Wild Ways

by Tanya Huff

  “Gale rules are Gale specific.” Charlie ducked in under the reaching branch of the big pine and stopped, settling her guitar into place. “Put your hand on my shoulder and I’ll bring us out by those three birches behind your house.”

  Dark eyes widened in wonder. “How did you know?”

  “Google Earth.You gave me your address, I borrowed Mark’s laptop.”

  “Oh.”

  “Still magic of a sort.”

  “I suppose.” Her fingers felt slightly damp against Charlie’s skin. “Are you sure you can take all of what I am through the Wood?”

  Charlie shushed the fiddler and checked. The missing skin left a gaping hole in Tanis’ song, silence where there’d been both deepwater music and waves against the shore. Easy enough to fix. She wove the absence of the skin through the song—a wail of longing bending the treble strings. She didn’t need to turn to know Tanis was crying again.

  “Trust me,” she said lightly, trying to lift the Selkie’s mood before the Wood got wet. “I took a Dragon Lord through last year, and your other form can’t possible weigh what he did.”

  “A Dragon Lord?” Damp interest.

  “They were . . .” Hunting. Invading. Igniting. “. . . visiting in Calgary, and we went to Chicago for pizza. He weighed more on the way back. Those guys can eat.”

  Tanis’ grip tightened and she sniffed, more in pique than sorrow. “I’ve always been told that we opened a gate to this world because of the Dragon Lords. That they found our other form . . . tasty.”

  Charlie snorted. “I get the impression they find pretty much everything tasty. Hang on.”

  Tanis lived in a small house on Grandfather’s Cove outside Main-a-Dieu. “It’s been in the family for generations,” she said leading the way out of the brush and over the rough cut lawn to the back door. “Not our generations of course, yours. Actually, Humans. I’m the only one living here right now; the others with landlives live with their husbands. But my sisters and my cousins visit often, and I spend a lot of my time with Bo.” She caught a handful of hair blown wild on the wind and twisted it into a braid. “Soon, I’ll leave here to live with Bo. Until he betrays me.”

  “What?”

  “It’s how our story always ends. With betrayal.” Her eyes went dark from lid to lid and a single tear fell to roll down the perfect curve of her cheek. “Mortal lives are so short.”

  The Fey were walking, talking clichés sometimes. “So they betray you by dying?”

  “The ultimate betrayal.” She shrugged, the glamour back, whites in her eyes again. “It’s the only betrayal left, isn’t it? These days, we choose the men we live a landlife with.”

  Is seemed as though the men so chosen couldn’t decline. But then, the Fey tended to get what the Fey wanted and as long as none of them made a move on a Gale boy, not her problem. “So no one ever sees you doing the obligatory moonlight dancing and steals your skin instead of falling in love?”

  “Please, most modern men wouldn’t believe what they saw and the last man who did and then strutted around saying I have your skin and you must be mine got visited by half a dozen cousins who kicked the living shit out of him until he divulged the hiding place.”

  “Half a dozen cousins? Not one of your males?”

  “A male would have killed him.”

  Seals bite.

  Also, divulged? Who actually said divulged? Tanis’ speech patterns were an interesting mix of Fey formal and twenty-first century casual.

  “Mr. Alcock next door mows the lawn,” Tanis continued, as though she hadn’t just been talking about putting the boots to a modern application of Celtic myth. “And his wife comes in and cleans once a week as the Alcock family has done for generations. In return, the family are the most successful fishermen in the village. Actually, these days, they might be the only successful fishermen in the village. Over the last few months, the remaining fishing grounds have all but emptied. As though the fish are fleeing before Carlson Oil can destroy their homes.”

  “Good for them . . . but back to the kicking. If you could find that skin . . .”

  “You weren’t listening; we could only find the man who had it—not that it was hard, what with the strutting and bragging and all. He had to tell us where the skin was.”

  “Okay, but my point is, we know who has the four missing skins.”

