The chamber behind the bar looked nothing like the sea-themed glory we’d just left. Some kind of intimate lounge area, I judged, with low sofas and chairs arranged around a glass table. Everything was black lacquer, polished wood and bronze fittings, and everything was Art Deco; the room could have come straight out of the 1930s. Or someone’s studied idea of what the 1930s looked like.
Daix was there, clinging to the back of a tall figure clad in dark, nondescript attire. A fair tackle: she had both hands wrapped tightly around the man’s throat, and judging from the expression on her enchanting face she’d throttle the life out of him without a second thought.
‘What—is—this—’ she was saying, face darkened with rage. ‘Did you do this?’
‘It’s not—me,’ gasped the man she was gamely trying to kill, clawing at the hands around his throat. He spared no attention for me, and no wonder, because this was Phélan and he’d only ever had eyes for Tai.
She stood like a rock. I didn’t dare look at her face. I’ve seen that heart break before; I didn’t want to watch it happen again.
‘Phélan?’ she said at last, and faintly.
‘Tai,’ he choked. ‘Good to—see you.’
‘You’re behind this?’ Tai’s voice grew stronger by the word; it never did take her long to get a grip on herself.
Daix had throttled him past the power of speech; he could only look at Tai, and I thought I read a negative there.
I felt it when Tai snapped. ‘You—fucking—shit,’ she gasped.
‘Moment,’ I said. Phélan was barely fighting Daix; why wasn’t he trying harder? ‘Tai, hold it together. Daix, could you maybe not—’
Too late. Where the hell Daix had conjured a knife from without releasing her hold on Phélan’s neck, I have no idea, but suddenly the gleam of naked metal caught my eye.
And Phélan acted at last. The knife was gone from Daix’s fingers in a trice; but rather than turn it on Daix, or on either of us, Phélan dropped it.
‘No you fucking don’t,’ growled Daix. Tendrils of fire laced her fingers, and spread — and Daix lit up like a torch.
Phélan screamed.
Tai shouted something. I didn’t hear what; all my attention was on the waters I’d left behind moments earlier. It waited for me there, so close, so receptive. I called to it, and it answered.
A deluge of damping water surged through the door, drenching Tai and me, aiming for Daix and Phélan.
But as quick as I had been, Tai was faster. Before the waters had travelled half the distance, Tai had opened her painted lips and voiced a shriek. Less siren-song, more ban sith howl; she screamed in three voices at once, a trio of discordant parts in a cacophonic wail that raised every hair on my body.
Daix stopped dead. So did Phélan. The flames around them vanished in a puff of smoke, seconds before the wall of my waters hit them both.
Phélan fell, and Daix with him.
And Tai was on her knees beside them, heedless of the water soaking through her gown. She stared dead into Phélan’s eyes, and spoke. ‘Did. You. Do. This?’ Every word hit him like a bullet; he visibly flinched.
‘No,’ he gasped, a syllable raw with pain.
Tai let him go. I knew the moment she took her song off him, for he came to life again in an instant, and hurled Daix away from him. Daix hadn’t had time to do much damage, but she’d achieved some: his throat was striped with livid red burns.
I expected him to bomb right out of there, but he didn’t. He retreated a safe distance from Daix (if there is such a thing) and stood, chest heaving, dark eyes roiling with anger.
Tai picked herself up off the floor, and stared the sluagh down.
‘Lovely,’ growled Daix. ‘We’re really getting the whole gang back together.’
Chapter Ten: Tai
I don’t know what possessed me to imagine I could handle having Phélan around again.
I stood in that messed up excuse for a club, a messed up excuse for a siren staring at bad news incarnate and wondering how the hell I got there.
Fi was a staunch presence at my elbow, somehow managing to be calming despite the state she was in. And I barely resisted the urge to launch myself at Phélan.
Not sure if I was planning to kiss him or slaughter him where he stood.
He looked… unchanged. Tall; some would say intimidatingly so. Longish dark hair rather mussed, thanks to Daix’s tender ministrations. He’s not handsome, precisely, but he might as well be; all that catlike, predatory grace is dangerously attractive, not to mention that smile—
‘You cannot seriously have the fucking cheek to smoulder at me,’ I said, and he was, the bastard. Cross between a brooding, Byronic stare and some kind of puppy eyes routine. Deeply unfair.
