Wood Sprites

37: Mouse Cage

An hour later, everything came crashing down on them.

There was a knock after someone tried the door and found it locked.

“Hide!” Louise whispered to the babies, waving the mice to take cover. She could feel the danger looming outside the door. They had run out of time. The mice darted under the furniture.

What should I do? A dozen possibilities flashed through Louise’s mind, followed by dozens of possible outcomes, some horrifying. She glanced frantically around the room. Between the babies and Joy “helping,” the twins had barely started with packing. Jillian had insisted that they scan the cave maps and the mansion’s blueprints before returning them to the secret room. It meant that everything that Louise didn’t want the elves to see was sitting out, waiting to be packed.

Tesla stood up; the babies had fled out of the mice robots to inhabit him again.

“Sit!” Louise hissed as one possibility became terrifyingly probable. “Do not fight! You promised!”

“Why do we have to listen to you?” Chuck Norris Pink grumbled in Nikola’s Christopher Robin lilt, but this time Louise recognized the true speaker.

“We won’t fight,” Nikola stated and Tesla sat. “Because we promised.”

“But we don’t like it,” one or both of the Jawbreakers complained.

The person knocked again. Louder. Impatient.

Joy wasn’t anywhere in sight. Hopefully she was inside Tesla or the secret room. There was no more time left to look for her. Louise snatched up items blindly from the “to pack” pile and started to shove them into her pockets. No, they were going to check her pockets. She pulled up her left pant leg and slid what would fit into her socks. At least their tablets had secure passwords; there was no way to take them with them and keep them hidden. The babies, though, were vulnerable inside of Tesla’s storage compartment.

There was a murmur of voices beyond the door and soon someone was going to be breaking down the door if they didn’t unlock it. Louise rushed across the room, turned the lock and flung open the door.

Louise had expected Anna. It was Celine, gazing down at Louise with dark suspicion. Behind her was a small herd of the male drivers who doubled as bodyguards. Louise managed a look of surprise on her face even as she realized that the fact Anna wasn’t there meant real danger for the twins. There were too many adults for the children to put up a fight and have any hope of winning.

“Where’s our grandmother?” Louise hated that she couldn’t keep fear out of her voice. Jillian could have done it.

“Why did you lock the door?” Celine attempted to brush past her.

Louise held her ground the best she could since the female was nearly two feet taller than her. She wanted to keep the door between the secret elves and everything dear to her. “Where’s Anna?”

Celine put a hand on Louise’s shoulder and shoved her back. “She’s in the hospital.”

“What?” the twins and the babies all cried.

“She was fine yesterday!” Louise shouted to cover the babies’ slip. “What did you do to her?”

“Humans get old and die,” Celine snapped and then alarm flashed across her face as she realized that she had all but admitted she wasn’t human. “She collapsed yesterday afternoon while she was at a business meeting. Someone there called an ambulance instead of her drivers.”

And what did Celine think the drivers would have done? Brought Anna back to the house to die instead of to the hospital?

Louise clung to her anger despite the fact she knew that Ming needed Anna. If she let her rage slip away, all Louise would be left with was the knowledge that they were alone in the house, surrounded by powerful enemies.

“Come with me.” Celine reached for Louise seconds after the girl slid backwards, leaving the female snatching at air.

“Where to?” Louise asked in as steady a voice as she could muster.

“We don’t have to listen to you.” Jillian thumped her baseball into her ball glove.

“No!” Louise cried out as everything unraveled. She jumped forward and took the slap that Celine aimed at Jillian, turning with the force so it looked more real, just like Mr. Howe taught them in the stage-fighting classes. Even then, the hit was hard enough to make everything go black for a moment.

When Louise could see again, Jillian was pulling her backwards, shouting, “Don’t hurt her! Don’t hurt her, you witch!”

Tesla was standing a foot closer than before, whimpering softly.

“Shhh.” Louise tried to calm all her siblings, making a “sit” motion with one hand at the babies while holding the other up to keep Celine’s attention. She could feel blood trickling warmly down from her nose and taste it her mouth. “I’m okay. Don’t cry.”

Celine watched them closely with a slight pleased smile. “Hurt one, hurt them both. Good to know.”

“We’ll go with you,” Louise stated as calmly as she could. She pressed the back of her left hand to her nose to hide the blood from her siblings. Her hand was shaking and she couldn’t stop it. When she sniffed, the hot metal taste of blood filled her mouth. Every word, every motion, seemed tied to infinite possible outcomes. To cry. To fight. They all tumbled into dark destruction. She had to stay calm. She had to do what Celine wanted. It was the only path that led toward escape for all of them. “Please. We’ll do what you want us to do. Just don’t hurt us.”

Celine nodded smugly. “Good. Come with me.” She headed toward the open door. She pointed at two of the bodyguards and indicated that they were to follow. The others she directed toward the walk-in closet. “Start in there.”

Jillian whimpered and clutched Louise in a death grip.

“It’s okay,” Louise said, even though she wasn’t sure. She had to keep the babies from doing anything to draw attention to themselves. “Don’t be scared. We’ll be fine. Just wait and see.”

Tesla sat down, trusting that they’d return. Louise could only hope that she could keep her promise that she and Jillian would figure a way out to save them all before the secret elves realized what the robot held inside it.

Yves and a dozen of the male bodyguard drivers were in the foyer. Two of the guards stood on ladders, carefully lowering a large painting they had just taken down off the wall. The males worked in near-reverent silence. Yves’ rich voice filled the echoing foyer like an actor on a stage.

