I didn’t think that was healthy, but I also wasn’t the one to say so. As far as I was concerned, Megan could do whatever she needed to do to survive without him. I did.
Megan yanked the playpen out of a closet in the boys’ room, and I placed Faith on the padded bottom, taking the blanket Megan provided. I leaned over to cover the baby, but jerked back at the last second.
“Whoa!” Blue elephants marched right to left across the cotton. I threw the thing far, far away.
“Hey!” Megan said. “What the heck?”
I grabbed her arm before she could retrieve it. “You can’t cover her with anything but plain material.” At Megan’s continued blank expression, I said, “Kitten blanket, kitten Faith.”
“Oh.” Megan smacked herself in the forehead with the heel of her hand. “Duh.”
“Even a baby elephant would have put a crimp in your playpen.”
“And a hole in my ceiling.”
I hadn’t thought of that. I was going to have to watch this kid and everything around her.
“Maybe you should leave Faith here,” Megan murmured.
“What? No!”
“You don’t think I can take care of her?”
“No. I mean yes. No.” I ran my hand through my shaggy dark brown hair. “She’s not a regular baby, Meg.”
“I want to help. You’ve got enough on your plate, and face it, Liz, you aren’t Mary Poppins.”
“Really? You think?” I sighed and jerked my head toward the hall. This conversation might get heated, and I did not want to wake Faith. Megan and I stepped out of the room and closed the door.
“Luther is good with her,” I began.
“What if something attacks you? One of you gonna hold Faith while the other fights?”
“If we have to.” I didn’t plan on getting attacked. I planned on hauling ass all the way to the Badlands. “Listen, I appreciate the offer, but who knows what she might turn into. Who knows what she can do. Her dad was a skinwalker, but her mom . . . not a clue.”
Megan frowned. “I can handle it.”
“I’m sure you can, but you’ll have to work.”
“Not much more cost for four kids with the sitter than three.”
“How you gonna explain a baby that turns into a giraffe?” Megan’s frown deepened. “What if she wakes up ravenous and gets her hands on a tiger T-shirt? I couldn’t live with myself if your kids were hurt, Meg.”
Her shoulders slumped. “Neither could I.”
“I appreciate the offer, but she’s my responsibility.” The doorbell rang again. “Go on,” I said. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
Megan left; I stepped into the bedroom, glanced into the playpen—still asleep—then snatched the receiver for the monitor and made sure the base was on. Back in the hall, I sensed I wasn’t alone.
Since I couldn’t very well wear my knife in a sheath at my waist during a kid’s birthday party, I’d strapped it to my calf beneath my jeans. I went down on one knee as if to tie my shoe, my fingers creeping beneath the cuff toward the weapon.
“You’re wearin’ sandals, love.”
The instant I heard the voice, I blew out a relieved breath and stood. “Quinn.”
A man stepped free of the shadows at the far end of the hall. “Mistress.”
Quinn Fitzpatrick was tall and sleek with shiny black hair and eerie yellow-green eyes. He was also a gargoyle, though you couldn’t tell it by looking at him. He was handsome to the point of stunning, warm and solid and alive. Yet not long after bar time he would be curled up in Megan’s garden as still as a statue, literally.
When God tossed the Grigori into the pit, he slammed shut the pearly gates. However, while some had broken the rules, others had not. Those angels too good to go to hell, but too corrupt for heaven, became fairies.
Left behind on the earth, they were lost. Suddenly human with no idea how to be, they would never have survived without help. They got it from the beasts. As a reward, those animals that offered aid were given the gifts of flight and shape-shifting. They could sprout wings; they could turn to stone.
Once the fairies could manage on their own, the gargoyles began to protect the weak and unwary from demon attack. The more humans they saved, the more human they became.
With the grace of the black panther he could become, Quinn moved forward.
“I told you to call me Liz,” I reminded him.
I was the leader of the light but I didn’t much care to be called mistress or any other form of similar address. Many of my people were ancient, however, and such titles came naturally to them.
Quinn’s gaze had strayed to the stairs Megan had so recently trotted down. I heard the low murmur of her voice as she welcomed her guests.
“She would like a baby in the house again,” he murmured, with a slight cant of the Irish. He’d been on this side of the Atlantic long enough—centuries perhaps—to lose most of his accent.
“Oh, no you don’t,” I said.
“Don’t what?” He continued to stare toward the sound of Megan’s voice.
“You’re here to protect her, not impregnate her,” I whispered furiously.
A soft growl rumbled from his chest. “I would never hurt her.”