One Salt Sea: An October Daye Novel

“This is probably where I’m supposed to say ‘neat trick,’ but I can do that with a don’t-look-here and a little fancy driving.” Still, I hit the gas, accelerating to a speed that bordered on unsafe. True to the Luidaeg’s word, there were no other cars in sight as we drove out of her magically-generated mist. “Where is everybody? Please don’t tell me you’ve turned the entire mortal population of the city into pillars of salt. I really don’t know how I’d explain that to the Queen.”


“There’s more than one way to get almost anywhere,” said the Luidaeg. Her tone was dismissive, like casting spells on half the city was no big deal. “People are just choosing those alternate routes tonight. That’s all.”

“What . . . what about the ones who were going places that didn’t have an alternate route?” asked Connor uneasily. He sounded like he didn’t really want to know the answer to his own question. That made one of us.

“They decided to do something else with their time,” said the Luidaeg. “The movie theaters are doing excellent business. Now drive, October.”

Her command was sharp enough that I sped up another ten miles per hour. The buildings outside the car windows were starting to blur and blend together, flickering past too quickly for me to make out individual details. “How do you know you’re going to be needed tonight?” I asked, raising my voice to be heard above the engine.

“Hold a moment.” The Luidaeg rolled down her window. Then she raised her left hand, tracing an elaborate pattern through the space between the seats. The air got suddenly colder, and I tasted saltwater on my tongue. Then the cold and the salt were both gone, taking the sound from outside the car with them. Her window was still halfway down, but there was no rush of air. We might as well have been driving in a hermetically sealed bubble—and for all that I knew, we were.

The Luidaeg met my eyes in the rearview mirror again before she shook her head, saying, “There’s no way of knowing who might be listening in. It’s better to be safe than to be sorry, especially right now.”

“You’re afraid of being spied on?” asked Connor. “That seems a little far-fetched.” He stopped, reddening as if he was just now realizing he’d spoken aloud.

The Luidaeg’s attention swung to him. When she spoke again, her voice was cold, almost without inflection. “I don’t believe I requested your opinion, Selkie,” she said, spitting out the word like it tasted bad. “As for things being ‘far-fetched,’ a year ago, you were a married man, and October here was a half-blood Knight living alone and half in love with the idea of her own death. Now your former wife is wanted for treason, October’s a Countess, her own personal death omen is paying half the rent, and the balance of her blood is a lot harder to read. No one who travels regularly in her company gets to use the term ‘far-fetched’ around me.”

“She’s got a point,” said Quentin, sounding almost cheerful. Having the Luidaeg in the car seemed to have made him feel much better about the whole excursion. That made one of us.

“Still,” I said, feeling like I should contribute, “for someone to be listening in, they’d have to be—”

“I’m not the only Firstborn left in the world. You should know that better than anyone, daughter of Amandine.” She somehow managed to turn the reminder of my mother into an endearment, like being Amandine’s child was a special, magical thing, rather than the source of half the complications in my life. “I don’t believe any of the other First are involved in this—but I can’t be certain. I can never be certain. And unless I absolutely know that none of my siblings are assisting our kidnappers, I can’t assume they’re not.”

“Oh, there’s a cheerful thought,” I said dourly. “How much do you know? Did you start listening as soon as the night-haunts left Goldengreen?”

“No. Not immediately. I knew you were going to call them, and it didn’t seem necessary.” There was quiet sorrow in her voice as she continued, “After you met with Duke Lorden, Mary . . . decided the circumstances were dire enough that she needed to call me with what she’d seen. She was worried that something terrible would happen if I didn’t go with you to Muir Woods.”