“Make sure they understand I want a cashier’s check, not money wired to an account. If you need to, tell them the truth: I don’t trust electronic transactions. I never understood how the Knights Templar sold the idea of banking.”

He glanced up the sweeping staircase as Celine herded the twins down them. “Have you checked their pockets? Wood sprites are like pack rats; they always have some nasty surprise hidden away.”

“No, husepavua. Forgiveness.” Celine stopped them at the foot of the stairs and turned out their pockets. Louise’s heart hammered in her chest, trying to pretend that she was only confused by what was happening as the female tugged and pulled at Louise’s jeans. The taste of blood still filled her mouth as it dripped from her bloody nose.

Celine frowned at the scraps of white rabbit fur, thimble, and spool of thread left over from making the mouse skins. “They’re making something.”

“Of course they are,” Yves said. “It’s in their blood.”

“We’re making designer clothes for our dolls,” Jillian snapped, anger in her voice. Her eyes, though, were on the blood leaking through Louise’s fingers as Louise kept her hand pressed against her nose. Tears started to shimmer in Jillian’s eyes.

If Jillian started to cry, Louise was sure she would break too. She took her hand from her nose and smeared the blood like war paint on her cheeks.

Yves shook his head. “Wood sprites. Always so ridiculously brave for how stupidly small they are. I could never decide if they were our greatest success or our worse failure. Certainly, they are the most dangerous of our rebellious creations.”

Louise stared at him, trying for brave but achieving only fearful confusion. What did he mean by rebellious creation? Did this mean that Leonardo Dufae wasn’t their male genetic donor?

Yves laughed dryly. “You don’t even know what you are, do you?”

“We’re nine years old?” Louise said it before she remembered that Esme had warned her not to be snarky. She was sure that Yves was going to tell her; he thought their helplessness and ignorance was funny.

“All you see. The electricity. The light bulbs. The horseless carriages that drive themselves. All the trinkets of human civilization are the results of a handful of genetic mutants that humans call geniuses. It’s so purely random that anyone who attempts to influence it via breeding is called immoral. God’s touch alone elevates the great thinker from the common human.

“But we are the gods of elves, and we made you.”

“I’m fairly sure Esme had us made from her genetic material,” Jillian muttered.

Yves laughed. “Oh, she only combined together what we wrought several thousand years ago. Two of our greatest achievements in three little females.” He was counting Alexander in with the twins. “And surely there are more than just three. .”

The bodyguard nearest the door lifted his hand to his ear, and cocked his head to listen to some report over an earbud. “Husepavua, Feng’s car just pulled into the driveway.”

Yves growled. “That idiot. I didn’t send for him.”

“Should we turn him away?” Several of the bodyguards moved toward the door, placing themselves between the entryway and Yves.

Yves glanced toward the twins, apparently hoping that they could give him a clue. Louise could only sense onrushing disaster in every direction. “No,” Yves said finally. “Let him come. Perhaps he has some useful news.” He turned from the door to point at a set of Elvish wyvern armor standing in an alcove. “Pack that.” He pointed at a Van Gogh oil painting beside the armor. “Sell that.”

The front door swung open and Ambassador Feng walked through. He checked at the sight of Yves and all the bodyguards in the foyer.

“Yves?” Feng said in confusion.

“What are you doing here?” Yves snapped in English, putting lie to his claim at the museum that Feng couldn’t speak English.

“Where is Aumvoutui? A force from the MSS just landed at Newark. .”

“Have you gone native?” Yves interrupted him. “Use words, not letters.”

“The Ministry of State Security for the People’s Republic of China,” Feng growled out. “They have the authority to arrest me and my entire staff and most likely that’s why they’re in New York. The people of the Republic have realized that they’ve shouldered the funding for the hyperphase gate, five spaceships to a mythical colony that doesn’t exist, and the settlement to the United States for the loss of Pittsburgh. Trillions of yuan. All so our people can return to Elfhome. They are not happy. Riots have broken out in Beijing. They make your Americans look like misbehaving children. They’re calling for blood.”

“Another century, another witch hunt,” Yves stated coolly. “We have taught you the song. Now dance to it.”

“It’s not as simple as Aumvoutui said. They now have cameras everywhere. There is no more anonymity. I can’t just disappear and resurface someplace else.”

“We warned you of that danger when you came to this world.”

“The bank account you gave me for such emergencies is empty. Aumvoutui must—”

Yves pressed his hand against the ambassador’s chest and spoke a word that sounded Elvish. The ambassador went to his knees with a cry of pain. A spell glyph appeared on his forehead, gleaming brilliantly. “You must remember your place. You were my little pet project. I alone made you. I am your god.” Yves cupped the male’s chin in his hand and whispered menacingly as tears ran down the ambassador’s cheeks. “The pure black of your hair. The raven wings of your eyebrows. The strength of your chin. Every line on your face, I picked for you. I planted you into a female’s womb and gave you life. I made you, and I can unmake you with a word.”

“Forgiveness,” Feng cried, his voice breaking from pain. “I was afraid—”

“Humans are lowly beasts, products of random chance, barely above monkeys. You are a masterpiece of spell-working.”

“Even lions fear large packs of monkeys,” Feng whispered.

Yves growled another word, and Feng screamed as his veins suddenly blazed under his skin as if his blood had turned to liquid fire. The ambassador convulsed into a tight knot, shrieking.

Louise bit hard on her lower lip, trying to keep in an answering scream of pure fear. She had never heard an adult male cry out in pain before; she had never heard a sound so raw and terrifying. Jillian clung tight to Louise, burying her face in Louise’s shoulder, sobbing with terror.

