“You hate it, then?” Jillian dared to ask.
“I’d have to be fairly shallow to make up my mind I hated something in less than four hours,” Tristan said.
Louise was tempted to say it had only taken her four minutes to hate him, but she clenched her teeth against the impulse.
“Why did you change schools so close to the end of the year?” Zahara asked. “Did your family move?”
Something like pain flashed through his eyes, and he focused on his plate. “Yes. My father’s work keeps me moving around. I was in Pasadena, California. Bird-watching.”
After all of Nikola’s “we” comments, Louise noticed that Tristan said “I” when he talked about moving and work. It seemed that, if he was telling the truth, he’d been in California alone. Who would send a nine-year-old alone to the other side of the country?
Ming the Merciless, obviously.
Did that mean that Ming was the Flying Monkeys’ father? There had been a family resemblance between all the males.
“Do you surf?” Iggy asked.
Tristan shook his head. “Apparently Scandinavians are great boaters and ice skaters but as swimmers, we suck. I stuck to skateboarding.”
It was agreed that skateboarding was cool, too, most likely because almost everyone had some experience with it. Even Jillian and Louise had done their share of collecting bruises.
“You don’t look French,” Jillian said in a very Peter tone.
“Ah, yes, the eyes.” Tristan vaguely motioned to his eyes, which had an epicanthic fold. “My family were originally Sami, it’s a small tribe of indigenous people of Scandinavia. We were in France only long enough to pick up a French name. My father moved to New York before I was born.”
Only the very last part sounded like the truth.
“So where do you live?” Iggy asked.
“I’ve got a condo in Queens.”
He had used “I” again. Did that mean he lived there alone? Surely someone who was nine years old didn’t live alone. Or did it mean he wasn’t actually nine?
Nikola blinked at them when they opened their locker. “We found them.”
“Shh.” Louise petted him. She felt guilty. She hadn’t checked her texts, since Tristan seemed to be watching them like a hawk. “Don’t talk until we say it’s safe.”
He nodded.
With heart hammering in her chest, she and Jillian walked out with Nikola tucked between them.
Tristan was doing a bad job of pretending that he wasn’t waiting for them at the front door. “A nanny-bot?”
“Yes,” Louise growled.
“I guess no one is picking you up, either.” Tristan waved to the line of luxury cars that were picking up the other students.
“We have Tesla.” Louise gripped the leash tightly.
Tristan pressed a hand to his chest. “I feel safer already.”
They attempted to hurry down the street toward the subway station, but he fell into step with them.
“What are you doing?” Louise snapped.
“I’m going home,” Tristan said. “I was afraid I was going to have to go all alone, so I’m glad that I can go with you.”
Louise stopped and faced him. “What?”
“We all live in Astoria.” He smirked. “So I can go home with you. It’s much safer that way.”
They walked to the subway station in tense silence. The twins had the excuse that they were shy, but that would only work for so long. They should find something safe to talk about. Something like school. Or him.
“What do your parents do?” Louise tentatively went down the safest route once they boarded the train and found seats.
“Oh. My mother is a fortune-teller. My father is a king in exile.”
“What?” the twins both asked.
Tristan laughed. “Well, that’s the cool way to put what they do. My mother is a hedge-fund manager. It means she guesses the future and invests in it. She’s very good at it.”
“And your father? The king?” Somehow that rang very true.
“He’s very, very rich, so he really doesn’t do anything at all, except collect people that make him richer and more powerful. People like my mother.”
“What country was your father king of?” Jillian asked.
“Nailau Peshyosa. It’s changed its name since he was forced out. And he wasn’t the king per se. He was Aumvoutui. King is a whole lot cooler sounding.”
Louise leaned down to mess with her shoelaces to hide her face. She recognized the name Nailau Peshyosa. It was ancient Elvish for the Inner Sea or the Mediterranean Sea. Ashfall had been Queen Soulful’s father and the first king of the elves. When he was crowned, the name was changed — over two thousand years ago.
She swallowed hard as she suddenly realized that Tristan looked the same in his photograph that Esme had left for them eighteen years earlier. He’d looked nine years old in the picture and he still looked nine now.
He wasn’t human.
She took a deep breath, fighting to stay calm. He could be lying about his father being a deposed elvish king. But why would he pick such a set of lies? Or had they been able to convince him that they were nothing but normal fifth-graders? Was this some kind of elaborate final test? To see if they reacted to the obscure names that only elves would know?
No matter what he thought they were, the fact remained that he wasn’t human.
Was he an elf?
Elves might be immortal, but they were born infants and needed to grow up first, just a lot slower than humans did. It took elves a hundred years before they could reach the physical maturity of a human eighteen-year-old. It meant at thirty-something they would be like an eight-year-old and at fifty they would be like a nine-year-old. There wasn’t a big difference between eight and nine.
So he was a young elf born approximately fifty years ago. The photograph would have been taken when he was in his thirties. If his father was an exiled “king,” then maybe it was why Esme had used the name Ming the Merciless. Ming was an emperor, which was kind of like a king.
It seemed as if Louise’s life was going to stay strange and impossible to guess.
Louise straightened up to study Tristan. Sunlight and shadows passed over his face as the train carried them toward home. Except for the slight almond shape to his eyes, and the fact that he should be really old, there were no real indications that he was an elf. His ears looked as round as hers.
“What?” He actually seemed leery of her.
“What year were you born in?”
“Same as you.”
Louise shook her head. “It depends if your birthday is in the spring or in the fall.”
He had to do the math. He did it fast, but he had to think. “Twenty-twenty-two.”
Most kids said it two-two or twenty-two.
“Ah, spring birthday.” Because fall birthdays would make him a fourth-grader now. “Are you Water Tiger or Earth Monkey?”
“What?”
“Chinese New Year starts in February. You’re either a Tiger or Monkey.” She lied, since Ox fell before Tiger.
“I–I never paid attention to that,” he stated. “What are you?”
“We are Tigers. We’re lucky and brave, but we can’t pass up a challenge, especially when honor is at stake or when we’re protecting the people we love.”
“Ah, I must be a Monkey then. I was born in January.”
She hadn’t told him on what side of the divide she and Jillian fell. He knew their birthday. She tried not to feel like this was the most frightening thing she had ever stumbled across. Wait — he’d known that they lived in Astoria, too. She wanted to run screaming, but they still had a long way to go. They were only now pulling into Queensboro Plaza.
Luckily some boys got on, loud and smelling of alcohol, and he focused fiercely on them.