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All men have limits.
They learn what they are and learn not to exceed them.
I ignore mine.
—BATMAN
Great spirits have long suffered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
—EINSTEIN
What they said.
—DANI O’MALLEY, STILL AS MEGA AS EVER
The roads are fragile food for city crooks on a starry night
DUBLIN
TWO YEARS, FIVE MONTHS ATS
“ANOTHER THREE OF THEM, Dani?” Rainey Lane exclaimed as she threw open the door of the townhouse.
The light from the cozily furnished home spilled into the night, glistening on cobblestones damp from a recent rain. Backlit, the fifty-four-year-old woman looked like the radiant, matronly angel of mercy she’d proven to be since I’d brought the first of the orphans to her.
“Four,” I corrected, motioning to the eldest of the children huddled behind me. Her name was Sara Brady, she’d told me grudgingly, and she was eleven years old. Her brother, Thomas, was seven, the girl holding his hand was five, and the baby a mere ten months.
As I reached behind Sara to unfasten the satchel that held her sleeping sister, she tensed, rising to the balls of her feet, and knocked my arm away, thin shoulders trembling. Poised to run, her eyes darted nervously as she considered he
r odds: the chilly, dangerous night or the warm, inviting light.
“You agreed to come here with me,” I reminded. “You’ll be safe and well cared for.”
“How long have they been on their own?” Rainey asked quietly.
“Nearly two months. Like most, they’ve no idea what happened to their parents.”
“I do. The Faerie took them,” the boy blurted. “I saw it, I did, with my own—”
Sara’s mouth thinned to a line as she kicked him sharply in the shins. “Hush Thomas, you’re not to be speaking of that!”
The boy began to cry, tears trickling down grimy cheeks. He rubbed his eyes with his fists then shook one at her. “But it’s true! I saw it! It was one of the Faerie! You know it’s true, Sara! You—”
When she kicked him again, harder, I moved between them and drew one to each side, resting my hands on their thin, knobby shoulders. “You’ll be safe here. This is Rainey Lane. She helps run the foster center.”
“Where they’ll split us up!” Sara hissed, pulling away from me.
Rainey spoke swiftly. “We never separate siblings. If we’re unable to find a good home for the four of you, you may stay in the center as long as you like.”
That was one of the things I’d been counting on when I’d brought Rainey the first of the abandoned children I’d discovered, half dead in the streets. Her adopted daughters were biological sisters: Alina and MacKayla Lane. Family was everything to her. Still, it wouldn’t be long before the recently formed center became too full to continue offering such an alternative.
Sara Brady squinted up at Rainey through damp, tangled hair, hostility blazing in her eyes. Silently, I applauded her bravado. The terrified eleven-year-old had managed to take care of her infant sister and her young siblings for nearly two months, without the many sidhe-seer gifts I’d had at her age. She was a fighter. But she was an eighty-pound-dripping-wet fighter, and Dublin, AWC, was no city for lightweights.
“You know who I am and what I do,” I said to Sara softly. “Have you heard such terrible things about me, then? Or the foster center?”
“I’ve not heard of your ‘foster center’ at all,” she said stiffly. “But kids on the telly always get split up.” And dreadful things happen to them, the shadows in her eyes said.
