"So you knew Aunt Amanda?" Sheila, the little girl, was saying as they walked the last half-block to Amanda's house.
"I did," Taylor said, no longer holding her head. "I spent a lot of time with her. I didn't know she had a niece."
"Well..." Sheila bit her lip and ducked between the rails of a split-rail fence they were walking past. "She doesn't. She helped me out when my mom got taken away. They were going to put me in a foster home, but she helped, and I got to stay with her for a few days." Sheila ran her hand down the bark of a sapling they passed, then swung around it and hurried to catch up with the long-legged adults. "Then the power went out, and a few days after that, she didn't come home."
There was silence for a moment. Then Sheila looked curiously up at Taylor. "So is your headache gone too?"
"Yeah, it is," Taylor replied. Then she stopped and looked down at the girl. "Holy cow," she said. "You're a Guardian too?"
"Aunt Amanda said I will be," Sheila said. "I wish she'd come home."
Daniel glanced back, then looked away. Kelly looked pained.
"Sheila," Taylor said gently, "she won't be coming back."
Sheila nodded. "I know," she said. "I felt it. I just wish she could."
They had reached the front door. Daniel opened the screen door and tested the lock. It was open, and he cautiously led the way in.
Sheila insisted that she could read just fine, and somewhat to Daniel's surprise, she turned out to be right; for a girl just barely into elementary school, she already read like she was in junior high. "I'm not very good at math," she told Taylor that afternoon as the two of them looked through one of Amanda's hand-bound books, "but my parents told me I was reading before I could walk."
The house, a smallish split-level, looked like a tornado had just gone through it; books, papers, and dirty dishes were stacked everywhere. Both Taylor and Sheila assured them that this was the house's normal state of being.
But amidst the mess, there were books. Hundreds of them. And only a handful actually had bar codes on the back. Most of them were self-published or hand-bound. In addition to these, there were dozens upon dozens of three-ring notebooks packed with newspaper articles and hand-written notes.
Kelly divided the books by topic -- Daniel got the ones that looked like they dealt with folklore; Taylor and Sheila divided up the ones that seemed to be more about Guardians. She set about organizing some of the scattered papers around the house, and started going through some of the binders.
When darkness began to creep up on them that evening and it was getting too dark to read, they got together to settle sleeping accommodations. Sheila already had a mattress set up in a corner of the living room, and Taylor claimed the couch next to it. Daniel and Kelly made their way to the bedroom upstairs.
"How'd your stuff go?" he asked as they headed toward the stairs.
"Not bad, I guess," she said. "It'll take us weeks to get through all of this, though."
"There's some good stuff," he said, shaking his head to clear out the tales of witches and giants and trolls he'd been reading. "I wish we could just take our time reading it all."
She glanced back at him as she started up the stairs. "I wish we knew how much time we have," she said quietly.
He reached up and touched her hand on the banister, suddenly remembering the dragon's prediction: that some of them would die. He swallowed, looking into Kelly's dark eyes.
She threaded her fingers through his, and pressed his hand against the side of her leg. "Come on," she said gently.
They continued up the stairs, went into the bedroom, and closed the door.
Sheila stared up the stairway from the far end of the living room, and giggled. "I dare you to go up there and listen," she said.
"What?" Taylor cried. "You sick little monkey!"
Both girls collapsed into a fit of giggles.
"Go on," Sheila said, with a mischeivous grin. "I dare you."
Aside from some muffled giggles and some sober quiet, the only other thing Taylor said for the rest of the evening was, "I wish my first time had been a little more like that."
Sheila had been impressed, and had pressed her for more details, but Taylor just lay down on the couch and turned away.
The next two days were quiet, full of reading and sorting. Kelly kept looking for a Rolodex or something equivalent, but there was no such to be found. Daniel continued to read folk tales, many of which contradicted each other on details of faeries' weaknesses, motivations, and modes of operation, but none of which dealt with dragon hatchlings or spirit-eating. Sheila and Taylor kept going through the Guardian books together, with similar results.
"This is getting frustrating," Kelly said at breakfast. "With the number of books and notebooks she has here, I just can't believe that she wasn't in contact with some other Guardians."
Daniel shrugged. "I just wish I knew what I was looking for. Several of these books talk about dragons, but there's nothing on hatchlings. A bunch of stuff that hints about how magic works, but nothing about spirits or anything like that."
Taylor shrugged. "We haven't found much either. I don't know. I have a nasty headache this morning..."
Sheila looked up suddenly. "So do I," she said. "You don't suppose the dragon is back?"
"What?" Kelly asked, puzzled.
"We're Guardians," Sheila explained. "We just naturally try to push stuff like that back toward Faerie. When it's something that big and powerful, we can't do it, and it gives us a headache."
"At least it's not a migraine this morning," Taylor mumbled.
"Then it's probably not a full-grown dragon," Sheila said matter-of-factly. "It's probably something else." She frowned and stared absently across the table as she munched on a handful of dry cereal. "It feels... I don't know. When I think about it too much, I get cold."
Daniel looked up at her, then at Taylor. "Hey, Taylor... do you get that, too?"
Taylor frowned, then closed her eyes for a few minutes. When she opened them again, she was shivering. "Yeah," she said. "Yeah, I do."
"Is it anything like what you felt when you came to get me? From the white raptor?"
"Um... I don't know," she said, thinking. "A little bit, I guess. That was a lot sharper, though. Like... like an ice cube on your skin, instead of just some cold air coming from a closed window."
Daniel looked at Kelly, who gave him a puzzled look back. Then he looked back at Taylor. "Do you think you could find where it's coming from?"
She furrowed her brow. "I think so," she said slowly. "Like I did with your sword when I wanted to find Goewyn."
"Let's go, after breakfast," he said.