Wood Sprites (32 page)

Nikola Tesla explored their room, clumsily handling everything with his awkward dog paws. They rescued their tablets, the lamp on the nightstand between their beds, their alarm clock, and their matching china piggy banks. Nikola Tesla paused to examine his front feet. “Why do our hands look like this?”

“Because you’re a dog,” Jillian said.

“We are?”

“Well, at the moment, you are,” Louise said. “It’s complicated.”

Which seemed to be the theme for their life lately.

Nikola tried to pick up their new camera and nearly dropped it. Louise yelped and snatched it out of his paws. He gazed up at her with puppy-dog eyes. “We want to look at it.”

Louise was sure April Geiselman would label this as karma. They wanted their baby brother and sisters so bad, and now they had them, with all the chaos that implied. How, though, mystified Louise. Somehow magic had weirdly combined the frozen embryos and the robotic brain of Tesla. It seemed impossible, but there was no denying that Nikola was a whole different creature than their nanny-bot.

Louise held the camera down to Nikola’s eye level and wondered how differently he might be seeing the object. “It might break if you drop it. Let me hold it while you look at it.”

“So, you’re a boy?” Jillian moved around the room, putting treasures away while Louise kept the dog—puppy—boy—babies—distracted.

Tesla peered closely at the camera, tilting his massive head back and forth. “What’s a boy?”

Jillian gave Louise a pleading look for her to answer the question. Louise shrugged; she had no idea how to explain when the person in question lacked any reasonable body parts.

Jillian tugged at her hair in frustration. “A boy is—someone who is not a girl.”

“What is a girl?”

“We’re girls.” Louise tried to head off that route of questioning.

“Well, then, we must be a boy, because we’re not you.”

“That works,” Jillian and Louise agreed.

Nikola was distracted from the camera by the snow globe of the hyperphase gate in orbit over Earth. (The Elfhome one was the first thing Jillian had put up out of reach.) He gave a little “oh” of amazement when the glitter swirled. Louise struggled not to snatch the globe out of his paws. She really didn’t like it that much; it still felt vaguely dangerous to her for some reason. She supposed it could be worse; there could be four babies fumbling through the twins’ belongings, in mass confusion.

“What are we going to do?” Louise whispered to Jillian. “Mom and Dad are going to freak if they find out. And they will, if he keeps talking.”

“We’ll tell them we figured out how to upload a personality, and we chose Christopher Robin. Nikola, can you say, ‘Silly old bear’?”

He tilted his head with confusion. “Silly old bear?” He had a perfect Christopher Robin lilt, but the intonation was wrong.

“No, no. Silly old bear.” Jillian gave the correct tone of an older person addressing a child.

“What’s a bear and why is it silly?”

“We are so screwed,” Louise whispered.

“We can work with this,” Jillian said.

“But what about tonight? We can’t leave him alone!” She was imagining all sorts of awful things like him getting out of the house and getting stolen.

“We can’t take him to the gala.”

“What’s a gala?” Nikola asked.

They stared at him with slight horror.

“It’s a party to raise money for some charity.” Louise attempted to define it in words that he might understand. “People get dressed up fancy, and there’s music, and pretty decorations, and . . .” Actually, she wasn’t completely clear what the gala was going to be like, so she fell back on the parties of Jane Austen. “People dance and say snarky things to each other, and there’s food and—”

“Food?” Joy woke up and joined the building disaster.

“Oh, now you’ve done it.” Jillian sighed.

“I’m hungry!” Joy cried.

“You’re always hungry, you bottomless pit.” Jillian opened the lowest drawer, where they’d hidden all of Joy’s food. “Oooh, you’ve eaten everything!”

“So hungry!” Joy clambered into Louise’s arms and gazed up at her pleadingly. “Open can!” She made the sound of the can opener. “Yummy, yummy, stinky food in can!”

Louise wished she knew how much Joy was supposed to eat. Was she actually starving like she seemed or was she just pigging out? She didn’t seem to be getting any fatter. After she’d eaten her fill, she would sleep for hours. “We should feed her before Mom and Dad get home.”

They moved to the kitchen since Joy was a messy eater. Jillian spread out paper towels for Joy to stand on as Louise used the can opener to open up the organic cat food that they had bought for the baby dragon and hidden under the sink. Joy sat on her haunches and clapped her hands together. Nikola watched with interest.

“Gimme!” Joy cried the moment that the can was open, releasing its pungent smell. She grabbed fistfuls of dark moist meat and shoved it into her mouth as quickly as she could shovel it in.

“Do you think we should move her to baby food?” Jillian asked.

Louise shrugged. They’d started with little three-ounce cans with pull-top lids that Joy mastered after they opened the first can in front of her. During the night she raided the kitchen and left the empty cans all over the floor. Luckily, Louise woke up and found the mess first. They’d moved to the twelve-ounce cans, which meant the little dragon was eating nearly a quarter of her weight in one sitting. “She likes these.”

“Nom, nom, nom,” Joy mumbled around the mouthful.

“Why is she putting it in her mouth?” Nikola asked.

How did he know it was her mouth and not know about food? It made Louise’s head hurt.

“It’s yummy.” Joy held out a handful to him. “But stinky.”

“No!” The twins both cried and leapt to intercept Nikola’s attempt to eat the food.

“That’s dragon food,” Louise said.

Nikola eyed the half-empty can. “It says ‘cat food,’ not dragon.”

He can read the word
food
but not understand it?
Louise glanced at the clock. They had exactly one hour before this became a complete disaster.

“Nikola, do you understand danger?”

He tilted his head to the right and then to the left. “Danger is when the primary target is in an area that might harm the primary target.”

