Wood Sprites

Crow Boy startled slightly when he got to them and registered the change in their appearance. Jillian had wanted to bleach their hair blond, but it turned out that the dye had turned Jillian’s hair carrot orange. (Louise had told her that it was a bad idea.) Jillian waved it off, saying they looked less like twins this way. They dyed Louise’s hair jet black and got her a pair of cosplay glasses. They were dressed in mismatched baggy T-shirts and pants, hoping that they would read as “male” to a casual observer. Louise secretly thought they’d only achieved looking like Harry Potter and Ron Weasley.

Crow Boy gestured at the cityscape outside the window. “Midtown East as in Manhattan?” Getting a nod, he waved his hand to take in the richly appointed room. “And we’re where?”

“The penthouse suite at the Waldorf Astoria.” Jillian took the freshly printed magic generator out of the industrial 3D printer. It was proving to be ten times faster than the printer at school.

“Also known as the Elvish embassy.” Louise double-checked the fake ID she was working on. One would think the state’s computer system would be more secure.

“How did we get here?” He obviously remembered nothing of his kidnapping despite the fact he’d been conscious enough to dismiss his great black wings.

“Garbage truck,” Jillian explained. “No one really ever pays close attention to them. We overrode its auto-drive program. It picked us up at the hospital and dropped us at the Waldorf Astoria’s loading dock.”

Louise took up the narrative of their escape. “We hacked the hotel’s computers in June to open up a meeting room so we could talk privately with Nigel Reid. So all we really needed to do was to use the back door we left to fabricate a wealthy but mostly absent parent who managed to pick up a card key without anyone remembering actually checking him in. As long as the credit card clears, the hotel doesn’t really care.”

“At ten thousand dollars a night, they really, really don’t care,” Jillian said. “They’ve been trotting up packages from the front desk and leaving them by the door without a single question asked.”

Crow Boy’s blue eyes had widened at the cost of the room. “How are you paying for it?”

“Stolen money.” Jillian waved her new phone over her head. “Money is the one thing we have lots of.”

“Oh, you should step back a little.” Louise motioned him to back up.

He did and a moment later the babies raced into the sitting room in their little mini-hovercarts. Chuck Norris was still in the lead; she was quite fearless compared to the other three. They popped up to the end table and again to the back of the couch and along the gilded wood at speeds that they’d clocked at thirty miles per hour. At the other end, the babies bounced down to the end table, to the seat of the wing chair, and then to the floor.

Crow Boy glanced again around the suite and then frowned at the marbled foyer where they’d set up a scale-model mock-up of the quarantine zone, complete with ten-foot-tall chain-link fence. “Am I really awake?”

“Asks the Crow Boy.” At some point, Jillian had decided “Crow Boy” was more fitting than “Crow Warrior” as a name for him.

“Yes, life currently is this odd.” Louise realized that they really should discuss basics. “What’s your name? We can’t keep calling you Crow Boy.”

“Crow Boy is fine,” he said. “I don’t like my real name.”

“Which is?” Jillian asked ruthlessly.

“Haruka Sessai.”

“What’s so horrible about that?” Louise asked.

“Haruka is a girl’s name. It means Spring Flower.”

“What do your friends call you?” Jillian asked.

He blushed and looked away as he murmured, “Daffodil.”

Jillian burst into laughter. Louise snorted as she tried to keep from laughing.

“What happened to my wings?” he asked.

“You made them go away after we woke you up the first time,” Louise explained.

He’d kept falling asleep as they escaped, so it wasn’t surprising that he didn’t have a clear memory.

“But. .” He turned to look out the window again. “This is Earth. There’s only pockets of magic and certainly none in Manhattan.”

“Step back!” Louise motioned him backwards again.

The babies lapped through the room. Nikola and Chuck Norris were tied. Green Jawbreaker had the lead on her sister, Red Jawbreaker.

“We really need to come up with better names for the girls,” Jillian murmured quietly.

Louise nodded. “We have generators that produce magic. We’re mass-producing them.”

“We’re going to fly into Pittsburgh next Shutdown.” Jillian glanced toward the foyer. “Was that four laps?”

Louise paused to count. “Yes.”

Jillian picked up the checkered flag and waited for the racers to return.

“I need to get to Monroeville,” Crow Boy said. “As soon as possible. Before Shutdown.”

“That’s the plan,” Jillian said.

“Why?” Louise asked.