Tales of the Misbegotten: Fairy Child
By Katherine Tomlinson
Dannon hated
the changeling cases.
The
Department had been making noises about creating a separate paranormal kidnapping
squad to handle them but with the city's financial mess and the department's
deep budget cuts, he knew that was never going to happen.
What Dannon
hated the most was dealing with the mothers, most of whom had led charmed lives
up until the moment the fairies took their babies and left something else
behind.
Everyone
knew it was the lucky ones who attracted the fairies' attention, the ones whose
lives were envied, the ones whose lives seemed special.
Dannon had
enough Irish in him to remember his grandmother telling him that a jealous look
at a mother and her child was dangerous for them both and must always be
followed by a blessing to ward off disaster.
Unless something bad was the intention.
The one good
thing about the current string of changeling crimes, Dannon figured, was that
it had put the kibosh on the practice of selling pictures of celebrity spawn.
Dannon hated
dealing with celebrities almost as much as he hated dealing with vampires and a
celebrity changeling case was a high-profile nightmare and the ordinary ones
were bad too.
Dannon
couldn't remember the number of times his team had been called to a house to
deal with distraught parents who thought their baby was safe because they'd put
an iron knife of a pair of scissors on top of the crib.
