“We really do appreciate you coming down, Lucy.”
She smiled at me. “I know you do. I just really want to get this guy.”
I realized that Lucy had taken my rape more personally, because we were friends. It made me care for her even more, and say with real feeling, “Thank you, Lucy.”
She smiled a little wider. “I’ll leave you to get the little tykes ready to leave, and go join the cops helping to keep back the crowd.”
“I assume the press,” I said.
“And just people wanting to see the little prince and princess; it’s not every day that America gets newborn royals.”
“True,” I said, and smiled at her.
She smiled back and then left us with, “I’m not usually into babies, but she’s a cute one.”
We thanked her, and once the door closed behind her, Doyle and I looked at each other. He came to stand beside me, and we both looked down at Bryluen.
“Mustn’t bespell the humans,” I said to her.
She blinked those exotic-looking eyes at me. The little knit cap was tucked over most of her red curls and completely hid the horn buds. She was tiny and perfect, and already magical.
“Do you think she understands?” I asked.
“No, but that answers one question.”
I looked up at him. “What question?”
“Maeve Reed has a human nanny for her baby, but we cannot risk human caregivers.”
“You mean we can’t risk the human caregivers being ensorcelled by the babies.”
“Yes, that is what I mean.”
I looked down at our little bundle of joy. “She’s part demi-fey, or part sluagh, one has the best glamour in all faerie, and the other is some of the last of the wild magic left in faerie.”
“There is wild magic about, my Merry.” He motioned at the tree and the wild rose vines.
I smiled. “True, but I’ve never seen a baby bespell someone that quickly and that well. Lucy has a strong will, and was likely wearing some protections against faerie glamour just as a precaution. Most police that deal with us do.”
“Yet Bryluen clouded her mind and senses as if it were nothing,” Doyle said.
“It was very quick and well done. I’ve known sidhe with centuries of practice who couldn’t have done it.”
He placed his hand gently on top of her head, so very dark against the multicolored cap. Bryluen blinked up at us. “They are going to be very powerful, Merry.”
“How do we teach them to control their powers if they have them this early, Doyle? Bryluen can’t understand right from wrong yet.”
“We will have to protect the humans from them until they are old enough to learn control.”
“How long will that be?”
“I do not know, but we know now that they have come into the world with instinctive magic and there is no waiting until puberty for their powers to manifest.”
“It would have been easier if their magic had waited,” I said.
“It would, but I do not think our path was ever meant to be easy, my Merry; wondrous, beautiful, exciting, thrilling, even frightening, but not easy.”
I raised Bryluen to lay a kiss upon her cheek. I loved her already; she was mine, ours, but I was a little frightened now. If she could make humans like her, want to hold and rock her, what else could she make them do? Child psychologists say that children are born sociopaths and have to learn to have a conscience. It happens around the age of two, usually, but until then there’s no conscience to appeal to, no way to understand that something is wrong or right.