Wood Sprites(178)

A box truck sat in the oversized end bay. Louise’s heart sunk as she envisioned trying to find Tesla in a tightly packed truck. As they rounded the back end, however, she was relieved to see that the elves hadn’t started to load it yet. Carefully labeled boxes sat in stacks, obviously organized into groups. The Jawbreakers stood on one of the larger cardboard boxes, waving.

“That was so scary!” The two broke into excited squeaking. “We were so scared. And Lou! Bang! That was awesome. And then boom! Better than fireworks!”

“Are you in here?” Jillian asked.

“Yup! Yup! We’re right here!”

The box had been labeled: Wood Sprites toys, possibly dangerous. It had been sealed shut with strapping tape. Louise pulled out her Swiss Army knife. While the mice all sang “boom, boom, fireworks bloom” in four-part harmony, Louise cut open the box and folded back the flaps to reveal Tesla.

The mice fell silent as Louise snapped open the storage hatch. The nactka was still safely inside. The twins breathed out with relief and all the mice cheered. The elves must not have realized that Tesla had a hidden compartment.

“What is that?” Crow Boy looked like he was going to fall over.

“The most important thing in the world.” Louise closed up the hatch. “We need to get out of here. Fast.”

“Lou.” Nikola tugged at her hair. “Put this mouse someplace safe and I’ll drive Tesla.”

She tucked the little bundle of fur into her carpenter pants leg pocket. Tesla shook awake and wagged his tail. She hugged him tightly.

“Awesome!” Jillian cried as she lunged into the box to pull out their tablets from deep inside it. “They’re still password locked. And our phones! Yay!” She dove into another box that was labeled: “Wood Sprites objects, unidentified, possibly dangerous.”

“What is so dangerous about a soldering gun?” Jillian muttered, still half inside the box.

“We need to go!” Louise scanned the cars around them. “We’ll take one of the cars and send the rest out to random addresses to muddy the trail.”

“I say we take the Lamborghini.” Jillian pointed at the dangerous looking sports car.

None of the cars blended in with normal traffic. All the other vehicles were the tanklike limousines. The Lamborghini could outrun anything short of a helicopter and maybe even that. At the moment, speed and maneuverability outweighed everything.

“Does it have self-driving?” She scooped up the Jawbreakers. “It is a Lamborghini.”

Nikola tilted his head; that usually meant he was accessing another computer. “Yes, it has a self-drive option. It’s recommended to be used when the driver has been drinking. What does taking in fluids have to do with driving?”

“We’ll explain later,” Jillian said. “Can you disarm its security and unlock it?”

The Lamborghini chirped and its doors opened. The garage doors all started upwards, gliding slightly on well-oiled tracks, preparing for a mass exodus of cars.

Crow Boy wavered in place, looking like he was upright on sheer willpower alone. There were a dozen thin cuts on his arms, seeping blood. If he fainted, Louise doubted that she and Jillian could get him into a car. It took several tense minutes to get him across the large garage to the Lamborghini and into the passenger seat, wings and all.

Only then did Louise realize that the sports car was much smaller inside than she expected. There was no backseat and there was a stick shift between the two front ones.

Nikola hopped into the driver’s seat and put his paws on the steering wheel. “Where are we going?”

“River Edge Station.” Jillian scrambled into the car and straddled on the divider between the seats. “Yves can track us via the anti-theft GPS on this.”

“No,” Louise vetoed that. “We need to get Crow Boy to a hospital quickly.”

Crow Boy murmured something about no hospital and flying under the radar.

Louise ignored him, as she eyed the crowded interior. The only place for her was on Crow Boy’s lap. She eased carefully in, making sure that she didn’t put weight on his broken leg. “The trains don’t come often enough to River Edge; we’ll be stranded at the station for too long.” She tried not to be scared when he wrapped his arms around her. Joy sat on Louise’s lap and glared up at the boy. “We’ll go into the city and have the car make a bunch of stops. They won’t know where we actually got out.”

“Okay, the city.” Nikola glanced toward the bay door and it rolled upwards. The engine suddenly rumbled loudly to life.

“Oh shit, it’s a combustion engine?” Louise thought only big construction vehicles were still run by gasoline.