One Salt Sea

THIRTY-FIVE

THE NIGHTS TRICKLED BY, turning slowly but inevitably into weeks. After the first mad flurry of activity—explaining the situation to Marcia and the pixies, introducing them to Dean, whose awkward pleas for guidance did more to smooth over the situation than anything I could have said; waiting by the phone for Cliff to call and tell me Gillian was safely home, and the police were looking for her abductors—everything sort of went numb, fogging into an endless stream of people offering their condolences. They were so sorry. Everyone was so very, very sorry.

You know what “sorry” does? Sorry doesn’t do a damn thing. They called my phone and they showed up at my door, they sent pixies and rose goblins and a dozen other, stranger forms of messenger, they delivered casseroles and cakes—like calories were somehow the answer to the ills of mortality? Who the hell decided that made sense? And none of it did a thrice-cursed thing. Connor was still dead. Faerie could endure until the end of time. I could burn out enough of my mortality to watch the sun die. And Connor would still be dead.

I spent a week in my bedroom, emerging only to get more coffee and to clear another bevy of people out of my living room. To be fair, May handled most of the ones who decided they actually needed to show up rather than sending a pixie; my friends understood why she was screening my calls, and everybody else could go hang for all I cared.

Quentin stayed at the apartment the entire time, leaving only when he had lessons on fighting technique or magical theory to attend. On those occasions, Etienne picked him up and brought him back, and he didn’t try to talk to me. Shadowed Hills was sunk deep in its own strange form of mourning—Raysel wasn’t dead, just sleeping . . . for now. Dugan’s elf-shot recipe contained a slow poison nasty enough to be one of Oleander’s creations. All we could do was hope that Walther would be able to counter it before it killed her.

I was dimly aware that I needed to talk to Sylvester about Rayseline. Her blood was a blend that could never have existed without magic; maybe my magic could help her. If her blood was less mixed-up, there was a chance she might be less mixed-up, too. In the meantime, Dianda was willing to place the blame for Margie’s death on Dugan alone. He mixed the elf-shot and put it in the hands of a woman who didn’t really understand the consequences of her actions. If everything came together right, maybe we could give Raysel another chance. As for Dugan . . .

Dugan was the Queen’s problem now, and she didn’t strike me as the kind of woman who would go easy on someone who’d been planning to depose her. I just hoped he was enjoying his stay in the Queen’s dungeon. Oberon knows, I was never going to forget my time there.

And Connor was still dead.

Gillian was going to live. I had to hold onto that. She was going to grow up, and become the amazing woman I knew she was destined to be. She was just going to do it without me. Eventually, growing up would turn into growing old . . . and I was no longer human enough to grow old with her.

Most changelings are abandoned by their pureblood parents when it becomes apparent that mortality is the one disease magic won’t cure. Changeling children are cute. Changeling adults are a constant reminder that anything that begins in the human world will eventually end there. I ran away from Amandine before she could start looking at me the way the other pureblood parents I knew looked at their own changeling children. Was I going to look at Gilly that way someday, when she was old and I wasn’t?

Maybe it was for the best that she didn’t want anything to do with me. All we could do—all we could ever have done—was break each other’s hearts.

And Connor was still dead.

Tybalt had taken his jacket with him when he carried Gillian back into the mortal world. I didn’t even realize it was gone until later, and then I was too busy grieving over the people I’d lost to really miss it. May brought it in with the mail one evening, hanging it on the inside of my bedroom door without a word. The leather smelled like pennyroyal and musk, the way it was supposed to. As for Tybalt himself, he didn’t appear, but this time, it didn’t feel like an abandonment. It felt like respect for my loss, and for the ones who hadn’t made it out alive.

And Connor was still dead.

I was curled under the covers on my bed, both cats and Spike nestled against me, when the door to my bedroom banged open. I stuck my head out, ready to tell May I didn’t want anything to eat, and stopped, briefly stunned by the sight of the Luidaeg standing at the foot of my bed.

“L-Luidaeg?”

“Good guess.” She leaned down and yanked the blankets away, throwing them onto the floor. “Get up and get dressed. We’re going out.”

Thank Maeve I don’t sleep naked. “I’m not going anywhere,” I informed her, trying to find the shards of my dignity. It wasn’t easy.

“Yes, you are,” she replied, voice calm. “Your only actual choice here is whether you’re doing it in socks and a nightshirt.”