Yves spoke a word and Feng slumped to the floor, panting hoarsely as his skin faded back to normal.

Yves stepped back from the male. “You will bring the dogs sniffing at my heels if you try to hide at my feet. You will go and be the warrior I made you and draw them off my scent.”

“Yes, husepavua,” Feng whispered.

“Follow the plan as you were told to do in emergencies like this. Use one of your alternate identities to go to the island and cross to Onihida. Someone has to keep rein on the oni until the Dufae heir can be caught and harnessed — or we find someone else to open a gate for us.”

“Yes, husepavua.”

Yves turned away, not bothering to watch the male stagger to his feet and stumble out of the mansion. He walked down the hall to stop at the next painting and pointed to it. “Sell that.” He pointed to a small statue. “Pack that.” He turned and gazed at the twins. “It’s a shame they’re not true identical twins. I’ll have to be more careful with them. Take them down to the casting chamber and put them into a spell cage. I’m sure they would figure out how to escape anything mechanical.”

Louise tried to tell herself that the spell cage was a fascinating awesome thing. In almost any other instance, it would be. Being carried down into a maze of dimly lit caves, shackled to the floor, and locked inside one, however, was really, really scary.

“Right,” Jillian muttered after the elves had trooped back upstairs. “This is a sticky wicket.”

“Could be worse.” Louise knew it could be much worse. She had at least kept the elves from discovering what she had shoved into her socks as they snapped the manacle about her right ankle. By luck or that weird sense of knowing what was coming, she had pushed the Swiss army knife painfully deep into her shoe.

The electric lights went out, leaving only the gleam of the active spell encaging them. They sat at the center of the spell inscribed into the stone floor.

“I say.” Jillian used a thick British accent. Louise wasn’t sure who Jillian was channeling but she was glad that her twin wasn’t freaking because at the moment Louise was slipping toward totally losing it. “Let’s not give fate any more ideas.”

“Uh-huh,” Louise forced out as she fumbled in the deep shadows.

Light suddenly flared out from Jillian.

“What’s that?”

“Spell light. I made it.” Jillian held up a brightly gleaming orb.

“Awesome!” More heartfelt words were never uttered. Louise unfolded the various blades of the Swiss army knife, trying to figure out which she could use on the shackle. Luckily the thick iron cuffs were probably over a hundred years old and fashioned when tolerances were in the fractions of an inch, not microns. “We need to get out of here. Get the babies. And—”

“Burn the house down.”

“Yes. Somehow. I doubt they have a closet full of high explosives that we can use.”

“We can improvise. We’re good at that.”

“Yes, we are.” Louise breathed out relief as her manacle clicked open. She bent over the cuff on Jillian’s leg, glad that Jillian was embracing anger to keep out fear. Her twin was trembling from one or both of the emotions flooding her. When Jillian’s manacle unlocked, she threw the hunk of metal as far as the chain would allow. They hugged each other tight, just for a moment, trying to draw strength without weakening the other.

Jillian pulled away first and stood, hands on her hips, looking very much like Peter Pan. “So, what do you think? How do we take down this spell?”

The cage was a weird mix of things that they’d never seen and spells from the codex. It had the familiar design of concentric rings, the outer rings triggering first and cascading inward. The inner layer shimmered in the deep shadows of the cave, weaving like the mad vines around Sleeping Beauty’s castle. The scrollwork seemed no more substantial than a hologram. When Louise reached out to tap it quickly — triggering a gasp of alarm from Jillian — the bars proved to be solid and cold as steel. They arched overhead, creating a sphere. Since the inner shell was tightly woven, they wouldn’t be able to reach the more vulnerable parts of the spell.

When Celine activated the cage, she hadn’t used a typical trigger word but a series of phonemes, much like those used in spell locks. Louise focused the light onto the spell engraved into the floor. The first ring contained elements from a lock. It was inscribed on an inlaid piece of marble that most likely hid the actual keywords that switched the cage on and off. If they had their tablets. .

If wishes were fishes.

“Without magic, it will collapse,” Louise said. “Do you think we can burn all the magic in this area?”

“No,” Jillian said after glancing around them. “There’s too much magic here. The sunroom is a mud puddle compared to this. This is a lake. Look over there.”

Louise turned to see what Jillian was pointing at. The narrow beam of the spell light picked out details across the large room. The floor was several large slabs of marble fitted together to make one large block. A spell had been marked onto the floor with a combination of wax and metal filings. It was a massive spell with a Celtic-knot complexity of subroutines and processes. She could identify all the pieces, but how they worked together she couldn’t even guess.

“I’m drawing a blank on how to get out of here,” Jillian whimpered.

“It’s okay. I managed to keep these.” Louise pulled out the two metal-ink pens she’d tucked into her sock. They were designed to draw functional circuits for electronics but it worked just as well for magic. “We can do a force-strike spell.”

“Will it be strong enough?”

“We can ramp it up with a series of focusing rings.”

Jillian considered it and nodded, but added a warning. “There might be a rebound effect. It could be bad.”

“We could do a simple shield, like the ones that the sekasha use, to protect us.”

“I’ll do the shield!” Jillian cried and snatched one of the pens out of Louise’s hand. She crouched on the floor and carefully marked a circle just big enough for both of them to stand in. “You do remember force strike well enough?” she whispered. “Because I don’t think I do — not all of it.”

They both had drawn the sekasha protective spell countless times for their videos, both for the Wind Clan and the Fire Clan, and had discussed at length the differences in the tattoos and the information they’d found in the codex. Louise took a deep breath, looking down at the bare floor. If she screwed up, there wouldn’t be any way to fix the mistake.

