“Just hold still!” Jillian cried.
Joy stuck out her tongue at Jillian.
After they were all dried off, they went back upstairs to get dressed for the gala and plan for their parents arrival. Nikola followed them up, murmuring Christopher Robin lines that they’d taught him and complaining.
“Tut, tut, it looks like rain. It still doesn’t make sense. Silly old bear. But what bear? You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. That one at least makes sense.”
* * *
Louise stared at the mirror, trying to gain confidence to actually leave the house. She felt like everyone was going to be looking at them, knowing the impossible and illegal things that the girls had been doing the last few days. Stealing magical artifacts from a museum. Baby dragons. Robotic dogs possessed by unborn siblings. She wanted the comfort of knowing that she and Jillian were drawing attention because they were cute and not because people knew. Jillian looked cute and they were twins. It stood to reason that Louise must be just as cute. All she needed to do was believe.
“We should just leave him here,” Jillian said as Louise tied a big yellow bow onto Nikola.
“No! We have to take him.” Louise’s whole insides went queasy at the idea of leaving their little brother behind. “It’s part of having a baby; you can’t leave them alone just because it’s inconvenient. Something might happen to him.”
“We were going to put him in the time capsule in the back of the closet.”
In truth, they had only given a little thought about where they were going to store the nactka once it was loaded. It seemed unlikely that Nikola would be safe in the back of the closet for years and years. The plan seemed so solid until it hit that “and then what” gray zone. Tesla wasn’t really a good compromise. They needed to do more, but until then, they needed to take care of Nikola like he was a real baby.
And real babies had to have someone with them all the time.
Tesla would just have to be added to the list of things they had already planned to take. Speaking of which, she needed to pack them. They needed to take their tablets and the gossamer calls they made. The magical whistles were hidden with all the other things related to the Codex. She shoved the calls into their purses, and then in a near panic, added the flash drive and photographs.
“If we take Nikola, we’ll end up having to take Joy too.” They weren’t sure what taking the magic generator out of Nikola would do. Until they could carefully test it, they’d have to keep one running inside the nanny-bot while the other recharged. So far, they hadn’t been able to separate Joy from the generator, which made them suspect that she needed magic to thrive.
“Gala food!” Joy cried.
Leaving Joy at home seemed even worse than the idea of somehow leaving her behind. “No. We all go. We’re a family.”
* * *
The trick, however, was to get Nikola to the gala at the Waldorf Astoria without their parents noticing. By secreting him in the car before their parents got home and careful redirection from the parking garage to the gala, they were able to keep him quietly following behind, unnoticed. He was being good, although part of it seemed to be that he was overwhelmed by everything. He kept twisting his head, trying to see everything.
When they checked in, however, one of the women manning the ticket window glanced beyond their parents and said, “Oh, that’s not really real, is it?”
As their parents turned, Jillian threw both arms around Nikola and grinned brightly. “No, he’s not real. He’s our nanny-bot.”
“What is he doing here?” their mother cried while their father looked too surprised to speak.
“He’s going to record us all together!” Jillian cried. “We both want to be in the picture—you can’t tell we’re twins if we’re not in the shot together. And we never have any video with Daddy in it when we’re together.”
Which was something their mother complained about constantly.
“We can’t bring him in with us.” Their mother started to scan the lobby.
Nikola cringed away from their mother.
Louise petted his head, trying to comfort him. “Why not? He wouldn’t bite or bark or pee.”
“He’s just one big self-moving camera.” Jillian pointed to a couple with their phones out, taking video. “They’re filming.”
“We’ll have to check him in the coat room,” their mother growled.
“Someone might take him!” Louise cried.
“You should have thought about that before bringing him.” Their mother turned back to the woman at the ticket window. “Where’s the coat check room?”