One Salt Sea: An October Daye Novel

And there, buried under the stronger, more recent scents, was the thing I’d been hoping and fearing I’d find: mustard flowers and hot wax. The signature of Raysel’s magic.

I opened my eyes and reached for the scrap of binder paper. It was water-damaged, and most of the list of items had blurred beyond reading, but Raysel’s childish scrawl was still legible in a few spots. “ ‘Knock three times,’ ”I read aloud. “What does that mean?”

“All servants are required to knock three times before entering,” said Dianda. She was frowning as I stood and turned to face her. “That gives the inhabitants time to prepare, so they won’t be surprised. A servant who didn’t knock might find themselves facing a rather unpleasant welcome.”

“Unpleasant how?”

Dianda’s frown became a thin smile, showing more teeth than I was strictly comfortable with. “Painfully so. Even in our quarters, we are never unarmed.”

“Charming. Do the Selkies know about the knocking?”

“Yes,” said Connor. “But . . . I never told Raysel that. There was no reason to.”

There was no reason to tell her about the wards, either, but I decided to keep that to myself. “Someone did.” I held up the slip of paper. “Rayseline was here, and she had written instructions to help her get inside.” It was easy to picture Helmi finding the scrap of paper in the process of cleaning the room and simply putting it with the rest, not realizing it was from a different source.

“Where is she now?” demanded Dianda. “Where are my sons?”

“I don’t know. But I’m going to find out.” I dropped the scrap of paper back into the dish, straightening.

Dean’s room yielded nothing else of interest, although I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have been happy to see me rooting through his underwear drawer. Eventually, even Dianda had to admit that we were done, and we moved across the hall to Peter’s room.

If Dean was a budding scholar dreaming of the land, Peter was a normal twelve year old, and even Helmi’s valiant efforts to tame his room had failed. I knew as soon as I crossed the threshold that he was a collector of shells, a lover of strange stones, and an explorer of sunken ships—unless he’d managed to acquire his impressive assortment of coins, cannonballs, and other shipwreck souvenirs online, which I doubted. He didn’t have a bed; instead, a deep saltwater pool about the size of a hotel hot tub sat at the center of the room, with handgrips around the edges to make it easier to get in and out of.

And none of that mattered, because the smell of blood punched me in the nose as soon as the door was opened. I grabbed the doorframe, half-staggering. Connor caught my shoulder, lending a bit of extra stability.

“What is it?” Dianda demanded. “What’s wrong?”

“Blood,” I said, trying to make my eyes focus. “Someone’s been using blood magic here.”

“That’s impossible. If someone had, we’d know.”

“Maybe not,” said Patrick. “Amandine could find a single drop of blood in a field of love-lies-bleeding. I saw her do it once, at a summer festival. It was a party trick for her.”

“She was a pureblood. October is a changeling.”

“Not where blood is concerned,” said Connor staunchly.

I barely heard them. I was too busy trying to sort through the conflicting information I was receiving from the room, which smelled like blood that wasn’t blood, and magic that wasn’t magic. I shrugged off Connor’s hand and started forward, not allowing myself to look where I was going. The trail was too tenuous for me to get distracted by silly things like what was actually around me.