Wood Sprites (38 page)

Tristan waited for them at the train station. Except for one yawn, there was no evidence he’d been up late, endlessly digging through the Internet. The twins tried to act surprised and not annoyed at all by his presence; they’d suspected he might be waiting for them. Their plan was to tag-team him so they could take turns reading over his search history.

“So, does your family have plans for next Friday?” Jillian started her distraction run. Louise slid on her gaming goggles so Tristan couldn’t see what she was accessing. He’d started the night by hacking into the school’s computers and pulling up student records. No surprise there. But he’d also tapped the records of all the employees too. Odder yet, he’d done detailed background checks on a weird selection of them. Mr. Howe. Miss Hamilton. Those made sense. Miss Gray. Less sense. Teachers whose names she didn’t recognize. No sense at all.

“Next Friday?” Tristan seemed completely confused.

So was Louise. She went back and checked which student records he’d pulled. He had only looked at seniors and juniors. He’d ignored the fifth-graders completely.

“Next Friday is the Fourth of July!” Jillian said. “It’s why we’re having the play on Wednesday instead of Friday. Everyone who goes on vacation leaves early Thursday so the school made the last day on the second.”

Actually they were supposed to get out of school the second week of June. By law, the school had to hold classes for a hundred and eighty days. A broken water pipe in the fall, a blizzard in February, and then the bombing had pushed the last day into July.

The babies said Tristan had been researching bomb-making.

Earth for Humans said that the bomber Vance Roycroft had gone rogue from their organization and claimed that he’d built a terrorist network totally separate from them. Police had confirmed that they found evidence that he hadn’t worked alone but so far hadn’t released any information on the other bombers.

To find a bomber, someone would need to know the basics of bomb-making. Tristan obviously thought that Roycroft’s accomplice was a teacher or one of the older students. But why did Tristan think someone at Perelman was a terrorist? Pure location? Or did he know something more? And why had Ming sent Tristan alone to Perelman to find the bomber?

“The Fourth! Oh, yeah, I forgot. Jet lag and everything.” Tristan yawned again, this time wider. “It’s still the middle of the night for me.”

“The fireworks are a big deal around here,” Jillian babbled, hopefully intending to work around to something more interesting. “We go to our Aunt Kitty’s place in Hoboken; she has a balcony overlooking the Hudson River. We have chicken and corn on the cob and apple pie.”

“How cliché,” Tristan said.

“Not cliché, traditional.” Jillian kicked the platform, obviously wanting to kick him. “The chicken is Jamaican jerk, not southern fried, and we have black beans, rice and peas, and ginger beer.”

“You don’t look Jamaican,” he teased, because he knew exactly what they were, at least as far as their mother’s side. Did Anna know who their father had been?

“Our grandmother was,” Jillian stated. “And she was a very wise woman. She always said that family meant what you made it to mean.”

The train squealed into the station. Louise pushed up her goggles and focused on following Jillian on to the train. All the cars were crowded, and they had to huddle together around Tesla.

Louise’s phone vibrated. She checked it, careful to keep the screen angled away from Tristan.

“We want to see the fireworks!” the text read. “Take us with you!”

She glanced down and Nikola gazed up her, face surprisingly hopeful for it being robotic. His tail thumped against her leg.

She typed “Ok” and put away her phone. She had no idea what to tell their parents, but there was no way she was going to leave Nikola alone. She patted Nikola on the head, and he leaned against her, tail thumping with happiness.

* * *

“He’s looking for the bombers.” Louise explained her theory while they camped out in the girls’ restroom before homeroom.

“Here?” Jillian cried and dropped her voice back to a whisper. “At the Perelman School for the Gifted? Are they nuts as well as morally retarded?”

“The target was right across the street.” Louise pointed toward the art gallery, which was still full of artwork from Elfhome. None of the teachers had left mysteriously, so if Tristan was right, the person was still here and possibly waiting for another chance.

“There’s like a million people within range of the remote control.”

Nikola had been prancing around them singing “Fireworks! Boom, boom, fireworks bloom.” He paused and said, “Actually it’s estimated at three million during the daytime.”

Jillian pointed to Nikola as if that totally proved her point.

“What do Sparrow, Yves, and Ambassador Feng want?” Louise said.

“What do those three have to do with the bomber?” Jillian cried.

“They want the zone expanded,” Louise said. “How could they make sure that happens? By convincing a bunch of racist idiots that setting off a bomb in Manhattan would be a good idea.”

“Wouldn’t that mean they know who the bombers are? Tristan wouldn’t have to be digging for a name.”

“Spy cells work by no one knowing all the other people in the network. There’s one point of contact and that’s it. Yves’ contact could have been Roycroft, who is dead now, and all he knows is that the trigger man was at Perelman.”

“What does he want with the bomber?” Nikola asked. “Is he going to arrest him?”

Louise glanced to Jillian. Her twin shrugged.

“I don’t think so,” Louise said.

Jillian ticked off possibilities on her fingers. “Either they’re afraid that the bomber can identify them and they’re going to kill him or her. Or they want to supply them with another bomb.”

Louise hadn’t thought it was possible that Tristan’s presence could get more frightening, but it just had. Fear was skittering around in her, urging her to run someplace to hide. They couldn’t go back home, not without having to confess more to their parents and putting Nikola at risk. “I think if he was here to supply a bomb to a mad man, Tristan wouldn’t be following us around. Anyone could do the research and deal with the bomber. Tristan is here because he can be with us all the time. Even Miss Hamilton isn’t constantly watching us. I think he may be protecting us.”

“Protecting us?” Jillian sneered at the idea.

