Chapter Twenty-Two
“Are you sure about this?” Aidan grumbled, standing in the sand, the cuffs of his trousers rolled up and the wind tangling his hair. The swirls of his tattoo poked out from under the cuff of his shirt. “This does not seem wise.”
Sorcha’s toes were also bare in the sand and the sun was warm on her nose, even though she could hear her mother’s childhood warnings about freckles and sunburns making her look common.
She also wore a simple dress her grandmother disdained.
And she was quite certain her braided twist was already slipping from its pins.
And Aidan, the man she would have assumed at one time to be the first to comment, did not appear to even notice. He was too busy glaring at the sea and the white flashes of the kelpie herd. The snap of powerful jaws could be heard over the soft sigh of the water swirling around her ankles.
Not that wearing a bonnet was particularly helpful when one waded into murder-horse territory.
She must have mumbled as such, arguing with her mother who was not here and had not been for some time, because Aidan pulled his gaze from the herd. His stance did not relax. “What’s that?” he asked.
“I forgot my bonnet.”
He looked perplexed. “I wasn’t aware you owned a bonnet.”
Sorcha snorted a laugh despite herself. “My mother would have agreed with you. She despaired over my freckles.” It sounded absurd the moment she said it. The man muddled her head.
He also frowned at her as though she had lost her mind entirely. “I like your freckles,” he said.
The warmth that suffused her was clearly from the sun. It was a warm early autumn day. Very warm.
She knew very well it had nothing to do with the sunlight.
She fought back a silly smile because this was no time for silly smiling. One did not let one’s mind wander when dealing with kelpies. That was how you lost a finger. A hand. Possibly a leg. Your nose.
“Perhaps you should let me try,” Aidan said for the third time in as many minutes.
Sorcha shook her head. “You don’t know how to talk to kelpies.”
“I might.”
“Well, do you? Know how to talk to kelpies?”
“No,” he admitted, his brow thunderous. “But I don’t like this.”
“We need to set the trap properly. There’s no sense in trying to catch the Collector if we can’t keep him.”
“I can find another spell.”
“Not before the full moon, or you would have found one already,” she pointed out. “This will work.”
There were boundaries that kept kelpies from eating the tourists on the beach of Haven or the academics thinking too hard on the pebbled beaches of Hallow, but out here on the shores between the two, there was only sand and sun and the waves.
And Sorcha’s basket of apples, cake, and currant buns.
She maintained that if one survived mostly on fish and kelp and the odd unlucky witch, a sweet bun might be worth a trade. At the very least, worth a conversation before an attempted mauling. It worked with cantankerous humans, so Sorcha did not see why it should not work on kelpies.
However, Aidan standing next to her with his gold eyes and a growl in his thick chest was not conducive to easy conversation. For anyone.
“You’re scaring them away,” Sorcha said as they sliced through the water to approach, then went sideways. Teeth flashed, full of seaweed and fishbones.
“That’s the point,” he rumbled.
The gulls on the beach screeched, agreeing with him.
She tossed them crumbs of a lemon pound cake and purple grapes she had found growing over a garden fence.
They technically belonged to the haberdasher, but as he liked to throw shoes at the gulls on his walks, Sorcha decided he owed them compensation.
The gulls always told her stories, and she believed them.
“You’ll have to stay here,” she told Aidan.
“Like hell.”
“Such language from a curator of the London Museum of Magic.”
“Sorcha—”
“If you keep grinding your teeth like that, you’ll snap one off.” She tilted her head. “Would your wolf also then have a gap? Do they grow back?”
“I’ll answer all of your questions if you step back.”
“Certainly not.” She rolled her eyes. “We need three strands of kelpie mane, and they won’t come any closer if you’re looming like a glowering mountain and growling like a wolf. You step back.”
He scrubbed a hand over his beard as though she had caused him physical pain.
She patted his very large arm. “I do this sort of thing all of the time, remember.”
“That is not comforting.”
The gulls gathered on the sand lifted into the air, circling around her. Loudly. They followed her into the sea.
“Why do they get to go with you?” Aidan demanded.
“Because gulls can communicate with all sea creatures,” Sorcha explained. “Why do you think they are so chatty all of the time?”
“I thought they were…gulls.”
“They are very social.” She tossed another grape for them.
“And very clever.” Another grape, swiped in midair.
