kind, but this sounds bad. I looked Kelpies up in the book. Read about them. I couldn’t pronounce the Gaelic so ‘Kelpie’ will have to do.”
“What did you learn?”
“They’re shifters that can appear as hot young women or water horses. They’re associated with Scotland, but they’re not exclusive to Scotland. Kind of like sirens in their womanly form, their goal being to lure young men and drag them to a watery death. In horse form they encourage people to touch their coats, which are apparently made of superglue. Either way, humans end up being dragged to a watery death.” I looked toward the safe. “Hold on.”
I retrieved the book that I’d come to think of as my magic-kind encyclopedia and found the section I was looking for.
“This is from a Robert Burns poem”. I read aloud.
“…When thowes dissolve the snawy hoord
An’ float the jinglin’ icy boord
Then, water-kelpies haunt the foord
By your direction
And ‘nighted trav’llers are allur’d
To their destruction…
“I guess it’s common knowledge that their bridles are their weak spot. I don’t know why they’d be created with a bridle, but I guess that’s good and bad news. If somebody gets hold of a bridle, they’ll be able to control that kelpie and all others.”
“This really should be number one on the docket.”
“You haven’t seen all the files.”
“I don’t need to see all the files to know how serious this is. A fae prince who captured a kelpie and is refusing to let her go so that he can control her entire species?” Keir sounded horrified, even though we were talking about creatures who were far from sympathetic. He grabbed the file and reopened it. “The Bureau of Behavioral Oversight is bringing the suit. Good. They carry a lot of weight.”
I closed the book, returned it to the safe, and sat. “These things are beyond nasty.”
Keir stared for a couple of beats before saying, “Humans would definitely think them monsters.”
With a look intended to convey that I thought there was something very, very wrong about that response, I said, “You don’t think they’re monsters? One of the stories in the book? There were ten children playing on a river bank. A kelpie managed to get nine of them onto her back. When she tried to lure the tenth child, he touched the kelpie’s nose and his finger stuck, but he cut it off to save himself. This is a species of magic-kind who live to kill humans in a grisly way, bodes never to be found. Every one of them is like the worst case of serial killer ever because they don’t die. They just continue with the murdering. Forever.”
Keir drew in a slow, deep breath. “I can see why that would be your first reaction. But the alternative view is that every species plays a role. Take Lochlan’s wolves for instance. If Lochlan was in trouble, they wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice their lives to come to his defense. They wouldn’t debate it. There’d be no inner conflict. Why? Because it’s what they are. It’s not up to us to decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. It just is.”
“Tell it to the mothers of the children who never saw them again. There aren’t two sides to this question, Keir. Killing innocent humans simply because they came too close to a stream, or river, or lake is a bad thing. There is no alternative.”
“You’re thinking like a human.”
“Well… that’s my jam.”
“Not anymore. Now you straddle the worlds of magic and mundane. Like a bridge. Let’s start with this. How do you know those stories are true? How do you know the humans were innocent?”
I felt a link of chainmail slip from my righteous armor. “You’re saying that…”
“That book you have? I’m not saying it’s not informative. Certainly the illustrations are fun to look at. But it was written by humans and, just like all sacred books written by humans…”
“There are inaccuracies.”
The ghost of a smile said Keir was pleased with the dawning of my enlightenment. “An understatement at best.”
This job was going to be a lot harder than I’d thought. “But Robert Burns…”
“Was a poet whose purpose was to entertain.”
Sitting back against my chair, I thought about that. Of course, Keir was right. Burns was the James Cameron of his day. I couldn’t trust that book to be any more reliable than fairy tales. Fantasy, loosely based on fact, and distorted to shock or titillate.
“I’m not the right person for this job,” I said quietly. Keir reached out