Louise groaned. She’d forgotten that they had more than one website of rabid fans.
Iggy continued, apparently assuming that she knew nothing about the fire. “Neighbors heard an explosion and called 911. They think that there was a gas leak in the kitchen. By the time the fire department got there, though, the whole house had caught on fire. They’re still fighting it.”
Which was why Iggy was frantically texting them.
“Yeah. We blew it up before we left.”
“What?” Iggy shouted.
“Our grandmother is married to a very evil family. She got sick and went to the hospital and her stepson locked us up in the basement. In a cage. And he had a boy locked up in the next room. So we blew up the house and ran away. He’s probably looking for us, so it’s not safe for us to tell anyone where we are.”
There was a long silence from the other end, and then Iggy said, “You’re totally serious. You’re not making that up?”
“Completely totally serious.”
“Louise, your grandmother died today.”
Louise felt tears burning in her eyes. She rubbed them away, surprised that she actually hadn’t seen the news coming. Yves wouldn’t have dared to lock them up without being sure that there was no chance of Anna ever finding out.
“Everyone is saying how you don’t have any family left,” Iggy said. “You don’t have any place to go, do you? Come to my house. You’ll be safe here.”
“No. No, we won’t.” There was no way Louise was going to be responsible for getting Iggy or his protective sisters hurt. It would kill her to bring harm down on the close-knit family. “If the Jello Shots can find all our friends, so can Desmarais.”
“Just come to our house and my mom and dad will find a place you’ll be safe.”
“We have family. Princess Tinker is our older sister.”
“She is? I thought the tabloids were just making that up.”
“No, they’re not making it up. She’s our sister.” Not that Alexander knew it. There were Orville and Lain, who were also complete strangers. Louise shivered at the knowledge that they were putting all their hope on people that they would barely recognize in person, who didn’t even know they existed. “We’re going to Elfhome. Windwolf will protect us there.”
“Are you sure?”
Louise closed her eyes tight and took a deep breath. And another. She sought that mysterious calm of knowing. Would Windwolf protect them? “The shards of the fallen have slipped from our fingers. With Joy, the darkness will strike at the heart of the wolf’s greatest strength and his greatest weakness. The wolf must gather the children to him. From oldest to unborn, Brilliance must hold the door.”
“Huh?”
She opened her eyes. “It means he’ll protect us. He has to. He has no choice. He needs us if his world is going to survive.”
39: Waldorf Astoria
They were deep in the planning of their next move when Crow Boy hobbled out of his bedroom and stared out the penthouse window in confusion. The sun was setting over New Jersey, and the canyons between the tall buildings were filling with darkness. He had discovered the blue jeans shorts and crutches but had ignored the T-shirt. The only sign of his wings was the mysterious complex spell tattooed onto his back.
“Where are we?” he asked without turning.
“Midtown East.” Louise pointed toward the kitchen. “We ordered Thai takeout for dinner. There’s shrimp pad thai and chicken satay and vegan fried rice.” The last because they weren’t sure he could eat shrimp, and chicken felt a little cannibalistic. There had been all the makings of banana splits, but Joy had gorged herself on them. The baby dragon was asleep in the twins’ bedroom, sprawled on the unmade king-size bed.
Crow Boy turned awkwardly on his crutches, eyeing the lush luxury of the sprawling sitting room. It was done all in soft blue, butter cream, and highlights of gold: a grown-up version of a fairytale castle. According to the literature, kings and queens, movie stars, and dozens of presidents had stayed in the suite.
Crow Boy startled slightly when he got to them and registered the change in their appearance. Jillian had wanted to bleach their hair blond, but it turned out that the dye had turned Jillian’s hair carrot orange. (Louise had told her that it was a bad idea.) Jillian waved it off, saying they looked less like twins this way. They dyed Louise’s hair jet black and got her a pair of cosplay glasses. They were dressed in mismatched baggy T-shirts and pants, hoping that they would read as “male” to a casual observer. Louise secretly thought they’d only achieved looking like Harry Potter and Ron Weasley.
Crow Boy gestured at the cityscape outside the window. “Midtown East as in Manhattan?” Getting a nod, he waved his hand to take in the richly appointed room. “And we’re where?”
“The penthouse suite at the Waldorf Astoria.” Jillian took the freshly printed magic generator out of the industrial 3D printer. It was proving to be ten times faster than the printer at school.
“Also known as the Elvish embassy.” Louise double-checked the fake ID she was working on. One would think the state’s computer system would be more secure.
“How did we get here?” He obviously remembered nothing of his kidnapping despite the fact he’d been conscious enough to dismiss his great black wings.
“Garbage truck,” Jillian explained. “No one really ever pays close attention to them. We overrode its auto-drive program. It picked us up at the hospital and dropped us at the Waldorf Astoria’s loading dock.”
Louise took up the narrative of their escape. “We hacked the hotel’s computers in June to open up a meeting room so we could talk privately with Nigel Reid. So all we really needed to do was to use the back door we left to fabricate a wealthy but mostly absent parent who managed to pick up a card key without anyone remembering actually checking him in. As long as the credit card clears, the hotel doesn’t really care.”
“At ten thousand dollars a night, they really, really don’t care,” Jillian said. “They’ve been trotting up packages from the front desk and leaving them by the door without a single question asked.”
Crow Boy’s blue eyes had widened at the cost of the room. “How are you paying for it?”
“Stolen money.” Jillian waved her new phone over her head. “Money is the one thing we have lots of.”
“Oh, you should step back a little.” Louise motioned him to back up.
He did and a moment later the babies raced into the sitting room in their little mini-hovercarts. Chuck Norris was still in the lead; she was quite fearless compared to the other three. They popped up to the end table and again to the back of the couch and along the gilded wood at speeds that they’d clocked at thirty miles per hour. At the other end, the babies bounced down to the end table, to the seat of the wing chair, and then to the floor.
Crow Boy glanced again around the suite and then frowned at the marbled foyer where they’d set up a scale-model mock-up of the quarantine zone, complete with ten-foot-tall chain-link fence. “Am I really awake?”
“Asks the Crow Boy.” At some point, Jillian had decided “Crow Boy” was more fitting than “Crow Warrior” as a name for him.
“Yes, life currently is this odd.” Louise realized that they really should discuss basics. “What’s your name? We can’t keep calling you Crow Boy.”
“Crow Boy is fine,” he said. “I don’t like my real name.”
“Which is?” Jillian asked ruthlessly.
“Haruka Sessai.”
“What’s so horrible about that?” Louise asked.
“Haruka is a girl’s name. It means Spring Flower.”
“What do your friends call you?” Jillian asked.
He blushed and looked away as he murmured, “Daffodil.”