I glared at her, taking note of her attire for the first time. She was wearing a long black skirt and a loose, somehow old-fashioned blouse in peacock blue. Her jewelry—necklace, earrings, even a matching bracelet—consisted of driftglass, seed pearls, and verdigris-tinted copper wire. I’d never seen her wearing jewelry before. She’d even taken the tape out of her hair, leaving it hanging loose in thick black waves.

“Get dressed,” she repeated.

“Fine,” I said sullenly, and rolled out of the bed. “Is this going to take long?”

“Dad forbid I should interrupt your plans for a night of feeling sorry for yourself. Yes, Toby, it’s going take a while. I’ll be in the living room. Don’t make me wait.”

She didn’t slam the door when she left. Instead, she eased it gently closed, pulling until the knob clicked home. That, more than anything else, told me how concerned about me she actually was. Moving slowly, but with increasing curiosity, I got out of bed.

When I emerged five minutes later, still dragging a brush through my hair, it was to find the Luidaeg and my Fetch engaged in a hushed, rapid-fire conversation that stopped as soon as they saw me. May glanced away, a flash of guilt in her expression. The Luidaeg, meanwhile, looked me up and down, assessing my attire: black dress slacks, the dark green cashmere sweater from Shadowed Hills, and a pair of black flats. Finally, she nodded.

“That should be acceptable. Get your keys.”

“Glad you approve. May, we’ll be back later.”

“I’ll be here,” she said, mustering a small, not-quitesteady smile. I couldn’t quite make myself return it as I grabbed my jacket from the rack, checking to be sure my car keys were still in the front pocket, and followed the Luidaeg outside.

“Where are we going?” I asked again, once we were both seated in the car, me with my seat belt fastened, her without. I didn’t see any reason to argue. It wasn’t like she’d let us get pulled over. “I sort of need to know which direction to go.”

“Half Moon Bay,” she said, settling deeper in her seat. She made a complicated gesture with her hands, and there was a silk-swathed bundle that smelled of fur and seawater stretched across her knees. “I have something to return to Roan Rathad.”

I paled. “Luidaeg, is that . . .”

“One is Elaine’s, most recently worn by Margie Atwater. The other is Owain’s, most recently worn by Connor O’Dell.” She touched the silk covering the skins with an almost caressing hand. “We’re taking them home.”

There was nothing I could say to that. I started the car.

San Francisco to Half Moon Bay isn’t an inconsiderable drive. We’d been on the road for half an hour, neither of us saying anything, when the Luidaeg suddenly said, “We’re square, you know. There are no debts between us.”

“Swell.” And all it cost was Connor’s life, and maybe Gilly’s sanity. “I’ll try not to need a favor any time soon.”

“That would be an interesting change.” The Luidaeg glanced at me. “How are you doing?”

“Doing? I get up. I eat. I go back to bed. The bills are paid for at least another month before I need to do anything else.” More than a month, actually. Sylvester insisted on paying for everything until I felt like I could deal with working. Normally, I would have refused, but he was my liege, and his daughter was the reason I was in mourning. If he wanted to pay my rent, that was his call.

“I asked how, not what.”

“I really don’t know, Luidaeg. I really don’t.”

“It gets better.” She ran her fingers across the silk again, sighing. “It doesn’t go away, but it gets better. Believe me, if it didn’t, I would have followed my sisters to the night-haunts’ table years ago.”

“That shouldn’t help, but it does,” I admitted. I took a deep breath, and said, “Luidaeg, about the night-haunts . . .”

Her sidelong glance was troubled, her eyes skittering over me and away again in an instant. “Don’t,” she said, voice somewhere between gentle and cautioning. “They look like the people we lose, but they’re not. They’re only ever themselves.”

“That’s not what I want to ask.”

“Then what?”

“The night-haunts are connected to the Fetches somehow, aren’t they?” Her nod was all but imperceptible. I pressed on. “How?”

“When they were born, they were predators. Killers. It was how Faerie made them, but they took too much. Father couldn’t have that, and so he bound them to eat only the dead. To make it stick, he . . . changed them. Every taste of living blood became a lottery, and a death sentence for a member of the flock.”

“Because one of them will be called as a Fetch for the person whose blood they taste,” I finished.

“Yes.”

“May . . .”

