Page 43 of The Unkindest Tide

“You know I can’t . . . I can’t do this for free. This is too much. I might be able to drape you in scales a second time without charging, because I know how much you hate the water, and that makes it a punishment as much as it is a gift. But you want me to do you a favor that involves risking myself, that I can’t spin in any way that turns it into a cruelty.” The Luidaeg glanced away, adding, in a softer voice, “Some days I wish I knew where she was, because then I could die trying to kill her for what she’s done to me.”

“I’m not a big fan of Titania’s, either,” I said. “Will you do it?”

“I’ll need three things from you, if I do, and if you refuse me any of them, I give you nothing.” She looked back to me. Her expression was agony. “I’m sorry. I’m fighting it as hard as I can, but I’m sorry.”

“I thought you could charge whatever you wanted,” I said, hating how afraid I was of whatever she might say next; hating the whine in my own voice. Not much scares me anymore. The things the Luidaeg could potentially ask for . . .

I remembered the look on Simon Torquill’s face in the moment before she ripped his sense of home from his chest, and I was afraid.

“I can charge more than a thing costs, as long as the price is in harmony with the request,” she said. “I could ask you to bring me the moon and the stars and not violate this geas, but I can’t give you things for free that I can’t spin around to being selfish. I’ve tried. It never works. Will you hear the fee?”

I could almost feel Tybalt staring at me. I squared my shoulders and said, “I will.”

“All right.” She sighed, a sound so deep that it seemed to rise up from the soles of her feet and shudder its way through her body. “First: when next I call on you to aid me, you can’t refuse. No matter what I ask of you, no matter how little you want to do what I demand, you can’t refuse. Your own magic won’t allow it.”

“Done,” I said.

“Second: I want blood. When this is done, you will come to my home, and I will bleed you until a full day has passed or I feel satisfied with what I’ve taken, whichever comes first. You will not ask me why I want the blood, or what I intend to do with it. Good or ill or in-between, it’s none of your concern.”

I hesitated. Magic lives in blood. In Faerie, having access to someone’s blood is almost as good as having access to the person themselves. By giving the Luidaeg my blood, I was giving her the ability to mimic or recreate almost anything I could do, including my ability to heal myself. I’ve been dead at least once, and probably more often than that, and the magic in my blood has refused to let me stay that way. What could the Luidaeg do with as much blood as she could strip from my body in a full day’s time?

It didn’t matter. Peter mattered, and Patrick and Dianda mattered, and ending this before it interfered with the salvation of the Selkies mattered. “Done,” I repeated, with somewhat less force this time.

At least the Luidaeg didn’t look surprised. She simply looked at me and said softly, “Third: I want you to bring Simon Torquill home. He’s suffered long enough.”

I jerked away from her like I’d been shocked. “Luidaeg . . . do you know what you’re asking me to do?”

She smiled. There was no joy there. “I’m the one who helped him get lost. So yes, I do. I know exactly what I’m asking you to do.”

Damn. I closed my eyes long enough to take a deep breath. Then I opened them and nodded. “Yes. I’ll bring him home.”

“I knew you would.” She leaned to the side, looking past me. “Squire, kitty-cat, come. You’ll both want to be here for this. Count Lorden, Duke Lorden, Marcia, Poppy, you all stay out here. If anyone from the Duchy comes to see how we are, make something up.”

“Lie?” asked Dean blankly.

The Luidaeg nodded. “Yes, lie. Fiction is a great gift I no longer share, but which you may indulge in to your heart’s content. Invent things. Spin wild stories and back each other up. No one’s going to come to me for clarification; they’re all too afraid I’m going to eat them.” She turned her attention back to me. “Well? Why are you still standing there? Move.”

I moved. Tybalt and Quentin were close behind me, the three of us crowding into her apartment, which was the same small, cozy, maritime design as the ones we were sleeping in. The Luidaeg slammed the door once we were all inside, resting her head momentarily against the wood before she wrenched it open again, revealing her kitchen at home in San Francisco.

“Luidaeg,” I said, carefully. “That’s your kitchen.”

“Yes,” she said, stepping over the threshold and heading for the fridge. “Your point?”

Quentin and I exchanged a glance. “If you can summon your kitchen, why did we have to take a boat to get here?” I asked.

“Because I can’t just snap my fingers and take away distance for no good reason; the magic doesn’t work like that, and let’s all be grateful,” said the Luidaeg. “There have to be limits, even on the Firstborn. We can’t be gods. The world would shatter and turn to dust beneath our feet.”

“Some of you would be gods if they were allowed,” said Tybalt.

“And all the ones who would be gods are the ones who shouldn’t be gods. My kitchen is here because I need it to do my job, and that gives me the leverage to bridge the distance.” The Luidaeg opened the refrigerator door and started rummaging around inside. “Last time I used one of Ketea’s scales to manage the transformation, but that’s not a good idea when I need your blood to remember that the form isn’t yours.”

“If it’s not a good idea now, why was it a good idea last time?” I crossed my arms, fighting the urge to scowl. It was born of nervousness; I don’t like it when people transform me into things. It didn’t seem to matter that this time, I’d asked to be turned into something I wasn’t supposed to be. It was still a transformation, and I still wasn’t comfortable with it.

“You were more human last time.” She pulled several bottles of fluid off the shelves and set them on the counter. One was white and sparkled like liquid starlight, one was so black it seemed to steal all light from the room, and the last was a swirling, pearlescent red, somewhere between blood and strawberries. “Humans don’t understand what it means to lose themselves in a new shape. They’re born in one body, they die in the same body, and all the changes they make to it are cosmetic. The bones remain the same.”

“And?”

“And you’re Dóchas Sidhe, children of the last Ride—and you have no idea what a relief it is to be able to say that, to not be waiting for you to figure out the right question to unlock your own family tree—and your blood knows how to become something it’s not. Tam Lin isn’t your grandfather, thank Dad, or you wouldn’t be standing here now, but the magic my mother threw at him splashed onto your grandmother, and it changed her, too, somewhere deep beneath the skin, where the world couldn’t see it. It’s easy to convince you to be something other than you are. Simon Torquill would never have been able to turn kitty-boy there,” she hooked a finger toward Tybalt, “into a fish for more than seven years, and Cait Sidhe are natural shapeshifters. With the brat, he’d have been lucky to get seven months.”