One Salt Sea: An October Daye Novel

WALKING BENEATH THE TOWERING REDWOODS was very much like walking into a forest in the Summerlands: majestic and unspoiled. Only a few undeniable signs broke the illusion of the forest primeval. Wooden walkways wound among the great trees, protecting the forest floor from careless feet, and there was a small gift shop near the entrance, polluting that part of the wood with the smell of human habitation. Tybalt lashed his tail as he glared in that direction, then continued down the wooden path, a dark streak moving through the growing shadow as the night descended.

I kept my hand on the hilt of my knife as I walked, flinching a little every time the bushes rustled. An owl hooted in the distance. The sound was answered by another, deeper hoot, before a chorus of frogs began to sing somewhere in the creek that ran beneath the wooden planks.

The Luidaeg paced next to me, her dark curls almost blending into the background. Her feet were silent, unlike Connor’s or Quentin’s; the two of them alone managed to sound like an entire invading army as their shoes clomped on the walkway. She looked at my face, reading the tension there, before casting a glance back over her shoulder and whispering a word in a language I didn’t recognize. The temperature of the air around us dropped by several degrees, and the sound of their footsteps stopped.

I nodded silent thanks, the need to stay as quiet as possible saving me from the effort of talking my way around the forbidden words, and kept on going.

Muir Woods was designed to retain as much of the spirit of the land as possible, while making it accessible to humans at the same time. They wouldn’t preserve anything they couldn’t appreciate, or so the logic ran; unless they saw the true beauty of California’s wilderness for themselves, they’d never understand why they shouldn’t burn it all to ashes. I’ve never understood that sort of thinking, but this time, it was working in our favor. We’d have been moving a lot slower if we’d been forced to make our own way through the undergrowth.

Tybalt reached a fork in the path and stopped, looking one way and then the other before turning to look at the rest of us. Deliberately, he sat, flattening his ears.

I bit back a sigh. If Tybalt had lost the scent—and he wasn’t a bloodhound, no matter how cheerfully I exploited the keenness of his feline nose—we were going to need to try something else. I looked to the Luidaeg, raising an eyebrow.

She nodded and held out her hand, gesturing for me to give her mine. I didn’t hesitate. Whatever she needed from me, she could have it, if there was a chance it meant we’d be able to get my daughter back.

The Luidaeg raised my hand to her mouth, looking at me solemnly before making a “hush” gesture at Quentin and Connor. They hadn’t been making any noise. All three of us looked at her quizzically, trying to figure out what she wanted.

We were still looking at her quizzically when she opened her mouth and bit me hard enough to draw blood.

I’d been expecting pain—I’ve learned that when I let the Luidaeg take hold of any part of my anatomy, pain is going to follow very shortly—but it still took everything I had to grit my teeth against the urge to scream, or at least squeak. As it was, I made a small, muffled, moaning sound before clapping my free hand over my mouth, stopping anything else from getting free.