Wood Sprites

They had less than a week to rescue the tengu children, and then the forest beyond the fence would be swapped for Pittsburgh. If Team Mischief hadn’t succeeded by then, the fight would be moved to Elfhome as the secret elves transported the nestlings across the border. Yves would have thousands of oni warriors at his command. Last anyone heard, Windwolf had been hundreds of miles away at Aum Renau. And one by one, the tengu children would be murdered.

Louise turned away from the window, trying to focus. They’d spent the nine hours on the train verifying that the children weren’t in the safe house anymore, nor at any of the other safe houses that Crow Boy knew that his people used while seeking the freedom of Pittsburgh. Logic suggested that Yves would have kept the children close to the quarantine zone, but it was nearly a hundred and sixty miles in circumference.

Less than a week and hundreds of square miles.

“Pft, nuts!” Joy muttered from the minibar, and a can went flying across the hotel room. “Oh! Candy!”

The cans of nuts landed beside the babies, who were ransacking the luggage, looking for the mini-hovercarts. Nikola was operating Tesla to move the heavy things and the girls were in the mice, darting here and there, squeaking excitedly. Like the Johnsons’ children, eventually they’d found their first train ride unbearably long and boring. Taking their cues from the real children, the babies had repeatedly asked how much longer the trip would be and fought with each other. At least the Team Mischief babies did not vomit, poop, pee, or scream — something that the Johnson kids did with alarming frequency. The three children had been an education on how difficult parenting really was. After five hours, Louise had been really wishing the Johnsons had off switches.

The hotel room door opened and Crow Boy came in carrying bags of takeout.

“The house is empty.” His voice was wooden. He set the bags on the suite’s dinette table. “Empty and clean.”

Louise breathed out in mixed relief. They’d tapped spy satellites on the train, pinpointed the safe house, and examined it remotely by every means they could think of. Crow Boy had insisted on going and checking it alone. The twins agreed because the only thing they couldn’t discount were the children being dead inside.

He collapsed into one of the chairs. “I feel so useless.”

“We’ll find them.” She opened the bags. “Indian?” There had been a Chinese restaurant just on the corner.

“I don’t know who I can trust.” He laid his head on the table. “Not everyone who is Chinese is an oni, but the human-looking oni are all traveling with Chinese visas. The oni need to have people close to both sides of the quarantine zones to get their people in and out unseen. The EIA have weeded out the moles in their agency, but there are plenty of others on Earth. We need to be careful not to be seen.”

She nodded, her stomach flipping at the thought of being captured again. Yves had been careless once, mostly because Feng had been there, distracting him. Yves wouldn’t underestimate the twins again. This time he’d know all about the babies and Joy.

Her hands trembled slightly as she opened up the containers of palak paneer, vegetable korma, chicken tikka masala, samosa, and naan bread.

Crow Boy reached out and took her hand; his was large and calloused compared to hers. “You only need to find them. I’ll deal with the guard.” For a moment he seemed like an adult man, and then the moment was gone, and he was an exhausted, battered fourteen-year-old boy with the world on his shoulders.

“I told you: no charging in.” She smacked him on the top of his head. “We’re smarter than Yves. He’ll never see us coming.”

Crow Boy’s shoulders shook with silent laughter.

“Promise!” Louise smacked him again.

“I will do anything you ask of me, but I won’t let you put yourself in danger. If it comes to a fight, you must let me do what I’ve been trained to do. Alone.”

At the mansion, he had taken on half a dozen adults by himself. He taken out two and held his own for several minutes against four. Those he was fighting had been worried enough to call for help.

“Are you like some kind of super ninja warrior?” Louise asked.

“Yes.”

“Really?”

His shoulders shook again with silent laughter. “It is a long story of love and honor and loyalty, but the simple answer is yes.”

“Oh, come on!” Louise cried. “I know you’re tired, but we need to know everything we can about what’s going on. If we’d known what was going on right after our first visit to the museum, we could have stopped — stopped everything. As it was, we didn’t even get a message to our sister warning her or Windwolf.”