“I can do this,” she said more to herself than to Jillian. “It’s a fairly simple spell. I just have to take my time and do it right.”

It was odd that she realized that the few times that they’d gone to church with their Grandma Mayer had sunk deep roots into her psychic. She wanted to believe in God because she wanted to believe he would hear her earnest prayer that she would actually draw the spell correctly. The consequences for failing were all too easy to imagine, and she was afraid that meant she would fail.

She clicked out the pen and knelt on the floor. Dear God, please. Please.

She was just finishing when she realized someone was calling her name.

“Lou! Lou!”

She looked up to find one of the mice was standing beyond the edge of the cage, waving to get her attention. “What are you doing here? I told you to stay!”

“They’re loading all our stuff onto a truck. They’ve taken Tesla to the garage and put him in a giant box. We don’t know what to do! We can’t get him out. The Jawbreakers are watching over Tesla, and Chuck Norris is looking for Joy.”

Where the hell had Joy gone? Last Louise had seen, the baby dragon was in their bedroom. Joy had been trying to pack the cans of freeze-dried food and complaining that she was hungry.

“Oh! Oh! I bet she went to the kitchen. Did Chuck look there?”

“There are people in the kitchen!”

Louise felt a flare of panic at the idea of the babies trying to search the big gleaming kitchen. It was so brightly lit and sparsely decorated that a moving mouse would stand out. “Tell her to stay away from the kitchen. We’re almost out of this and we’ll. . we’ll get the gossamer call. Joy will answer it.”

Behind her, Jillian hissed out a swear word. “Oh, I’m so stupid! I have the gossamer call! Joy can get us out of here.”

Jillian took the small whistle out of her shoe and blew it. Most of the sound it produced was inaudible to humans, but the lowest frequency notes echoed through the caves.

“Jilly!” Louise cried. She thought she heard something rustle in response to the sound but it was gone before she could identify it.

“Sorry! Sorry! I forgot that it isn’t totally ultrasonic.”

“What’s this?” Joy appeared beside Nikola with a big tub of ice cream that she could barely carry. Her face and both front paws were smeared with white cream and little blots of chocolate. Joy held the nearly empty container out for inspection. The label stated “Stracciatella Gelato.” It explained why the babies couldn’t find Joy; she’d been sealed in the massive walk-in freezer. It also confirmed that the monster call traveled on a magical wavelength beyond normal sound. “What is it? What is yummy cold stuff?”

Louise rubbed her face to stop the scream of frustration and anger from coming out. Joy was a baby and didn’t understand the danger they were in.

Jillian, though, didn’t muffle her scream. “It’s ice cream, you greedy little—”

Louise slapped her hand over her twin’s mouth. “Shhh, shhh, we don’t want anyone to hear!”

Jillian continued for another minute, muttering angrily against Louise’s hand.

Louise ignored her sister. “Joy, can you get us out of this spell?”

Joy eyed the gleaming cage of power. “Oooh. Nasty cage spell. No.”

Jillian mumbled, “Mm mm mmm mmm.”

Louise translated. “Can you at least try?”

“There is no try.” Joy pointed at the shimmering bars with a crème-covered paw.

Jillian growled with frustration and pulled Louise’s hand from her mouth. “I’m done with the shield. What about you?”

Louise eyed the spell nervously. It looked right. “Yes, let’s do this.” She waved at Nikola. “Get back. We’re going to try blasting our way out.”

Nikola scurried back into the shadows. Joy waddled away, carrying her tub of gelato. Jillian spoke the command word and then “oohhh” in surprise.

“What?”

“I can see it. It’s like. . black glow. . all around us.”

“Good.” Louise took a deep breath. She spoke the command word.

With a loud crack, the spell activated and arrowed force along the directional arrow drawn in the runes. It plowed through the glyphs of the cage spell, instantly reducing part of the floor into rubble. The sudden trench continued to plow forward, into the distant casting room. The cage vanished as if it had never existed, and they were plunged into darkness. Dust and pieces of the ceiling rained down around them, the sekasha shield protecting the twins.

“Whoo-hoo!” Jillian shouted and cancelled the shield.

They did the dance of joy, jumping up and down, screaming with excitement until Louise remembered that they might be heard.

“Shhh!” Louise smacked her twin.

“If they didn’t hear that, they’re not going to hear me!” Jillian cried. “And how did you hit me? I can’t see anything.”

“I could hear you!” Louise took the spell light out of her pocket and panned it across the room. First thing she spotted was the now empty gelato container lying abandoned on the ground. Then she spotlighted Joy licking her fingers. There was no sign of the little white mouse. “Where’s Nikola?”

Joy looked around and then shrugged.

“Nikola?” Louise called as Jillian picked up Joy, muttering darkly about the baby dragon’s eating habits.

Louise thought she heard a distant squeak. She caught hold of Jillian’s hand and headed toward the noise. How far could Nikola have gotten? She didn’t think a mouse could run so far in such a short time. Had he been hurt by the explosion? There didn’t seem to be any rubble in the direction of his voice, but had she really heard him? “Nikola?”

“Lou!” came the faint answer from the darkness.

“That way!” Jillian whispered.

Around a rough corner and down a narrow hallway and they entered another casting room. The light picked out the glyphs of a spell marked out on the marble in wax and iron. She didn’t recognize any of the components but something about it made her skin crawl.

“Nikola?” Louise whispered.

She jumped when the mouse robot suddenly scurried up her leg so Nikola could perch on her shoulder.

