The Unkindest Tide (October Daye #13) - Seanan McGuire Page 0,114

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