure everything out. We’ve got to go before he does.”
Jillian squinted at her, apparently still half-asleep, stepping through the logic. “Videos?”
“Of Tinker and Oilcan!” Chuck Norris squeaked.
“Racing!” Red Gingham Jawbreaker cried.
“But we can’t get to Elfhome now!” Nikola cried. “It’s twenty-five days to Shutdown. We haven’t moved all the money yet. .”
“. . and we don’t have all the mice!” the girls chorused with Nikola.