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know she was not yet finished with Nemed. He’d done something to the child. She didn’t know what, but those ears were surely a trick of some sort. For hours she’d sat with him, examining him, touching a finger to those tiny points and struggling to know what had happened. Aside from that one feature he seemed perfectly human. A perfectly normal baby, big and healthy and entirely intact. Mum had come to see him, and with the cap on she couldn’t tell anything was amiss. Lindsay’s mother would have known if anything was wrong with the baby, but she’d said nothing and gone home as happy about the birth as when she’d arrived.
     
    But then when the changeling had come . . .
     
    It was a little faerie man. Or an elf. Leprechaun or brownie, perhaps; it was hard to tell sometimes with those folk. Filthy and evil, and lying there in the crib with a terrible grin on his face as if it were a huge joke on her. She’d caught the creature by the throat where he lay and shook him. His eyes bugged out with fear, and that fed her anger. She demanded to know where her son was, and the thing in her hands pointed to his throat. He was choking. She let up just enough for him to gasp for air, and growled at him that he should comply with her request or be strangled.
     
    He said, “Search the past, for he has died there. In the place of his conception. He’s returned home.”
     
    “Why?” Died? In the past? “When? Who killed him?” She could go there and stop it.
     
    “’Twas his fate.” The faerie in her hands grinned. “And yours.” Then he laughed. Shrill and manic, his laughter cut to her core.
     
    Outraged, she strangled the creature, throwing the dust of death every which way and leaving her with nothing but an empty crib and a photograph of the child with deformed ears. Perhaps it had been a bad idea not to take him prisoner and bring him with her, but to see that . . . thing where her baby should have been was too horrifying. Too evil. She’d not been able to countenance letting him live in place of her baby for even a moment.
     
    After that, memory grew a little fuzzy. All she could think of in her rage and grief was that she must find Nemed and make him give back her child, then kill him so the boy would be safe. Now she was close to her goal. Nemed was here somewhere. She would find him, make him give back her son, then kill the elf.
     
    Now she opened her eyes to continue her search and thought of how upset Alex would be when he learned of the ears. Those ears. God knew where they’d come from. A spell? What had Nemed done? Was the child even Alex’s genetically? And if not, then how had she conceived? She was not conversant with the ins and outs of fey magic; she imagined anything was possible. If Nemed did this to her—destroyed her marriage to Alex—for that alone he should die. He certainly would once she caught up with him.
     
    Finally she found herself in the room she sought. This was the place; she was sure. But no Nemed. It figured. Cowardly wanker. She set her bag on the dirt floor that sloped to the middle like most earthen floors packed hard by the feet of occupants. Off in the corner was the secluded spot where they’d seen Nemed before, but though she peered into it she couldn’t discern any presence. That meant little, for she knew the lack of light made for deceptions she couldn’t penetrate.
     
    She pulled open the zipper of her bag and took the rolled elastic bandage from it. Quickly she unbuttoned her blouse and removed it, pulled off her bra, then wrapped the wide bandage around her breasts to press them flat. Or, at least, as flat as she could get them just then. Her teeth clamped to her lower lip at the pain of binding breasts filled with milk, and her heart broke that it would go away soon unless she could find her son very quickly. It was already dwindling; her breasts had been rock hard at first but now seemed only heavy. The milk would keep coming if she expressed it,