“Lou, something is inside the sphere.” Nikola huddled against her neck, a small, fearful ball of fur.

She panned the light upwards. A massive orb hung from a chain at the center of the spell. The bars were solid metal wrought into elaborate circles and glyphs. Four legs jutted out of the bottom where it would connect to runes on the floor, acting like jumper cables on a circuit board. While she didn’t recognize the spell, she could tell that the magic all focused inward to the four points, and thus funneled into the orb.

And there was something trapped inside.

The creature shifted with a quiet rustle. Louise gasped as the light shone on glossy black feathers. There was some kind of bird in the orb. A massive bird as the beam of light revealed dozens of long flight feathers, each broader than her hand. It was too big to be a turkey vulture or a bald eagle. Why would anyone lock a bird up in this dark, cold place? Was Yves experimenting on the poor thing? Did it even have food and water or was Yves letting it suffer since he planned to kill it anyhow?

“What kind of bird is it?” Jillian whispered.

“I don’t know.” Louise cautiously moved closer to the orb to get a better look. “The feathers remind me of a crow, but it’s too big. Maybe a condor. Maybe something from Elfhome.”

“Like a roc?”

“The elves haven’t verified that rocs exist—”

With a loud rustle of feathers, the wings shifted to reveal a boy’s face. He had short unruly black hair sticking out in all directions, thick dark eyebrows, surprisingly blue eyes, and a large hooked nose. For some reason, he looked familiar even though Louise was sure that she didn’t know him. He tilted his head this way and that, like a bird would, trying to peer past the glare of the spell light.

“That’s not a bird!” Jillian cried. “It’s a — It’s a — What the hell is it?”

“I don’t know,” Louise whispered.

The bird boy wasn’t wearing a shirt. While they couldn’t see how everything connected to his back, it was obvious that he had wings and not just a feathered cloak. He looked like a high school gymnast, lean but strongly built, all his shoulder and chest muscles sharply defined. His wings were raven black, shifting just like a nervous bird’s. He wore dark fabric pants but his feet were bare.

“He has bird feet!” Jillian cried.

Why were bird feet more stunning than wings? Louise didn’t know, but she couldn’t stop staring. His shin and ankle looked human, but his foot split into three long toes with sharp talons at the end of them.

“Do you think he’s — he’s intelligent?” Jillian asked.

Was he in the orb simply because he was more bird than boy? He felt at once pitiful and dangerous. She took a step back.

He lunged and caught hold of Jillian.

The twins both screamed. Louise grabbed the boy’s wrists and tried to free Jillian.

Joy appeared on his arm, hissing angrily. “Bad! Bad! Let go!”

He let go with a cry of dismay, spilling the twins onto the floor. “I’m sorry!” he shouted as they scrambled backward. “Please! Wait! I’m sorry!”

Louise was across the room and halfway up a flight of stairs that she hadn’t noticed before when she realized that Jillian wasn’t following. Nikola was clinging to Louise’s shirt collar, squeaking frantically, “Go! Go!”

“Jilly?” Louise shouted.

“Listen!” Jillian called from somewhere in the darkness.

“Please!” the caged winged creature cried. “Forgive me! I’m sorry!”

“He could be just parroting the words.” Louise dashed back to take Jillian’s hand and tug her toward the steps.

“If he’s intelligent enough to talk, we can’t leave him in the cage!” Jillian resisted being pulled away. “We’re going to burn this place down, remember?”

They were probably going to need a distraction to get cleanly away from the mansion. A fire would work well. To leave any animal trapped in a cage, intelligent or not, while the place filled with flames was unthinkable. Still, Louise didn’t want to risk her twin. Without Louise’s precognition power, Jillian couldn’t sidestep danger. It was probably why Jillian was often caught when Louise had always managed to stay one step out of trouble. “What if he’s dangerous? How do we let him out without getting hurt?”

“We’ll talk to him!” Jillian cried. “The enemy of my enemy—”

“Is a circus freak,” Louise muttered darkly.

“Well, yes. But if he’s intelligent, then he’ll probably see the benefit of cooperating with us. He’s bigger than us; we could use some added muscle. Besides, you dropped the spell light and you’ll need it to find our way out of here.”

Louise hadn’t even realized that she’d dropped it; she’d run through the darkness without noticing it. She might be able to continue safely, but she didn’t like the idea of blindly trusting some vague spider-sense instead of just seeing where they were going. “Okay, we’ll get it.”

As they neared the light, Louise realized that Joy was perched on Jillian’s shoulders. The baby dragon was smacking Jillian on the head, muttering “Other way! Other way, stupid!” as they crept back to the cage.

The creature fell silent as they neared. He had shifted so he was crouched on all fours. He bowed, touching his forehead to the cage’s floor. His wings half-unfurled, showing the bone and muscle structure of his back needed for flight.

“I’m sorry.” He remained bowed low. “I thought you were one of them. I’m sorry I scared you.”

“Okay, we get it.” Jillian obviously didn’t like him begging any more than Louise did.

The boy kept his head bowed to the floor of the cage. “You are her Chosen?”

“Yup! All mine!” Joy hugged Jillian’s face.

“Mmm!” Jillian struggled to pry the baby dragon off her face even as Joy stuck out her tongue at the boy.

“What’s a Chosen?” Louise studied the giant birdcage. If he wasn’t dangerous, how were they going to get him free? Where was the lock? “Is that like being an elf? Are you — were you an elf?”

Jillian managed to pry Joy free. “I don’t think he’s an elf.”

