Tybalt snorted. “I suppose that’s true. Very well, then. Let us go.”
We followed the Luidaeg to her bedroom. She knocked three times on the doorframe before opening the door, either to dispel some ward too subtle for me to see or to warn something inside to get out of view. Then she turned the knob, waving for us to follow her into the dazzling candlelight on the other side.
If most of the Luidaeg’s apartment is decorated in “early decay,” her bedroom is more like a cross between a movie version of a medieval castle and an aquarium. Candles cover every available surface, and saltwater tanks filled with strange fish and stranger creatures line the walls. A sea dragon the length of my arm swam in the largest tank, casting a disapproving pearl-eyed gaze over everything it surveyed. I couldn’t sleep in that room if you paid me, but the Luidaeg likes it; it’s the one room in her apartment that she bothers to take care of. The few times I’ve seen it, it’s been spotless, lit by those ever-burning candles . . . and candlelight is no comfort to me. Not since Blind Michael.
The Luidaeg saw my shudder. There was a trace of sympathy in her expression as she closed the door, saying, “My little brother left his marks on people who knew him.”
“You can say that again.” I tried to focus on a tank of orange-and-white-striped hippocampi—tiny, literal sea horses that chased each other in and out of the colorful anemones lining their tank, their miniature hooves lashing. “So what are we in here for?”
“You need to go to the Undersea.” The Luidaeg opened a drawer in her nightstand, pulling out a long, wicked-looking pin crusted with pearls and loops of verdigrisstained silver. Straightening, she said imperiously, “Give me your hand.”
“Is this one of those things where you injure me to make a point?” I asked, already extending my left hand toward her.
“Yes.” She lashed out like a striking snake, burying the pin in the meaty part of my thumb. I’d been expecting the pain—I’ve learned to anticipate bleeding once the Luidaeg has a weapon—but I yelped all the same, jerking my wounded hand away from her. Tybalt hissed, suddenly beside me.
“Settle down, kitty-cat; I’ll be needing your blood in a moment,” said the Luidaeg, right before she drove the pin into the palm of her own hand. Voice still calm, she continued, “It’s all a matter of getting the right mix. Toby’s not a shapeshifter, which is bad for our purposes, but she’s easily changed, which is good for them. It’s just a matter of telling her what to be—and how to come back to what she is.”
“No big, then,” I said numbly, trying not to look at the pin sticking out of the Luidaeg’s hand. I hate the sight of blood.
Tybalt’s hand was a heavy, welcome weight on my shoulder. “My blood only knows one transformation, and cats can’t breathe underwater,” he said.
“True. But your blood knows what it is to go from one thing to another and back again.” The Luidaeg smiled, pulling the pin free. “Mine’s a bit more malleable, and I figure she’d like to go back to her semi-original shape when she’s done.”
“The word ‘semi’ is a problem for me in that sentence,” I said.
“Like you’re mint in the box right now? You are what you were made to be, you’re not what you’ve always been—your poor body is almost as confused as you are.” She walked to the tank where the sea dragon swam and knocked her finger against the glass. “Come to the surface, Ketea. I need you.”
“What, precisely, are you attempting to do?” demanded Tybalt.
“What I was asked to do. Send October down to the depths and bring her back again, with no nasty loopholes or conditions to complicate our lives.” The sea dragon stuck its head out of the water. The Luidaeg stroked it with a finger, cooing in what sounded like Greek before continuing, “Normally, I’d charge for something like this, but since you’re doing it for me—and it amuses the shit out of me—we’ll call this a freebie.”
One Salt Sea: An October Daye Novel
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