When he finally raised his gaze to the woman on the throne, he found Hilde watching him with an amused look. “Not particularly impressive but entertaining, witega.”
“Thank you, Völva Hilde. I’m only just learning to use my abilities,” he replied, keeping his eyes on the floor where they were safe from offending anyone.
“Isa says you saved Greta’s life by shifting the waves, so you could reach her. If that is so, then that is far from novice behavior.”
Immanuel opened his mouth, his mind faltering over that moment. He could scarcely remember it. All he had wanted was to grab Miss Larkin’s hand without losing his grip on the life preserver. He had felt the magic’s resonance in the water, but in the chaos, he hadn’t realized he even did anything.
“It wasn’t intentional. Pardon my asking, but how do you know all of this?”
“We were there,” Isa replied, the lines at the edges of her eyes betraying the youthful fullness of her freckled cheeks. “We felt our sister needed us.”
“By the time we arrived to assist her, you were in the water with her. I thought of drowning you,” Tara replied tartly.
His head swam as Isa added, “She thought you were hurting her.”
“But you reached her when we could not. Why did you do it?”
Words died in his throat. Why? The answer suddenly seemed too simple. “Because she fell into the water.” When they merely stared at him, he continued, “Because she’s with child, and I didn’t want her to freeze to death. I don’t know why else anyone would do it. If you’re looking for an ulterior motive, Völva Hilde, I don’t have one.”
Hilde narrowed her eyes. “Then how did you manipulate the sea when you can barely make ice? The sea doesn’t bow to just anyone, especially a man using magic. It’s unseemly.”
Heat flushed Immanuel’s cheeks as he eyed the ice melting on the rocky floor. Suddenly it didn’t seem nearly as impressive. “It’s hard to explain. It’s as if I can see a net lying over the water, and if I focus, I can tap into it and manipulate it. It works much better when my companion is nearby.”
“Companion?”
A barely perceivable look passed between the women, and for a moment, he swore he saw their weapons and guard lower a fraction. As soon as he saw it, it disappeared beneath scowls and hushed phrases. He swallowed against the knot in his throat. Clasping his hands in front of him, Immanuel resisted the urge to take the vivalabe from his bag and fidget with it. Even if he knew seeing a sea of blue stones would send his heart racing, at least he would know Adam was safe by the trajectory of the sandstone ball. The knife flashed in Hilde’s hand as she handed it to an attendant, the lethal glint snapping him from his thoughts.
“Did your companion come from the city with you? Is she here of her own free will?” Hilde asked, her voice edged with consternation as she circled him in long, stalking steps.
“Of course, why wouldn’t he be?” he spat, his voice rising.
“He? Your companion is a man?”
His tongue went dry. Opening his mouth to speak, Immanuel found his voice small as he looked between the powerful women staring him down. “Yes, my companion is a man. We were bonded by the Interceptors, and when he is around, my magic is more powerful.”
“The Interceptors forced you to bond with him?”
Tears prickled the back of Immanuel’s eyes. Honesty would either get him killed or set him free. Taking a steadying breath, he planted his trembling legs and replied, “No, we wanted to. We are companions.” When the women looked to one another, he quietly added, “Mates.”
A look of relief spread among the selkies while Immanuel’s stomach knotted at the admission. Adam would be furious.
“You didn’t come looking for a woman to bring back?” Tara asked.
Keeping his eyes on the ground, he hoped the wicked blade had disappeared for good and wouldn’t reappear at his throat when they heard his answer. “No, ma’am. Neither Adam nor I need or want a wife.”
Hilde studied his face. Stepping closer until she stood within a hand’s breadth of him, she gripped his chin and tilted his face until they were eye-to-eye. Her firm grip lacked the roughness of Lady Rose, but in her gaze, he could feel the same pulse of power.
“Are you in want of a wife?” she asked, her voice level and low.
“No, Völva Hilde.”
