Hell and High Water

by Charlotte E. English

  ‘I am,’ I admitted. ‘But I can’t go back and try it again. Daix’s seen to that.’ There would be nothing left of the club by now; Daix’s fires burned fast, and hot. The pools were gone.

  Daix gave Tai an imaginary hat-tip. ‘You’re welcome.’

  Tai glared at me. ‘Were you always this reckless?’

  ‘Were you?’ I countered.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There you go, then.’

  ‘But that’s me. That was sort of my thing. You’re meant to be the sane one.’

  ‘No. I was the fearful, cautious one. I’m less so, now.’

  Tai gave me a long, wordless look, in which I read a mixture of understanding and annoyance. ‘You weren’t always that. I’ve seen you face incredible odds, and without a trace of fear.’

  ‘I had the fear,’ I said. ‘Circumstances frequently compelled me to ignore it.’

  One of Tai’s eyebrows rose, slightly. ‘Okay. And why are you different now?’

  I subjected that question to a moment’s thought. ‘Perhaps it ceased to matter whether I got hurt.’

  Tai’s dark eyes darkened further, and narrowed. ‘What—’

  ‘Stop it,’ Daix snapped. ‘If you two want to soothe each other’s boo-boos, save it for another time. We’re working here.’

  ‘Apologies,’ I said. ‘You’re right.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Tai. ‘Since Fi’s been denied the opportunity to perform a feat of awe-inspiring heroism at great personal cost, we’ll have to do it the other way.’

  ‘I tremble at the prospect of the other way,’ I said. ‘You’ve got that reckless look about you.’

  ‘Oh, but it’s all right when you do it?’

  ‘Stop it,’ Daix growled.

  ‘I do have a plan,’ said Tai. ‘Neither of you will like it.’

  ‘I’ll probably love it,’ said Daix.

  Tai inclined her head. ‘Fair. Fi, I need your permission to be certifiably insane for a bit.’

  ‘Do you need my permission?’

  ‘I’d… okay, I’d like your permission. Please.’

  ‘You may have it, if you must. With the proviso that you don’t get yourself killed.’

  ‘Or you, either,’ she said. ‘Let’s pretend we all still care about whether you live or die, hm?’

  ‘All right. Nobody gets killed.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Are you going to share the details?’

  ‘Later, maybe. For now, it’s best if you two proceed as you were intending anyway. Daix, anything else you can dig up about the Quinn-Diamhors’ doings might help. Also get in touch with your shadier contacts and find out about any illegal sealskin sales or trades going on.’

  ‘I love it when things get shady,’ Daix grinned. ‘Can I pose as a buyer?’

  ‘Perfect. You’re evil incarnate and you’ve always wanted a selkie slave of your very own.’

  ‘Sounds like me.’

  ‘Pearls, too,’ I put in.

  Daix frowned. ‘All right, but why would I want to buy selkies’ pearls?’

  ‘For one thing,’ I said, ‘they’re among the rarest, most beautiful pearls money can buy, and tend to fetch spectacular prices.’

  ‘So there’s plain old material value. Okay.’

  ‘For another, they… may confer some limited gramarye upon the wearer.’

  ‘May? That’s awfully wishy-washy, Fionn.’

  ‘No selkie wants to be separated from their pearls,’ I said coldly. ‘So it’s not something that’s been studied much, hm? But there are stories—’

  ‘And you did say I’d probably have drowned if I hadn’t had yours,’ Tai put in.

  ‘Right. I am not certain of that, and I have zero interest in running experiments to find out how quickly you drown without them.’

  Tai’s lips quirked in a sideways smile. ‘Seconded. Though you know, it really felt like I was drowning. At the risk of sounding shockingly ungrateful, they could have worked a bit better.’

  ‘Still, you didn’t drown, so your experience offers some limited support for the idea. Which is partly why I begin to think the missing selkies may be more about selkie gramarye than about selkie slaves.’

  ‘Why not both?’ said Daix. ‘By this account, you selkie-types are just dripping in value. Can’t think why there hasn’t been a selkie trafficking operation before.’

  Her words chilled me, because they were true.

