Free Unbearable by Tracy Cooper-Posey Page B

bare hands and Nick had only had blood on his shirt from picking her up and holding her. There had been none on his hands.
    Miguel smuggled our swords back the next day. His eyes were red-rimmed and his perpetual smile was gone. He hugged us all in turn before getting into his Buick and driving away in a cloud of blue exhaust fumes.
    I had assumed that was the end of it. With the police clearing us, we were free to return to New York. Nyanther announced that he would head back with us, then he would continue on after that. He planned to return to Scotland for an extended stay. He would stop in Albany only long enough to gather his things together.
    Which would leave Nick and I alone for the first time in decades, with just one tiny human in the house.
    Except that I had forgotten it was 1984.
    The extent of my blindness and idiocy made itself known the day we left for Albany. I couldn’t stand the idea of driving back, so Nick was going to give the DeVille to Miguel and we would fly back from Miami. Miguel would bring the swords up in the DeVille in the summer and introduce us to his wife and new child.
    The hardest task about packing for the journey was having to collect Tally’s things. I thought it was the hardest thing I would have to face that day and got through it with my jaw clenched.
    I was just about done when someone rapped on the room door. I figured it was Nyanther and opened it without checking.
    The woman standing there was middle-aged, with a hard expression in her eyes and drab clothing. “Mr. Sherwood?”
    “No, I’m Damian,” I said. “You need to speak to Nick?”
    She looked passed me to where Riley was sitting on the floor enthusiastically whacking plastic bricks with a plastic hammer. “I’m here to collect the child.”
    Something hard and heavy dropped in my chest. The world shifted. My hearing faded.
    “Collect?” I breathed. My voice sounded distant even to me.
    “What the hell?” Nick demanded, coming up behind me. “What do you mean?”
    The woman pulled out a wallet and flashed ID at us. It looked very official. More official than anything we could produce. “Florida Department of Children and Families,” she said stiffly. “We understand that the child, Riley, has no family now that her mother has passed on. I’m here to process her.”
    Nick pulled in a breath that shuddered. “You can’t take her away,” he said flatly.
    The woman looked at him steadily. “Are you a relative, Mr. Sherwood?”
    I am. The two words were right there. I just had to speak them. Except that the relationship was so distant, there were more than two thousand years of generations between us. And I didn’t have a single piece of proof.
    Nick pushed his hands through his hair. “We’re not blood but Tally grew up with us. We helped raise her. She wanted us to take care of Riley.”
    “She wrote that down somewhere?” the woman asked sharply. “We couldn’t find evidence of a will, or documents that indicated if she had any final wishes.”
    “You’ve been through my house,” Nick breathed. He sounded stunned.
    I felt the same. “You can’t take her,” I said, my lips numb. I could barely form the words.
    “I’m afraid I can, Mr.…Damian. It is our responsibility to take care of wards of the state. I can have the police enforce the directive, if necessary.”
    Wards of state.
    I felt sick. Genuinely, physically sick. I wasn’t breathing even though I needed to. My heart wouldn’t work, either and that didn’t help. Oxygen deprivation. I was getting dizzy with it.
    The woman tried to step through the door and both Nick and I straightened in reaction.
    She retreated. “Believe me, this will all be much easier for everyone if you just let me have her. If I have to involve the police, it will frighten her.” She stepped back one more step and nodded down the corridor. “I just have to call them.”
    I looked. There were two cops waiting there, their arms crossed.
    “Think of