The Unkindest Tide (October Daye #13) - Seanan McGuire Page 0,70

need three things from you, if I do, and if you refuse me any of them, I give you nothing.” She looked back to me. Her expression was agony. “I’m sorry. I’m fighting it as hard as I can, but I’m sorry.”

“I thought you could charge whatever you wanted,” I said, hating how afraid I was of whatever she might say next; hating the whine in my own voice. Not much scares me anymore. The things the Luidaeg could potentially ask for . . .

I remembered the look on Simon Torquill’s face in the moment before she ripped his sense of home from his chest, and I was afraid.

“I can charge more than a thing costs, as long as the price is in harmony with the request,” she said. “I could ask you to bring me the moon and the stars and not violate this geas, but I can’t give you things for free that I can’t spin around to being selfish. I’ve tried. It never works. Will you hear the fee?”

I could almost feel Tybalt staring at me. I squared my shoulders and said, “I will.”

“All right.” She sighed, a sound so deep that it seemed to rise up from the soles of her feet and shudder its way through her body. “First: when next I call on you to aid me, you can’t refuse. No matter what I ask of you, no matter how little you want to do what I demand, you can’t refuse. Your own magic won’t allow it.”

“Done,” I said.

“Second: I want blood. When this is done, you will come to my home, and I will bleed you until a full day has passed or I feel satisfied with what I’ve taken, whichever comes first. You will not ask me why I want the blood, or what I intend to do with it. Good or ill or in-between, it’s none of your concern.”

I hesitated. Magic lives in blood. In Faerie, having access to someone’s blood is almost as good as having access to the person themselves. By giving the Luidaeg my blood, I was giving her the ability to mimic or recreate almost anything I could do, including my ability to heal myself. I’ve been dead at least once, and probably more often than that, and the magic in my blood has refused to let me stay that way. What could the Luidaeg do with as much blood as she could strip from my body in a full day’s time?

It didn’t matter. Peter mattered, and Patrick and Dianda mattered, and ending this before it interfered with the salvation of the Selkies mattered. “Done,” I repeated, with somewhat less force this time.

At least the Luidaeg didn’t look surprised. She simply looked at me and said softly, “Third: I want you to bring Simon Torquill home. He’s suffered long enough.”

I jerked away from her like I’d been shocked. “Luidaeg . . . do you know what you’re asking me to do?”

She smiled. There was no joy there. “I’m the one who helped him get lost. So yes, I do. I know exactly what I’m asking you to do.”

Damn. I closed my eyes long enough to take a deep breath. Then I opened them and nodded. “Yes. I’ll bring him home.”

“I knew you would.” She leaned to the side, looking past me. “Squire, kitty-cat, come. You’ll both want to be here for this. Count Lorden, Duke Lorden, Marcia, Poppy, you all stay out here. If anyone from the Duchy comes to see how we are, make something up.”

“Lie?” asked Dean blankly.

The Luidaeg nodded. “Yes, lie. Fiction is a great gift I no longer share, but which you may indulge in to your heart’s content. Invent things. Spin wild stories and back each other up. No one’s going to come to me for clarification; they’re all too afraid I’m going to eat them.” She turned her attention back to me. “Well? Why are you still standing there? Move.”

I moved. Tybalt and Quentin were close behind me, the three of us crowding into her apartment, which was the same small, cozy, maritime design as the ones we were sleeping in. The Luidaeg slammed the door once we were all inside, resting her head momentarily against the wood before she wrenched it open again, revealing her kitchen at home in San Francisco.

“Luidaeg,” I said, carefully. “That’s your kitchen.”

“Yes,” she said, stepping over the threshold and heading for the fridge. “Your point?”

Quentin and I exchanged a glance. “If you can summon your