  ‘Snatch a selkie from the airport,’ said Tai, grimly. ‘Or a club. Use her skin to enslave her. Force her to hand over her pearls, and all the gramarye therein.’

  ‘Use the magic, traffick the bitch,’ said Daix.

  ‘Daix, some sensitivity please,’ I said, icily. ‘We’re talking about Tai’s roommate here.’

  ‘Sorry,’ muttered Daix.

  ‘Narasel died,’ said Tai. ‘Maybe — maybe she was an experiment gone wrong.’

  ‘I didn’t drown — because I still had my skin, and could shapeshift,’ I agreed. ‘You didn’t because you had some of my gramarye. If they stripped Narasel of skin and pearls during that initial process—’

  ‘When she went into the water, at the club,’ Tai nodded.

  ‘Then she suffered the same fate we did, only she hadn’t the means left to survive it.’

  Tai’s lips tightened. ‘Maybe they didn’t expect that outcome. After all, she was valuable merchandise.’

  I ignored the sick feeling Tai’s vocabulary gave me. Merchandise. ‘If this is all true, it ought to be encouraging,’ I offered. ‘Mearil, Melly and any others shouldn’t be in imminent danger of their lives. They’re worth too much for that.’

  ‘I hope you’re right,’ said Tai. ‘But the same questions remain. Where are they? If they’re to be bound and sold into slavery — how? By whom, and to whom? And what’s being done with their pearls and their gramarye?’

  ‘In other words,’ I said. ‘Who wants a taste of selkie powers enough to set up such an operation as this?’

  ‘And who has the clout to be so damned public about it?’ said Daix. ‘It’s not exactly a subtle operation, is it?’

  Tai nodded. ‘Someone feels powerful enough to get away with it.’

  ‘Someone who knows us,’ I said. ‘Let’s not forget: we’ve been deliberately baited.’

  I felt Tai’s gaze on me again, and met her eyes. It isn’t always easy to do that. She knows me too well.

  ‘Fi,’ said she.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Please tell me you aren’t going to go out there and deliberately get yourself snatched.’

  ‘How would I do that?’

  ‘I don’t know, by swanning around visibly unprotected until somebody hauls you off the street?’

  ‘If they were going to snatch me, why haven’t they already?’

  ‘I mean, I agree, but they sort of tried, by sending us to that damned club. And you weren’t meant to make it out of there.’

  ‘So you’re worried I’ll be the next Mearil.’

  ‘Having evaded the trap, more obvious tactics may be employed.’

  I sighed. ‘Are you sure it would be the wrong thing for me to do?’

  ‘Yes. How the hell can you ask me that.’

  ‘I’d find out what’s going on.’

  ‘Fi, you — you of all people can’t risk being slave-taken again. How the hell long did it take you to get over it last time?’

  I found I had nothing to say. Had I ever got over it, really?

  ‘Exactly,’ she said.

  ‘And what’s your plan, then?’ I said.

  ‘I’m going to get slave-taken.’

  I went very still. ‘What?’

  ‘You saw what I did up on the street, right? I can make people look at me and see you. If you’ll lend me those pearls one more time — I’ll get them back for you, I swear—’

  ‘Tai, you can’t do that.’

  ‘Why not? It won’t affect me like it would affect you. I can’t be genuinely enslaved, I can just act like I
am. And since it’s not a thing I’ve been traumatised by in the past, it won’t hurt me like it would hurt you.’

  ‘No. Absolutely not.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I have a better idea,’ said Daix.

  Tai narrowed her eyes at me, then turned her attention to Daix. ‘Which is?’

  ‘If I’m posing as a buyer, Tai can pose as a seller.’ Daix beamed at me. ‘And she’s selling you.’

  ‘What?’ I said, faintly.

  ‘Story time!’ Daix gave a gleeful little bounce, and adopted a smoky voice. ‘The enigmatic fatales, braving the underworld night after night in the service of the oppressed—’

  ‘Get on with it,’ sighed Tai.

  Daix shot her a poisonous look, and resumed her usual tones. ‘Until the mission that ended us, and it all went wrong. Eighty years pass and we don’t even talk to each other. So far, so true?’

  ‘Okay,’ said Tai, cautiously.

