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some of it was just plain brute strength.
    I knew she was giving them trouble because Sholto was using more than just his two strong hands. His father had been a nightflyer, like the manta-ray creatures that had disarmed the police. The same tentacles that graced the nightflyers had now exploded from beneath the t-shirt Sholto had worn to pass for human.
    His tentacles were the white of his flesh, decorated with veins of gold and jewel colors. They were pretty, actually, once you got past the fact that they were there at all.
    Gran hadn’t had time to get past that fact, and she was cursing Sholto soundly. “Do nae touch me with those unclean things!” Her arms looked thin as matchsticks, but when she yanked, Rhys and Sholto both moved a little.
    Sholto braced two of his thicker tentacles against the floor, and when next Gran pulled only Rhys moved. Sholto had his foundation. He could hold her, thanks to his extra bits. The tentacles weren’t there just to horrify, or for decoration. They were truly limbs, and like all limbs, they were useful.
    Rhys shouted to be heard above Gran’s yells, the police, and everything else. “Hettie, someone put a spell on you!” He chanced removing one hand from her bony wrist. I caught a glimpse of something shiny and golden caught between finger and thumb before Gran jerked herself free of his other hand. Holding a brownie was a two-person job for most people, even the warriors of the sidhe. Especially if you didn’t want to hurt the brownie.
    Gran balled her fist up, and I think she would have hit Rhys in the face, but Sholto caught her arm with a tentacle, and stopped her in mid-punch.
    She yelled louder, screeching, and began to fight him in earnest. Small objects began to fly at him from around the room. It was when the shards of window glass began to move that Rhys slapped her.
    I think it startled us all, because Gran looked at him with wide eyes. He said her name, loud and clear, putting power into it so that it rang like some great bell, echoing in the room as no human speech ever did.
    He held the shining gold thread in front of her face. “Someone wove this into your hair, Hettie. It is a spell of emotions, meant to increase whatever you feel. More anger, more hatred, more rage, more prejudice against the black court. You are one of the most reasonable fey I know, Hettie. Why would you ever pick today to lose control?” He moved the golden thread so that her eyes and head followed it. He moved her gaze so that she would look at me in the bed. “Why would you endanger your granddaughter and your great-grandchildren whom she carries inside her? That is not you, Hettie.”
    She looked past the golden thread to me. Tears began to shine in her eyes. “Sorry I am, Merry. Sorrier that I know who did this evil thing.”
    There was a sound from near the doors. Galen said, “Sholto, the tentacles are crushing the policemen.”
    Sholto looked at the far wall with its burden of huge tentacles and police, as if he’d forgotten they were there. “If I let them go, they will try to be heroic, for they will never believe that we are not villains. We look too much like villains to be anything else to the humans.” There was a tone in his voice, something bitter.
    How did we explain what had just happened so that the police didn’t think exactly that? How do you explain that the giant octopus tentacles are trying to rescue us, and that the little old lady was the danger?
    “You must call off your beast, Sholto,” Doyle said.
    “They will either try to run out the door and call for reinforcements, or they will try to draw a second gun and kill my beast. They have already wounded him with lead bullets.”
    Him. He’d called the thing with tentacles bigger than my body a him. Funny, even with growing up with one of the nightflyers as my bodyguard, I still wouldn’t have thought of the giant tentacled thing as a “him” or “her.” It was an “it,” but apparently not.