In unspoken agreement, the twins started to pick up in the kitchen. This was Joy; unless she was seriously hurt, she’d be near food. Their parents went upstairs with the policeman to assess the damage up there. She wasn’t in the pantry as Louise expected. Nor was she under the sink where they had hidden her cat food.
“Where is she?” Jillian’s voice quavered.
“Who?” Nikola had been pressed against Louise’s side since they arrived at the police station. “Joy?”
“Yes, Joy.”
“She’s in the refrigerator.”
“How did she get in there?” Louise opened the door. The inside was almost as bad as the rest of the house. All the little Tupperware containers of leftovers had been torn open and licked clean. The fruit bin had little greasy handprints across the inside of the glass front, and only a few apple cores and some orange rinds remained. The baby dragon was asleep among the well-gnawed bones of the roast chicken. “Oh! Oh no! What a mess!”
“I’ll clean the fridge. You get her.” Jillian swung the trashcan around to beside the open refrigerator.
Louise scooped Joy up. Over the layer of frosting, she now had butter and various types of grease. She smelled of rosemary and garlic and chicken fat, with hints of oranges. The baby dragon yawned but otherwise slept through the quick warm bath in the sink with a large dose of dish soap to strip off the grease.
“What are we going to tell Mom and Dad?” Louise cried as she quickly dried Joy with a clean tea towel.
“That those men also took all the food in the fridge.” Jillian dumped the chicken bones into the trashcan and covered them up with the torn foam from the living room couch.
“Why would anyone break into a house and steal leftovers? Mom and Dad are never going to believe—”
“Why would anyone steal our toothbrushes?” their father said as he came down the steps with the police officer. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Was it an expensive electric toothbrush?” The cop made notes on his tablet.
“No, they were just normal toothbrushes like you get at the supermarket. They’re — what, ten dollars? I don’t know. Who takes
“You got me,” the cop said. “First time I’ve seen it. So, what was in the safe in the bedroom?”
“Just paperwork. It was basically a fireproof filing box. It had our passports and marriage license and birth certificates and things like that. God, what a nightmare.”
“You’re alive and your family is fine,” the cop said. “Count your blessings.”
Riding to school with Nikola Tesla Dufae was totally different than being with Tesla the nanny-bot. They’d learned that he was enraptured by any shiny new situation and would fall silent, satisfied to just look and listen. Once things became familiar, however, he started to ask questions. Sunday had been a hell of an effort to get him to stay quiet as their parents cataloged all that had been taken from the house. Halfway to the city, on the crowded train, the questions started.
“Where are we going?”
“We told you that you shouldn’t talk unless we’re alone,” Louise whispered as the high school student standing beside them glanced down at Nikola. She tightened her hold on his leash.
He gave a little whimper. “It just that Joy is dreaming of cake and she’s wiggling her fingers and it tickles.”
At times he said things that hurt Louise’s brain. How did he know that Joy was dreaming of cake? Was he somehow aware of her thoughts? How was he aware at all? He was a couple of frozen cells inside a magical egg-shaped thing riding on top of a magical generator within a robotic body.
And how exactly was he feeling Joy wiggling her fingers? The storage bin didn’t have sensors.
She petted his head to give them both something else to think about. He laid his head on her lap and thumped his tail.
Jillian hadn’t noticed the exchange. She bent over her tablet, memorizing lines to the play. Between stealing the
“We’re going to school,” Louise whispered. “And I know you’re going to have a lot of questions, but you need to not ask us any of them until we’re alone.”
He whimpered again and sighed deeply.
Louise felt bad for him. It would kill her not to ask questions all day. Maybe there were other ways of getting around him not talking. “Can you text?”
“Yes! We can!” He’d gained more control over Tesla’s body over the weekend. His pointed ears dipped in worry. “Can we?”
“Yes, you can text me.” She hugged him. “But you’ll have to be patient for me to answer. I might not be able to text you back immediately.”
Jillian surprised Louise by introducing Iggy to Nikola Tesla. He’d been waiting at the top of the station’s staircase. As usual, he went to pet Tesla even as he called hello to them.