I threw my shoes at him.
He blinked. ‘What?’
‘What. Are. You. Doing here?’
‘You called me.’
‘And I expected you to show up at my house! What are you doing here?’
‘I followed you. What are you doing here?’
‘Our investigations led us here,’ I said with infinite dignity. Then I began to laugh, because he looked so hangdog, and my knees were weak with tension and possibly relief, and I never have managed to hang onto my dignity for very long anyway.
Phélan merely looked more confused. He glanced at Fionn, who sighed.
‘Do you know anything about this place?’ said Fi, with remarkable presence of mind.
‘Nothing whatsoever.’
The silence stretched. Fi would be giving him the intense stare, the one that promises to vivisect the man if he proved himself a liar.
I caught my breath and stopped laughing, assisted by the sobering sensation of cold water soaking through my gown. ‘I’ll say this right now,’ I said. ‘If you turn out to be mixed up with this shit, I will personally remove your delicates one at a time and feed them to you.’
Phélan’s brows rose towards his hairline. ‘My delicates?’
I pointed a finger at his face. ‘Eyeballs.’ I pointed lower. ‘Spleen. One kidney, perhaps both. Testicles—’
‘Okay. Stop. I get the picture.’
‘Lovely.’
He sighed, and ran a hand through his already tousled hair. ‘Why did you call me?’
Daix moved behind him, and his eyes flicked to follow her progress. She grinned. ‘Don’t worry, pretty. I won’t hurt you again… yet.’
‘Daix,’ I snarled. ‘Knock it off.’
Phélan rolled his eyes. I had to give him credit for not wiping the floor with her face; he could have. He returned his gaze to my face instead, and waited.
‘We need help,’ I said, bluntly. ‘We’re over our heads in trouble.’
Phélan stared at me. ‘Did you just say you need help?’
‘Correct.’
‘Thetai Sarra Antha? Asking for help?’
‘We’re eighty years out of practice and fae are getting killed. Get over it.’
His gaze sharpened. ‘This is about that selkie.’
‘Narasel,’ said Fionn. ‘She was one of my models. We’ve got two more selkies known to be missing, there may be more—’
‘We were hoping to find them here,’ I said. ‘Fat chance I guess.’
‘There’s no one here,’ Phélan agreed. ‘I’ve looked around.’
‘Someone came out,’ I said, frowning. ‘As we arrived. Drunk chick. Could’ve been human.’
‘Possibly an illusion,’ said Fionn.
‘Obviously an illusion,’ said Daix in disgust. ‘Look, this whole thing has patently been set up for our benefit.’
‘A trap,’ I agreed. ‘Considering our names were announced when we came in, though I don’t remember hearing yours.’ This last I directed at Phélan, who gave the faintest of smiles.
‘I didn’t exactly walk openly through the front door,’ he said.
‘You sneaked.’
‘Effortlessly.’
‘Even so,’ said Fionn. ‘The ques
tion remains: why the trap? What are we here for?’
‘In case you were wondering,’ said Daix. ‘The front door locked behind me when I came in.’
‘What?’ I said, whirling around. Too damned late.
It took us a few moments to establish that there were no other doors into or out of the place, and no windows either; the ones we’d seen on the outer façade were bricked up on the inside. And the front door, through which we had so casually strolled a half-hour or so ago, was completely impenetrable.
‘Well, then,’ said Fionn, and began to strip off her gown.
‘Fi,’ I said, eyeing this procedure with grave misgiving. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m not sure what you or Daix are supposed to be here for,’ said Fionn serenely, dropping her gown in a heap on the floor. ‘But I clearly have a date with that pool of water.’
‘You’re not going back in?’
‘How else would you like to proceed?’
‘Search,’ I said, groping for a sensible answer. ‘There must be something else here—’
Fionn just looked at Phélan, whose negative came swiftly and with certainty.
‘And we’re just going to trust him, are we?’ I snapped.
‘You tell us,’ said Fionn.
Phélan gave me a long look, mostly inscrutable, but I read a trace of interest in that gaze. Was I going to trust him? Even now?