The invisible hand slipped into his mind by the time he finished saying her name. While Judith’s mind forced through like a battering ram, Hilde’s slunk into his consciousness with the grace of an eel. After a moment, she released his face and turned back to the women with a nod. In an instant, the air of fear and distrust had been replaced with wariness and hesitant curiosity. With a barked order, Hilde dismissed the other selkies. Tara and Isa remained nearby as the others disappeared down the labyrinth of passages or shifted back into seal form and slipped into the water. Tara glowered at Immanuel over Hilde’s shoulder, the knife hanging loosely in her grip. Immanuel swallowed hard as Hilde returned to the throne and the other two women fell in on either side of her.
“What is your name?”
“Immanuel Winter.”
“Winter, you said you came here by accident, but you also said you are here to help us. Explain yourself.”
Immanuel licked his lips and straightened as best he could despite the damp weighing down his coat. “I had no idea your— your meeting place was beneath the stone circle. I merely went there to investigate, to see if there were any ruins or inscriptions.” He opened his mouth but closed it. He had to be careful. “The reason my companion and I came to the island was to find you, the selkies. The Interceptors sent us because we received news that a selkie had been murdered here.”
He had expected Hilde to stiffen or be shocked or even upset, but her face remained impassive. Beside her, Isa cast her eyes to the floor, her lips set in a tight line, while Tara scowled at no one in particular. Though, he was beginning to suspect, that was just how she looked.
“And why did they decide to get involved this instance?”
“Someone, the person who murdered her, preserved her body and sent it to the Royal Zoological Society as proof of your existence. The Interceptors caught the box before it reached the society and sent it to me to confirm it—she—was authentic. I’m sorry to say she was very much real and certainly murdered.” Recalling all he could, Immanuel described her markings and features.
“Berte,” Tara stated.
Isa wrapped her arm around Tara’s shoulders, but she shoved her away and with a tight breath, her face returned to its mask of arrogance.
“We can’t say for certain it was her.”
“Do— do women go missing often? Don’t the men—”
“The men? The men are the reason they go missing,” Tara snapped.
Immanuel looked between her and Hilde, hoping for an answer. When it appeared he would only receive silence and suspicion, he murmured, “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand. Is there a kidnapper?”
“A selkie bride is prized in these parts and has been for centuries. Sailors want a sea wife. With a sea wife, your sons will be better fishermen and sailors, longer to tire and freeze.”
“But what about selkie men? Don’t they protect you?”
A sharp laugh broke from Tara’s throat. “Why did they send you if you know nothing of our ways?”
“Tara, please,” Isa murmured.
Immanuel’s cheeks burned. He had been thinking the same since he arrived.
“There’s no such thing as selkie men. Only women can change shape and live on land or sea. Half of the seals that live in these waters have selkie ancestors. If we breed with them, the women can shift, the males remain seals. If we breed with a man, our daughters can shift, but our sons remain on land.”
“So why kidnap you?” Even as the words left his lips, Immanuel felt the gulf of naivety open within him. It was the same feeling that sunk in his gut during department meetings, that they were adults and he was still a pr
ecocious child out of his depth.
“You look old enough to know the answer, even if your appetite differs. We are hard to catch when we don’t want to be, and the only way to keep us land bound is to steal our skins. Those of us who won’t be courted are taken by force.”
Horror hardened in Immanuel’s throat. “Oh, I see. Then, you had good reason for trying to dispose of me.”
“Why did they send you?” Tara demanded. “And what happened to Berte?”
“They sent me because I work at a museum in London where I’m considered something of a seal expert. That’s the only reason I got involved in the first place. I became entangled with the Interceptors a few months ago, so when your friend’s body turned up, they sent her to me to be studied. The Interceptors weren’t certain if she was real or not.”
“Of course they didn’t,” Hilde breathed between tented fingers. “We’re nothing but a cabal of provincial monsters to them.”
