The twins collapsed in the front hall in a quivering heap when they got home.
“I can’t believe this!” Jillian cried. “This is horrible!”
“Why can’t we talk to people?” Nikola whimpered. “Or at least, why can we talk to some people and not others? What’s the point of being able to talk if not to do it?”
Joy somehow escaped Tesla’s storage compartment to bounce on Louise’s stomach. “No! No! Food first! Joy was good. Feed Joy!”
“Okay!” Louise cried. “Okay! Food and talk!”
Since Jillian seemed even more stressed by the events, Louise took charge of Joy’s feeding. They had moved the growing supply of cat food to the back of the drawer of baking supplies since their mother rarely had time to actually bake. Joy bounced impatiently in place, clapping her hands as Louise opened the can.
Nikola stood and watched the process, his size putting him nearly level with the counter. “We don’t understand why Tristan said he was born in 2022. He wasn’t. Why he would say that? He didn’t even like saying it; he found it very stressful.”
“How can you tell?” Jillian asked.
“His breathing changed and his heartbeat went up.”
“Nom, nom, nom.” Joy shoveled in the cat food, dribbling it everywhere. They’d forgotten the paper towels, so Louise scooped up baby dragon and can and carried them both to the sink.
“Louise!” Jillian cried. “It’s all over the floor now. Nikola, don’t walk in it!”
Nikola looked at his paw and then shook it through the micro-tremor clean cycle.
Louise sighed as Jillian shrieked. How were they going to keep Nikola and Joy hidden from everyone? It was all becoming overwhelming. It was one thing when it was just their parents and the punishment for being discovered the loss of Internet and other privileges. It seemed like a logic puzzle without a solution. They couldn’t go to school without Tesla standing guard. The nactka didn’t need magic to keep the embryos frozen; they had made several test runs with ice prior to robbing the clinic. What the lack of magic would do to Nikola mentally, they were loath to find out. They had discovered by accident that moving the nactka and generator out of the Tesla body, however, made Nikola blind, mute, deaf and paralyzed. Needless to say, none of them wanted to deprive him of his “body.”
They had the second generator but its battery pack needed to be charged during the day while they were at school. They could make another battery pack — actually they should, just so they had a spare — but they couldn’t finish it and have it fully charged by tomorrow morning. The twins weren’t sure what would happen if they separated Joy from the generator for any length of time. The baby dragon refused to cooperate in any experiments. It was possible that the lack of magic would kill her, so they didn’t force her. Also a plan of leaving Joy home alone had “bad idea” written all over it.
So they were stuck with the foursome: Nikola and Tesla, Joy and the generator.
With Flying Monkey Five in their classroom, taking all four to school seemed like a recipe for disaster.
“Please listen to us.” Nikola pressed up against Louise. “We’ve waited all day to speak with you. Please let us talk!”
“Okay, we’re listening.”
Nikola opened his mouth and then stood there a moment. Finally he admitted in a quiet little voice, “We don’t know where to start.”
“What is Tristan’s real name? It’s not Flying Monkey Five. No one names their kid that.”
“We’re not sure. When he was born, he was given the name of Tristan Jacques Desmarais, but if we understand names correctly, that’s his real name. Maybe. His father’s name is listed as Edmond Desmarais and that’s not his father’s real name, so Desmarais can’t be his real-real name. Right?”
“Wait. Desmarais? He’s Anna Desmarais’ son?”
He nodded. “Here. We’ll show you.” He looked toward the new kitchen television, and it clicked on. A sepia photograph of Ming the Merciless scowled down at them. “This is the earliest photo I could find of Ming. At that time he was known as Pruet Lalumiere. It is dated April 16, 1853.”
“Ming is an elf?” Jillian cried in surprise as Nikola flashed more photos of Ming on the screen. “Whoa, slower, we can’t see that fast!”
“Sorry.” Nikola slowed down to a few seconds per photo. Nearly too fast to follow except that they were all of Ming, unsmiling, in old-fashioned clothes. After the first one or two photos, which seemed to be portraits, the following pictures were candid shots where Ming barely seemed to realize he was being photographed. Horses were replaced by Model T Fords and then color slowly leached in. The time between the photos grew longer, as if he became more and more cautious of having his picture taken. As an elf stuck on Earth, he most likely didn’t want proof that he was immortal just lying around.
“I think Ming is an elf king exiled from Elfhome,” Louise said. “I think that Tristan was telling the truth about his father. He just didn’t expect us to take him seriously.”
“Weird. Why would he do that?”
“Tristan is an elf.” Louise pointed out what she’d realized on the train to support that. “And elves don’t lie.”
“It’s socially frowned upon,” Jillian grumbled. “It doesn’t mean they can’t. It’s just extremely dishonorable to lie.”
“If we were normal kids, we wouldn’t have believed what he said, so it’s fairly safe to tell us the truth.”
“But if he thinks we’re normal kids, why is he at our school?”
“I don’t know.” The obvious answer was that Anna Desmarais had sent him there. But why?
“I could only find four photographs of Crown Prince Kiss Butt. His name is listed as Yves Desmarais.” Nikola flashed through the pictures on fast-forward.
Yves? As in the man who’d ordered Alexander kidnapped and Windwolf killed? If Ming was the exiled ruler of the elves, then that would make sense. The crown prince had met with his father’s still-loyal subjects to pass on orders. As viceroy, Windwolf represented Queen Soulful Ember’s presence in Pittsburgh. Not only would Windwolf report any troop movements, he had the power to reduce them to slag. If the twins’ research was correct, then there weren’t any other domana-caste elves in Pittsburgh.
“Wait!” Jillian cried. “Back up to the second photo!” The picture showed a collection of people, all unaware of the camera as they stared at something horrific. Only Yves seemed unaffected by whatever they were looking at. Jillian pointed at a woman with both hands covering her mouth. “That’s Esme!”
Nikola tilted his head as he chased info down on the Internet. “Yes, that’s Esme Shenske. Anna Desmarais is her mother.”
“What?” Jillian and Louise both shouted.
Nikola cringed away. “Anna Desmarais is Esme Shenske’s mother.”
“Oh my God, she’s our grandmother?” Jillian and Louise both cried.
Nikola gave a complete report. “Anna Cohan married Neil Shenske and had two daughters, Lain and Esme. Eight months after Neil was killed, she married Edmond Desmarais and had two sons, Lucien and Tristan.”
“Flying Monkeys Four and Five.” Louise ticked them off on her fingers. “Crown Prince Kiss Butt — Yves — was child one. Lain and Esme are two and three. Their little half brothers were four and five.”
“Oh geez, we’ve been going nuts trying to figure this out, and it’s been her family all along.” Jillian gave a scream and waved her hands over her head. “What the hell? Why didn’t she just put their names on the photos?”
“Because Edmond Desmarais isn’t Ming’s real name any more than Ming is.” Louise paced as her stomach churned. “We know Tristan is the baby of the family, and Esme left eighteen years ago. She might have assumed he would grow up. If we hadn’t recognized him from his photo, we certainly wouldn’t be able to identify him by the name he gave us. The obviously fake name of Flying Monkey Five forced us to do an extensive search.”