One Salt Sea: An October Daye Novel

“What are we looking for?” asked Etienne.

“Anything that shouldn’t be there.” I knelt, peering into the narrow, shadow-filled space between the floor and the bottom of the mattress. If Raysel had kept anything hidden there, it was long gone; the only things I saw were dust bunnies and a few more scraps of wallpaper.

“How specific,” said Etienne, as he started going through the wardrobe.

“I live to serve.” Peeling back the blanket revealed nothing but the mattress, sliced open along the side to allow for the removal of half the stuffing. I reached cautiously through the slit, and found nothing but wadded lumps of silk. “This isn’t a room for two.”

“No,” said Etienne. “Master O’Dell maintained his own quarters.”

“Oh.” I always knew things between Connor and Raysel were less than ideal—I wasn’t even sure the marriage had been consummated, and I’d never quite been able to bring myself to ask—but somehow, I thought they would have shared at least an apartment, if not a bed. That’s what I get for being an occasional idealist, I guess.

Tybalt stalked over to the bureau, letting out an earsplitting yowl. I stood, turning in his direction. “What’s that, Lassie? Timmy’s down the well?”

The look he gave me could have peeled paint. I snickered as I walked over to him, motioning for Grianne to step aside.

“What?”

Tybalt reached out with one paw and tapped the front of the bureau’s bottommost drawer. He meowed again, just to be sure I got the point.

“I’m on it,” I said, and sat down on the floor. “Grianne, a little light down here?” The second Merry Dancer swung into position. “That’s good.”

The drawer stuck a little as I tugged it free. The reason became clear when I looked at its contents: shoeboxes full of rocks. Dozens and dozens of rocks. They looked perfectly ordinary, like they’d been harvested from paths and flowerbeds around the knowe. I picked one up, squinting at it. “Okay, what the hell?”

“She used to pick those up,” Grianne said. The sound of her voice was surprising enough that I turned toward it, the rock forgotten. She shrugged. “When she was walking, and thought no one watched her, she would pick them up from wherever she happened to be. I never asked her why. I doubted she would give me an answer.”

“Yeah, probably not.” I was sickeningly sure I knew what the answer would have been, if Raysel had been compelled to tell the truth. She’d spent so many years lost in the darkness that she must have lived every day afraid the world would fall away again, leaving her alone in the nothingness. Rocks were little things, simple things, and they were solid. They were real. If they symbolized nothing else, they proved that she was in a place that actually existed.

I put the rock back among its brothers before gripping the sides of the drawer and giving it one last, firm tug. It popped loose and thudded to the floor. I checked the sides and bottom for hidden panels or secret documents, and then pushed it aside. Tybalt gave it a sniff before meowing and crouching to peer into the hole in the bureau.

“I got it,” I said. “If there’s nothing else, you can have thumbs again.”

He yawned, whiskers curling forward in what looked distinctly like amusement. Then he turned and walked away.

“Remember pants,” I called, and reached into the opening, feeling around. My fingers brushed the surface of a wooden box. I lifted it out.

Stickers obscured most of the varnished pine of the box itself, a mix that ranged from cartoon characters I recognized from Gilly’s childhood to more recent bumper stickers and band logos. I remembered giving her some of the older ones, treasures smuggled in from the mortal world. There was no rhyme or reason to the way they were layered; they seemed to have been slapped on entirely at random.

“What do you have?” asked Tybalt, stepping up behind me.