“I’ve devised four exit routes from this room to the sidewalk, depending on time of day.” Jillian poured out M&M’s onto the blueprint. “In the mornings, Nattie is in the kitchen along with Celine. Ming and Anna are in their suites in the east wing.” She slid red M&M to mark the locations of the adults. “And the rest are scattered among the outbuildings.” She placed four green M&Ms in the west wing. “And we’re here.”
She flicked a 3D rendered model to Louise’s tablet. “These are the four exits. That door.” She pointed at the hallway door. “The bathroom into Lain’s bedroom and then out into the hallway again. I’ve discovered that Esme actually hinged the plywood over the real windows.” She pointed at the false wall of the secret room. “There’s climbing equipment that we can…”
“Candy!” Joy abandoned nibbling on the paper hat to frantically snatch up the M&Ms. “Nom, nom, nom!”
“Joy!” Jillian cried. “That’s mine! I was saving those!”
Escape planning was paused while Jillian and Joy frantically ate the candy until both looked like chipmunks with stuffed cheeks.
“What’s the other ways out?” Louise asked once the M&Ms were gone.
“Mmm.” Jillian pointed at Joy while chewing. The baby dragon pulled the paper hat onto her head and saluted. “Mmmhm.” Jillian swallowed. “She’s phased at least twice her mass through the false wall. I’m not sure her limit. We could experiment.”
“Let’s keep that as Backup Plan B or maybe even C or D.” Louise gazed at the blueprint feeling uneasy. If they could wait the twenty-seven days to the next Shutdown, fleeing to Pittsburgh would be simple. But she knew they couldn’t wait that long. They had to go soon. “Who the hell came up with the stupid idea of having Shutdown once a month? Why not days on Elfhome and nights on Earth, or something sane like that?”
Nikola took it as a serious question. He tilted his head as he announced, “That was actually one suggested schedule but the elves rejected it. They proposed that Pittsburgh would visit Elfhome only once a year. Pittsburghers advocated that the city would go through Startup and Shutdown once a month, staying on Elfhome for forty-eight hours every thirty days. The UN chose the current schedule as a compromise.”
Compromise? The UN must be using some new definition of the word where neither party got anything they wanted.
If the UN “arbitrarily” set the cycle of Pittsburgh being stranded for a whole month, then it meant Ming really chose the timing. If Louise had to guess, he wanted to drive away the two million humans living in the metropolitan area. It was one thing to live in a city that occasionally visited another world, and quite another to be stuck there three hundred and fifty-three days out of the year. With one manipulation of the treaty terms, Ming made it so the humans fled Pittsburgh, leaving the city short of skilled manpower. People chosen by Ming could then be positioned on Elfhome.
For a moment, the scale of what was against them overwhelmed Louise. So much stood against them. Ming and all his people here at the mansion. His people in the EIA. The oni hidden among the humans. Elves like Sparrow. She wanted to reach out and take Jillian’s hand, but she knew that her twin wouldn’t be able to take her leaning on her. Not yet. Jillian was getting her feet under her but she couldn’t be strong for Louise. In the very same way, Louise knew that she couldn’t go to Anna and tell her all the things she suspected of Ming. Esme, no doubt, tried. When her mother wouldn’t listen, Esme had painted all her furniture black, built her secret lair and wove complex plans.
“…In my dream, he found you when you were much too young. Too small. Too helpless.”
Louise clung to memory. Esme knew that they would be caught and had left a secret hoard of weapons. They weren’t completely alone. If they could get to Elfhome, then they would have Alexander and Windwolf.
“They’ll finish the work on Lain’s bedroom tomorrow.” Louise circled back to the real threat. “All they really have to do is put up curtains and move in furniture.”
“How does it look?” Jillian asked.
Louise threw up her hands. “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.”
“I want to see.” Jillian headed for the bathroom that connected the two bedrooms.
“Why?”
“It’s like a movie set that we had built.” Jillian opened the door and gasped. “Oh, Lou, it’s going to be beautiful.”
She walked to the center of Lain’s bedroom and spun slowly, arms outstretched.