“He’s a tengu,” Joy stated. “Stupid poopy face.” She muttered other things that sounded like curses that the tengu seemed to understand. Hurt and dismay showed on his face.

“He said he was sorry.” Jillian held Joy in her arms so the baby dragon couldn’t plaster herself to Jillian’s face again.

“Who are you?” The boy sat up, moving slowly so he wouldn’t scare them. The circular metal cage didn’t allow for him to stand. “What are you doing here?”

“We’re trying to escape from Yves,” Louise said.

“Yves?”

“Crown Prince Kiss Butt. The son of the exiled emperor of the elves. Yves Desmarais. Husepavua. Whatever his real name is.”

“Ah, Okami Shiroikage,” he whispered. “The Unmaker. I thought he was just a legend made up to frighten our people. I was wrong.”

“He locked us up in a magical cage so he could study us,” Louise said.

“But we broke free,” Jillian added. “What did he do to you?”

“Nothing yet,” the winged boy said.

“Nothing?” the twins both cried. “But you have wings!”

Despite everything, he grinned. “Yes, I have wings. I was given them on my sixth hatching day. It was like having Christmas and New Years and Halloween all at once. My people are part human, part crow. Not that you can usually tell when we’re on Earth.”

Louise completed a full circle around the spherical cage without seeing anything that looked like a door. Maybe if they raised the orb. She panned the light up the chain and across to the winch controls. To her dismay, there was an arc-welding machine sitting on the floor. One of the elves had sealed the orb shut after they’d put the tengu into it. The finality of it shocked her. Yves didn’t intend for the crow boy to come out of the orb alive.

Jillian was right. They couldn’t leave him here. It would haunt them the rest of their lives.

But how could they free him? Even if they could figure out the welding machine, they didn’t have time. They had to save the babies. They couldn’t use the force-strike spell; a blow hard enough to break the orb open would probably kill the crow boy.

She scanned the room, quickly considering what she had to work with.

“Oh, be nice!” Jillian cried as Joy wiggled her butt at the boy.

They had called the baby dragon down to the caves to phase them out of their cage. “Joy, can you get him out of that?”

The baby dragon turned up her nose like an offended princess. “No.”

“No?” Louise echoed in dismay.

“Tengu belong to Providence,” Joy explained.

“Who is Providence?” Jillian asked.

“He’s the guardian spirit of the tengu,” Crow Boy said.

“Five Claw Dragon.” Joy lifted her front right leg and showed off the fact that she had five claws on her paw. “Double stupid poopy face.”

“A dragon?” Jillian cried as Louise asked, “Like you?”

Joy blew a raspberry. “Completely different but mostly the same.”

Louise guessed that meant that the dragons were about the same as humans were to one another. She and Elle were both nine-year-old girls, but after that everything was different about them.

“So you can’t get him out because of Providence?” Jillian asked.

Joy nodded her head energetically. “Tengu belong to Providence.”

Perhaps Joy wouldn’t be so insistent if Crow Boy hadn’t grabbed Jillian. They couldn’t stand there endlessly debating with the little dragon.

Louise reached out to pet Joy on the head. “You can’t touch him, but can you move the cage?”

Joy stared at her with suspicion. “Move cage: free tengu.”

“He stays where he is,” Louise pointed out. “You leave him where you found him.”

“Please, Joy,” Jillian added, “I’ll get you candy!”

“Jawbreakers!” Joy cried.

“Whatever. Just phase the cage, please!”

“Okay.”

They swung the cage side to side on the heavy chain. When it was at its farthest point, Joy shifted it and the tengu was left in midair. He landed lightly and leapt forward to get out of the way of the swinging orb.

The twins backed nervously away from the tengu.

Crow Boy knelt down before them and bowed his head. “Thank you.”

“We’re not out of the doo-doo yet,” Jillian muttered darkly.

They found their way to an extensive wine cellar. Judging by the boxing supplies, the staff would be packing up the wine after the art. Yves was truly abandoning the mansion at full speed. They picked their way through the racks until they found the dimly lit spiral staircase leading up. Louise stopped at the bottom step. She could smell fried onions, cumin, and coriander. She thought she could hear voices.

She reached up to pet Nikola where he was riding her shoulder. He’d been quiet since they found Crow Boy. “Nikola, are there still people in the kitchen?”

“Yes. Nattie is cleaning up from dinner, and there are six others with her. They’re fighting about money; the mansion’s general operating fund is empty.”

On the house blueprints, it had been clear that this stairwell was the only way down into the sub-basements. It spiralled down two stories, past the basement level without connecting, from the large walk-in pantry off the kitchen. There had been no other way out. Obviously they would need a very large distraction somewhere else in the house to lure off the elves.

Louise started ticking through available resources when Crow Boy brushed past her. He’d picked up a long bar of steel from somewhere that he carried like a spear.

“Hide,” he whispered and ran silently up the stairs.

“What’s he doing?” Jillian whispered fiercely.

“Getting into a mess!” Louise ran after him. She couldn’t even shout after him to stop him; they were too close to the elves. What was he thinking? For them to hide and then sneak out when the elves dragged him back down into the basement? It wasn’t going to go that way. The elves were going to kill him, and they’d be trapped as the secret elves searched the basement. What could she do to stop the oncoming disaster? Have the babies call 911? No, the police wouldn’t be here in time to save Crow Boy. No one would get there in time. Turn off the lights? No, the mansion electrical system was still last century. Blow something up? Yes, that would work!

“Is Tesla still in the truck?” Louise cried to Nikola clinging to her collar.

“Yes. The Jawbreakers are with him.”

