Page 67 of The Unkindest Tide

I breathed in, and the magic flowed around me, neatly separating into its component parts, saltwater and freshwater and kelp and roses, always, always roses. I kept breathing in, looking for anything that sang to my memory of René’s magic. Chicory and phlox, that’s what he’d said; chicory and phlox.

There. It wasn’t much, barely more than a whisper, but it was enough. I let go of Tybalt’s arms and started walking forward, eyes still closed, trusting him and Quentin to stop me before I could walk over the edge of the ship. With my luck, the Luidaeg’s spell would wear off between the dock and the water, and I’d get to enjoy drowning. Again.

I hate drowning.

Chicory. Not René’s chicory, which was sweet, mellow, well-aged, like a spice that had been sitting in a kitchen cupboard for years, waiting for the chance to be used. This was sharper, more bitter on the tongue, fresh-wrung from the root and still grieving for its marshy home. I followed it across the sand, and when the scent told me to turn left, I did, feeling Tybalt’s hand briefly clamp down on my shoulder to protect me from some unseen danger. It was good to have people I could trust like this. There was a time when I wouldn’t have been able to make this walk, because there would have been no one to stop me from going over the edge of the world.

Had Isla been alone when she’d walked this way? She’d been bleeding magic, but that isn’t uncommon for fae in fae spaces. We’re as twitchy and unfocused as the humans are, when we’re not forced to stay on edge to protect ourselves from discovery. She had probably been making illusory balls to toss from hand to hand, or filling the air with small sparkles. Selkies have limited magic by pureblood standards—most of their strength goes into their skins, into keeping them alive and capable of transforming—but they have enough to fidget with.

Had Isla known she was heading toward her own death? I hoped not. I hoped she’d been calm and casual, maybe a little nervous, since the Luidaeg had essentially declared open season on Selkie skins, but confident in her own ability to keep her skin safe. I couldn’t bring her back, and so I had to believe she’d been caught unaware, that it had happened quickly and completely and left her with very little time to realize what was happening.

I knew I was lying to myself. Her actual death told me that much. Unless she’d been unconscious when she hit the water, her death had been neither quick nor peaceful, but had been an agonizing struggle for survival, surrounded by an element that had, until not long before she fell, loved her. Selkies loved the sea; the sea loved Selkies.

The scent of chicory and phlox grew stronger, until I felt like I wouldn’t lose it even if my eyes were opened. I couldn’t take the chance. I walked and kept walking. The smell grew stronger still. René gasped. It was a small, strangled sound, powered by pain.

I opened my eyes.

We were standing under a boardwalk. There was still sand beneath our feet, but this was no longer the peaceful artificial beach designed to keep visiting Selkies comfortable: this was a part of the Duchy of Ships, and not the nicest, or best-maintained part. The wood around us was slick with water and ripe with rot, blotching the structure in lurid greens and oranges. As soon as I acknowledged the presence of the decay, I could smell it, mundane odors overpowering the magical. That didn’t matter. We were where we needed to be.

The sand in front of us had been disturbed, thrashed up by what looked almost like a localized whirlwind. The wind couldn’t reach it here to smooth the damage away. A string of cheap glass beads lay off to one side, a few rolling loose to mingle with the sand. That was where René’s attention was fixed, not on the damage, but on the little glass beads.

“I . . . I want those when you’re done,” he said, in a strangled voice. “Most of them were our mother’s. She used to wear them braided in her hair, just like Isla did.”

“I appreciate you not grabbing for them,” I said, beginning to circle the disturbed area.

He made a small sound that I might have interpreted as a laugh under other circumstances. “I watch a lot of police procedurals with the kids—I’m one of the teachers in Beacon’s Home. We need to prep our children for the mortal world, since most of them will wind up living there, and television helps. Gives them a sort of skewed idea of America, but since they’ll never move that far from home, that’s fine. Let them think it’s a dangerous wasteland full of guns and drugs and murder.”

“To be fair, that’s pretty close to my experience, and I do live there,” I said, continuing to circle.

There weren’t as many distinct strains of magic here: this was a place where most people didn’t go. That made sense. It was dark, gloomy, and decayed, which would put off a lot of the locals, and it wasn’t dark, gloomy, or decayed enough for the rest of them. This was a liminal ground, splitting the difference between so many factions that it wound up equally inimical to all.

Breathing shallowly in through my mouth and out through my nose brought me the mingled scents of our magics, musk and pennyroyal and steel and heather blended with my own copper and freshly cut grass, and the nearly-twinned scents of René and Isla, but nothing else distinct enough for even me to name. Whoever killed Isla, they had done it without using magic.

There was information in the absence. I didn’t know how to interpret it yet, but I knew there was an answer there. It might not be a good one, but . . .

“If one of the human kinfolk who came here with the Selkie clans had killed Isla, would they already be wearing her skin?” I asked, looking toward René.

He shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. I want to say yes—I’ve never known one of our kin to be able to resist the singing of the sea, and we can hear it when we’re near an unattached skin, like it’s trying to lure us into the depths—but I’ve also never known one of us to kill for the sake of a skin. It’s not our way.”

“Murder is everyone’s way, given sufficient incentive,” said Tybalt. “I’ve never in my life known a person who couldn’t be moved to the killing floor.”

“You know me,” protested Quentin.

Tybalt fixed him with a steely eye. “Yes,” he said. “I do.”

“All right.” I can track magic for miles, but Selkie skins don’t have the same sort of personalized scent. The Luidaeg’s spell is a part of them, buried in every strand of fur, and I can’t follow them. Tybalt, on the other hand . . . “We know where Isla’s body ended up. What I want to know is what happened to her skin.”

“Because whoever has her skin is the killer?” asked Quentin.

“Not necessarily.” That would be too easy. “Tybalt?”

He transferred his unflinching gaze to me. “You’re about to ask me to transform and try to sniff out the trail of a killer, aren’t you? How many times must I tell you that I’m not a bloodhound?”

“Oh, believe me, I know you’re not,” I said. “I want the killer or the skin, or both. Any of the above will help me start figuring out what happened.”

“Scent doesn’t cling well to sand,” he said.

“It’s better than nothing.”