  ‘Well. Despite signs of a tentative reconciliation in the past two days, resentments among us remain intense. Tai has got close to Fionn again, not because she’s generously forgiven that detestable selkie for her part at Ravensbrück but because she’s harbouring treachery in her ample bosom. Perhaps Tai isn’t broken up about her roommate’s disappearance at all. Perhaps she even had something to do with it. Perhaps she’d like to do the same thing to Fionn.’

  ‘So I’m evil and I’d like to sell out my old partner for cash,’ said Tai.

  ‘Maybe cash, maybe something better. We can talk about that.’

  ‘Sounds like me.’

  ‘I know!’

  ‘And you’re gleefully on board with this because you’re Daix, and we all know you’re evil.’

  ‘Correct.’ Daix shrugged. ‘There always were plenty who saw us that way. Why not capitalise on it?’

  ‘If you can’t beat them…’ said Tai, rolling her eyes.

  Daix’s grin was vicious. ‘Join them.’

  Both of them looked at me. Waiting.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘We’re not doing the stupid motto, Daix. Not again.’

  ‘Just this one time,’ she pleaded. ‘For me?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Look, we’ll even cue you in again. If you can’t beat them—’

  Tai’s eyes twinkled. ‘Join them. Come on, Fi. It’s as true now as ever.’

  I permitted myself a short sigh. ‘Then break them.’

  Daix clapped. ‘We’re still so cool.’

  ‘And evil,’ said Tai. ‘So evil.’

  Daix was right. Back in the day, we’d developed a certain moral flexibility, because it suited our purposes. It’s hard to battle evil head-on, sometimes. It can be done, but it’s the hard road.

  Easier to do it from the inside. Easier to make yourself one of them — then take them apart. We’d played so many roles over the years, reinvented ourselves over and over again, employed disguise after disguise…

  People had noticed eventually, of course. That’s where the legend came from. The mysterious fatales, shadowy figures behind the ruin of many an underworld scheme.

  That’s one of the things that had gone so wrong. They’d figured out who we were.

  But maybe we could use that, this time.

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll agree, because it’s far better than any scheme where Tai gets taken.’

  ‘To be very clear on one point,’ Tai said, eyeing Daix. ‘At no point are we actually going to sell Fi.’

  ‘Can’t we?’

  ‘Never, ever, and no.’

  ‘Damnit. That complicates things.’

  ‘Hey, if it comes to that, I can still masquerade as Fi.’

  ‘No—’ I began.

  Daix brightened. ‘Great. That’s settled. Now we just have to figure out who we’re going to trade Fi to.’

  ‘I’m employing Phélan,’ said Tai.

  ‘Like you needed an excuse.’

  ‘It’s not an excuse. He probably knows something that we could use. Might have connections.’

  ‘I’d love to mercilessly mock you some more,’ said Daix, ‘but unfortunately, you’re right.’

  ‘Fine. So I’ll do that. Daix, you do your thing. Fi…’

  I waited, stone cold.

  ‘I know you’re hating this, and I’m sorry.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘It’s going to be worth it.’

  ‘Better be.’

  Tai winced. ‘Will you get on Jane’s case, as planned? Backstage gossip, word among the modelling agencies, that kind of thing—’

  ‘It’s done. I’ll also be talking to Faerd. I have new questions for him.’

  Tai nodded. ‘And I’ll pay a visit to the Booted Puca again. See if I can catch these mythical sluagh with the sealskin market.’

  Chapter Twelve: Tai

  I’d called Phélan again before Fi, Daix and I ever got as far as my cellar hideaway. Honestly, the plan to use myself as Fionn-shaped bait had been circling in my mind for a while.

  I still wasn’t sure I was ready to relinquish it altogether. But Daix’s plan had merit, too.

  Either way, I needed to pick Phélan’s brains.

  The man had the sense not to shadow me, this time — or at least, not to let me know that he had. He did what I’d expected him to do. He went to my house.

  I knew he was there from the moment I opened the front door. I’ve never been able to decide whether or not I’m imagining things, when it comes to Phélan. He has an impact on things people have no business messing with, like atmosphere, and shadows, and the precise quality of the silence.