  Tanis sighed and pulled a key for the back door out from under an upturned clay flower pot. “Don’t be ridiculous. We can’t threaten an entire corporation. They have the skins, so we won’t be a threat. Plus, the CEO is a woman; we can’t even lure her somewhere secluded and point a male at her hoping she’ll survive long enough to talk. Given the way she does business, she’s probably taken that possibility into account. Her executive assistant is a man and he’s usually the one getting his hands dirty, but even if we get these skins back, we can’t stop them from getting more, and they’ll definitely up the ante. I’m the only landlifer without kids and Carlson Oil has a rep for being hard-line and we’re vulnerable now they know what we are. What?” she asked as Charlie stared at her. “Because we spend so little time in the water, those of us living a landlife are the core of the environmental group, and offshore drilling was on our radar even before Carlson filed for permits.”

  Of course it was. Turned out Tanis was pretty chatty when she wasn’t sobbing or her lips weren’t attached to Bo’s. “So offshore drilling’s innately evil?”

  “If the Gulf spill taught us anything, it was that spills are inevitable. Even ignoring the flight of the fish stocks, Carlson wants to drill right next to a seal rookery. We have family there. Wipe your feet,” she added as she opened the door.

  There were no charms on or around the back door even though the birches would have been the easiest place for Auntie Catherine to emerge from the Wood.

  The downstairs of the house had been simply furnished with the sort of heavy, handmade eighteenth century pieces that would cause the most stalwart antique dealer to have palpitations as he worked out his commission. Provided he could find buyers willing to ignore the slight scent of fish.

  The decor in Tanis’ bedroom jumped ahead a few centuries to come down in the land of online shopping. Comforter, sheets, shams, curtains, rug . . . everything matched. Bed, dressers, and bedside tables were MDF, shipped flat-pack and assembled. The art prints on the pale blue walls were generic landscapes. The room looked like it had been put together by someone not quite Human but trying hard. Personality showed only in the pile of romantic comedies by the television in the corner, the brightly colored clothing piled and draped over every possible surface, and, the poster of George Stroumboulopoulos on the plaster-and-lathe wall between the two dormer windows. The CBC late night talk show host, who declared he was everyone’s boyfriend, had apparently not been told that Canadian celebrities, particularly those on the CBC, didn’t smolder.

  Charlie admired the poster a moment longer, then asked, “So where was your skin?”

  “In my underwear drawer. No, the other one,” she added as Charlie reached out.

  If the skins could be the size the Selkies wanted, Tanis had obviously wanted hers to not take up much room in a drawer crammed full of matching bra and panty sets. If that wasn’t enough, and it looked like enough for two or three women, a leopard print demi bra hung from one corner of the dresser mirror, sharing space with a fuchsia cami and a lime-green thong.

  Charlie waited to see if her fiddler had anything to say, wasted another moment imagining Eineen in a thong, then took a deep breath and set about methodically searching the room for charms. Nothing.

  “You were in the room when it was stolen?”

  “Bo and I both were. Sound asleep.”

  Every other entrance into the house was as bare of charms as the back door. Charlie even checked the chimney just to be on the safe side. Nothing. Just like the RV.

  Back in the bedroom, Tanis pulled the note from the drawer in the bedside table and handed it over.

 
Support the well on Hay Island and your skin will be returned when the wellhead is in place.

  The only difference between it and Neela’s note was the entirely expected tearstains.

  Leaning back against the big dresser, Charlie hit paper and ink with every WTF? charm she knew and discovered nothing. Nada. Goose eggs all around.

  But something nudged at her, twanged her subconscious like a familiar song she could only just . . . barely . . . hear. Almost had it . . . nearly . . .

  Distracted by the lime-green thong and its reflection, she lost it.

  “What now?” Tanis asked as they went back downstairs.

  “I have no idea. But I’m not giving up,” she added hurriedly as Tanis started to sniffle. “Maybe I should talk to Amelia Carlson.”

  “She’s the head of the second largest oil company in Atlantic Canada.”

  “And I’m Charlie Gale.”

  Tanis paused at the front door, brows raised. “Can you just walk up to her, then?”

  Charlie shrugged. “Don’t know. I’ve never tried.”

