She also completely ignored her own situation.

“More trickery,” Allie snorted.

“Let’s talk about your home. What does it look like?” If I could find the dark elf’s lair, I could take him out. Once he was gone, the new forest babies could learn to let their human half dominate. Gradually, the woodland genes would fade into dormancy.

What would happen to the five teens? I had to get the girls out. Now. The boys?

Later. I’d make that decision later. Or they would. They were almost adults, ready to take responsibility for their own lives. But they couldn’t be allowed to continue their father’s ways.

No way. No how.

Something the girls had said wiggled and slid around the edges of my mind. Something about invasive nonnative species. Their father was out of his native environment and therefore a noxious weed.

I knew that keeping English Ivy from strangling native trees was an ongoing battle with the parks department. The butterfly bush had just been added to the list of pesky plants. A native of China, too many of the fragrant shrubs had escaped planned landscapes to take over creek banks, crowding out helpful natives.

The girls said that keeping those plants under control was part of their work.

Could the parks department and their volunteers manage without the additional help of a family of forest elves? Volunteer groups. They were around but how did I find them? How effective were they?

Goddess, I was digging myself deeper with every thought twist. I needed to concentrate on one thing at a time.

“What about our home?” Blackberry asked suspiciously.

If I remembered correctly, one species of blackberry, the big one with huge berries was also an invasive nonnative species too. Maybe she was named after the smaller and less aggressive local plant. The one with tiny thorns designed to hook into the delicate flesh of a bear’s mouth to keep the animals from stripping the plant of greenery just to get to the berries.

“How big is your home? Forest Park is huge. There are large stretches where a small hut could blend into the background and stay hidden. But a big modern construction with lots of glass wouldn’t.” I needed a map.

“Not hard to hide something that’s mostly underground,” Salal said on a shrug. She too avoided her sister’s horrible confession.

“Caves? I didn’t know the geology of the hills was conducive to extensive cave systems.” I’d absorbed bits and pieces of information about rocks and plate tectonics and such from my deceased husband. Dill had a Ph.D. in geology and spent a lot of our three-month marriage crawling around the high desert plateau of Central Oregon and Washington. I’d shipped his rock collection back to his parents, postage due, after they tried to stiff me on Dill’s life insurance and inheritance of the house.

“She didn’t say caves,” Blackberry snorted. She didn’t want to part with information her father wanted to remain secret, but as a teen she needed to let me know that her knowledge was superior to mine.

“If not natural caves ...” I mused.

“Then unnatural tunnels,” Allie offered.

“The Shanghai Tunnels!” I whispered. I’d seen a program on TV about what lies beneath major cities. Often whole underworlds. Portland had a sordid history of subterranean opium dens, brothels, and cells for unwilling recruits to the maritime industry. Not all of them had been fully explored. Local rumor claimed that some of them went all the way into the West Hills.

Forest Park covered a huge tract of those hills. Why couldn’t some, or just one of those tunnels lead to an elven home?

“How did you get here?” I jumped topics on the girls.

Gollum had a bad habit of expecting others to follow his rapid transitions. His mind had already made logical leaps. Unfortunately, not everyone had his intelligence and extensive knowledge of seemingly unrelated subject matter.

“We took the bus.” Salal shrugged just like her sister, ducking her head into her shoulders.

Okay. They’d already admitted to ranging around Old Town and Chinatown.

“How’d you get to the bus?” I pressed them.

The girls looked at their hands folded around tea mugs.

“You don’t have to tell me. I’m guessing you walked a tunnel into Old Town and came up in a back alley right near a bus stop.”

Salal half nodded. “It’s beside a parking lot where Father keeps his car. But Oak is the only one of us with a driver’s license, other than Father, that is.”

“What’s his connection to the Coopers?”

“How’d you know about that?” Blackberry looked up sharply.

“Scrap smelled him there a few weeks ago. His minions and your brothers invaded the office looking for something precious.”

“Oh,” she said flatly. “Father works there. We all help out sometimes when they have a new shipment of antiques. The boys have learned to use the computer there.”

“I want to go back to the women your father attacks,” Allie insisted. “And what he makes your brothers do to you. How has he gotten away with it for so long?” Her shoulders hunched and her hands reached for the gun that no longer hung on her belt. Her new revolver was locked up in the bedroom.

