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 an elf 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. 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 an 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 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.
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 hidden the cans of cat food in the back of the drawer of the 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 towel, 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 to 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.”