Wood Sprites (36 page)

He did look like Crown Prince Kiss Butt. He had the same strong but nearly too sharp lines of his face. His hair was pale blond. His eyes were blazing green; it looked like he had to be wearing contacts to make them that vivid. He locked gazes with her, and the corners of his mouth turned up slightly.

Something about it made her angry. She didn’t know who or what he was, but she had spent a lifetime getting around people smarter than him. She gave him her best “I have no idea what you’re talking about” smile. As his smile faded, she felt stronger, like she’d already defeated him.

She settled in her seat beside Jillian and ran her hands over the desk. The school had tried to keep them apart in first grade. It was a simple matter to lay siege to the adults’ patience and slowly but surely push for what they wanted: seats together. It had taken a month to wear down two sets of teachers, the principal and vice principal and both of their parents, but in the end they had won.

Game of wits, she could win.

“Class, this is Tristan LaClaire. He’s going to have a very hard time as there’s only a few days of school left, so please be nice to him.”

There was already a desk for him as if produced by magic. Thankfully it was across the room, but still he had direct sight of them without needing to turn around.

Elle put her hand up as Tristan settled into his seat. “What will he be doing during the play? All the parts have been taken.”

Miss Hamilton considered. She probably thought about the fact that they were short on pirates but also knew that the pirates were losing popularity in her class as the rehearsals continued. A new student didn’t need an immediate strike against him. “He can be one of the Lost Boys.”

“But we already have all the Lost Boys.”

“We can have an unnamed one. It won’t be a problem.”

Unnamed Lost Boy. Louise shivered slightly at how fitting that felt for the boy seated to her far right. Tristan LaClaire? She felt sure that wasn’t his name any more than Flying Monkey Five.

He was here, reason unknown. The key to what he wanted might be connected to who he really was.

* * *

It was nerve-wracking to have Tristan, or whatever his real name was, in class. He was there, in the corner of her eye, no matter how hard she tried to ignore him. Every time she glanced his direction, he would meet her gaze and smirk.

It was the smirk that annoyed her the most. He knew that she had no idea why he was there and was feeling superior about it. Worse, she couldn’t even guess. If her life didn’t include baby dragons and robots possessed by unborn brothers and books of magic, she could easily come up with a dozen reasons why Tristan was in their classroom. With all normal logic removed, though, it was dangerous to try and guess.

In art class, they were doing team projects. Tristan was assigned to Elle’s team since they were short one person. Louise worked to ignore him, making it a point to sit with her back to them. Unlike class, though, they were allowed to talk in the art room.

“I don’t think they like me much.” Tristan’s tone was more smugly amused than hurt.

“They’re just really shy.” Elle surprised Louise by coming to their defense. “Until recently they didn’t talk to anyone. Which is kind of sad. They’re actually very nice once they get over being too shy to talk.”

“Oh.” He sounded almost concerned. Was he simply changing his tone because he thought that Elle was a friend of theirs? “What brought them out of their shell?”

Louise nearly forgot how to breathe as she realized that Elle could spill everything. Their contact with Nigel made it clear that they’d put too much into the videos; anyone who watched them would assume that Lemon-Lime knew everything about Elfhome.

“They joined the Girl Scouts.” Elle misled him brilliantly.

* * *

By lunchtime Louise was jumpy and short-tempered. She just wanted to lock herself in the girls’ restroom and scream. Jillian seemed fine, at least on the surface, but she’d retreated behind Peter Pan’s fearless personality.

Still, Jillian flinched just as much as Louise when Tristan sat down at their lunch table.

Zahara eyed him warily and asked the question that everyone had avoided all morning. “Why did you come to school so late in the year? We’re almost done.”

“I’m on a fact-finding mission,” Tristan said.

“Facts on what?” Louise forced herself to ask.

“This and that.” He poked at his lunch. “How good the food is, for one. It made more sense for me to come now and see if I like this school enough to go in the fall than to wait until September and find out I hate it.”

“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.

* * *

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.”