‘Damnit,’ I muttered. ‘Fi, you are not doing this alone.’
She merely shrugged one shoulder, already leaving us, heading back to that scummy pool of water. The thing was too pretty by far; nothing but disaster could come of this.
‘Wait,’ I called. ‘Fi.’
She paused, but barely. The water had some kind of hold on her, and she was losing the battle.
I divested myself of my layers of velvet, and followed after. ‘Daix, hold the fort?’ I called back.
‘Yeah,’ Daix muttered. ‘By all means, give me the fun job.’
‘Tai?’
That was Phélan. I stopped, and turned back.
He held my gaze, his stare dark and intense. ‘Be careful.’
‘Really can’t promise,’ I said, and turned my back on him. Fionn was wading into the pool and I couldn’t let her get too far ahead of me.
‘Fi,’ I called, and broke into a trot. ‘Wait.’
She didn’t. The waters rose up to welcome her; she walked until she hit the very centre of the pool; then, in a flurry of ocean-scented spray and moon-pale foam, she was gone.
‘Shit,’ I spat, and ran.
I wasn’t sure if the waters would take me the way they did her; they had left Daix untouched, after all. But I wasn’t Daix, and besides… I had Fionn’s pearls.
I never did quite grasp what those things do for her. She doesn’t talk about it, and I haven’t asked. That they have some deep link to her selkie magics seems clear enough; beyond that, I haven’t a clue.
The waters wanted them, though. The pearls lit up again the instant I stepped into the pool, glowing that eerie sea-green, and I felt a coolness emanating from them, a deep and foreboding chill. I kept a tight grip on them as I waded farther into the water, willing it to take me as it had Fionn.
Ocean spray flew up, filling my nose with sea air. An arctic chill seeped through to my bones, and I began to shiver so hard my teeth clattered together. I heard Daix shout something unintelligible behind me, just as my vision blurred; then ice-water filled up my lungs and I began to choke.
‘Tai.’ That was Phélan, enraged; I distantly heard footsteps; but before he could reach me, the bottom rushed out of my world and I fell into darkness.
I fell, and kept falling. Deep water received me, deep and dark; wide-eyed, panicking, I stared helplessly into thick, intense blackness. A whirl of boisterous currents tossed me in circles, pummelled me with a force that had nothing to do with nature. I felt caught in the grip of some capricious game, spun like a top, tumbling like a doll made of rags—
Fionn’s pearls, still clutched in one hand, glowed like stars in the deep, but that’s all, they shone, what use was a light to me when I was drowning—
Not that I took it calmly when something tried to take them— the currents whirled me around until I was dizzy, and tore at my hands, trying to loosen my grip on them, but they’re Fionn’s, and if I had to die before I’d give up something important to her then so be it—
The water wouldn’t end, and I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe—
Something heavy barrelled into me, and I was borne upwards — I hoped it was upwards — my lungs were on fire—
My head broke the surface, encountered clear air. I choked, vomiting up water — and then dragged in an enormous lungful of sweet, sweet oxygen, surprised that I possessed the power to do so.
After a few panicked, heaving breaths, I calmed enough to look around me.
Lights bobbed on the near horizon. The vague shapes of darkened verdure loomed from the shadows, gently limned in wan moonlight. A park. I was in a river, winding through a park.
Swimming in slow circles around me was Fionn, seal-shaped and pissed off. I knew this from the choppy nature of her movements; ordinarily she’s a being of effortless grace.
I took a few more breaths, marvelling at my capacity to do so without choking. Fi and her ways with water.
‘Okay,’ I said aloud. ‘Maybe that wasn’t the best idea.’
Fionn’s only response to this handsome concession was to shove me with her nose, in the process alerting me to the existence of a humbling quantity of deep aches in my rather abused physique. I’d have bruises tomorrow.
‘I’m sorry!’ I said. ‘Fuck’s sake, should I have just watched you wander into danger alone?’
Fionn said something, but since it emerged garbled, and she kept slipping into a seal’s chattering vocabulary, I didn’t understand a word.
I could guess, though.