  The view at the front of the house was amazing. A flagstone path led to a gravel road, across the road a narrow band of beach grass, across that a tidal beach, and across that, the sea. Turquoise close to shore, darkening farther out, distant waves topped with white ruffles—only water separated that shore from Europe. One hell of a lot of water.

  And a Selkie.

  Eineen crossed the sand, her hair wet and flowing down over her body like a midnight veil, her face too narrow, her eyes too large and too dark, her proportions wrong. Every time her foot touched the sand, it added another note to the song wrapped around her . . . wild seas and drowning men and bones white against the seabed. She met Charlie’s gaze and held it and between one step and the next was still beautiful but no longer other.

  Except for the sealskin she held in her right hand. That was pretty freakin’ other, Charlie amended.

  “We all keep some clothes here,” Tanis explained, pouring boiling water into a teapot as Eineen showered off the salt. “Between you and me? Given how much time Eineen’s spending at the festivals and working with the environmental group, I think she’s ready for another landlife.” Her mouth made a perfect O of dismay. “I don’t mean with you,” she added. “I mean, you’re nice and you’re helping and all, but . . .”

  “But she’s not really helping, is she?” Eineen had thrown on a purple tank and black cotton skirt. Her hair was still wet but merely hair rather than unearthly tresses. “Or have you found something here?”

  “Not a thing,” Charlie admitted, sniffing a homemade cookie for traces of cod. “To paraphrase Dr. McCoy, I’m a musician, not a detective. There isn’t a mark on either site. There isn’t even a place where a charm’s been removed. I have no idea how Auntie Catherine is getting in and getting the pelts out.”

  Wrapping her hands around a mug of tea, Eineen looked thoughtful. “Maybe you’re asking the wrong question. Before you ask how, you should ask where.”

  “What?”

  “How did your Auntie Catherine know where to look? How did she know there was a pelt in this house? In Glera’s house? In Seanan’s boat? In Neela’s trailer? How did she know where the skins were hidden?”

  Charlie swallowed and sucked chocolate chips off her teeth. “Someone told her?”

  The temperature in the room dropped about ten degrees. Eyes, face, webbing, teeth . . .

  They had remarkably pointed teeth, Charlie realized. She spread her hands, thought of Aston, reconsidered, and tucked her fingers between her thighs and the stool. “According to Tanis, it always ends with betrayal. If that’s true, then what’s to say you haven’t been betrayed?”

  Eineen’s features softened, and Tanis burst into tears. “Bo didn’t betray me!”

  “Oh, for . . .” Eineen sighed, stood, and gathered Tanis into her arms. “Hush, little one.”

  “Actually, I very much doubt Bo betrayed her.” Charlie reached for another cookie. She appreciated baked goods that weren’t layered in charms. “Gale girls know besotted and he’s clearly, completely besotted.”

  This brought on a fresh burst of tears.

  “Happy tears?” Charlie guessed.

  Eineen shrugged, rubbing comforting circles on the small of Tanis’ back. “The husbands of the other three know,” she admitted. “One of them could have betrayed us.”

  “No. Not to Carlson Oil.” Tanis lifted her head from Eineen’s shoulder and wiped her nose on the back of her hand. “I worked with all of them when we stopped the seal hunt and while they might sell us out for a guarantee the drilling would never happen, they’d never do it get a well put in. Not so close to shore. Not so close to the rookery.”

  “Jobs . . .”

  “They’re fiddlers.”

  Charlie shrugged. “It’s Cape Breton; who isn’t?”

  “And sure,” Tanis continued, ignoring her, “Glera’s brother-in-law works the oil fields out west . . .”

  “Fort McMurray?”

  “I don’t know. Does it matter?”

  “Evidence of a small world.”

  “This one,” she agreed. “But he couldn’t betray Seanan; he doesn’t know about the boat.”

