The Unkindest Tide (October Daye #13) - Seanan McGuire Page 0,49

the Selkies, although that’s not going to stop me. Faerie needs the Roane.”

“Why?” asked Tybalt. The Luidaeg whipped around to stare at him, and he put his hands up. “Peace, lady, please. I only ask because . . . because this doesn’t return your children to you. This doesn’t put their hands in yours, or their eyes upon your face. Why do this, when the ones who broke faith with you are so long gone?”

“I made a promise, and thanks to my stepmother, I can’t break them,” she said. “I could try. Some people might even argue that I have tried, with as long as I’ve put off calling in this debt that is due. I could have grabbed October here when she was a child, raised her as my own, raised her to think doing this was the most important thing in the world.” She glanced at me before resuming her forward progress. “And don’t think I didn’t consider it. Amy had no right to do what she did to you. No right. But I wasn’t ready to be a mother again, and Sylvester was glad to step in when I told him he was needed, and I gave the Selkies another fifty years. I’ve put this off as long as I can. Anything more would be cruel.”

“Ah,” said Tybalt, with what sounded like genuine sorrow. “My apologies for your unfair predicament.”

The Luidaeg sighed and kept walking.

The shacks grew denser around us, until there was no space between them. Sand began appearing on the deck, adding a level of grit and grip to the waterlogged wood. And then, without warning, the lane opened up, becoming a wide, artificial cove, like something out of a Coney Island fever dream.

We were still in the Duchy of Ships: that much was clear from the way everything continued to shift and creak around us, ancient wood settling deeper and deeper into its questionable moorings. But the decks and walkways were gone, obscured by a layer of fine white sand that would have looked exactly like an ordinary beach, if not for the five-foot drop between it and the waterline. The shacks were replaced by tidy little houses built in an almost Cape Cod style and painted in ice cream pastels, their windows thrown wide and their shutters painted in contrasting colors.

There were children everywhere. Small children, two and three years old, rolling in the sand and building complicated castles that collapsed at the slightest touch. Awkward prepubescent children goading each other into diving off the beach’s edge, pulling themselves back up to the sand by way of rope ladders, or scaling the pylons that held the whole construct in place. Teenagers, who looked at us, took note of our clothing, and looked away, although I couldn’t say whether it was out of dislike of strangers or judgment of our fashion choices.

There were adults as well, moving more sedately, and every other one I saw had a seal’s pelt tied around their waist or shoulders. They were the ones who went pale at the sight of us—or, in some cases, froze in place, seemingly unable to even breathe.

“Annie!”

The cry came from our left. I turned to see a freckled teenager with brown-and-silver hair and green, green eyes running across the sand, arms already open for the hug she knew she was certain to receive. The Luidaeg didn’t move as Diva barreled into her. She didn’t return the hug, either. She just stood there, implacable as the tides, while the girl clung to her.

“I knew you’d come, I just knew you would, I told Mom you had to, we were all summoned and that means you, too, and you wouldn’t dare go against the sea witch—have you seen her? She’s supposed to come here, she’s supposed to come tell us what happens next, and I’m excited but I’m scared, too, because what if she’s not nice? What if she called us here to hurt us? I’m not even in line for a skin, I don’t need one, not with the magic I got from Dad, but I had to come anyway, and—Annie?” Diva caught herself mid-sentence and pulled back, squinting at the Luidaeg. “Annie, what’s wrong? What’s wrong with your eyes?”

“I love you,” said the Luidaeg softly. My breath caught. The Luidaeg can’t lie. “I’ve loved you since the moment I met you. You were this little wrinkled screaming thing, you were Liz trying to apologize for what she’d done to me, and you were