What could Louise do? Her own dream pressed close, frightening not because it was of things that could not be changed in the past, but loomed over them as things that might yet come. Was Jillian strong enough to deal with all the things that Louise had seen in her dream? Did they have the time for Louise to even delay the truth?
She decided to start small. “In my dreams, the babies rode little hoverbikes to visit Orville. They wanted him to help them pick out new names. They’re not very happy with the ones we chose.”
Jillian laughed, sounding more like her old self. “What? Don’t you think Chuck will like Charlene?”
“No. She hates it,” Louise said. “Orville wasn’t any help. He doesn’t like his name either. He likes to be called Oilcan.”
“Oilcan?” Jillian let go of Louise’s hand to stretch. “Oilcan? What a weird name. How do you think he got it?”
“I’m not sure.” Louise frowned in the darkness at the innocent-looking incubator. While they were at the mansion, the babies said that Joy had taught them to dream walk, allowing them to explore. The babies had known about the caves under the house long before the twins. Were they really still restlessly exploring despite growing in eggs instead of suspended in frozen nitrogen? How did they interact with Oilcan? It didn’t seem safe, them wandering around like that, even if they weren’t really leaving their eggs. “I think we really need to pick other names for the babies.”
“I liked Charlene.” Jillian even looked more like herself, as her short “Peter Pan” haircut of June had grown out. Her hair had been a brash carrot orange after she’d bleached it in New York City in an attempt to disguise herself. The tengu had taken pity on her and produced a hairdresser to dye Jillian’s hair back to her original brown color.
“Charleeene.” Louise mimicked Chuck Norris.
Jillian laughed again. “Okay. Why don’t we just call her Chuck Norris Dufae and be done with it? No one seems to go by their real name on Elfhome. At least, not in our family.”
“I want to stay Louise Mayer.” Louise lay back down beside her twin.
“I want to stay Jillian Eloise Mayer.” Jillian shifted the blue-flannel pillowcase that housed the remains of her childhood huggy blanket Fritz to curl beside Louise. “Together, we’re Lemon-Lime JEl-Lo. But what do we call the Jawbreakers?”
They’d picked out two girl names after considering hundreds. Louise couldn’t even remember what they settled on. Obviously the babies didn’t like the choices.
“Jawbreaker could be their middle names,” Louise said. “It not like we use our middle names. I bet no one outside our family knows what they are. We could use some other names that still mean Red and Green. Red. Rose. Ruby.”
“What’s wrong with Cherry? It’s a flavor of candy.”
Was that what they settled on? Louise couldn’t remember but apparently the babies didn’t like the name. It wasn’t as dramatic as Crimson Death. She was blanking on the shades of red. “Maybe Vermilion?”
“Gag!” Jillian cried. “Cerise.”
“That’s just cherry in French.”
“They won’t know.”
Louise wasn’t too sure of that. “Magenta.”
“Makes me think of Rocky Horror.” Jillian threw her hands up in the air and sang, “Let’s do the time warp again!”
“That might be a good thing.” Rocky Horror was cool and that’s what the babies wanted. Still it felt off. “Scarlet? Scarlet Witch. Scarlet Overkill.”
“Oh she would love that!” Jillian said. “Or Skarlet from Mortal Kombat. Finish him!”
“Scarlet Dufae.” Louise tried it with the last name that the babies had already claimed.
“I like it. It rolls. One down. Green. Moss. Olive.”
“No and no.” Louise vetoed both Moss and Olive.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. They just don’t feel — right. Emerald. Lime.”
“We’re Lime,” Jillian said. “Lemon-Lime JEl-Lo.”
In other words, both Lemon and Lime were off the list.
Louise tried to think of another green name. All that was coming to mind was Avocado. The babies’ names weren’t their most pressing of problems. If her dream was true, then the box full of baby dragons — possibly Joy’s brothers and sisters — had fallen into oni hands.
“Pickle,” Jillian said.
“What?” Louise asked in confusion.
“I’m still trying to think of green names. It sucks that this place doesn’t have Wi-Fi. We could look up shades of green. None of the ones I can think of sound like a little girl.”
“I don’t think they want to have names that sound like little girls.”
“All the green words I can think of is food. Basil. Mint. Pistachio. I think I’m hungry. I want ice cream.”
“Ice cream!” Joy cried from the shadows. The baby dragon bounded across the floor to their futon bed. She had a Gobstopper in either paw.
“Where you get that candy?” Jillian cried.
“Found them! Yummy! Nomnomnom!” Joy shoved both into her mouth to demonstrate.
Louise’s heart sank at the proof that Joy had raided Oilcan’s nightstand. It meant that her dream of Jin telling Tinker about the box was probably also true. Louise had noticed that the tengu leader had carefully given the impression that the babies would be born, not hatched. He’d dodged the question about how many women were pregnant with Dufae babies. He’d said nothing about eggs.
Crow Boy had told them that it normally took a great deal of ceremony to summon Providence’s spirit to discuss important issues. Impatience had vanished after the dragons had implanted the babies into Gracie. Joy was uncommunicative to the tengu, whom she saw as Providence’s property. She might tell the twins but her English mostly consisted of food-related words. It wasn’t that she couldn’t learn more, she merely refused to.
It meant that no one knew exactly what the dragons had done to the babies in order for them to survive.
When the twins had taken Crow Boy to the hospital, it became apparent that the tengu weren’t human at a very basic level. It was possible that the dragons had changed the babies so that they could thrive within eggs. They might be genetically tengu in addition to elf, dragon, and human. No one would know until the eggs hatched.
Louise didn’t care what kind of feet the babies had when they were born. Human. Crow. It didn’t matter to her. Jin probably avoided the issue because it would matter greatly to the elves. Would it matter to their older sister, Alexander, who obviously liked to be called Tinker? To their “biological” mother, Esme? To Oilcan, who probably was going to end up as their guardian? It made Louise uneasy just thinking about it.
Even more worrisome was the matter of the box. If only she’d known while they were robbing the museum to take all of the eggs. If only they’d tried to intercept the shipment to Elfhome. She and Jillian had been so focused on the babies, they hadn’t thought beyond their own needs.
There was a lot that Jin didn’t tell Tinker domi. It was possible that in all the chaos, the information had gotten lost. Had she and Jillian told Crow Boy everything that they knew? It had been July when they rescued the tengu youth out of the cage. It had been a frantic scramble to escape from the fortress of evil, get safely to Monroeville, and then rescue the Nestlings. It was now September. Louise had lost most of August while recovering from being shot by Yves. Surely, sometime while Louise hadn’t been fully conscious, Jillian had covered everything that they hadn’t told Crow Boy.
Did Jillian know everything?
After their parents died, Louise kept more and more secrets from her twin. Jillian had been so fragile. Louise had been afraid that if Jillian knew how truly perilous their situation was that Jillian would break. Even now, with all the surviving members of their family safe, she wasn’t sure if Jillian could handle more.