‘It’s not that I thought you couldn’t handle it,’ I said, spinning in a slow circle as I trod water. Nothing else of much note caught my eye. ‘It’s that nobody should be running off without backup. Didn’t we learn that? Besides, how the fuck could you know that you could handle it?’
The seal vanished, leaving a wringing-wet Fionn in its place. She snatched her pearls from me and restored them to her wrist, after which she visibly calmed down. ‘If you hadn’t had those you’d be dead,’ she informed me. ‘You’d have drowned long before I got to you.’
‘If I hadn’t had them, maybe you’d be dead,’ I retorted. ‘Unless I miss my guess, we’re in the Thames Barrier Park, a ways upstream from where Narasel’s body was found. Whatever happened to her was supposed to be your fate, and it’s got to have something to do with your unusual jewellery choices. Do all selkies have those pearls?’
‘In a manner of speaking,’ said Fionn shortly.
I waited, but she said nothing more. ‘And?’ I prompted. ‘Now isn’t the time to be secretive about this stuff, Fi.’
‘You might thank me for saving your life.’
‘You might thank me for saving yours.’
‘You did no such thing. If the pearls are a danger, why aren’t you dead?’
I sighed, beginning to shiver again. ‘Other than your own tender ministrations — for which, indeed, I thank you — I’m not a selkie. Whatever power took us there had a strong interest in your pearls, Fi, but me? I felt … flushed, like waste. Like something else was meant to happen between that pool and this river, and we skipped to the end. Because I didn’t meet the criteria, and apparently, neither did you.’
‘A delightful piece of wild speculation, for which we have no evidence.’
‘True,’ I agreed. ‘But when Narasel showed up in these waters she was stone dead, and you palpably aren’t. And sure, we don’t know that she ever went near those weird-as-fuck pools, but we have quite the stack of coincidences piling up if she didn’t.’
I heard her sigh. Then she had hold of me, and was to
wing me towards the distant bank with remarkable strength, considering her rail-thin physique. ‘I can swim,’ I informed her.
She ignored that. ‘You’re freezing to death,’ she informed me calmly.
‘Fair point.’
We reached the bank, and I was mercilessly shoved up and out onto the hard, cold ground. I got up at once and began pacing, as if that would somehow make me warmer. Honestly. ‘One day,’ I said, somewhat indistinctly around my chattering teeth. ‘We’re back together for one day and already we’re wandering the city in our underwear in the small hours of the morning, soaked to the skin, after a near brush with death. Still got it, Fi.’ I punched the air with one fist.
‘Good,’ said Fionn. ‘If you’re capable of joking, you probably aren’t about to drop dead.’
‘I love you, too.’
‘As for your speculations,’ she said, ignoring that with aplomb. ‘I wouldn’t say that I think you’re wrong. Something… tried to…’ She paused. ‘I felt… drained. Downed like a cup of water, and spat out again. I barely had the energy to take seal-form.’
‘And the pearls?’ I prompted. ‘What the hell are they, Fi?’
In answer, Fionn appeared before me, and the moonlight somehow caught and lingered in her skin, her hair; she glimmered with pure magic, and every mote of light, every drop of water clinging to her pale skin was a pearl, or something like it.
‘Oh,’ I said.
‘If someone stripped you of your voice,’ said Fionn, letting the radiance fade once more. ‘You could imagine how it feels to be stripped of my pearls.’
‘I don’t know. I only have the one voice, but you seem to be well supplied with pearls.’
Fionn trailed her fingers in the water, sending up a spray. Each droplet became a fresh, lambent pearl, and sank slowly into the deep. ‘These, though,’ she said, indicating her bracelet, ‘are the oldest and rarest that I have. It would take me a century to replace them.’
‘What do they have to do with your shapeshifting? Your sealskin?’
‘Nothing. Take my pearls and you weaken me. Take my skin and… you enslave me.’
I paced faster. ‘I wonder if we’re barking up the wrong tree here. Is this about selkie-skins, or is it about selkie’s pearls?’ I said. ‘Or both? And while we’re thinking about that, how about we go get warm or something? I haven’t exactly tried, but I’m pretty sure I can’t sing my way out of a bout of hypothermia.’
Hell and High Water Page 11