“Why do you say attack? He uses no violence,” Salal insisted.

Blackberry didn’t look so sure.

“Does your father ask their permission? Does he court them? Does he follow up with offers of a relationship?” Allie pressed.

“N ... no.”

“Then he coerces them, tricks them. He doesn’t get their permission. That’s rape.”

“Would you like it if some man did that to you?” I brought home the concept.

“Our brothers and the helpers haven’t practiced on me yet, though Father wants them to,” Salal defended the nasty little man.

“Um....” Blackberry hedged.

“How does your father expect you to behave when confronted with men? Do you strip off and open your legs to every man who looks at you—like a prostitute? Will you do it for your brothers when they can no longer resist his prodding?” Crude, but they didn’t seem to understand subtle. “Or will you have sex with the lost travelers your father brings home just to produce more babies?”

“Yes,” Blackberry whispered. “That’s what he wants. That’s why he insists we practice. That’s why I need the black cohosh.”

“He’s using you like breeding cattle.” Allie swallowed deeply and turned her back. She was having trouble containing her outrage.

So was I.

“Why?” I asked. “Loss of habitat and urban crowding drove him here from the Italian Alps. He doesn’t belong here. Why is he so bent on rebuilding the Nörglein when there isn’t enough wild land left for them all?”

“I don’t know!” Blackberry shouted. She stood up, angrily pushing back her stool so that it clattered against the wood floor. Without another word she headed for the front door.

I couldn’t stop her. The next decision had to be her own.

“We’d better get home,” Salal said flatly. She rose more slowly, pushing her stool up next to the bar politely. She stalled by righting the fallen chair. She kept her gaze firmly on her task, never engaging me or her sister. “Thank you for the lesson on female biology. Thank you for the tea.”

“You don’t have to go back,” I reminded them quietly.

Both girls stilled. Not even their eyelids twitched. A useful skill when hiding in the forest.

“Father will be very angry if we are late,” Blackberry said after several long moments of silence.

“What will he do if you don’t go back?” Allie asked. I could see ideas spinning in her head.

“He’ll punish us.”

“How?” I asked.

“He’ll ... he’ll command our brothers to whip us with the vines of the other blackberry. The big ones.”

I cringed in sympathy. The Himalayan variety had thorns big enough to penetrate the hide of a Yeti.

An odd thought. Bullets from an automatic weapon couldn’t penetrate the hide of a Sasquatch—the North American version of the Yeti—because they were man-made. The blackberry, being natural, probably could. Something to keep in mind.

“Interesting that the coward will command your brothers to do his dirty work, but can’t stomach it himself.”

“We’ll protect you,” Allie insisted.

“You are awfully generous in that ‘we,’” I grumbled.

“You don’t ever have to go back,” Allie continued as if she hadn’t heard me. “You can be like normal girls, go to school, and have friends. Learn to use a computer. Date boys and make your own decisions who you have sex with and when, preferably when you have a lot more experience of life and know what you really want in a partner, a long-term partner.”

Blackberry retreated one step away from the door. Salal looked up with interest.

“You can protect us?” Blackberry asked, hopefully.

“Scrap, you on alert?”

“Where will you hide us?” Salal asked.

“Right here,” Allie replied.

“You giving up the bed to them?” I returned.

“We’ll work something out.” She smiled.

“I wish I could call Donovan, he’s got experience in integrating Kajiri into society.” He’d reached out to me in his worry over Doreen. “I don’t trust him. Gollum could help. I think I have to call him.”

But first I needed a double shot of single malt Scotch. The good stuff.

Nope. That wouldn’t work even if I could figure out how to do it. We don’t want those girls exposed to the energies of the chat room that would bring out their elven heritage even more. We want to tamp down on those characteristics.

So who’s going to sleep where? Maybe we can do it in shifts.

At least my babe is calling Gollum.

Uh oh, the phone is ringing. It’s Dr. Sean. He’s going to distract my babe and keep her from calling the only man she can trust to help her.

What to do? What to do?

I know, I’ll send Gollum an email. Hmm, if I invade his home computer monitor I can make the screen show my message.

It’s going to take some work and a whole lot of energy. Best I load up on mold first. Then I’ll hit his computer just about the time he gets home from teaching.

That’s the trick. Show him the message once and then make it fade like an automatic delete. He’ll never know it’s me and not Tess calling for help.