“Tell Chuck to get to the garage! We’re leaving now!”

“We are?”

“Yes!”

At the top of the steps, Louise nearly tripped over unconscious elves sprawled on the pantry floor. It was Celine with a big ring of keys and one of the males that acted as drivers. Were they the reason Crow Boy had run upstairs? Had he heard them coming and realized that the elves were about to check on the caged prisoners?

And this was the best plan he could come up with?

Granted he had mowed these two down easily enough, but her spider-sense was screaming “this will not end well.” Louise stepped over Celine and grabbed a large sack of flour from the pantry shelf. She had only seconds before everything toppled to complete disaster.

As if on cue, someone shouted, “We need help! The yamabushi is loose!”

Louise ran into the kitchen, carrying the bag of flour.

After the cave dark of the dank sub-basement, the kitchen was a sudden assault of light and smell. Every light was on, reflecting off the gleaming granite counters and stainless-steel appliances. The coppery scent of fresh blood mixed with hot spices and fried onions. Dirty pots and pans beside the sink with steaming water still running was proof that Crow Boy had taken the elves off guard. The fight had spilled to the other side of the kitchen, where he leaped and kicked and spun, fending off Nattie and three males armed with butcher knives. Shouts of “The yamabushi is loose” rang deeper within the house, and Louise could hear reinforcements racing toward the kitchen. Crow Boy was about to be overwhelmed by sheer numbers.

Louise put the flour bag on the granite counter and quickly sketched a disperse spell onto the wrapper.

Nattie snatched up one of the kitchen chairs and swung it hard at Crow Boy. It caught him mid-leap and smashed him down to the floor. The elves leapt to pin the boy to the floor.

“Don’t kill him,” one of the males warned. “We need him breathing.”

“Breathing, yes.” Nattie stomped down on Crow Boy’s left leg, and there was a sickening crack. “In one piece, no. Give me that knife.”

Louise gave the flour bag a hard shove, sending it skidding across the polished stone. She shouted the trigger word. The bag exploded as all the particles blossomed in all directions like an instant dry blizzard.

In the whiteout, Nattie cursed loudly. “Oh, shit! The wood sprites!”

Flour was drifting down. When it settled it would be useless. Louise needed a spark to cause a dust explosion!

Jillian screamed as Celine suddenly caught her from behind.

“I’ve got one of them!” Celine cried. “The other one is here—”

“Let her go!” Louise snatched up a skillet from the sink and swung as hard as she could at the female’s knee. The elf screamed and lunged toward her. Louise backhanded her with the skillet like a tennis racket. There was a satisfying clang as the stainless-steel pan connected with Celine’s face.

Celine lost her grip on Jillian. Louise caught her twin by the wrist and dragged her away from the elf. Celine staggered backwards, glaring at Louise as blood seeped from her mouth.

“You little breeding bitch,” the elf snarled and picked up a meat cleaver. “We only need one of you.”

Joy reared up on Jillian’s shoulder. Her mane flared out, and the baby dragon breathed a blast of fire at Celine’s face.

Celine’s scream was drowned out by a massive fireball as the flour hazing the air exploded.

Louise felt the explosion quake the floor under her feet, but the flames rushed past, a swirl of orange and reds, not touching the twins.

“Mine, stupid poopy face, all mine!” Joy stood on Jillian’s shoulder, mane bristling, muttering in anger as the firestorm raged around them.

The entire kitchen was on fire. Flames crawled up the walls and raced across the ceiling. The stove erupted in a secondary blast.

“We have to get out of here!” Jillian cried.

Celine seemed dead, curled into a tight ball of burnt flesh. Her body, though, reminded Louise that Crow Boy was somewhere in the kitchen.

“We need to find Crow Boy first!”

They found him halfway across the room, crawling toward them instead of toward the blown-open door.

“I was afraid you would be trapped.” He coughed as they got him up. Using his wings and a hand on either of their shoulders, he managed to balance and then half-hop, half-fly toward the door.

“That was stupid!” Louise cried. “There were dozens of ways we could have gotten out of there without them even knowing we were free. Next time, wait until we tell you what to do.”

He grimaced in pain. “I sincerely hope there isn’t a next time.”

The three of them couldn’t fit through the shattered doorway at the same time, so Louise stepped through first. It took her outside the protection of Joy’s shields, and the sudden flare of intense heat and thick smoke made her stumble forward, coughing.

She saw the gunman just as he saw her. She stared unbelieving as he raised his rifle and took aim at her.

But then the male fell over, twitching.

“Hooyah!” Chuck Norris squeaked as she fist-pumped. “Taser is in the mouse!”

“Chuck!”

Chuck waved her tiny hands. “I totally saved you!”

Louise scooped up the mouse robot. “Yes, you did. Thank you.”

The detached garage had obviously been built to hold horse carriages. It was a massive, dimly lit building with heavy timbers supporting its barnlike roof. It housed a dozen sleek modern cars. The light of the growing house fire flickered through celestial windows over the bay doors. From deep pools of darkness, the light gleamed off polished chrome in pinpoints like demonic eyes.

A box truck sat in the oversized end bay. Louise’s heart sank as she envisioned trying to find Tesla in a tightly packed truck. As they rounded the back end, however, she was relieved to see that the elves hadn’t started to load it yet. Carefully labeled boxes sat in stacks, obviously organized into groups. The Jawbreakers stood on one of the larger cardboard boxes, waving.

“That was so scary!” The two broke into excited squeaking. “We were so scared. And Lou! Bang! That was awesome. And then boom! Better than fireworks!”

