“Us?”
“We’re the only ones that seem to know the truth,” Louise added the strawberries to her basket.
“What if they get mad and start to look for us?”
“Jello Shots have been trying to figure out who we are for the last two years. We apparently are like world-class ninjas because a hundred thousand geeks haven’t been able to find a clue.”
“I don’t know if that’s scary or sad.”
“I think it’s both.” Louise picked up premium beef jerky that their mother would never, never buy because of how horribly expensive it was.
“Yeah, both.” Jillian eyed the basket. “Why are you buying so much junk? You know we’ll have to hide it all.”
“Because we can,” Louise said. “Besides, I want something in case we get hungry. We’ve got lots of work to do. Thank god we’re nearly done with saving the babies.”
“So this video is of Peter Pan and Tinker Bell saving Windwolf?”
Louise laughed. “No, I just riffed on my dream. Two Pittsburghers save him. I don’t even name them. The guy is dressed up as an African explorer. The girl looks like Tinker Bell with the blonde hair and the chest but she has a flamethrower. They kill this saurus that is chasing Windwolf and take him to the Neighborhood of Make-Believe.”
“That is so weird. Why?”
“I had a dream about Nigel in Pittsburgh. I just smashed the two dreams together to protect Alexander.”
“Okay, that works.” They stopped in the kitchen equipment aisle and considered the tools. They needed heavy gloves, tongs, and something to stand in for the rack holding the vials of frozen embryos so they could practice stealing them out of the liquid nitrogen vaults. “Did you check on the snake?”
“Yes, we can pick it up tomorrow afternoon. All we need to do is make sure ice doesn’t melt in the nactka and we’re ready to roll.”
* * *
They’d been so upset the night of the robbery that they’d just brought the nactka home inside the gift shop box and hidden it away in the back of their closet. There it had stayed, untouched.
They set up for the experiment on their desk, arranging the magic generator, oven mitts, scissors, a thermometer, and a glass of normal ice. They’d toyed with stealing a cup of liquid nitrogen out of the chemistry lab at school but the long commute on the crowded train made it unsafe and impractical.
First impression of the nactka, as Louise lifted it out of its box, remained of a delicately etched monster-size egg. According to the Codex, much like Dufae’s box, it required magic to open and close, but once sealed, it would hold whatever was inside in stasis without magic. Louise suspected—if she had translated the Elvish and understood quantum physics as well as she thought—that the device acted like a miniature gate, teleporting whatever was inside from the moment the nactka was sealed to the moment that it was unsealed.
They set the nactka carefully on the magic generator. While Jillian filmed the experiments, Louise took an outside reading of it with the thermometer and made note that it was the same temperature as the room.
“We need to test the ice before it melts.” Jillian pointed her new camera at the glass filled with ice.
“I’m hurrying.” Louise spoke the key word to unseal the nactka.
The dome of the device cracked at the lines and unfolded like a flower as if the cream-colored shell were on hinges. They both yelped in surprise as a creature popped up out of the trap and hissed angrily. Before Louise could get a clear look at it, the creature sprang to the edge of the desk, then to her footboard and then bounced off the glass of the window.
“What is it?” Jillian backed way, trying to film the animal as it bounced around the room like a rubber ball.
“Um.” Louise got the impression of a small snaky-body and a mouth full of teeth. No snake she’d ever seen moved with leaps and bounds. It landed back on the desk beside the nactka and shoved it aside to stand on the magic generator. “I don’t know.” Louise tore open the bag of goldfish crackers and put one of the bright orange fish on the edge of the desk. She softly snapped her fingers; might as well start training it now. “Cracker?”
She sat on her bed, giving the creature an opportunity to investigate the food.
“I don’t think snakes eat crackers.” Jillian worked the zoom controls on her camera.
The creature sniffed loudly and then darted forward to snatch up the goldfish. It opened wide and shoved the cracker into its surprisingly large mouth.
“I don’t think it’s a snake.” Louise slid another goldfish onto the edge of the desk after the creature retreated back to the generator. She snapped her fingers together softly. “Cracker? Snakes don’t have legs.”