Louise abandoned the photographs. They only raised more questions. She opened up the PDF file named Dufae Codex, hoping for answers. The scanned pages of the file were from a book, handwritten in Elvish. Page after page of runes. There wasn’t a single French or English word in sight. The source material had to be a thick bound journal, as there were over a thousand pages. She checked random pages to verify that it was entirely in Elvish. After the first dozen pages, though, the text changed from handwritten notes to elaborate symbols and circles and glyphs. She recognized the format from the only scientific paper they’d ever found on spell-casting.
“This. This,” she whispered, having to force the words out one at a time. “The Dufae Codex is a book of spells!”
Jillian squealed with excitement. “Oh! Oh! Lou!” Jillian went speechless as she scrolled through the book, and when she finally could talk again, she sounded like she could barely breathe. “This is so awesome! We can learn magic!”
“There’s no magic on Earth,” Louise pointed out despite the giddy feeling that was racing through her. An entire spell book of Elf magic. This was better than Christmas. It couldn’t be real. She didn’t want to get all excited only to be disappointed.
“Well, the elves were getting to Earth somehow if the Dufae were in. . oh! Oh!”
“What?”
“Leonardo was an elf!”
“Barely. And?”
“No one knows how the gate works!” Jillian jumped up and started to pace, words tumbling out with her excitement. “That’s the reason Pittsburgh goes back and forth between the two worlds. If someone could come up with another way of doing it, they’d do that instead. All the scientists on Earth have tried, but they can’t figure out what Leonardo did. It’s not based on any science that they understand. Because it’s not science, it’s magic!”
Louise nodded along with the deductions. It made sense, but she was missing why Jillian was so excited by this. “So?”
“We can’t figure out how to save our little brother and baby sisters using science — so maybe we can use magic.”
“Magic?”
“We know what science can do. There’s no artificial womb yet. We’re not going to be able to implant our brother and sisters into — say — a pig.”
“Ewww! Why would you say that?”
“I’m just thinking outside the box.”
“Too outside!”
“And we’re not going to be able to talk a woman into doing it!” Jillian nearly shouted to override Louise. “Not without lots of money.”
“There’s the money from YourStore.”
“Yeah, with that we could get the babies born, but then what? We need enough money to raise them. We can’t make enough to do both — not legally — in a few months. And if we do it illegally, we could get taken away from Mom and Dad.”
Louise wasn’t completely sure about the last one. Their parents had explained — several times — in the past that parents who couldn’t stop their kids from breaking the law lost custody of them. She had tried to research this claim, but most kids who made the news had done something really horrible — like torturing cats or killing another child. There wasn’t any data on nine-year-old bank robbers. Louise wasn’t sure if this was because other nine-year-olds hadn’t attempted it, or had their identities protected because they were minors or simply too smart to get caught. Still, the risks were too high to explain her doubts. Jillian was always sure they could get away with everything but was sometimes painfully wrong.
“But if we focus all our time on learning magic and it turns out we’re wrong. .” Louise started to argue her sister’s logic.
“If we don’t figure it out, we’ll track down Mrs. Shenske and tell her.”
“What? No, no, that’s bad, we talked about that. Esme’s mother might have Mom and Dad arrested.”
“We do it anonymously. First we fiddle with Dad’s company’s records. It’d be easy. We change the number of embryos so no one can tell any are missing, and we wipe out Dad accessing the racks on our conception date. Boom. Everything that ties us to Esme goes away—”
“We should do it anyhow — just in case,” Louise said.
“Okay.” Jillian sat down and picked up her tablet. “But we wipe out everything that links us to Esme and then send some secret message to her mother telling her about the embryos. Last-ditch plan.”
“Do you think she’ll actually do anything with the information?”
Jillian shrugged. “I don’t know. She might not. That’s why it’s a last-ditch plan. A better plan is to see if the codex has a spell that will let us save our baby brother and sisters.”
“We’ll need magic for a spell to work.” Louise picked up her tablet.
Jillian paused in the middle of hacking their dad’s work account. “You have an idea?”
“If Dufae’s hyperphase gate uses magic, then it’s generating its own magical power source. I’m going to see if anyone else has realized that and found a way to re-create his method.”
“We’re elves. We’re elves! We’re elves and we have a spell book!” The words wanted to leap right out of Louise’s mouth as they set the table for dinner. Jillian obviously wasn’t having the same problem. Only the speed with which Jillian put out dishes and silverware betrayed that she was impatient to get back to their room and work at translating the spell book.
Their mother, however, had brought home Ethiopian takeout from Queen of Sheba. It was a sure sign that she was very upset about something. Another indication of their mother’s mood was that she’d bought more than they could possibly eat. There was dabo bread with awaze dip, menchet abesh wot, gored gored, gomen besega, ater kik alecha, shiro, and cabbage wot. She cranked up Rob Zombie in a declaration that she was not to be talked to until she’d had time to calm down. She moved through the kitchen, stripping off the uncomfortable work shoes and jewelry, head bobbing in time with the music, eyes angry.
Certainly it was all the more reason for Louise not to blurt out their secret. She fought the urge, filling up glasses.
Their father came home, stood in the dim foyer a moment, eyes wide, listening to the loud heavy metal music. After a visible “did I do something wrong” mental check, he came cautiously into the kitchen. He opened his mouth several times, reconsidered what he was about to say, and closed it each time. He settled at the table and asked with a glance, Do you know what’s wrong?
Jillian shook her head, looking innocent.
Louise bit down on We’re elves and we’ve got a spell book and shook her head, too.
Following her own rule on quiet for meals together, their mother turned off the music and sat down for dinner in silence.
After several minutes of furious eating, she sat back and sighed. “Anna Desmarais is a raving loon.”
Their father braved a comment. “I thought you were done with the Forest Forever event.”
“She’s also on the board of trustees for the Stars Align Gala in June. Part of being filthy rich and having a guilty conscience means she’s connected to a dozen different charities.”
“You’ve worked with some whack jobs before.”
“She implied at the meeting today that I embezzled from Forest Forever.”
“You’re kidding!” their father cried as the twins gasped.
“She didn’t call me a liar and thief, at least not in so many words.” Their mother growled. “She danced all around actually accusing me, but she made it fairly clear what she thought. She wants all the books checked for Forest Forever before releasing the next round of funds for the Stars Align Gala.”