“Are you in here?” Jillian asked.

“Yup! Yup! We’re right here!”

The box had been labeled: “Wood Sprites’ toys, possibly dangerous.” It had been sealed shut with strapping tape. Louise pulled out her Swiss army knife. While the mice all sang “Boom, boom, fireworks bloom” in four-part harmony, Louise cut open the box and folded back the flaps to reveal Tesla.

The mice fell silent as Louise snapped open the storage hatch. The nactka was still safely inside. The twins breathed out with relief, and all the mice cheered. The elves must not have realized that Tesla had a hidden compartment.

“What is that?” Crow Boy looked like he was going to fall over.

“The most important thing in the world.” Louise closed up the hatch. “We need to get out of here. Fast.”

“Lou.” Nikola tugged at her hair. “Put this mouse someplace safe and I’ll drive Tesla.”

She tucked the little bundle of fur into her carpenter pants leg pocket. Tesla shook awake and wagged his tail. She hugged him tightly.

“Awesome!” Jillian cried as she lunged into the box to pull out their tablets from deep inside it. “They’re still password locked. And our phones! Yay!” She dove into another box that was labeled: “Wood Sprites’ objects, unidentified, possibly dangerous.”

“What is so dangerous about a soldering gun?” Jillian muttered, still half inside the box.

“We need to go!” Louise scanned the cars around them. “We’ll take one of the cars and send the rest out to random addresses to muddy the trail.”

“I say we take the Lamborghini.” Jillian pointed at the dangerous-looking sports car.

None of the cars blended in with normal traffic. All the other vehicles were the tanklike limousines. The Lamborghini could outrun anything short of a helicopter and maybe even that. At the moment, speed and maneuverability outweighed everything.

“Does it have self-driving?” She scooped up the Jawbreakers. “It is a Lamborghini.”

Nikola tilted his head, which usually meant he was accessing another computer. “Yes, it has a self-drive option. It’s recommended to be used when the driver has been drinking. What does taking in fluids have to do with driving?”

“We’ll explain later,” Jillian said. “Can you disarm its security and unlock it?”

The Lamborghini chirped and its doors opened. The garage doors all started upwards, gliding slightly on well-oiled tracks, preparing for a mass exodus of cars.

Crow Boy wavered in place, looking like he was upright on sheer willpower alone. There were a dozen thin cuts on his arms, seeping blood. If he fainted, Louise doubted that she and Jillian could get him into a car. It took several tense minutes to get him across the large garage to the Lamborghini and into the passenger seat, wings and all.

Only then did Louise realize that the sports car was much smaller inside than she had expected. There was no backseat and there was a stick shift between the two front ones.

Nikola hopped into the driver’s seat and put his paws on the steering wheel. “Where are we going?”

“River Edge Station.” Jillian scrambled into the car and straddled the divider between the seats. “Yves can track us via the anti-theft GPS on this.”

“No.” Louise vetoed that. “We need to get Crow Boy to a hospital quickly.”

Crow Boy murmured something about no hospital and flying under the radar.

Louise ignored him as she eyed the crowded interior. The only place for her was on Crow Boy’s lap. She eased carefully in, making sure that she didn’t put weight on his broken leg. “The trains don’t come often enough to River Edge; we’ll be stranded at the station for too long.” She tried not to be scared when he wrapped his arms around her. Joy sat on Louise’s lap and glared up at the boy. “We’ll go into the city and have the car make a bunch of stops. They won’t know where we actually got out.”

“Okay, the city,” Nikola said. The engine suddenly rumbled loudly to life.

“Oh shit, it’s a combustion engine?” Louise thought only big construction vehicles were still run by gasoline.

Nikola tilted his head. “To go we do this?”

The sports car leapt forward with a roar and squeal of tires. They slid sideways through the turn of the driveway and raced toward the far road. Louise and Jillian both shrieked in surprise and fear.

“Oh. Sorry.” The car started to slow.

“No, don’t slow down now! Go!”

“Okay!” Nikola bounced in his seat with excitement and they flew into the night. “Mapping quickest route to Manhattan.”

Third star to the right, Louise thought, straight on toward dawn.

It was twenty miles to Times Square. They did it in nearly ten minutes, leaving black contrails of tire marks at every turn. They slowed down — slightly — for the Lincoln Tunnel while Nikola explained that he’d avoided the George Washington Bridge because it was congested despite the 3:00 a.m. time.

Louise gripped tight the armrest built into the door, trying not to scream as they zipped past slower cars. “I thought that self-driven cars couldn’t speed.”

“Speed limit is set by the road, not the car.” Nikola tilted his head back and forth as he communicated with outside computers. “Snow or ice or something could change the speed that the road can be traveled safely, so the car is told the speed limit along with all the other traffic data. We’re filtering the information as it’s coming from the road, leaving all the other factors constant but changing the speed limit upwards by sixty miles per hour.”

Louise glanced at the dashboard, read their speed, and whimpered slightly.

They slewed sideways into an impossibly rare parking space within view of the Times Square subway station entrance. They sat there panting as the car rumbled in idle.

“So, where do we go?” Jillian whispered.

“We need to go to a hospital for — for — Crow Boy.” Louise winced as she realized that they’d spent the last hour fleeing and not asking the most basic of questions, like “What is your name?”

“We need to take him to a hospital.”

“Which one?” Jillian made it sound like there might be several hospitals that specialized in boys with wings.

Louise decided to focus on “boy” instead of “wings.” “Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital.”

Nikola took that as a plan, and the car roared as it leapt out of the parking space.