That sounded like robotic logic. Louise supposed that if Nikola could move the dog’s body and talk over its speakers, then the full robotic brain could also be accessed.

“Until we tell you otherwise, only talk to Jillian and me.”

“Joy!” the baby dragon cried, waving her hand to be included. The hand held food that dribbled through her clawed fingers.

“And Joy.” Louise supposed Nikola might be able to teach Joy more English. So far she seemed only interested in learning words that got her more food. “If you really need to say something to us, and there’s someone else there, you need to say ‘Tut, tut, it looks like rain.’”

“Tut, tut, it looks like rain,” Nikola quoted solemnly.

“Yes.”

“But there’s only a thirty percent chance of rain,” Nikola complained.

“We’re so grounded.” Jillian sighed.

* * *

They washed out the empty cat-food can so it wouldn’t smell, buried it deep within the trash, ran the range exhaust fan, and sprayed the kitchen with air freshener. Joy needed to be washed carefully, and she squirmed like an earthworm as they tried soaping her up and spraying her down in the kitchen sink.

“Just hold still!” Jillian cried.

Joy stuck out her tongue at Jillian.

After they were all dried off, they went back upstairs to get dressed for the gala and plan for their parents’ arrival. Nikola followed them up, murmuring Christopher Robin lines that they’d taught him and complaining.

“Tut, tut, it looks like rain. It still doesn’t make sense. Silly old bear. But what bear? You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. That one at least makes sense.”

* * *

Louise stared at the mirror, trying to gain the confidence to actually leave the house. She felt like everyone was going to be looking at them, knowing the impossible and illegal things that the girls had been doing the last few days. Stealing magical artifacts from a museum. Baby dragons. Robotic dogs possessed by unborn siblings. She wanted the comfort of knowing that she and Jillian were drawing attention because they were cute and not because people
knew
. Jillian looked cute, and they were twins. It stood to reason that Louise must be just as cute. All she needed to do was believe.

“We should just leave him here,” Jillian said as Louise tied a big yellow bow onto Nikola.

“No! We have to take him.” Louise’s whole insides went queasy at the idea of leaving their little brother behind. “It’s part of having a baby; you can’t leave them alone just because it’s inconvenient. Something might happen to him.”

“We were going to put him in the time capsule in the back of the closet.”

In truth, they had only given a little thought about where they were going to store the
nactka
once it was loaded. It seemed unlikely that Nikola would be safe in the back of the closet for years and years. The plan had seemed so solid until it hit that “and then what” gray zone. Tesla wasn’t really a good compromise. They needed to do more, but until then, they needed to take care of Nikola like he was a real baby.

And real babies had to have someone with them all the time.

Tesla would just have to be added to the list of things they had already planned to take. Speaking of which, she needed to pack them. They needed to take their tablets and the gossamer calls they made. The magical whistles were hidden with all the other things related to the codex. She shoved the calls into their purses, and then in a near panic, added the flash drive and photographs.

“If we take Nikola, we’ll end up having to take Joy, too.” They weren’t sure what taking the magic generator out of Nikola would do. Until they could carefully test it, they’d have to keep one running inside the nanny-bot while the other recharged. So far, they hadn’t been able to separate Joy from the generator, which made them suspect that she needed magic to thrive.

“Gala food!” Joy cried.

Leaving Joy at home seemed even worse than taking her.

“No. We all go. We’re a family.”

* * *

The trick, however, was to get Nikola to the gala at the Waldorf Astoria without their parents noticing. By secreting him in the car before their parents got home and careful redirection from the parking garage to the gala, they were able to keep him quietly following behind, unnoticed. He was being good, although part of it seemed to be that he was overwhelmed by everything. He kept twisting his head, trying to see everything.

When they checked in, however, one of the women manning the ticket window glanced beyond their parents and said, “Oh, that’s not really real, is it?”

As their parents turned, Jillian threw both arms around Nikola and grinned brightly. “No, he’s not real. He’s our nanny-bot.”

“What is he doing here?” their mother cried while their father looked too surprised to speak.

“He’s going to record us all together!” Jillian cried. “We both want to be in the picture—you can’t tell we’re twins if we’re not in the shot together. And we never have any video with Daddy in it when we’re together.”

Which was something their mother complained about constantly.

“We can’t bring him in with us.” Their mother started to scan the lobby.

Nikola cringed away from their mother.

Louise petted his head, trying to comfort him. “Why not? He wouldn’t bite or bark or pee.”

“He’s just one big self-moving camera.” Jillian pointed to a couple with their phones out, taking video. “They’re filming.”

“We’ll have to check him in the coat room,” their mother growled.

“Someone might take him!” Louise cried.

“You should have thought about that before bringing him.” Their mother turned back to the woman at the ticket window. “Where’s the coat-check room?”

“It’s the middle of June.” The woman looked surprised at the question. “We didn’t set up a coat check.”

Their mother stopped scanning to glare down at them. The hand went out. The finger pointed. “You. Two. Are. In. Trouble.”

Louise swallowed hard and gripped Jillian’s hand tightly.

“How much trouble depends on the rest of the night,” their mother continued. “You two be good and charming to Anna Desmarais and much will be forgiven.”

“Do we really have to be nice to her?” Jillian had the courage or stupidity to ask. Louise squeezed her twin’s hand hard in warning.

“Don’t push me now,” their mother growled quietly so no one around them could hear her. “You will be nice if you ever want a life again.”

“She’s been awful to you!” Jillian cried. “Why do you have to be the one that’s nice?”

“Because I am better than her!” their mother snapped. “I do not let other people define me. I am who I am, and that is an intelligent and gracious human being. And as such, I do not drop to the level of bullies and trade insult for insult.”

“But isn’t that just letting them win?” Jillian ignored another squeeze.