He looked up, surprised. “Ach, what bonnie wee lasses!”
They circled the table like tigers, checking the room for spy equipment. Louise doubted that there would be any but Jillian had wanted to be sure.
“I’m sorry, but this is going to be a private meeting.” His Scottish burr faded as he gained control of his surprise. “Go on back to the party. I’ll be out in a short while.”
“You’re meeting with us,” Louise said.
“I am now?” He smiled despite the fact he didn’t seem to believe them.
“Yes, we need to talk.” Jillian positioned Nikola by the door. “Watch the door.”
“Watch it do what?” Nikola whispered, apparently unsure if he was supposed to talk in front of Nigel or not.
Jillian covered her face with her hand just as their mother would. “Just warn us if someone is coming in.”
Nigel stood up. “Lassies—”
“We’re Lemon-Lime JEl-Lo,” Louise stated before he could order them out again. “We’re the ones you’re meeting with.”
“You’re…” he started but trailed off, looking puzzled.
“Lemon-Lime JEl-Lo!” Jillian snapped.
“He was probably expecting someone older,” Louise pointed out.
“Well, yes, and taller.” He came to crouch down in front of them so they were eye-to-eye. “You’re truly Lemon-Lime?”
He seemed so disappointed.
“We have the gossamer call like we promised you,” Louise cried.
“I’m sure you do.” His voice was heavy with sadness. “It’s just that when I saw your last video, I thought that you must know more than the news we got from Elfhome prior to Startup. I thought you knew that the Viceroy survived the attack on him.”
“You can’t tell anyone that we don’t know! ” the twins cried.
“We do know who attacked him,” Louise said.
“At least some of the people involved,” Jillian said.
“They’re doing a lot of horrible things like kidnapping children and killing scientists,” Louise continued. “And they want the quarantine zone expanded. They attacked Windwolf, and now they’re using his disappearance to push through the vote.”
Nigel made a surprised pained sound like someone had punched him in the stomach. “So humans murdered the Viceroy?”
“He’s not dead!” Louise felt sure of it, although she knew that she couldn’t prove it. “Everyone has to stop acting like he is.”
“And we’re not sure what they are,” Jillian added. “They might look human, but we don’t think they really are.”
“They might be elves,” Louise said.
“Evil anti-elves,” Jillian cried.
Louise winced. The extremely short version sounded stupid. She wasn’t sure, however, how to condense three years of secretive information gathering. “The AMNH has an exhibit of things created by elves found on Earth over the last two thousand years. The elves were getting here via natural ‘hyperphase gates’ found in cave systems; basically magic-created fissures between the two universes. These pathways were their equivalent to the Silk Road. Elves used to come to Earth to sell these items. Around two hundred and forty years ago, they had a war with someone. Someone so powerful that they destroyed all the pathways between the worlds to end the war.”
Nigel tilted his head in confusion. “I visited the exhibit yesterday. I noticed that they didn’t explain how the items ended up on Earth. How do you know all this?”
“Some of it is deductive reasoning,” Louise admitted. “Windwolf already knew English when Director Maynard met him during the first Startup. He had copies of maps that King Charles the Second issued to the Hudson Bay Company when he founded their first expedition in 1668. His copy also showed an English trading post where Pittsburgh stands. It dates the map between 1740 when William Trent established that outpost and 1758 when Fort Duquesne was built by the French.”
“I never heard that about the map before,” Nigel said.
Jillian waved it off as unimportant. “One of the EIA archive videos from Maynard’s first contact with Windwolf has a close-up of the map. The EIA has restricted access to their videos, so no one has actually studied them at length.”
“I see.” Nigel clearly was afraid to ask how they’d gotten hold of it.
It seemed safe to lump the Codex in with data they’d seen but didn’t own. “We’ve also found the journal of an elf who was in France during the seventeen hundreds. We’re not sure when he arrived but he was there for several years prior to being killed in the French Revolution in the 1790s. When he attempted to travel back to Elfhome, the way was unexpectedly blocked. He traveled to several points and was dismayed to find all the pathways closed off.”