Wood Sprites(121)

They had the second generator but its battery pack needed to be charged during the day while they were at school. They could make another battery pack—actually they should, just so they had a spare—but they couldn’t finish it and have it fully charged by tomorrow morning. The twins weren’t sure what would happen if they separated Joy from the generator for any length of time. The baby dragon refused to cooperate in any experiments. It was possible that the lack of magic would kill her, so they didn’t force her. Also a plan of leaving Joy home alone had “bad idea” written all over it.

So they were stuck with the foursome: Nikola and Tesla, Joy and the generator.

With Flying Monkey Five in their classroom, taking all four to school seemed like a recipe for disaster.

“Please listen to us.” Nikola pressed up against Louise. “We’ve waited all day to speak with you. Please let us talk!”

“Okay, we’re listening.”

Nikola opened his mouth and then stood there a moment. Finally he admitted in a quiet little voice, “We don’t know where to start.”

“What is Tristan real name? It’s not Flying Monkey Five. No one names their kid that.”

“We’re not sure. When he was born, he was given the name of Tristan Jacques Desmarais, but if we understand names correctly, that’s his real name. Maybe. His father’s name is listed as Edmond Desmarais and that’s not his father’s real name, so Desmarais can’t be his real-real name. Right?”

“Wait. Desmarais? He’s Anna Desmarais’ son?”

He nodded. “Here. We’ll show you.” He looked toward the new kitchen television and it clicked on. A sepia photograph of Ming the Merciless scowled down at them. “This is the earliest photo I could find of Ming. At that time he was known as Pruet Lalumiere. It is dated April 16, 1853.”

“Ming is an elf?” Jillian cried in surprise as Nikola flashed more photos of Ming on the screen. “Whoa, slower, we can’t see that fast!”

“Sorry.” Nikola slowed down to a few seconds per photo. Nearly too fast to follow except that they were all of Ming, unsmiling, in old-fashioned clothes. After the first one or two photos, which seem to be portraits, the following pictures were candid shots where Ming barely seemed to realize he was being photographed. Horses were replaced by model-T Fords and then color slowly leached in. The time between the photos was growing longer, as if he became more and more cautious of having his picture taken. As an elf stuck on Earth, he most likely didn’t want proof that he was immortal just lying around.

“I think Ming is an elf king exiled from Elfhome,” Louise said. “I think that Tristan was telling the truth about his father, he just didn’t expect us to take him seriously.”

“Weird. Why would he do that?”

“Tristan is an elf.” Louise pointed out what she had realized on the train to support that. “And elves don’t lie.”

“It’s socially frowned upon,” Jillian grumbled. “It doesn’t mean they can’t. It’s just extremely dishonorable to lie.”

“If we were normal kids, we wouldn’t have believed what he said, so it’s fairly safe to tell us the truth.”

“But if he thinks we’re normal kids, why is he at our school?”

“I don’t know.” The obvious answer was that Anna Desmarais had sent him there. But why?

“I could only find four photographs of Crown Prince Kiss Butt. His name is listed as Yves Desmarais.” Nikola flashed through the pictures on fast-forward.

Yves? As in the man who ordered Alexander kidnapped and Windwolf killed? If Ming was the exiled ruler of the elves, then that would make sense. The Crown Prince had met with his father’s still-loyal subjects to pass on orders. As Viceroy, Windwolf represented Queen Soulful Ember’s presence in Pittsburgh. Not only would Windwolf report any troop movements, he had the power to reduce them to slag. If the twins’ research was correct, then there weren’t any other domana-caste elves in Pittsburgh.

“Wait!” Jillian cried. “Back up to the second photo!” The picture showed a collection of people, all unaware of the camera as they stared at something horrific. Only Yves seemed unaffected by whatever they were looking at. Jillian pointed at a woman with both hands covering her mouth. “That’s Esme!”

Nikola tilted his head as he chased info down on the Internet. “Yes, that’s Esme Shenske. Anna Desmarais is her mother.”

“What?” Jillian and Louise both shouted.

Nikola cringed away. “Anna Desmarais is Esme Shenske’s mother.”