“And easily bribed with food.” A screech, a flick of a wing.
“Well, you are.” She tossed more crumbs onto the water.
“It’s what I like best about you. Now, do please tell the kelpies I have a proposition.
” The large basket of baked treats bobbed on her arm as she tried to keep it aloft.
Her dress billowed around her. The sand shifted under her feet as the gulls screeched and shouted, diving and darting away.
Elderberry flew above, keeping an eye on the kelpies as the water boiled around them, powerful haunches propelling them toward her.
Although Sorcha had acted nonchalant around Aidan, it did take considerable willpower and courage to stay still as the waves tried to unmoor her and the kelpies descended, screeching and gnashing their giant teeth.
Aidan swore softly from somewhere behind her.
“Don’t,” she said just as softly. “Don’t spook them now.”
The water foamed and frothed, fishbones and something that looked suspiciously like a human bone bobbing to the surface. Something she hoped very much was seaweed touched her leg. She swallowed, willing herself to stay calm.
The kelpies might be violent murder horses, but they were also beautiful. And she might want to bite everyone too if they kept bursting into her house and trying to steal her hair or her bones. There were many spells that could be vastly enhanced by kelpie parts. Unfortunately.
She crumbled a chunk of cake into bits. Powerful jaws snapped around them immediately, kelpies jostling each other.
“Manners,” Sorcha said. “Tell them there’s enough for everyone,” she asked the gulls, sending images of breads and cakes and apples from a never-ending basket.
No one had to know her basket very much did have a beginning and an end. Not kelpie, nor a certain Lycan earl looming behind her.
The kelpies splashed impatiently, whipping their tails. A lash from a tail could break your leg, or toss you under the waves to drown. Sorcha threw an apple. She had meant to offer it, but her heart was pounding and her muscles were tensing. More cake. This called for more cake.
She scattered the rest of the lemon loaf, and a kelpie foal swam toward her.
He was snapping his jaws, but it was less menacing.
She might still lose a finger, but he looked so proud of himself, just learning and eager for cake.
“Well, aren’t you a darling?” she cooed. His sleek, wet fur gleamed like opals.
Aidan groaned. “You cannot keep a baby kelpie in your courtyard fountain.”
“Of course not. I don’t have a courtyard fountain.”
“I will build you one if you come away from there.”
The foal nudged her hip and nearly knocked her over. She slid sideways on the sand. Aidan was stalking toward her as she righted herself. “I’m all right,” she called out. “You’ll only agitate them.”
He halted. Reluctantly.
She was beginning to be able to differentiate between the different rumbles and the growls he made.
“Sorcha, I’m begging you.”
She tossed the rest of the apples, lobbing them as far as she could to draw most of the kelpies out of biting distance.
Murdering distance. She asked the gulls to translate for her, sending images of braided kelpie hair in exchange for more apples, more cake.
The foal slapped the surface of the water with his tail excitedly.
But another kelpie charged forward, snorting a warning, eyes rolling. The foal dipped behind her in what looked like a sulk, as though he had been sent to his room without dessert.
Sorcha held up her hands, whistling frantically to the gulls that she was not here to harm the kelpies or steal from them. The mother kelpie did not back away, but nor did she attack.
Sorcha sent more images to the gulls: protecting other creatures like the foal, the fighting pits. Brutus searching for his daughter.
The kelpie met her gaze. The gulls screeched.
Three men on the beach at night, silver chains, hexed nets. Spears dipped in sleeping draughts. A foal screaming. Blood in the water.
“He’s been here,” Sorcha told Aidan. “He’s tried to take the foals for his fights.” She did not know how he planned to trap them or exhibit them. Would he build a pool of some sort? Or claim one of the beaches? It didn’t matter. She wasn’t going to let it happen.
“We’ll stop him,” Aidan said softly.
Sorcha unclenched her fists, nodding. “He’s right,” she called to the gulls. “We’re going to stop him. But we need their help.”
The gulls dove closer, their calls shrill and piercing.
There was a long moment as the herd gathered, all clamping jaws and flashing hooves.
The mother kelpie finally tossed her head.
She sent the foal diving down out of sight and did not try to close her jaws around the gull that darted down to pluck a hair from her mane.
He dove again, taking a hair from another kelpie, and then a third.
He flew to Sorcha, dropping them into her hand.