“I’m through,” Jillian called from outside.
Louise carefully lined her box up with the loop and stepped through. “Okay, I’m out.”
Jillian’s hand appeared and jerked the loop out of the glass and canceled the spell. “It’s out. Let’s go!”
Louise checked the security camera feed. It showed the glass back in place and the multicolor ball bouncing away as it trailed behind Jillian, still connected by the wire. With a quiet thud and a muted “oomph” Jillian hit a tree and bounced off it.
Wincing, Louise checked the other security cameras. There were no guards heading toward the Columbus Street exit, so no one must have noticed the ball for the minute it was inside the museum. Breathing out with relief, Louise followed after Jillian into the wooded safety of Theodore Roosevelt Park.
22: Surrogate Mom
April Geiselman jerked open the door. She was in a bathrobe, and her makeup was weirdly smeared. She glared down at them. “What are you doing here? It’s after dark. Do your parents know where you are?”
“We need help.” Jillian slipped past her into the apartment. Tesla followed Jillian in, unstoppable as a tank. They’d safely retrieved him from Jin Wong’s statue. The mini-Tesla was still in school, broadcasting from their locker.
“Alexander is in big trouble. We need to warn her!” Louise ducked around April the other way.
“Some people want to kidnap her!” Jillian cried as Louise dumped the flattened wardrobe boxes on the floor.
“Hey! Wait!” April cried. “You can’t come in; I have — what?”
“We were at the museum. . and we heard these people talking about Alexander.” Louise realized that they probably shouldn’t dwell too much on where they heard all this and certainly never mention when. “They said they’re going to kidnap her! We need to warn her, but we don’t know how!”
“Okay, okay, calm down.” April made calming motions with her hands. “Who are ‘they’ and where is she? I thought she was still on Elfhome.”
“We don’t know who ‘they’ are!” the twins cried, and Louise added, “At least not all of them.”
A tall figure in the hallway brought the conversation to a halt. The shirtless man had lipstick smeared across part of his face and his hair sticking out every which way. “April? What’s going on? Whose kids are these?”
They all gaped at him for a moment.
April finally broke the silence by pointing at him. “Stephen! They’re — they’re. . It’s complicated. Look, I’m really sorry, but this is going to be a while. Can — can we do this another time?”
April herded the man into her bedroom, where the muted conversation continued in awkward and embarrassed starts and stops. Mostly it was April apologizing and Stephen saying that he understood. Since they’d missed dinner, the twins raided April’s fridge for Diet Coke, still-warm Chinese takeout, and three different types of pickles.
April had changed into a tank top and yoga pants when the two adults emerged from the bedroom. There was an awkward good-bye at the door, where both adults seemed hyperaware that the twins were watching closely.
“I feel like I’m in high school again,” Stephen whispered.
“I’m sorry,” April said for tenth time since the twins appeared on her doorstep. “It’s a family emergency.”
“So they’re family?” Stephen asked.
April shot the twins a cryptic look. “Yes, it’s complicated, but they’re family.”
“With family, is it ever anything but complicated?” Stephen hesitated and then kissed April good-bye before allowing her to shove him out the door.
“Call me,” April cried and then slammed shut the door and chained it. She leaned her head against the door for a minute. “I just knew the negative karma was going to bite me in the butt one day. Walk away from one kid and two will come breaking down your door.”
“Sorry,” Louise called.
April pounded her forehead against the door a few times before joining them in the kitchen. “Okay, let’s start at the top. You found out that someone is going to kidnap Alexander. Who?”
Since Louise was the only one who had actually seen and heard the elves, she told the story without explaining where they were when they overheard the conversation. April got out a cold Diet Coke, poured it into a glass, and added rum to it.
“They were just standing out in public, planning this out loud?”
Put that way it did seem unlikely. Sparrow’s movements, though, were highly publicized, as hordes of fans and protesters followed her. If someone came to the Waldorf Astoria, the sekasha would have paid more attention to the individuals. The Lost Treasures gave an excuse for the group to gather in relative innocence.
“They were talking in French,” Louise said.
“So how did you understand them?” April asked.
Jillian slurped down the chow mien noodle she’d been fighting with and explained. “We’re fluent in French.”
“And Spanish — but in New York, how could we not be?” Louise felt that confessing to trivial things made up for leaving out the whole museum robbery thing.
“And Low Elvish.” Jillian apparently felt the same way.
“And Hindi and Mandarin.” Louise started to tick off on her fingers the languages they knew.
Jillian waved her chopsticks to negate that claim. “That’s more ‘limited working proficiency’ than fluent.”
“Hindi and Mandarin?” April added more rum to her drink.
“We learned Hindi by watching Bollywood musicals,” Louise said.
“And Mandarin from Chinese historical dramas,” Jillian said. “And a smattering of Korean, for the same reason.”
“But that doesn’t matter,” Louise said. “I was hiding, so they thought they were alone while they planned to kidnap Alexander and kill Windwolf.”
“Whoa! Wait! Kill Windwolf? Holy shit! You said this was Sparrow and Windwolf’s bodyguards!”
“Well, that’s why Sparrow was talking in French. None of the sekasha understand it, so even if they overheard her — and they did — they didn’t know what she was planning.”
“Who cares what language they were speaking in?” Jillian cried. “We have to warn Alexander!”
“We can’t.” April took a big swallow of her drink. “At least, not until Shutdown. Are you sure about this?”
“Yes!” both girls cried.
“We can’t call her because we don’t have a phone number for her,” Jillian said. “And we haven’t been able to find a Pittsburgh directory.”
“Oh, I have one,” April said.
“You do?” the twins cried.
April went to her bookcase and pulled out a paper book. “Pittsburgh is completely last century. They do old-fashioned paper directories.”
The twins leapt at her with a cry and snatched the book from her hands. “Bell, Bell, Bell.” They chanted, flipping pages. “Bartley. Bowles. Bruton. Burger. There’s no Bell!”
“Their number might be unlisted.” April got out another Diet Coke.
“Why would anyone do that?” the twins cried. “What’s the point of having a directory if everyone isn’t in it?”
April shrugged and added rum to the new soda. “I don’t know. My folks are in it. They mailed me that copy as a hint to call more often. Maybe the reason Tim Bell’s phone stopped working was because they moved to Earth.”
“No, on the application to CMU, Alexander said she lived on Elfhome.” Louise flipped to the W section. “Maybe Orville is listed.”
“Well?” April asked as the twin frowned at the only Wright listed.
“There’s an Oilcan Wright. Who names their kid Oilcan?” Louise stared at the simple listing of name, street address, and phone number. “How are you supposed to cross-reference this?”