“Anna wanted Mom to pull us out of school. Since Mom wouldn’t do that, Anna sent Tristan here to protect us.” That didn’t feel right. “Or Ming did, to stop Anna from worrying about us.” That felt more possible.

Jillian took it to its logical end. “So Tristan is looking for the bomber to kill him or her.”

The homeroom bell rang, ending their war session. Reluctantly they left the safety of the restroom. Louise wished she could find comfort in the fact that Tristan probably didn’t mean them harm, but it meant that one of the teachers or other students had already killed several innocent bystanders and might do it again.

* * *

Nikola gave the locker a dejected look and then gazed pleadingly at them. “You’ll answer our texts?”

“Yes.” Louise patted him on the head and then nudged him toward the tight dark hole. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “But you’ll be safer this way.”

With a whimper, Nikola backed into the space and let them close the door on him. Louise felt horrible doing it. People went to jail for doing this to children. If the twins weren’t fifth-graders, they wouldn’t have to be doing this to Nikola. If they were adults like other parents—because they were Nikola’s parents—they could be working at home or work different shifts or arrange for a nanny. With time they might be able to think of better options, but there hadn’t been time.

* * *

It had been over a month since the bombing. The FBI tip line gave the official profile of the suspected terrorists.

The most vocal members of Earth for Humans were the people living in the affected zone who stood to lose their homes and workplaces. While they would be compensated for the loss of their homes, they’d receive less than fair-market price and most likely wouldn’t be able to relocate close to their work—if their jobs remained afterwards. There were violent debates also going on as to how wide the expansion would need to be to be effective and how uniform it could be without taking out basic support structures like major roadways, power stations, and utility rights-of-way.

Those members, though, tended to be the most levelheaded ones as they’d spent years dealing with having a hole into another universe in their backyard.

The FBI said that the most dangerous members were the ones who had been forced to move from Pittsburgh during the Shutdown. The treaty had specified that the elves would not have to deal with insane, criminal, or orphaned humans. The terms had been extended out to the more general definitions. People who had received treatment for mild depression, eating disorders, and controllable bipolar disorder were lumped in with dangerous psychotics. Drunk drivers were exiled with murderers. Shamed and driven out, they held a great deal of resentment against the elves.

Since the bombing, the details of Vance Roycroft’s life had been put on public display. It was a long, disjointed story of disasters and bad choices. Roycroft’s childhood home had been squarely on the Rim. The first Startup had leveled the house; his father’s body had never been found. It had been assumed that his father had been shattered down to atoms when Pittsburgh had been transferred to Elfhome. His mother had suffered a nervous breakdown and been deported. Vance had been put into foster care on Earth. Roycroft’s life never recovered from that first Startup. Early brushes with the law exchanged foster care for juvenile detention centers. When he turned eighteen, he was given a clean slate. Shortly after that he’d joined Earth for Humans.

It must have been then that he was chosen to be a tool. He “started” a business importing and exporting goods from Pittsburgh. The media took it at face value since, as a native Pittsburgher, Roycroft had the privilege of being able to come and go without having to constantly go through the visa process. Louise suspected that Ming had set Roycroft up with a strong line of credit and a list of customers. There was no other way someone could go from absolute nothing to being able to lease trucks, fill them with gas, and drive them to another world.

The authorities claimed that all the explosives had been purchased on Earth and taken to Elfhome, where Roycroft assembled the bomb inside the packing crate for a large ironwood chest. Because of the nature of traffic out of Pittsburgh, the terrorists would have been unable to predict the exact time of delivery. For some reason, Roycroft didn’t use a cell phone as a simple trigger. Instead he’d used a fairly sophisticated AI-driven trigger that had been programmed to do detailed safety checks prior to the explosion. If it had worked properly, it wouldn’t have obeyed the command to explode before being delivered to the correct location. No wonder the authorities hadn’t considered the terrorists “dangerous” enough to try and lock down the city.

There had been a flaw, however, in the range of GPS coordinates that the device used to check to see if it was properly delivered. What the designer thought was several inches in any direction actually translated to dozens of feet. A simple stupid mistake had cost people’s lives.

Roycroft had been a high school dropout with no real aptitude for technology. He couldn’t have created the trigger.

No one at Perelman fit the FBI profile. Assuming that Roycroft’s accomplices had designed the trigger, then Tristan’s choices made sense. Everyone he ran background checks on could have possibly created the device. He focused mostly on the teachers who had military backgrounds. Tristan, though, was unfamiliar with the school. He didn’t realize that there was only one person with unlimited access to the one piece of equipment necessary to make the trigger: the 3D printer in the technology annex. When Louise had checked the print history a few days after the bombing, Mr. Kessler was the only teacher who had printed anything for weeks prior to her creating the magic generator.

“No. No. This is wrong. What could have happened?”

On the day of the bombing, Mr. Kessler had dashed up twelve flights, in a rush to start a program running on his desk computer. Of all the teachers, only he had been overcome with horror, unable to react. Was it because he was responsible for all the carnage he could so clearly see from the annex window? He’d carefully designed a humane bomb, one that was careful not to kill anyone, and instead he’d unleashed it on children.

If he had made the trigger, then the record should be in the print history.

Louise logged into the school’s administrative system via their back door and accessed the printer. It had been wiped clean. Nothing remained. The lack of evidence was just as damning.

Louise felt Tristan’s stare. She made the mistake of glancing up and meeting his eyes. He looked puzzled. She realized that her reactions to what she’d found must have shown on her face.

She ducked her head, heart pounding. Mr. Kessler was a horrible, self-centered man but she didn’t want to be responsible for getting him killed. What were they going to do?