  They were almost at something. Charlie could hear all the notes now but not the tune. Not quite. “Auntie Catherine went straight to the underwear drawer. She had to have, because she wouldn’t have bothered cleaning up after herself if she’d had to toss the place.” It was a little harder to tell that Neela’s trailer hadn’t been tossed, given the mess, but the mess, in turn, helped support her theory. It would have taken hours to search through the scattering of toys. “Auntie Catherine has the Sight. Maybe she saw where the skins would be. She could have seen it years ago and only just found a use for the information. Now me, I’m not an auntie, not even second circle—they’re all about connections—and I certainly don’t have the Sight . . .” Charlie couldn’t think of much worse than getting glimpses of the future and having to decide whether or not to interfere. Okay. Advance warning of Justin Beiber might have been worth it but not much else. “. . . so no, not a hope in hell I can find them the same way. But this is who I am.” She picked up her guitar from where she’d leaned it against the wall, settled it on her lap, and barred her way up, and then down the fretboard before settling to play.

  Eineen’s song was deep and mysterious and dangerous, and Charlie couldn’t so much play it as evoke it, letting the bass strings ring as she built the melody above them. Outside, across the road, across the beach, the waves beat out the percussion against the shore. With a wail of strings, her fiddler joined in.

  Charlie stood and walked up the stairs, following the music, the stairwell barely wide enough for her to keep playing even with the guitar tipped. The second bedroom held a narrow bed and a lot of clothing; different styles, different sizes, different eras. She stopped in front of a line of brass hooks screwed into the wall behind the door. Stopped playing. Lifted a powder blue chenille dressing gown. Lifted a yellow windbreaker. Lifted a shawl . . .

  And found herself holding a sealskin.

  It was heavy, it smelled like fish, and the empty eyeholes were creeping her the hell out.

  “I’ll take that.” Eineen reached past her, tugged the skin from her hand, and it was a shawl again. Then a fabric belt, wrapped around a narrow waist.

  It was possible, likely even, that Auntie Catherine had been able to maintain the glamour. Somehow, Charlie couldn’t see her dragging what looked like a skinned seal all over the province.

  “I took Tanis through the Wood,” she said, leaving the room. “I know her song and her skin is a part of it. It doesn’t matter where Auntie Catherine has hidden it, I can track it the same way I found yours. It’s not even tracking really; it’s just joining the pieces. Second verse, follows the first.”

  “Now?” Staring up at her from the bottom of the stairs, Tanis’ eyes were open painfully wide.

  Charlie flexed her fingers. Th
e Band-aid on her thumb made her grip on the pick uncertain, so she tugged it off with her teeth and then shoved it in the pocket of her shorts.

  “I can get rid of that.”

  “Thanks, but I’ll take care of it.” Gales didn’t leave their blood just lying around, not if they wanted to survive adolescence. Or, specifically, their siblings’ adolescence. Those sorts of charms always went wrong. “Stand beside me, hand on my shoulder, like when we were traveling . . . and why are you crying now?”

  “I just . . . it’s almost over.”

  “Shouldn’t you be outside? If you’re going to be traveling,” Eineen expanded as Charlie turned toward her.

  “Not yet. First I have to find the missing piece of the song, the part that links Tanis to her sealskin. Once I have it, we ride that to the final chorus. Safer to fill in the blanks before we start moving.”

  Feet braced, Charlie relaxed her shoulders and played the opening notes. Listened. Built Tanis’ song up from the touch on her shoulder, from the waves, from her tears, from the love on Bo’s face when he looked down at her. She touched the absence of the skin and, this time, felt the shape of its absence, followed that shape out, away, and . . .

  And. . . .

  And. . . .

  Eineen’s fingers were cool around her wrist as she stopped the movement of Charlie’s right hand. “You can’t get there, can you? And you’re bleeding again.”

  Charlie had no memory of losing the pick.

  Tanis, predictably, was crying.

  “Auntie Catherine knows I’m here,” Charlie growled around the thumb in her mouth. “She’s deliberately blocked me.”

  “So now what?”

  “Now, I’m heading home.” Early afternoon had become early evening while she played. The three-hour time difference was about to save her ass. “While I’m gone, you guys and your lifejacket group are going to set up a press conference, where you discuss how maybe possibly, a shallow water well wouldn’t be such a bad thing.”

  “Why would anyone believe that?” Eineen demanded, arms folded.