Nigel tilted his head in confusion. “I visited the exhibit yesterday. I noticed that they didn’t explain how the items ended up on Earth. How do you know all this?”
“Some of it is deductive reasoning,” Louise admitted. “Windwolf already knew English when Director Maynard met him during the first Startup. He had copies of maps that King Charles the Second issued to the Hudson Bay Company when he founded their first expedition in 1668. His copy also showed an English trading post where Pittsburgh stands. It dates the map between 1740, when William Trent established that outpost, and 1758, when Fort Duquesne was built by the French.”
“I never heard that about the map before,” Nigel said.
Jillian waved it off as unimportant. “One of the EIA archive videos from Maynard’s first contact with Windwolf has a close-up of the map. The EIA has restricted access to their videos, so no one has actually studied them at length.”
“I see.” Nigel clearly was afraid to ask how they’d gotten hold of it.
It seemed safe to lump the codex in with data they’d seen but didn’t own. “We’ve also found the journal of an elf who was in France during the 1700s. We’re not sure when he arrived, but he was there for several years prior to being killed in the French Revolution in the 1790s. When he attempted to travel back to Elfhome, the way was unexpectedly blocked. He traveled to several points and was dismayed to find all the pathways closed off.”
“Where did you find that?” Nigel asked.
“We can’t say,” Louise said. “There are a lot of things we’ve done that weren’t technically legal.”
“So let’s just not go there — okay?” Jillian gave Louise an annoyed look for bringing up the codex in the first place. “The thing is, there’s no way to know how many elves were trapped on Earth or what side of the war that they were on. But the ones we saw didn’t look like elves. We’re only guessing that they were because they talked about being alive for hundreds of years.”
“The important thing is that they have moles in the EIA and the United Nations and possibly among the police force in Pittsburgh.”
“You have proof of this?” Nigel asked.
“Nothing we can show you,” Louise said. “But this isn’t a guess. We know this for sure.”
Jillian nodded. “It’s why you haven’t been able to go to Elfhome. They’re using the EIA to block visas of anyone that they don’t want in Pittsburgh. But NBC bypassed their normal channels and pushed your paperwork through.”
“We don’t know why they’ve been trying to keep you out, but they don’t want you there. They might try and kill you.”
“But you need to go,” Jillian said. “The people in Pittsburgh have no idea that they’re about to be in the middle of war.”
“A war between. .?”
“The elves and the anti-elves. The anti-elves have been building up an army — someplace — and they’ve been kidnapping scientists to make a gate like the one in orbit, only on land.” Jillian took his tablet and linked it with theirs. “Here’s a list of scientists they’ve kidnapped. We know that everyone on this list is dead, except for Kensbock. We’re not sure they’re the ones that took him; he wasn’t doing the same type of work. We also know that the NSA is looking into the kidnappings, but we don’t think they’ve realized who is behind them.”
“And this is really important.” Louise sent him all the pictures of the Dufae box copied from the AMNH’s server. “This was part of the exhibit. Sparrow took it back to Elfhome. It might look like a block of wood, but it’s a box. And it has eleven of these inside.” They had carefully taken pictures of the nactka inside a light box and erased all GPS tags on it. No one would be able to trace the picture back to their bedroom. “It’s really important that you find the box and get it back to Earth. If you can’t get it back to Earth, get it to the sekasha and have them open them.”
“What are these?”
Jillian opened her mouth, and Louise was suddenly overwhelmed with the sense that she was going to say the worst possible thing.
“We’re not sure!” Louise cried before her twin could reply. “The elf that died in the French Revolution believed that they were linked to a powerful spell. He brought them to Earth where he thought they could be safely studied. We’re not sure yet what the spell does, but it would be very bad if they’re used.”
“Sparrow took this box?” Nigel asked.
Jillian gave Louise another dark look for telling the truth about the nactka. “She’s one of the anti-elves. She’s the one that set the trap for Windwolf.”
“Sparrow? The viceroy’s secretary is the one that tried to kill him?”
“Husepavua,” Louise corrected him. “We don’t have any proof. It would be our word against hers. She’s an elf — or pretending to be an elf — or something — and other elves are going to believe her first.”
“You can’t tell anyone!” Jillian said. “We wouldn’t be telling you except we don’t know anyone already on Elfhome, and someone should be looking for the box and we can’t go ourselves.”
Nigel’s eyes widened with alarm. “Ach, no, ye cannae do that! Ye are just wee lasses.”
Apparently Nigel’s Scottish burr went into overdrive when he was extremely rattled. Louise felt guilty for alarming him. The truth was that if they went to Elfhome, they would be focused on finding Alexander. They couldn’t trust Nigel, though, with all of their secrets. They couldn’t tell him anything about her.
“Here.” Jillian opened up her purse and handed him the whistle. They’d brought two just in case only one of them managed to make the meeting. “This is the gossamer call we promised you.”
“You’ll need it on Elfhome.” Louise showed him how the tones could be changed by pressing his fingertips against the holes.
Jillian pointed out the spell etchings on the call. “We’ve found a spell that works as an amplifier for the ultrasonic frequencies. It needs magic to work, but it will make the call’s range to be. . well, we’re not sure of the range. We haven’t been able to test it, but we think it’s close to a thousand miles, or one mei.”
“You’ll have to be careful on Elfhome not to blow it with anything metal in your hands — that could twist the magic, and the results could be bad,” Louise warned. “Here is a list of gossamer commands we’ve pieced together from analyzing video. It’s kind of like Morse code. We’re guessing on these, so don’t take them as God’s word.”
“Thank you so very much. I never expected Lemon-Lime to be two little girls. You didn’t come here all by yourself, did you? You have someone. .?”
“Our parents,” Louise said.
“They’re here?” Nigel glanced toward the door.
Louise jumped a little. “Someplace.”
“But they don’t know about our videos!” Jillian said.
“They don’t?” Nigel looked concerned.
“They’re super-protective, and they were afraid that if we posted our videos, we’d pick up creepy stalkers. They’re not very computer smart, so they didn’t believe we could stay anonymous. We knew that if we were careful, no one could trace our posts back to us, so we — kind of — went around them.”
Like Anna Desmarais probably would. Louise cringed inwardly.
“So they don’t know how popular you are?” Nigel asked.
“No!” the twins cried.
“We didn’t even know,” Jillian grumbled. “We apparently use the Internet in a much different way than the average person. We know about all the social media, but we don’t hit those sites.” Until recently, they didn’t have anyone to be social with. “We do research.” Hack into secure sites. “And post our videos.”