Chimes at Midnight

Karen blinked at me again before looking up at the ceiling and saying, “I tried. I’ll try again, but she’s too far gone right now.” Then she disappeared, leaving me alone.

Well. That was rude of her. I yawned and rolled over in the bed, trying to find a good position for a nap. Everything was comfortable. Everything was wonderful, and weirdly, that was the problem. I wasn’t used to being so content. I didn’t know how to sleep through it. I closed my eyes, hoping that would do the trick.

Instead, I felt the mattress shift as someone sat down next to me, and Connor said, “You know, you’re never going to be totally happy here. This isn’t where you’re supposed to be. Also, this is a really ugly duvet.”

“Connor!” I opened my eyes, rolling onto my back again so that I could see him better. My Selkie lover looked just like he always had, silvery hair, drowning-dark eyes, handsome without being intimidating about it. So much of Faerie tried to turn beauty into a weapon. It was nice to look at a man who was just easy on the eyes, no supernatural strings attached.

Maybe that also explained my attraction to . . . my smile faded, replaced by a puzzled frown. My attraction to who? I was lying in my bed—my big four-poster bed, the one Mother had put in my room at her tower, with the pillows piled so high they were almost a pre-made fort, and the sheets spun from wind and thistledown—and I was looking at Connor, so why was I trying to think about another man? It didn’t make any sense.

Connor rested one webbed hand against my cheek, frowning. “You need to wake up.”

Now it was my turn to frown. “You, too? Come on, Connor, I’m not asleep. I’m here, with you.” It felt like I hadn’t seen him in forever. I sat up in the bed, looping my arms around his shoulders, and leaned close enough to smell the sweet saltwater scent of his skin. “Kiss me.”

“No.” He pulled away. “Toby, fight it. You have to fight it.”

“Fight what?” My frown turned puzzled. “Come on, Connor. Kiss me. Don’t you love me anymore?”

He laughed, a sharp, barking sound that gave away his Selkie nature almost as much as his appearance. “With all my heart, but, Toby, I lost the right to kiss you on the night that I died. Remember? I died in the shallowing in Muir Woods, when we went to bring Gillian home. You saw me among the night-haunts.” He gently removed my hand from the back of his neck and moved it to press against his chest. “Remember?”

Dampness beneath my fingers, dampness flowing up through the fabric of his shirt. I pulled my hand away, and it was red with something I wanted to pretend was wine, but it wasn’t wine, no, it had never been wine. The smell of blood was suddenly heavy in the room, so similar to seawater, so unmistakably not. I raised my head to stare at Connor.

He shrugged, looking sheepish and sad. The blood was spreading rapidly through his shirt, dyeing it a deep, almost purple shade of crimson. I wanted to look away. I hate the sight of blood. “I’m sorry, Toby,” he said. “I died. You were there. You loved me, and I died, and I can’t kiss you anymore, because I’m not the one you’re meant to be kissing. I would have stayed with you forever, if I’d had the chance. I would have given you a million kisses. But that didn’t happen. I died, and all those kisses died with me.”

“What . . .” The room suddenly seemed wrong. I hadn’t lived in my mother’s tower for years. Connor had never been there at all, not the first time we were dating, and not the second time, either. I looked down at myself. I was wearing a long black T-shirt with the logo for the Bourbon Room on the front. I hadn’t owned that shirt in twenty years. I didn’t even remember what had happened to it. “What’s going on?”