Wood Sprites(159)
The floor was now a deep warm black and the walls were rich creamy gray. Grain and Joist had hung a chandelier that was a wonderful cascade of silver branches and crystals.
“It’s going to be done,” Louise grumbled. “When they finish, Anna will want to redo Esme’s room. If they start tearing out everything, they’ll find the secret room.”
Louise had had uneasy dreams all week of Esme frantically giving orders as workers dismantled her spaceship around her. While Louise believed that the nightmare had been actually Louise’s fear that that Esme’s bedroom being torn apart, she felt more and more sure that something horrible had happened to Esme in the cold darkness of space. While Louise still couldn’t think of Esme as “mother” she’d begun to think of her of something like an aunt or a much older sister. It made her sad to think that Esme died painfully years before they were even born.
The question remained, though: why. What was Esme trying to do, arranging for children to be born and then leaving Earth? Whatever Esme had been attempting, it had been important enough that Esme had been willing to die trying to succeed. Had she succeeded or failed? Certainly lives had been at stake. Maybe even worlds.
But they didn’t have the luxury to worry about worlds right now. They had to protect the babies and Joy.
“We won’t let them remodel.” Jillian sounded like her normal self for once. “We’ll tell Anna that if she changes the bedroom, we’ll lose the only thing we have of Esme.”
It might work. It was probably why Anna hadn’t changed the room in the first place. But if Ming had already left for Elfhome, how soon would he want Anna and the twins to join him? How much time did they really have? It felt like a very short time.
The bugging software that Louise had on the mansion’s phone indicated an incoming call. Since she set it up, there hadn’t been any calls, which made her think she’d bugged an inactive line. After careful checking, though, she discovered that the secret elves avoided most lines of communication. It put the meeting at the museum in a new light: the secret elves didn’t call someone when they wanted to talk.
She tapped an icon so they could listen to the rare conversation. Rapid-fire High Elvish spilled out of her tablet. She only recognized a handful of English words thrown in, referencing technology that elves normally didn’t have access to. Cargo ship. Overhead Crane. Ammo. Someone had the unfortunate job of telling Yves about the fire in the South China Sea. The news was not being taken well. There was a thunderous noise and then silence.
“I think we got their attention,” Louise said. “Let’s take everything they have while they’re trying to put out that fire.”
36: MISCHIEF OF MICE
“What we need are mice,” Jillian thud-thunk the baseball against the floor and vanity instead of helping Louise. “A whole bunch of mice. A herd? A flock? Whatever they call a lot of mice.”
“Huh?” Louise wasn’t sure she had heard her twin correctly. It was proving harder than she thought to raid Ming’s many bank accounts. Most of his liquid capital was well hidden in offshore accounts. She had to track all large transfers of cash and then determined who actually owned the destination company. Once she found the accounts, however, it was fairly simple to trigger another transfer to one of theirs. She bounced the money between shell companies, like a pea under a set of cups, and then dropped it into one of their super secret accounts.
“A mischief of mice,” Nikola answered Jillian’s question, head cocked in confusion. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“That’s so cool.” Jillian laughed evilly. “And utterly perfect. Then what we need is a mischief of mice. Robotic mice. Exploding robotic mice. A couple hundred of them. Maybe several thousand.”
Louise sighed out her anger. Dovetail and the others had already finished moving all the furniture into Lain’s old bedroom. Luckily the chaos that they were creating had distracted Anna along with the elves. Louise could feel that they were running out of time. Still, she couldn’t insist on Jillian focusing on looting Ming’s finances because it would make her twin more aware of their danger. Even now, Jillian was barely coping with their situation; they’d been playing WWII prisoner of war for two days now. Louise comforted herself with the knowledge that Jillian probably was making important progress in their actual escape. Hopefully. “Mice? What are you talking about?”
“Getting across the border on the next Shutdown. There’s a pedestrian-only gate between the North Side and the North Hills. Only Pittsburgh residents can use it to visit Earth; they’re given a bracelet that allows them to quickly cross back through the gate later without the hassle of checking visa paperwork.” Jillian put aside the baseball and glove to pull up a map on her tablet. “See, Pittsburghers park in this lot here, walk through this gate, and they’re on this dead-end street. They can walk down to this corner and catch a bus that only runs during Shutdown that loops from this bus stop to these local malls. The setup only works because none of the roads on either side actually connects to the four highways that link Pittsburgh to Earth. The normal traffic jams that happen at Shutdown don’t affect this area.”