Wood Sprites полностью

“And this is really important.” Louise sent him all the pictures of the Dufae box copied from the AMNH’s server. “This was part of the exhibit. Sparrow took it back to Elfhome. It might look like a block of wood, but it’s a box. And it has eleven of these inside.” They had carefully taken pictures of the nactka inside a light box and erased all GPS tags on it. No one would be able to trace the picture back to their bedroom. “It’s really important that you find the box and get it back to Earth. If you can’t get it back to Earth, get it to the sekasha and have them open them.”

“What are these?”

Jillian opened her mouth, and Louise was suddenly overwhelmed with the sense that she was going to say the worst possible thing.

“We’re not sure!” Louise cried before her twin could reply. “The elf that died in the French Revolution believed that they were linked to a powerful spell. He brought them to Earth where he thought they could be safely studied. We’re not sure yet what the spell does, but it would be very bad if they’re used.”

“Sparrow took this box?” Nigel asked.

Jillian gave Louise another dark look for telling the truth about the nactka. “She’s one of the anti-elves. She’s the one that set the trap for Windwolf.”

“Sparrow? The viceroy’s secretary is the one that tried to kill him?”

“Husepavua,” Louise corrected him. “We don’t have any proof. It would be our word against hers. She’s an elf — or pretending to be an elf — or something — and other elves are going to believe her first.”

“You can’t tell anyone!” Jillian said. “We wouldn’t be telling you except we don’t know anyone already on Elfhome, and someone should be looking for the box and we can’t go ourselves.”

Nigel’s eyes widened with alarm. “Ach, no, ye cannae do that! Ye are just wee lasses.”

Apparently Nigel’s Scottish burr went into overdrive when he was extremely rattled. Louise felt guilty for alarming him. The truth was that if they went to Elfhome, they would be focused on finding Alexander. They couldn’t trust Nigel, though, with all of their secrets. They couldn’t tell him anything about her.

“Here.” Jillian opened up her purse and handed him the whistle. They’d brought two just in case only one of them managed to make the meeting. “This is the gossamer call we promised you.”

“You’ll need it on Elfhome.” Louise showed him how the tones could be changed by pressing his fingertips against the holes.

Jillian pointed out the spell etchings on the call. “We’ve found a spell that works as an amplifier for the ultrasonic frequencies. It needs magic to work, but it will make the call’s range to be. . well, we’re not sure of the range. We haven’t been able to test it, but we think it’s close to a thousand miles, or one mei.”

“You’ll have to be careful on Elfhome not to blow it with anything metal in your hands — that could twist the magic, and the results could be bad,” Louise warned. “Here is a list of gossamer commands we’ve pieced together from analyzing video. It’s kind of like Morse code. We’re guessing on these, so don’t take them as God’s word.”

“Thank you so very much. I never expected Lemon-Lime to be two little girls. You didn’t come here all by yourself, did you? You have someone. .?”

“Our parents,” Louise said.

“They’re here?” Nigel glanced toward the door.

Louise jumped a little. “Someplace.”

“But they don’t know about our videos!” Jillian said.

“They don’t?” Nigel looked concerned.

“They’re super-protective, and they were afraid that if we posted our videos, we’d pick up creepy stalkers. They’re not very computer smart, so they didn’t believe we could stay anonymous. We knew that if we were careful, no one could trace our posts back to us, so we — kind of — went around them.”

Like Anna Desmarais probably would. Louise cringed inwardly.

“So they don’t know how popular you are?” Nigel asked.

“No!” the twins cried.

“We didn’t even know,” Jillian grumbled. “We apparently use the Internet in a much different way than the average person. We know about all the social media, but we don’t hit those sites.” Until recently, they didn’t have anyone to be social with. “We do research.” Hack into secure sites. “And post our videos.”

Embarrassed, Louise turned the conversation back to the whistle. “The elves seemed to be exploiting instinctual behavior with the gossamer call. Elves have stated that the wargs are bioengineered for war. If the elves found a way to make sound trigger certain responses in all animals, then this whistle might effect anything they’ve created.”

“So it works on wargs?” Nigel tried the various finger positions.

“We think it will, but the commands and reactions aren’t going to be the same as for the gossamer. You would have to use trial and error, and that could be dangerous.”

Nigel suddenly lifted the call and blew on it.

“No!” both the girls cried.