Wood Sprites(139)
“A note would have worked,” Jillian grumbled. “What happened? Why do you hate Ming?”
“Because he’s horrible!” Louise moved Joy from her shoulder to the desktop; she didn’t want the baby dragon to see into the pillowcase. Joy probably could and definitely would open all the cans of fish and gorge on them.
Having gobbled down the slice of cheddar, Joy twiddled her fingers. “Yummy yellow stuff!”
“It’s cheese.” Nikola sounded slightly smug for being able to name the food but ruined the image by adding, “Right?”
“Yes, it’s cheese.” Louise fed a wedge of smelly blue cheese to Joy, who sniffed it experimentally and eyed the blue-green lumps. “That’s blue cheese. I think.”
“Stinky!” Joy cried as if this was a wonderful quality and then crammed the entire wedge into her mouth. “Nom, nom, nom.”
“Lou!” Jillian cried. “What happened with Ming?”
While feeding more cheese to Joy, Louise explained what she had heard. “Because half-elves grow up slower than humans, he’s just as much a kid as we are, and they’ve been making him live all alone for years. They won’t get him a nanny and they won’t leave here to be with him because they think this place has magic.”
“It does,” Jillian said.
Louise gave Jillian a puzzled look. Had Jillian been experimenting with magic while Louise was gone?
“I noticed last night downstairs.” Jillian only got more confusing.
“What are you talking about?” Louise said.
“I could see magic downstairs.” Jillian pointed toward the foyer.
Louise stared at her twin.
“You can’t see it?” Jillian asked.
“No!” What’s more, Louise had never heard of anyone being able to “see” magic. “What does it look like?”
“It’s purplish and misty and it’s warm,” Jillian said.
“How do you know it’s magic?” Louise asked.
Jillian pointed at Nikola. “Because it’s the same as the magic generator.”
“You can see magic?” Louise barely kept from shouting. It felt like a betrayal that Jillian had some weird special ability and she didn’t. That Jillian hadn’t even mentioned it up to now.
“I thought you could too.” Jillian started to cry.
Louise stared at her twin in dismay. Once again Jillian had bested her without even trying; so why was she crying?
32: FLAYED
One good thing about Joy stuffing herself was that she was asleep before Anna knocked on the door and walked in before they could answer. Julian was in her Peter Pan costume and obviously hiding deep within the character. Louise had changed back to her normal clothes; she wanted to keep her ninja activities as secret as possible.
“Jillian, where are your clothes?” Anna asked.
“I want to keep them clean,” Jillian stated. “If we eat something like pancakes for breakfast, they might get messy.”
“She’s a very messy eater,” Louise said because it might be useful for one of them to constantly be dropping food. It would be easier to sneak out food if some of it was always rolling under the table. “When can we go home and get everything we want to keep?”
“This is your home now.” Anna waved to take in Esme’s steampunk bedroom. “The house is part of your parents’ estate. It’s up to the executor of their will to go through things and decide what is to be done with them.”
“Who is that?” Louise hated the idea of a stranger going through their things.
“I don’t know. I have my lawyers looking into it.”
“We should be able to get our stuff,” Jillian said. “Our clothes and everything in our bedroom is ours.”
“In these kind of things, it’s best to follow protocols; otherwise things get messy.”
There was a protocol for kidnapping your grandchildren? “What are we going to do for clothes?”
“We’ll go out shopping later.” She waved them toward the door. “Come downstairs for breakfast.”
Would the cook notice all the food missing? Would he tell anyone? Would Ming realize that Louise heard everything? Louise wished that she could turn to someone for comfort but she was afraid that if she leaned on Jillian, her twin would break under the pressure.
Nikola was leaning against her, obviously not wanting to be left alone. It would be better, though, that he never come to Ming’s attention. Besides, Joy probably wouldn’t stay hidden if there was a table full of food just above her head. Louise patted him reassuringly but commanded firmly, “Stay.”