“Was called after you shared blood with the night-haunts. She wore a hundred faces before ever donning yours.” Again that skittering sidelong glance. “She was the only one who tasted your offering to them; she chose to be a Fetch for you. She wanted to give you time to prepare.”

“Because I was her hero,” I said softly, remembering the flock as I’d first seen it—and the flock as I’d seen it for the second time. Dare’s haunt vanished between the two appearances. The night-haunt with the face and memories of a girl who believed in me, and who I failed to save. “Does she remember?”

“Bits and pieces. The memories of the fallen were only ever masks she wore. Yours was going to be the last. In a way, it still is.”

“Yeah.” I laughed a little, unsteadily. “This explains a lot.”

“Does it explain why she didn’t want to tell you?”

“I don’t know that I would have wanted to tell me. But it doesn’t change anything.”

“Be sure to tell her that when you get home. She’s been worried.” The Luidaeg’s attention suddenly focused on the road. “Take the next exit,” she said.

“Got it.” I followed her directions, asking, “Why are we doing this? I didn’t get the impression that you were a big fan of the Selkies.”

“Because it’s polite. Because it’s the right thing to do. And because once upon a time, they brought the dead home to me. Because I love them.” The Luidaeg shook her head. “I hate the Selkies for what they are, but I need them to keep the skins they wear alive.”

I hesitated. “Luidaeg, what’s the connection between the Selkies and the Roane?”

“Turn left at the end of this street.” Her tone made it clear that my question would not be answered. I nodded, accepting that, and drove on.

The Luidaeg’s directions took us down increasingly obscure streets, all of them scrupulously maintained. We finally turned onto a private drive that wound almost all the way around a small hill before stopping at a beachfront house large enough to be a bed-and-breakfast. It was a classic Victorian, with extensions pointing off in every direction, making it clear that construction had never really ended.

The driveway was packed with cars, and every light in the house looked like it was on, creating an artificial twilight that extended well beyond the walls. The Luidaeg smiled at me, just a little, as we got out. “I need you to do me a favor,” she said.

I raised an eyebrow. “Driving you to Half Moon Bay wasn’t enough?”

“Just . . . please. Don’t tell them who I am.” Her expression turned pleading. “Most of them don’t know, and it’s not time for them to know yet.”

“I thought you couldn’t lie.”

“I can’t lie to anyone but them.” She stroked the silkwrapped bundle one more time. Something subtle shifted in her face, the bones rearranging themselves just enough to make her unfamiliar. When she looked up again, her eyes were a smoky driftglass blue, and she looked like another person. “Please.”

“Will you tell me why you can lie to them?”

“After we’re done here. I promise.”

“Then, yeah. I won’t tell them who you are.”

She smiled with obvious relief, and beckoned for me to follow up the long stretch of driveway between us and the house.

I could hear the music before we were halfway there, wild fiddling and the strumming of at least a dozen guitars. I blinked, but didn’t say anything. Not until the Luidaeg rang the bell, and the door was opened by a freckled teenage girl with Connor’s brown-and-silver hair and bluer eyes than I’d ever seen on a Selkie. She blinked twice, eyes darting from the Luidaeg to me. And then she burst into tears, all but flinging herself into the Luidaeg’s arms.

“Oh, Annie, Annie, is he really gone?”

“He is.” The Luidaeg patted the girl’s back with her free hand, and said, “Diva, this is October Daye. She was Connor’s sweetheart.”

Diva straightened, not bothering to wipe her eyes. Tears rolled unashamedly down her cheeks as she studied me. Then she smiled. “You really are a pretty one. He was lucky in the having of you.”

“I was lucky to have him,” I said, and extended my hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Family never meets family,” she said, ignoring my hand. She hugged me instead, with surprising vigor. “Welcome to our home.” Releasing me, she looked back to the Luidaeg, and said, “Come in. Food’s in the kitchen. I’ll tell Mum you’re here.” Then she was gone, vanishing into the halfseen living room. The Luidaeg and I followed her inside, and into chaos.

Purebloods don’t have funerals, but they do have wakes—sedate, structured things, meant to tie off loose ends rather than to allow for public mourning. The Selkies must have missed that memo. Everywhere I looked there were Selkies and Selkies-in-waiting, their children who had yet to inherit a skin of their own. Some of them wept as unreservedly as Diva. Others laughed, or sawed away on their fiddles, filling the air with jigs and reels that had some people dancing, despite the nature of the occasion.

