Book 4 in the *Romantic Times* Sapphire award winning Elfhome series.Even though they attend a school of gifted students in New York City, child geniuses Louise Mayer and her twin sister Jillian have always felt alone in the world, isolated by their brilliance. Shortly before their ninth birthday, they make an amazing discovery. They're not alone.Their real mother was astronaut Esme Shenske and their father was the famous inventor, Leonardo Dufae. They have an older sister, Alexander, living on the planet of Elfhome, and four siblings still in cryogenic storage at the fertility center. There's only one problem: the frozen embryos are scheduled to be destroyed within six months. The race is on to save their baby brother and sisters.As a war breaks out on Elfhome and riots start in New York City, the twins use science and magic to plow over everything standing in their way. But when they come face to face with an ancient evil force, they're soon in over their heads in danger. ****About Wen Spencer's Elfhome series:**"Spencer's intertwining of current Earth technology and otherworldly elven magic is quite ingenious." — *Booklist***About Wen Spencer:**"Wit and intelligence inform this off-beat, tongue-in-cheek fantasy. . Furious action. . good characterization, playful eroticism and well-developed folklore. . lift this well above the fantasy average. . Buffy fans should find a lot to like in the book's resourceful heroine."— *Publishers Weekly* on series debut *Tinker***About Wen Spencer's *Eight Million Gods*:** *Eight Million Gods* is a wonderfully weird romp through Japanese mythology, culture shock, fan culture and the ability to write your own happy ending. It is diverting and entertaining fantasy." — *Galveston County Daily News***The Elfhome Series*** TinkerWolf Who RulesElfhomeWood Sprites***### About the AuthorJohn W. Campbell Award Winner **Wen Spencer** resides in paradise in Hilo, Hawaii with two volcanoes overlooking her home. Spencer says that she often wakes up and exclaims "Oh my god, I live on an island in the middle of the Pacific!" According to Spencer, she lives with "my Dali Llama-like husband, my autistic teenage son, and two cats (one of which is recovering from mental illness). All of which makes for very odd home life at times." Spencer's love of Japanese anime and manga flavors her writing. Her novel *Tinker* won the 2003 Sapphire Award for Best Science Fiction Romance and was a finalist for the *Romantic Times* Reviewers' Choice Award for Fantasy Novel. Her *Wolf Who Rules* was a Top Pick by *Romantic Times* and given their top rating of four and a half stars. Other Baen books include space opera thriller *Endless Blue* and *Elfhome,* third entry in the Tinker series.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Wen Spencer
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.
A Baen Books Original
Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471
ISBN: 978-1-4767-3671-6
eISBN: 978-1-62579-310-2
Cover art by Stephen Hickman
First Baen printing, September 2014
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Spencer, Wen.
Wood sprites / Wen Spencer.
pages cm — (Elfhome; 4)
ISBN 978-1-4767-3671-6 (hardback)
1. Twin sisters — Fiction. 2. Gifted persons — Fiction. 3. Imaginary places — Fiction. 4. Families — Fiction. 5. Imaginary wars and battles — Fiction. I. Title.
PS3619.P4665W88 2014
813’.6—dc23
2014020008
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Pages by Joy Freeman (http://www.pagesbyjoy.com)
Printed in the United States of America
Electronic Version by Baen Books
Books are not the effort of just one person.
Many thanks to the people who gave me a
helping hand during the course of this book.
Dan Kosak
Brian Chee
Andy Bradford
Bonnie Funk
Kevin Geiselman
Ruth L. Heller, DVM
Nancy Janda
Laurel Jamieson Lohrey
Sue Petroulas
Hope Erica Ring, M.D.
June Drexler Robertson
David Stein
N. A. Young
Aaron, Becky, Katie, and Josh Wollerton for being
willing subjects of science experiments for fiction.
The Barflies at Baen’s Bar who were willing to
figure out exactly what I said thirteen years ago.
And especially Traci Scroggins, who fought the good fight.
To my sister, Kathy Sue Flower
Who is eighteen months older and yet has
always been shorter than me. She wore dresses
that matched mine. She shared long summers of
secret forts and rambling adventures. She slept in
the top bunk of our bed year in and year out.
Because of her, I have an inkling
of what it is to be a twin.
Louise Georgina Mayer learned many important life lessons the week before her ninth birthday. The first was that flour was indeed explosive. The second was not to experiment with explosives indoors — or at least not in a small wooden playhouse that doubled as a film studio. The third was that adults — firemen, EMTs, policemen, her parents — liked to state the obvious when trying to make a point. Yes, she realized that they’d miscalculated while still airborne — thank you very much. The fourth was that her twin sister rocked — Jillian sat there with blood streaming down her face and managed a wide-eyed story of innocence that pinned the entire event on their Barbie dolls. Fifth was that people believed the stupidest things if you delivered the story while bleeding.
Sixth was that her parents were liars.
“That can’t be right,” she told the emergency room nurse who was applying the bracelet to her wrist that claimed she was blood-type AB. The man blithely ignored her, so she said it louder and clearer. “That’s not right.”
“Hm? What isn’t right, sweetie?” the nurse asked although by his tone he still wasn’t paying attention.
“I’m blood-type O,” Louise stated firmly. She was going to be a geneticist someday. Maybe. A geneticist or an animal trainer or a circus performer. Unlike Jillian, Louise couldn’t decide what she wanted to do with her life. Jillian wanted to write, act, and direct big-budget action movies, hence the entire flour explosion. According to their alibi, Barbie was merely pinned under her pink convertible in a blizzard. In truth, the planned small explosion was special effects for Soulful Ember, queen of the elves, using magic to defeat an army of man-eating black-willow trees. It was supposed to be the climax of episode twenty-four in their partially accurate series chronicling the history of Earth’s twin sister, Elfhome.
“Type O?” The nurse became focused. He picked up a tester, and there was a sudden sharp pain in her finger. The machine beeped, and he shook his head. “No, you’re AB positive. See. Here, let’s do your sister.”
He made Jillian wince, and the machine beeped again. The display said: AB+.
Which was completely impossible. Both of her parents were blood-type O, which was amazing because they were such different people. Their father was tall, weedy thin, Nordic pale, and hopelessly nerdy looking. Their mother was an equally tall African-American warrior queen who struggled daily not to be anything but solid built. Two type-O people made a boring genetic grid: O across the board with the only possible outcome being O. Louise and Jillian weren’t identical twins, which made it even more impossible.
