One Salt Sea: An October Daye Novel

I swallowed, fighting the first tremors of fear. All I could do was hope they were willing to listen, and that I was right about the rules governing their interactions with the living.

“We didn’t think to see you alive a second time, October Daye, daughter of Amandine,” said the night-haunt with Devin’s face. He landed on the floor, closing his wings with an audible snap as he looked me slowly up and down. “You aren’t what you were.”

“None of us are what we were,” I said, and frowned. He hadn’t been their spokesman before. I glanced around the flock, but the night-haunt with Dare’s face was nowhere to be seen.

There were new faces among the night-haunts, some I knew, a few that I didn’t. Oleander de Merelands was there. So was Dare’s brother, Manuel, and Gordan, the only one from ALH Computing to die a “natural” death. There were more Cait Sidhe than I expected. Tybalt never told me how many of his subjects died when Oleander poisoned them. It looked like the casualties were higher than I ever guessed.

Devin’s haunt followed my gaze and said, “The hunting has been good of late.”

“Uh, yeah.” I cleared my throat. “Look, I was hoping you’d be willing to talk with me.”

“That’s usually the reason for a summons.” He looked at my simple circle, eyebrows raising in that old, familiar gesture of silent judgment. “No flowers? No pretty words or symbolic deaths?”

“Like you said, I’m not what I once was.” I crouched to put myself on his level. “I didn’t send the summons on a whim. I had no other choice. I need your help.”

He smiled. The other night-haunts tittered. “My dear October,” he said, in a tone that was pure Devin, oozing charm and danger in equal measure, “why would we ever deign to help you? We’re not in the business of helping people. Really, darling, I don’t understand.”

Time to deal with the devil. I took a deep breath, and said, “Rayseline Torquill has stolen the children of the Duke and Duchess of Saltmist. I don’t know why—not yet—but I need to find out, or a lot of people are going to get hurt.”

Devin’s haunt cocked his head, smile twisting into a familiar expression of amused contempt. “And what makes you think we don’t want ‘a lot of people’ getting hurt? We need to eat if we’re to live.”

“You remember being us,” I said, quietly. “You remember what it was like to live. I know you need to eat. But I can’t imagine you’d wish for war.”

The night-haunts whispered among themselves, the sound like wind rattling through the branches of skeletal trees. I shivered as I listened to them, and part of me noted, analytically, that the Luidaeg never actually said my circle would protect me. If they decided they just wanted to kill me and be done, I might be in for the fight of a lifetime.

I was getting tired of being in an endless succession of things called “the fight of a lifetime.” Just once, I’d like to have the fight of a Tuesday afternoon. “Please,” I said.

The haunt with Devin’s face looked at me solemnly. “You aren’t what you once were,” he repeated, and the words were all the more unnerving because they were spoken in the voice of my old mentor. “You’re becoming what I always thought you’d be. Who are you looking for?”

“A Selkie. I don’t have a name, and I don’t know whether they’re male or female, but they would have died recently, and without their skin.”

“She didn’t expect to kill me,” said a voice behind me. I turned, and found myself looking at a diminutive figure—diminutive even by night-haunt standards—with ruddy brown hair and freckles spattered across her heart-shaped face. I recognized her vaguely. We’d probably been at the same formal events.

I’d never asked her name.

“Are you the one I’m looking for?” I asked.

She nodded, stepping forward. She stopped with her bare toes just shy of my circle’s edge. “My name is—my name was—Margie. I was in service to Her Grace, the Duchess of Saltmist, these last fifty years.”