  Atmosphere: subtly tense.

  Shadows: deeper than they ought to be, like holes in the world.

  Silence: profound.

  I closed and locked the door behind me, and dropped my keys on a nearby shelf. ‘Hi, Phélan.’

  ‘Tai.’ The word emerged from the depths of the darkness. Phélan didn’t.

  I switched on the light.

  He was standing — no, lurking — at the rear of my living room, leaning against the wall in a pose of deceptive casualness. He didn’t move, but he did squint against the sudden light.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, stepping out of my shoes. ‘But I really don’t need you being dark and shadowy all over my personal space.’

  ‘Still finding that devastatingly attractive?’

  ‘Still finding it incredibly annoying.’

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘You do know those things aren’t meant to be the same, right?’

  He shrugged. ‘If it works.’

  ‘It doesn’t work. I mean, it’s pretty much the textbook definition of an unhealthy relationship.’

  ‘Since no part of this has ever been a relationship, I shall go right on being dark and shadowy.’

  ‘I knew there was a reason I didn’t talk to you for a decade. Or eight.’

  Phélan’s mouth tightened.

  ‘That being so,’ I continued, ‘why exactly did you give me your number?’

  I’d come home one day, several years ago, to find a note on my pillow. My fucking pillow. It had nothing on it save somebody’s mobile phone number, hastily scrawled in black ink. I didn’t need to recognise Phélan’s writing to know it was his.

  ‘And by the way,’ I added, ‘if you were actively trying to be as creepy as possible you couldn’t have done a better job.’

  ‘That’s fair,’ he said, surprisingly serious.

  ‘So? What the hell were you doing.’

  ‘I wanted you to know I was looking out for you.’

  ‘By breaking into my room and leaving your contact details in my actual bed.’

  ‘I… yes.’

  ‘There’s a term for that kind of thing.’

  ‘Don’t say stalker.’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘I haven’t been stalking you.’

  ‘Except for the pillow-note thing. Oh, and following me to the club tonight.’

  ‘Looking out for y
ou.’

  ‘That’s not how you do that.’

  He shrugged. ‘Okay, answer me this then: why did you save my number?’

  ‘Because… I happen to be an idiot.’

  He grinned, which was annoying, because my traitorous heart performed a somersault on the spot. ‘Me too.’

  ‘Okay. Good to clear that up.’ I sank into an armchair, and sat with my arms folded. ‘While I fully see the appeal of looming over me from an intimidating height, it’s also fine to sit down.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said politely, quite as though I’d been courteous as well, and sat down across from me.

  We engaged in a little mutual staring.

  ‘Right,’ I said, sitting up a little straighter. ‘Business. I called you because I do actually need your help.’

  ‘I recall.’

  That reminded me of the evening’s events; my gaze strayed, guiltily, to the burns on his neck. ‘I’m sorry about the… Daix, thing.’

  ‘I know. I’ve always been pretty sorry about the Daix thing, too.’

  ‘I don’t think she’s set fire to anyone in years. It’s hard for her.’

  ‘I sympathise.’

  Knowing Phélan, he literally might.

  ‘Are we getting around to why you called me?’ he prompted.

  ‘I called you because you’re the worst person I know.’

  A slight frown. ‘Right.’

  ‘If anyone of my acquaintance is likely to have their fingers deep in this pie, it’s you.’

  ‘I think that was an insult,’ said Phélan. ‘Not even a pretend insult, either.’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘It’s fair.’ Phélan had so often turned out to be involved in some scheme we were disrupting, if never very deeply. He was never the mastermind, never really committed himself to any scheme of infamy, but he was more than happy to make use of other people’s if it benefited him somehow.

  His face registered annoyance, briefly, then turned rueful. ‘It is fair. Why don’t you fill me in about this particular pie?’

  ‘It’s not just about that selkie they pulled out of the river. There are more.’ I gave him a rapid precis of the developments thus far, and our suspicions as to the probable motives. Phélan listened in silence; I couldn’t tell, from his face, what he was thinking.

  ‘So when I heard that some mysterious sluagh’s been trying to flog one or more selkie-skins on the quiet,’ I concluded, ‘naturally I thought of you.’