Page 59 of The Unkindest Tide

“I want you to conserve your strength, and my hair is wet,” I said. “My body heals. My hair doesn’t.”

“Vanity, little fish?”

“Practicality. I’m practically sure Stacy will murder me if I wind up bald this close to the wedding. She’s looking forward to braiding things into my hair, and I know better than to disappoint her.”

Tybalt blinked, looking startled. “You think . . . you truly believe we’re close to our marriage?”

“Well, yeah.” I glanced at him. “You said you didn’t want to wait forever. I mean, I don’t think we’re going to elope tomorrow, but I figure I wouldn’t have time to grow my hair all the way back.”

“You better not be eloping,” said Quentin. “The High King has offered to host the ceremony. You don’t run off and leave the High King with an outstretched hand and no vassal to hold it. It’s not done.”

“I am a King of Cats,” said Tybalt. “Your High King has no authority over me.”

“Maybe not, but he has authority over me, and I’d rather not piss him off.” Making an enemy of the High King of North America would be impressively stupid, even for me. He could call Quentin back to Toronto any time he wanted. That meant keeping him happy was essential.

“I suppose I accepted certain complications when I elected to tie my future to a daughter of the Divided Courts,” said Tybalt without rancor. He sounded oddly pleased, and was smiling as he reached over to twine his fingers with mine.

The Duchy of Ships bustled around us as we walked, and if some people cast curious glances in our direction, they were smart enough, or well-mannered enough, not to say anything. I surreptitiously checked my shirt, and was pleased to see there wasn’t any blood from my earlier fight with Torin’s guard. The water had washed it all away.

“Don’t think you’re escaping judgment quite so easily,” said Tybalt, in a pleasant tone. “I can still smell it. Not strongly, but enough that I know it’s your blood, and not the poor drowned woman’s.”

“Also there’s a big hole in your shirt,” chirped Quentin.

I shot him a baleful look. “You’re not helping.”

“Sure I am. I’m making sure there are consequences when you let yourself get stabbed in the stomach. Maybe that way, you’ll do it less, and I’ll have fewer nightmares. Everyone wins.” Quentin shrugged, unrepentant. “You’re the one who taught me how to cheat. Just think, if you’d been more scrupulous about following protocol, I might not be betraying you now.”

“I can’t believe you’re using the ‘I learned it from watching you,’ excuse,” I muttered. “I can’t decide whether I’m proud or pissed off.”

“See, I’m happy either way,” said Quentin.

I huffed and kept walking.

The shops we’d seen before were open now, and the marketplace bustled with people—merchants hawking their wares, customers sorting through them, looking for the perfect pearl, or lobster, or pearl-encrusted lobster. Everything I could think of needing was for sale somewhere, with the obvious exception of electronics; this far into the Summerlands, even April’s modified cellular service didn’t work. That was sort of nice, since it meant she had actual limits. It was also sort of vexing. It would have been nice to be able to call home and summon as much backup as we could cram into a rowboat.

I narrowed my eyes and focused on the people. Most belonged to the Undersea races, Merrow and Sirens and people with pearlized eyes or shimmering scales dusted across their skin, whose heritage teased my tongue with signals I didn’t quite know how to puzzle out. I might be a walking encyclopedia of magical signatures, but that doesn’t give me the ability to recognize types of fae I’ve never seen before. They were a mystery to me, their shoulders draped in fishnets and strings of coral beads, their brows covered with bandannas or graced with curving seashell horns that grew directly from the bone.

Every time I breathed in, the part of my magic that was dedicated to tracing the magic of others tucked their individual scents neatly away, earmarking them for later. I’d be able to follow a single spell cast by any of these people halfway around the world. It was a slightly unnerving thought. The more I learn about what it means to be Dóchas Sidhe, the more I wonder how many of my choices—becoming a private investigator, following trails I probably shouldn’t have followed—have been guided by my magic trying to find a way to assert itself on the world.

It was an unnerving thought, and so I shunted it aside and focused on what I wasn’t seeing around the stalls. I wasn’t seeing any Selkies. With as many as I knew were in the Duchy, they should have been everywhere. Selkie children should have been getting under the feet of the merchants; Selkie adults should have been poking through the available wares. Keeping the still technically human relations back at the beach would have made sense, but the absolute absence of the Selkies as a people was strange. I didn’t like it.

Tybalt and Quentin frowned at my expression, then at each other, and kept walking. They’d done enough of this sort of thing to know that I’d speak up when I felt it was safe to do so, and not before.

“Are you sure we’re going the right way?” asked Quentin.

“Even with as overwhelming as the magic in this place is, I can’t lose the Luidaeg’s trail,” I said. “It’s like a fishhook in my nostrils. I could follow her anywhere.” The scent of her magic wasn’t normally this strong. She also wasn’t normally this open about her true nature. The more of her masks she set aside, the easier it got for me to track her.

That explained a lot—including why August hadn’t been able to find Oberon when she’d run off on her fool’s errand and gotten herself lost for more than a century. If the Firstborn can mask themselves to the point that their terrifyingly powerful magic becomes nothing more than a vague parlor trick, how much more than that can the Three do? Can they disappear so that no one can follow them?

Can they ever be found?

The beach opened before us as we came down the final stretch of dock, its sands shimmering in the moonlight. There were no children playing outside now. There was no one. The whole place was empty, and if not for the candles flickering in the windows of the little Cape Cod-style houses, I would have thought there was no one here at all. I stopped, squinting at the houses.

Selkies didn’t tend to use much magic beyond that which came to them from their skins. The Roane were prophets and storm-singers, almost as skilled at controlling the waves as the Merrow, but none of that had carried down to the people who’d stolen their place in Faerie. We were probably going to have some nasty weather patterns when the Roane were reborn and had to rush to learn how to keep their natural gifts under control.

That was a problem for another day, and frankly, for someone else. I was just here to bring the Roane back into the world—and now, to get justice for one Selkie woman who hadn’t deserved to die the way she did.

I stopped, squinting at the row of small, semi-identical houses. Tybalt and Quentin waited patiently, until I raised my hand and pointed.