A Local Habitation

The blood I’d slipped in was still fresh enough to be wet and red. There wasn’t much of it, and I hadn’t been expecting it; that explained why I hadn’t caught the smell of it before. Now that I was “looking,” it was everywhere, almost overwhelming me.

Pulling away from Tybalt, I sprinted down the hall toward the futon room with an energy I hadn’t realized I still had. Dizziness and panic fought a brief war for control of my actions, and panic won, spurring me to run even faster. I’d told myself Connor and Quentin would be safe where they were . . . and we had a killer who killed her best friend, working with an accomplice who could walk through walls. I’m an idiot. All I could do was hope that I wasn’t already too late.

Sometimes hope is the cruelest joke of all.





THIRTY-ONE



THE FUTON ROOM DOOR WAS OPEN. I skidded to a stop as I turned the final corner, staring, before beginning to walk slowly forward. It felt like I was moving in a dream.

That only lasted as long as it took for me to realize just how much blood had been spilled, and that there was a dark, torpedolike shape lying motionless in the middle of the floor. There was no sign of Quentin. “Connor!” I exclaimed, almost falling over myself as I dropped to my knees next to the seal. “Don’t be dead, don’t be dead, come on, baby, don’t be dead . . .” My hands fumbled across his blood-tacky fur, looking for a pulse. “How the fuck do you find a harbor seal’s pulse?”

“He’s not dead.” Tybalt was standing in the doorway, studying the blood splattered on the walls and floor as casually as a man studying the menu at his local diner.

“How do you know?”

“He doesn’t smell dead.”

That would have to be good enough. I stood, wiping my hands against my jeans as I looked around the room. I hadn’t wanted to believe that they could be in danger. I’d wanted to believe I was just panicking, paranoid as always, and everything would be fine. You can’t always get what you want.

“He went to seal form when he was injured,” I said, my voice sounding distant to my own ears. “It must have been a shock. That’s usually what triggers an involuntary shift in Selkies.”

“You mean like this?” Tybalt stooped to pick something up, holding it up to show me.

A stun gun. “That’d do it,” I agreed. I walked over to the futon, running my fingers along the mattress. The blood matted on its surface was sticky and still warm. Once again, we’d almost made it in time.

Quentin wasn’t Gean-Cannah; there was nothing special about his blood, nothing I could use to save him. He was going to die, just like all the others. Just like Dare. I was going to have to bury another one. I was . . .

I stuck my fingers in my mouth, trying to break that train of thought before it reached its inevitable destination. I was rewarded with a brief, unfocused flash of blackness and silence as the blood-memory flickered and broke. Oh, thank Maeve. He was asleep when he bled. Not dead, not yet. Just sleeping.

“Toby?” Elliot was standing in the doorway, face gone whey-white. “What happened here? Where’s Quentin?”

“Gordan took him.” I was starting to see the blood trail on the floor, marking out the way in blotches and streaks. Only half of it was real blood. The rest was potential blood, ghost-blood, made visible by the magic I inherited from my mother. I could track him. As long as he was bleeding, I could track him. “She messed Connor up, too. Pretty badly.”

“What can we do?”

“We go.” I looked squarely at Elliot. “We go now, because there’s no time to wait. Tybalt, can you—”

“I’ll guard him. I should be able to coax him back to human form.”

“Good.” I started to follow Elliot back into the hall. Tybalt caught my hand, stopping me, and I turned to stare at him. “What—?”

“Be careful,” he said, voice pitched low. His eyes searched my face until finally, with a sigh, he let go of my hand. “I’ll keep the seal-boy safe. Go. Find your charge.”