And all of them were thrilled to see the Luidaeg, even as their eyes sorrowfully acknowledged the nature of the bundle in her arms. “Cousin Annie” was apparently a valued member of the family, even if she didn’t visit often enough for most of them. She was stopped a dozen times as she led me toward the back of the room. Each time, she was hugged and welcomed, and each time, she told the ones who’d stopped her who I was, and each time, they told me they were sorry for my loss. They told me Connor was lucky to have had me. I was crying, too, before we reached the stairs . . . but they were good tears, because everyone in this house understood them.

We finally reached the door at the back of the room, and the Luidaeg led me into a narrow hall, where a flight of stairs led to the second floor. She put a hand on the banister, and asked, “Do you understand why we’re here?”

“I think so.” I wiped my cheeks with the back of one hand.

“Good. Come on.”

The sounds of the party fell away as we climbed higher, replaced by the deep, comfortable silence that only old, well-loved homes ever manage to attain. We met Diva at the first landing; she was going down much faster than we were going up, and barely managed to stop herself in time.

“Annie!” She stepped to the side. “Mum’s expecting you. She said October could come, if you thought it was appropriate.”

“I appreciate it, Diva,” said the Luidaeg, and hugged the girl quickly before resuming her ascent. I followed, giving Diva a smile as we passed her. Then the girl was gone, leaving the faint smell of seawater in her wake as she thundered down the stairs.

“Diva’s a good kid,” the Luidaeg said. “Her mother’s a Selkie, and her father’s Roane. They’re still waiting to see which she’ll take after—if it’s him, she won’t need one of the family skins.”

“Oh,” I said, unsure what else was expected of me. “The Roane are . . . they’re pretty rare, aren’t they?”

“Now they are. And Selkies aren’t supposed to mate outside the family. Diva’s mother never cared much for rules. Diva’s father . . . well. He was just glad to have a child at all. When you’re on the verge of extinction, you’ll take what you can get.”

“Oh,” I said again.

The Luidaeg gave me a tolerant look, and kept climbing.

A single door was open in the hall at the top of the stairs, letting a warm, inviting light spill out onto the floor. The Luidaeg stopped in the doorway, rapping her knuckles against the frame. “Hello, Lizzy,” she said. “Mind if we come in?”

“As if any could stop you?” asked the woman seated behind the room’s carved mahogany desk. She looked to be somewhere in her late thirties, with ash-blonde hair that couldn’t quite decide between gold and silver, and a Selkie’s characteristic sea-dark eyes. A snifter of what smelled like brandy was in her hand. The light came from the oil lamps set on the desk’s front corners, well away from the papers in front of her, or the books that lined the walls. “Come in, come in, and bring your friend along.”

“It’s still polite to ask,” said the Luidaeg, stepping inside. “Lizzy, this is October Daye. October, this is Elizabeth Ryan, current head of this clan.”

“And much grief it’s given me,” said Elizabeth bitterly. She took a sip of brandy. “You are welcome here, the both of you.”

“No, I’m not.” The Luidaeg dragged a chair to the front of the desk, gesturing for me to do the same. She put her bundle down in front of Elizabeth before she sat, and said, “That’s two skins returned. Be sure they’re passed quickly.”

Elizabeth’s gaze sharpened as she set her glass aside, reaching out to pull the bundle toward her. “Why?”

“Because time is almost up.” One corner of the Luidaeg’s mouth turned upward in something that bordered on a smile. “October was Connor’s lover, and she’s Amandine’s daughter. You have a year to notify the clans. Then? Your bill comes due.”

“You come to me in time of mourning to tell me this?”

“Yeah, Lizzy, I do, because this is when you’ll listen to me.” The Luidaeg leaned forward, the driftglass haze bleeding from her eyes, replaced by blackness. “I can make the choices for you, but you won’t like them. Tell the clans. One year.”

“And what do I tell the children for whom there are no skins? What do I tell the parents who have to choose between them? Annie—Luidaeg, please—”

“You tell them the truth.” The Luidaeg stood. “I’ve been kinder than I had to be. You know that. I didn’t have to give you warning.”