Before Immanuel could process what she said, the words were already tumbling out. “I was asked to study her body and determine its— her authenticity. They were going to hand the case over to someone more experienced, but I pestered them until they let me take over.”
“Did you come to study us like your other creatures?” Tara asked, her voice hardened with a sneer.
“No, no, not at all.” He held up his hands in surrender, fearing he would be tossed into the sea again. “I knew from the moment I saw her that she wasn’t a seal or any sort of creature. Please understand, the Interceptors, they— they mean well, they wanted to find out what happened to Berte, but they still acted like you weren’t real. I couldn’t let someone who didn’t see what I saw come here.”
“And what exactly did you see, witega?”
Immanuel swallowed hard at the familiar nudge of Hilde’s mind knocking to get into his. Closing his eyes, he let her in and drew up the last moments of Berte’s life. The fear, the pain, the moment she knew it was all over. Hilde raised her eyes to his, her lips parted and her eyes hardened with grief. Pain rang through Immanuel’s head as he closed his eyes and dropped his gaze to his feet.
“It was Berte. I heard her voice in my mind.”
Before Immanuel could speak, Tara turned and made for the cove’s entrance. A wave of nausea climbed up this throat at the sight of her body folding in on itself as she collapsed into a seal and slid into the water.
“I didn’t mean to cause—”
“You didn’t. We knew of Berte’s disappearance, but we hoped she had merely been land bound or had made a secret love match. How did you come to possess her memories?”
“I have the ability to see a being’s last moments. It isn’t exactly the kind of ability I can show you, otherwise I would have said so earlier.”
Straightening, Hilde motioned for Isa to give her space. “What do you intend to do? You certainly didn’t come just to tell us this.”
“I want to find out who killed her and keep them from hurting anyone else. I thought I might warn you or ask you for your help to find whoever did it, but if you aren’t safe on land, I will do it myself. If I should find them, I will take them to the proper authorities for punishment.”
As Immanuel spoke, Hilde whispered something into Isa’s ear and the woman disappeared behind the throne into the niche. In a moment, she was back, clutching something between her clawed fingers. Crossing the sandy floor, she stood just far enough away for she and Immanuel to get a good look at each other. He let his eyes slip over her full, spotted hips and stomach before coming to rest on her mane of curly auburn hair. She ran an appraising eye over his form, lingering at his waist and his long neck before tracing his scar. Holding his hand, she turned his shaking palm up and let a caged pyramid of green fluorite on a rough chain drizzle into his palm. Her warm fingers closed around his, the faint scratch of fur and a web of tissue remaining even in her mostly human form. Giving him a careworn smile that revealed the points of her teeth, Isa returned to Hilde’s side.
“Winter, we accept your help in finding Berte’s killer, but let it be known that if you do not find whomever murdered our sister, we will find them. Should you cross us, know our justice will be far more swift than your Interceptors. Do you understand?”
Immanuel nodded despite the knot growing in his stomach. Judith had warned him that they wanted to avoid an interspecies incident, yet he found himself drawn deeper. Pushing the thought away, he focused on the rough, multicolored stone whispering in his palm.
“Yes, Völva Hilde.”
“Very well. What you have in your hand is a calling stone. It’s much like the one you found. If you need us, all you have to do is stand in the sea and activate the stone with your thoughts. We will be watching you.” Leaning back in her throne, Hilde inclined her head to stare at the massive skull. Without taking her eyes off its sockets, she said, “Isa, take him up to the surface and make certain the circle holds this time.”
