“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.