“I liked you better when I was young and foolish and thought you a cousin, sea witch,” said Elizabeth bitterly, reaching for her brandy. I wasn’t clear on what was happening, but I was pretty sure that brandy wasn’t her first of the night, and it wasn’t going to be her last.

“Yeah, well, I liked you better when you were young and foolish and called me Annie-my-sweet and danced with me on the beaches,” said the Luidaeg. She stood. “Growing up’s a bitch, isn’t it, Liz? You have a year. October, come on.”

I lingered for a moment after the Luidaeg left the room—just long enough to say, “Sorry about this.” And then I followed her.

We were halfway down the stairs when she said, voice pitched low, “Everything has a cost, October; remember that. It may be a long time before the bill comes due, but everything has a cost.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Come on.”

At the bottom of the stairs, the Luidaeg turned away from the light and music of the living room, opening the door that led to the porch behind the house. Moonlight glittered off the waves like a thousand broken mirrors, all of them too shattered to ever be repaired. She kept walking, and so I kept following, until we reached the wet, hard-packed sand at the water’s edge.

“I can lie to the Selkies because I’m their First, even though they aren’t my children,” she said, as matter-of-factly as if she were remarking on the weather. I made a small sound of surprise. She cast me a sharply amused look. “Did you think I’d lived a chaste life? I’m the mother of the Roane. I loved them so much it hurt. It still does, if I think about it too much.”

“But—”

“For the love of my father, October, listen. I don’t know if I’ll have the nerve to tell you this twice.” She looked out at the water, at the waves—at anything but me. “One of my sisters betrayed me. She put knives in the hands of humans and told them to kill my children, because it would make them immortal. The Roane who lived were the ones who were with me. Not enough to make a race. Barely enough to remain a family.”

I gasped. That was all.

The Luidaeg’s shoulders slumped. “They killed my babies because they wanted to live forever. Only it turns out forever isn’t very long. Their own children slit their throats while they slept, and brought the skins of my dead babies home to me. They begged me for their lives. Me, the sea witch, the wronged one . . . they begged me to forgive them for the sins of their parents. So I forgave them. And I bound them. They would be Selkies from that day onward, they would wear the skins of my sons and daughters and grandchildren, and they would keep the magic alive until I could find a way to make things right.”

“Until the bill could come due,” I whispered.

“Yeah.” She glanced at me. “I love the Selkies because they are my family. I hate them because they killed my family. Everything’s a contradiction.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I had children. I was a mother. And now my children are gone, almost all of them. Their skins live, on the backs of Selkies . . . for now. Because everything changes, Toby. Everything passes, even in Faerie. For now, you’re alive. Your squire needs you to be a knight; your Fetch needs you to be a sister; your liege needs you to be the daughter he didn’t lose. So be alive. If you’re not willing to do it for them, do it for Connor. I seriously doubt he took an arrow for your kid just so you could cry yourself to death. I’d tell you he wasn’t worth it, but no one gets to make that call for you. So I’ll just tell you that everything changes, everything passes, and we need you too much for you to keep doing this.”

“I miss him,” I said. The waves almost swallowed the sound of my voice.

The Luidaeg looked at me gravely, her irises shading back to dusty driftglass blue. It looked right on her; it looked real, like I was seeing her eyes without a mask for the first time. “That doesn’t go away. But it gets better.”

There were so many things I wanted to ask. What was the shallowing in Muir Woods? What did the Luidaeg mean when she told Elizabeth the bill was almost due? Who was Arden, and why would a shallowing care if she was alive? Questions stacked upon questions . . . and none of them mattered in that moment, as we stood at the edge of the water and watched the waves beating themselves against the sand. Because the Luidaeg was right. Nothing stays the same for long, not in Faerie, not in the human world, not anywhere. But some things are worth fighting for.

Dean would have Goldengreen. Gillian would have her father, and nightmares she couldn’t explain—nightmares that would fade, if she stayed away from Faerie. I would have my strange little self-assembled family, with all the problems and pleasures that included. I wouldn’t have Connor anymore. But someone would wear his skin, and if that was enough to keep the Roane a little bit alive, maybe it was enough to keep him a little bit alive, too.

The Luidaeg put a hand on my shoulder. I glanced at her, startled, before nodding and putting my own hand over it. We stayed there for a long time, listening to the distant music drifting from the house behind us, and watched as the tide rolled out. She didn’t say anything about my tears. I didn’t say anything about hers.

Everything changes.