The sun had truly set and Zee turned on lights as we went. Though I could see fine in the dark, I was grateful for the light. My heart was still certain that we were going to be eaten, and it pounded away at twice its usual speed.
Death's unlovely perfume drew my attention to a closed door. If I'd been on my own, I could have opened the door easily enough, but I believe in making use of others. I whined (coyotes can't bark, not like a dog) and Zee obediently opened the door and revealed the stairs going down into a basement. It was the first of the houses that had had a basement - unless they'd been hidden somehow.
I bounded down the stairs. Zee turned on the lights and followed me down. Most of the basement looked like basements look: junk stored without rhyme or reason, unfinished walls and cement floor. I padded across the floor, following death to a door, shut tight. Zee opened that one without me asking and I found, at last, the place where the fae who had lived here was murdered.
Unlike the rest of the house, this room had been immaculate before the resident had been murdered. Underneath the rust-colored stains of the fae's blood, the tile floor gleamed. Cracked leather-bound tomes with the authentic lumpiness of pre - printing press books sat intermingled with battered paperbacks and college math and biology texts in bookcases that lined the walls.
This room was the bloodiest I'd seen so far - and given the first murder, that was saying something. Even dried and old, the blood was overwhelming. It had pooled, stained, and sprayed as the fae had fought with his attacker. The lower shelves of three bookcases were dotted with it. Tables had been knocked over and a lamp was broken on the floor.
Maybe I wouldn't have realized it if I hadn't just been thinking about them, but the fae here had been a selkie. I had never met one before that I knew, but I'd been to zoos and I knew what seals smelled like.
I didn't want to walk into the room. I wasn't usually squeamish, but lately I'd been walking in enough blood. Where the blood had pooled - in the grout between tiles, on a book lying open, and against the base of one of the bookcases where the floor wasn't quite level - it had rotted instead of dried. The room smelled of blood, seal, and decaying fish.
I avoided the worst of the mess where I could and tried not to think too much about what I couldn't avoid. Gradually what my nose told me distracted me from the unpleasantness of my task. I quartered the room, while Zee waited just outside it.
As I started for the door, I caught something. Most of the blood here belonged to the fae, but on the floor, just in front of the door, were a few drops of blood that did not.
If Zee had been a police officer, I'd have shifted then and there to tell him what I'd found. But if I pointed my finger toward a suspect, I was pretty sure I knew what would happen to the person I pointed it at.
Werewolves dealt with their criminals the same way. I don't have any quarrel with killing murderers, but if I'm the one doing the accusing, I'd like to be absolutely certain, given the consequences. And the person I'd be accusing was an unlikely choice for killing this many fae.
Zee followed me up the stairs, turning off lights and closing doors as we went. I didn't bother looking further. There had only been two scents in the basement room besides Uncle Mike's. Either the selkie didn't bring guests into his library, or he had cleaned since the last time. Most damning of all was the blood.
Zee opened the front door and I stepped out into full night where the silvered moon had fully risen. How long had I sat staring at the impossible sea?
A shadow stirred on the porch and became Uncle Mike. He smelled of malt and hot wings, and I could see that he was still dressed in his tavern-keeper clothes: loose ivory-colored khakis and green T-shirt with his own name in the possessive across his chest in sparkling white letters. It wasn't egocentrism; Uncle Mike's was the name of his tavern.
"She's wet," he said, his Irish thicker than Zee's German.
"Seawater," Zee told him. "She'll be all right."
Uncle Mike's handsome face tightened. "Seawater."
"I thought you were working tonight?" There was a warning in Zee's voice as he changed the topic. I wasn't sure whether he didn't want to talk about my encounter with the sea fae, or if he was protecting me - or both.
"BFA was out patrolling looking for you two. Cobweb called me because she was worried they'd interfere. I sent the BFA off with a flea in their ear - they have no authority to tell you how long you can keep a visitor - but I'm afraid we've drawn their attention to you, Mercy. They might cause you trouble."
His words were nothing out of the ordinary, but there was something darker about his voice that had nothing to do with the night and everything to do with power.
He looked back at Zee. "Any luck?"
Zee shrugged. "We'll have to wait until she changes back." He looked at me. "I think it is time to bring this to an end. You see too much, Mercy, when it isn't safe."
The hair on the back of my neck told me something was watching us from the shadows. I drew the wind in my nose and knew it was more than two or three. I looked around and growled, letting my nose wrinkle up to display my fangs.
Uncle Mike raised his eyebrows at me, then took a look around himself. He tipped up his chin and said, his eyes on me, "You will all go home now." He waited and then said something sharp in Gaelic. I heard a crash and someone took off down the sidewalk in a clatter of hooves.
"We're alone now," he told me. "You can go ahead and change."