Jane poked Hal to move on. Quickly. There were at least two EIA guards on duty. If PB&G was going to “interview” Yumiko, they’d better do it before more guards could arrive.
“So where is this tengu?” Hal asked.
“She’s up on the top floor, right hand corner. It’s the room furthest from the nurse’s station, just in case trouble breaks out.” It would be the room that Mercy Hospital routinely put Hal in, most likely for the very same reason, only two floors up. Usually the rooms around Hal were empty. Mercy was the only hospital in Pittsburgh but anyone that could put off surgery went Stateside to get it done. “Although I can’t see what trouble could break out since the tengu is still unconscious and Sparrow will be here to collect her before she wakes up.”
“Sparrow? The viceroy’s secretary?” Hal asked.
Tinnerman nodded. “Yeah, the grunts told me that they’d called Maynard and he was with Sparrow down in the South Hills, nearly to the Rim by Brownsville. She’s on her way. They wanted to be sure I knew it so I could keep an eye out for her and make sure she got to the top floor when she arrived.” He straightened proudly. “I’m fluent in Elvish. I got straight A’s in high school. Busted my butt and got rank three translator qualifications.”
Hal made appreciative noises, as it was fairly impressive. Rank four required a Master’s degree; it also was the minimum level for official EIA translator positions. It meant that most Pittsburghers couldn’t get a job with the EIA despite conversing in Elvish their entire lives.
Nigel came down the hall, walking gingerly as he rebuttoned his linen shirt, but otherwise beaming with delight as normal. Hal caught sight of him and did a quick wrap-up, thanking Tinnerman for his help.
“This way.” Jane started them toward the correct bank of elevators to get up to the patients’ rooms. “Since the EIA had a building dropped on them, we only have to get past two guards who have had a very shitty day.” And it was about to get worse. Jane tried not to feel guilty. “If Sparrow shows up while we’re talking to Yumiko, let me do the talking.” Hal’s Elvish sucked. “I’ll let her know that Yumiko might know where Tinker domi is being held. If we can get Yumiko to trust us…”
Jane yelped with surprise as Nigel suddenly dragged her and Hal sideways into a janitor’s closet. “What the hell?” She whispered because the man probably had a good reason for cramming them into a five-foot-wide space.
“Jane, there’s something I haven’t told you that you need to know.” Nigel turned on the closet light, dragged Taggart into the closet too and shut the door.
“What?” Jane fought with a rag mop trying to fall into her face. “Seriously, what are we doing in here?”
“Turn the camera off,” Nigel told Taggart. “This cannot be recorded. It is a matter of life or death.”
Taggart looked mystified but hit the power button his camera. “Okay. It’s off. What’s this about?”
“Sparrow was the one that arranged to have Windwolf killed,” Nigel said quietly.
“What?” Jane cried.
Nigel held up his hands to quiet her. “Sparrow conspired with the oni to have the viceroy killed. If she had succeeded, she would have been in control of Pittsburgh until the queen decided who would rule in his place. Since these are elves, that could have been longer than any of us could imagine. It would have handed complete control of the city to the oni.”
“Shit!” Jane hissed.
Taggart was looking lost and confused. “Why didn’t you tell me this?”
Nigel sighed. “Because I’m protecting the ones that told me. Also there’s no proof to those allegations, but I believe them to be true.”
“Who told you?” Taggart growled.
“No one can know this,” Nigel said. “It must never be repeated, particularly on camera. It must remain a secret to our deaths.”
“You know you can trust me,” Taggart said.
“I met the wee lasses who are Lemon-Lime,” Nigel said. “Och, they are clever little ones but they’re in over their heads. They trusted me with their lives; I cannae betray them.”
It took a moment for Jane to remember that Lemon-Lime was the name of the film company that gave Nigel the monster call. “How little is little? College age? High school?”
“They are not that much older than Joey. Eight. Nine.” He measured off a child that would only come to slightly above Jane’s hip. “Twins. At first I couldn’t believe them; Lemon-Lime videos are extensively researched and the humor is cunning, albeit often juvenile. It didn’t seem possible for such wee lasses to produce them. But then they explained the gossamer call. They weren’t repeating information that they barely grasped. They’d taken the barest of clues and created a device that uses magic—a power not found on Earth—to control beasts that live on another world. But by doing so, they had stumbled across a horrific secret. They trusted me with their lives by telling me what they’d found out.”
Jane had six younger siblings; she didn’t completely trust anything coming out of a child’s mouth. “Two nine-year-olds uncovered a conspiracy between an elf and the oni while on Earth?”
“They did a video of Windwolf being saved by a human man and woman, although the details…Oh! Oh! Oh my!”
Jane glanced around the tiny closet to see what was triggering Nigel’s wide-eyed look of surprise. “What?”
“They released this last month, immediately after Windwolf’s attack and disappearance hit the news. It was assumed that Lemon-Lime had some inside knowledge.” He pulled out his phone, and played a video. It was animated but accurately showed the attack on Windwolf by Foo dogs. And then it got weird. Windwolf was chased onto Grandma Gertie’s putt-putt golf course, menaced by a bull, attacked by a saurus, saved by Jane and Hal then taken to the Neighborhood of Make Believe.
“What…what…what…” Jane sputtered. She grabbed his phone and played it again. In the video, Jane was wearing something that looked like a Valkyrie costume but they’d nailed Hal from his pith helmet and safari jacket. “This is what happened to us! The events are out of order. We ate at the studio the night before, but this was yesterday morning! Bull. Flashbang. Saurus. Rifle.”
“I think we should consider anything they told me to be deadly accurate,” Nigel said.
Jane played the video a third time. “This is so creepy.” It was so wildly unlikely that she wanted to believe that the events had been staged to match the video but everything had been too completely random. Her argument with Chloe that led to her asking for viewers to call in monster sightings. Nigel wanting to stop at the putt-putt golf course. Her decision to use a flashbang to scare off the bull. No one, not even Nigel, could have guided them into this exact fight.
Add in the fact that they were having this discussion in a janitor’s closet and her life suddenly felt completely surreal.
“The elves say that they have oracles that can accurately see the future,” Nigel said. “We’ve dismissed those claims as native superstitions. Obviously we were wrong.”
Boo had said that the Eyes could see the future and that Kajo had moved all his camps because Pure Radiance had come to the Westernlands. Hide and seek.
“The twins had no proof because they simply ‘saw’ the truth.” Jane handed back the phone. “It means we won’t have evidence to give the elves. We can’t accuse Sparrow.”
Taggart growled softly. “If Lemon-Lime is right, then Sparrow is probably also behind the kidnapping of Windwolf’s bride and foster brother. She stood there on the riverfront and pretended to help lead the search. Most likely she was directing the elves away from the oni camps.”
“Sparrow can’t let Yumiko talk to the other elves,” Jane said. “Wraith Arrow said that the tengu are the spies of the oni. Sparrow can’t be sure what Yumiko knows. One wrong word and the sekasha will kill Sparrow right after they kill Yumiko.”