He herded the three kids quickly upstairs, glancing over his shoulder as the patrol passed outside, and ushered them into the sitting room. They couldn't stay, he told himself as he made them tea and toast, they couldn't possibly stay. But they were just kids, the smallest one might not even be into double figures. They gulped the food down like they hadn't eaten in days.

"Why you helping us?" asked the boy.

Because it's the opposite of what they would have done, he made himself not say.

They stayed the night.

And then the next.

And then the next.

The boy was Lukas, and he had the ability to sense people and danger. "That's it," he muttered rather grumpily when Otto asked him about its uses or limitations. "I can't tell what the people are doing or make us or them further away."

He also said he couldn't sense him, which seemed to make him angry rather than uncomfortable. Then again, everything seemed to make the boy angry.

The older girl, Amy, was apparently his cousin, and had, as she put it, the ability to 'temporarily unlock things.' Which explained how they had gotten into the shop.

The younger girl, Norah, was indeed only a child, seven years old with blue skin and yellow eyes. She was a quiet, timid girl unrelated to the older teens who told him they had found her wandering alone.

"We couldn't just leave her," Amy had said. "She'd have died."

He didn't want to believe it was true, that they were at the point where small children would be shot in the street, but he couldn't deny it either.