Chapter Seventeen
To Live
Adam stared at the broken grandfather clock in the corner of the dining room. He had completed his third circuit around the house, tidying things that were no longer askew and fluffing pillows that had lost their shape years ago. Their makeshift dinner, a few jars of jam, some suspect butter, and coarse brown bread, waited on the table, but one thought refused to leave his mind, Where was Immanuel? After Adam had returned from the lighthouse with his head swimming in whatever swill Quince had served him, he had found the house empty. It hadn’t alarmed him then. Byron Durnure seemed like the talkative type, the awkward kind of intellectual that Immanuel got along with swimmingly. It wasn’t until after Adam had taken a walk through the village, chatting with any fisherman, housewife, or child who would give him the time of day, which wasn’t many, that fear took root. Durnure had been in his workshop, unaware of Adam’s presence until he tapped his shoulder to take his attention from the gadget he was tinkering with. The man had been covered in grease with a meticulously arranged toolbox open at his side. A look of unrestrained annoyance blistered his features as he spat that he hadn’t seen Mr. Winter and returned to his work without another word.
He had never gotten there.
Rubbing his wrist, Adam hissed at the raw flesh before turning back to the lifeless clock. He had returned home in the rain, hoping beyond anything that Immanuel had merely been waylaid by a colony of seals or a local who wanted to chat. Had he gone looking for him at the lighthouse and become trapped there when that half of the island flooded with the tide?
More than anything, Adam wanted to leave and search for him. The thought of his body broken at the bottom of a treacherous staircase or floating among the waves terrified him, but he couldn’t look too worried. Immanuel was supposed to be a colleague and nothing more, so why would he take it upon himself to turn the island upside down to find him? Because he is more than that, Adam thought bitterly.
Instead he busied himself with chores. At home, he would have gone over the books for Hadley’s company or the ledgers from Lord Dorset’s estate. Anything to take his mind away from the worst scenarios he could conjure. So he fluffed cushions, straightened picture frames, and hacked through an entire loaf of hard bread in hopes Immanuel would be home to eat it. A tidy house is a tidy mind, he repeated to himself. It might explain why Immanuel’s office always looked like it had been ransacked while his appeared so clean that one might think it was unused. He learned early that when you had everything in order, few bothered to look deeper to find the cracks.
The kettle whistled on the stove, and the moment Adam disappeared into the dingy kitchen, the front door squealed open. Pulling the kettle off the stove, Adam dashed back into the living room to find a wide grin spreading across Immanuel’s face even as rain ran from his hair into his water-limp collar. A lance of panic shot through Adam’s breast at the sight of Immanuel’s pale lips and his ashen skin glistening with moisture. With each breath, his cheeks flushed with color.
“Selkies! I saw selkies,” he cri
ed, his voice breaking with a laugh.
“You what?”
“I met them, Adam.” He unwound his wet scarf and carelessly dropped his leather satchel onto the sofa. His frozen fingers fumbled over the buttons of his coat as he excitedly prattled on. “I should have been afraid. I should have, really. They were terrifying. They tried to kill me—twice—but Adam, I saw them. I spoke to them. I can’t believe it.”
Stepping forward, Adam undid Immanuel’s coat and pulled it from his shoulders. “But how did you— Did you say they tried to kill you?”
“Yes, well, I can’t blame them for that. They don’t trust men, and for good reason. I told them about the murder, showed them my memories, and they want me to help find her killer. They actually want my help. I can’t believe it, Adam.”
The tale of his day poured from him. He recounted the sensation of stepping through the strange stones, the labyrinth beneath the island, and finally all that had passed in the selkies’ den. When Immanuel finally finished, his face was awash with light. He was soaked to the bone, the water turning his linen shirt nearly translucent and his grey wool trousers black from the thigh down, yet he seemed more alive at that moment than he had for months in London. Adam swallowed down the oaths and reproaches lingering at the back of his throat and laid his hands on Immanuel’s shoulders.
Adam looked over his form, the unrelenting fear constricting his throat. “You’re all right? I mean, they didn’t hurt you?”
“No, I’m— I can’t think of the word, but oh, Adam, you should have seen them. It was terrifying. One minute they were seals swimming toward me, and the next, they were women or something in between. Naked as the day they were born. You think it would be odd, but it isn’t. It’s— it’s—”
Selkie Cove (The Ingenious Mechanical Devices Book 5) Page 19