“You wouldn’t be either,” he said. “What do you think happened to their mama?” Barghests are notoriously protective of their young. A litter without a mother almost certainly meant something had gone wrong.

“Poison and claws don’t protect you from becoming roadkill,” I said. Barghests had an unfortunate tendency to play in traffic. Thankfully the night-haunts were always there to clean up the mess before the humans saw. “She’s lucky she stowed them here, even if they did manage to cause a lot of damage before Dame Altair called me.”

“It’s a whole new world,” he said sadly. There was no way I could argue with that.

A few millennia ago, when Faerie was still in its ascendancy, creatures like the Barghests would have roamed the moors, not afraid of anything but hunting parties and bigger predators. Things have changed since then. With Faerie in hiding and more of her creatures becoming extinct every year, the Barghests were probably lucky to have been captured. At least with Danny looking out for them, they might stand a chance.

Not all Faerie’s denizens have fared as poorly as her monsters. Sure, the Barghests would have been free and happy to do as they pleased,but people like me and most of my friends would have been treated like lepers. Assuming we were allowed to live. As human civilization has taken over much of what used to belong to the fae, changelings have become more integrated into Faerie culture. Call it evolution in action. We’re half-human, but our loyalties are to Faerie; that makes us useful tools in a world that includes things like iron and the Internet. Not that I’ve been able to figure out the e-mail account Countess April O’Leary set up for me, despite several telephone “tech support” sessions punctuated by April’s muffled laughter. Missing fourteen years of technological advancement has left me a little behind the times.