Louise squeaked in realization that it was the worst possible time for the elves to venture to New York City. “Why on Earth is she here? Now?”
Claudia blinked in surprise. “You haven’t heard? There’s this really awesome exhibit of Elvish artifacts found all over the world. It’s coming to New York in a few days. The UN decided that since humans have broken part of the treaty by logging the quarantine zone, the elves could reclaim any part of the exhibit that is culturally important to them.”
“What?” Louise and Jillian both cried. They hadn’t planned for elves seeing the exhibit. Sparrow would know Dufae’s box was a chest and that it could be opened. At least the female elf couldn’t open it, not on Earth without magic, and not on Elfhome without the key phrase to the spell lock.
“The elves will probably lie and claim everything in the exhibit.” Elle hovered at the door for a minute, trying not to look scared and failing. Then with a deep breath, she marched across the room to the twins. She gave Jillian an odd measuring look, like she wanted something from Jillian but knew she couldn’t get it from her, and then hugged Louise tightly.
Louise squeaked in surprise and then realized that Elle was trembling. The girl was really, really scared. Taking pity on Elle, Louise hugged her back. “There, there.” She repeated the nonsense her father always said at times like this. She understood now why; what the hell was she supposed to say? It was the first time Louise had ever hugged anyone outside her family. Elle seemed to be all fragile bones under her porcelain white skin. She smelled totally different than Jillian; if pink had a scent, Elle was delicately sprinkled with it.
Jillian gave Louise a confused look for hugging Elle. “No, they’re elves. They won’t lie; it’s shameful to them to be deceitful. It goes against their sense of honor. They wouldn’t say something was culturally important if it wasn’t.”
Which was the twins’ only comfort in the face of the news.
“Bad form?” Elle quoted Peter Pan’s criticism of Hook when he cheated. “There will always be villains that break the rules. Only children are naïve enough to believe that.”
“Honor isn’t about other people, it’s about what you want to be,” Louise said. “A hero does the good and noble thing. The villain allows fear or envy or selfishness to let him ignore what is right. If you can recognize the difference, then you’re choosing to be one or the other. Which do you want to be? The villain or the hero?”
“Oh!” Claudia cried as she remembered something else. “And Sae-Saetoto. .”
“Sparrow.” Jillian saved Claudia from butchering the rest of the female’s name. Really, how much harder was Saetato than Claudia?
“Sparrow brought
The twins squealed in excitement. “Which ones? Which ones?”
“Wraith Arrow.” Claudia ticked names off on her fingers. “Skybolt. Zephyr Blade. The blue-haired one.”
“Stormsong?” The twins squealed for one of their favorites. Apparently at some point, Stormsong had had a stalker with an artist’s eye. The twins had found hauntingly beautiful pictures of Stormsong doing unlikely things like skateboarding. The photographs had been on an abandoned website; it wasn’t clear if the stalker had died of old age or come to a violent end for pissing off the female warrior elf.
“I think Killing Frost,” Claudia continued. “Or it could have been Tempest Knife. You know a lot of them look like twins.”
“They’re not twins,” Louise said. The ninjas had attempted to build family trees for the elves in Pittsburgh and were dismayed to discover that while the elves were all part of the Wind Clan, not one was actually related to another. None of Windwolf’s bodyguards were even cousins to one another. But Louise had to admit that they did look like brothers. The Wind Clan
Jillian was already checking her tablet for news stories. “Of course they don’t name the bodyguards. Come on. Pictures. Pictures. Yes!”
Louise took out her tablet as Jillian linked the story. The elves had been photographed at the train station, unloading. There was something surreal about seeing them up against the familiar landscape of New York City. “That’s Bladebite, not Skybolt, and Tempest Knife.”
“How can you tell?” Claudia asked.
Louise frowned at the male, trying to pinpoint the differences. “Bladebite is wider across the shoulders. His features are squarer. He keeps his hair shorter, so the beads the
“What are the beads for?” Elle sounded honestly curious, not like before, when she didn’t expect them to know and thought she was setting up a trap.
