A Local Habitation

He was tall, lean, and still managed to be fairly compact; if Alex was the magazine cover-model version of the California surfer, Connor was the real thing, right down to the calluses on his hands and the cut of his hair—long enough to be attractive, short enough that the waves wouldn’t plaster it down over his drowningly dark Selkie eyes.

“Yeah, well. When His Grace decides to ship me off to Fremont at a moment’s notice, I get a little worried.” He held my hand where it was for a moment more before releasing it and turning to offer Jan a wry smile. “It’s good to see that she doesn’t just cause collateral damage at home.”

“It’s been educational,” Jan agreed, holding out her hand. “Toby, you want me to call that guy for you?”

“Please.” I passed her Danny’s card. “Tell him it’s for me, and he’ll come. I mean, he’ll bill through the nose once he realizes I’m not going to be the one in the cab, but that’s why Sylvester has a bank account, right?”

Jan grinned. “Right.”

“If you’ll all excuse me, I’d like to get started on those errands,” said Elliot. “The sun should be up any moment now, which will herald the opening of the flower shops. Gordan, would you mind accompanying me?”

For a moment, Gordan looked like she was looking for an excuse to refuse. Then she shrugged, scowling, and said, “Better than hanging around this mortuary.”

“April will stay with me,” Jan said. “That way, I can get some work done, but I won’t be alone. Fair?”

“Fair,” I allowed. “If you see Terrie or Alex, tell them we’re setting up base here in the cafeteria. We’ll just get my things from Colin’s office.” I didn’t want to try cramming Connor, Quentin, and myself into the relatively small office for any length of time; someone would wind up with a bloody nose. Since it would take Danny at least half an hour to get to us, we needed to move to a bigger space.

“Got it,” said Jan, giving me a small half-salute. And with that, we scattered.

For once, I was awake at dawn and didn’t really mind that much. The sun came up when we were halfway down the hall, and Quentin, Connor, and I stopped where we were, leaning on each other’s arms until the moment passed and we were able to breathe again. Connor grinned goofily, taking a little longer than was necessary to let go of me as he straightened.

“Remember that time we almost got caught out, and you pulled the blue eye shadow out of your purse and smeared it on your cheeks so you could tell people we were on our way to a Star Trek convention?”

Quentin blinked at him. I bit back a groan.

“Embarrassing stories later, paperwork now, please,” I said, and herded them toward the end of the hall with Connor snickering all the way.

His snickering stopped when we entered the office. He took in the posters on the walls and the tank of Hippocampi before turning to me, asking, “Whose office is this?”

“Was. Colin Dunne’s.” He paled. I cocked my head to the side. “You knew him?”

“Not well, but, yeah, I did. How . . . ?”

“Same way as everyone else here: under circumstances we don’t understand just yet. We’re working on it. That’s why you’re getting Quentin the hell out of here, remember?”

Connor nodded, very slowly. “Where’s his skin?”

His . . . oh, oak and ash. Groaning, I put a hand over my face. “It was in the car.”

“The car.”

“Yeah.”

“Which exploded.”

“Uh-huh.”

“With Colin’s skin inside it.” He was starting to get angry; I could hear it in his tone.

I dropped my hand to see Quentin looking back and forth between us in utter confusion. Poor kid was probably fostered from a landlocked state. He wouldn’t understand the succession laws of the Selkie families.

“It wasn’t intentional. The car seemed like the best place at the time. It just—”