His eyes were greener than the Lincoln green that Uncle Mike had his waitstaff wear, so green that not even the growing gloom of night dimmed their color. Long pale hair, damp with saltwater and tangled with bits of sea plants, reached the back of his knees. He was stark naked, and comfortable with it.
I could see no weapons. There was no aggression in his posture or voice, but my instincts were screaming. I lowered my head, keeping eye contact, and managed not to growl.
Staying in coyote form seemed the safest thing. He might think me simply a coyote...who had wandered into the bathroom of a dead fae and from there to wherever here was. Not likely, I had to admit. Maybe there were other paths to get here. I'd seen no hint of another living thing, but maybe he'd believe I was exactly what I looked like.
We stared at each other for a long time, neither of us moving. His skin was several shades paler than his hair. I could see the bluish cast of veins just below his skin.
His nostrils fluttered as he drew in my scent, but I knew I smelled like a coyote.
Why hadn't Zee used him? Obviously this fae used his nose, and he didn't seem powerless to me.
Maybe it was because they thought he might be the murderer.
I shuffled through folklore as he watched me, trying to think of all the human-seeming fae who dwelt in or about the sea. There were a lot of them, but only a few I knew much about.
Selkies were the only ones I could remember that were even neutral. I didn't think he was a selkie - mostly because I couldn't be that lucky - and he didn't smell like something that would turn into a mammal. He smelled cold and fishlike. There were kinder things in lakes and lochs, but the sea spawns mostly horror stories, not gentle brownies who keep houses clean.
"You smell like a coyote," he said finally. "You look like a coyote. But no coyote ever wandered Underhill to the Sea King's Realm. What are you?"
"Gnadiger Herr," said Zee cautiously from somewhere just behind me. "This one is working for us and got lost."
Sometimes I loved that old man as much as I loved anyone, but I'd never been so happy to hear his voice.
The sea fae didn't move except to raise his eyes until I was pretty sure he was looking Zee in the face. I didn't want to look away, but I took a step back until my hip hit Zee's leg to reassure myself that he wasn't just a figment of my imagination.
"She is not fae," said the fae.
"Neither is she human." There was something in Zee's voice that was awfully close to deference, and I knew I'd been right to be afraid.
The stranger abruptly strode forward and dropped to one knee in front of me. He grabbed my muzzle without so much as a by-your-leave and ran his free hand over my eyes and ears. His icy hands weren't ungentle, but even so, without Zee's nudge I might have objected. He dropped my head abruptly and stood again.
"She wears no elf-salve, nor does she stink of the drugs that occasionally drop a lost one here to wander and die. Last I knew, rare though it is, your magic was not such as could do this. So how did she get here?"
As he spoke, I realized that it wasn't Harvard I heard in his voice, but Merrie Old England.
"I don't know, mein Herr. I suspect that she doesn't know either. You of all people know that the Underhill is fickle and lonely. If my friend broke the glamour that hides the entrances, it would never keep her out."
The sea creature grew very still - and the waves of the ocean subsided like a cat gathering itself to pounce. The wisps of clouds in the sky darkened.
"And how," he said very quietly, "would she break our glamour?"
"I brought her to help us discover a murderer because she has a very good nose," Zee said. "If glamour has a weakness, it is scent. Once she broke that part of the illusion, the rest followed. She is not powerful or a threat."
The ocean struck without warning. A giant wave slapped me, robbing me of my footing and my sight. In one bare instant it stole the heat of my body so I don't think I could have breathed even if my nose wasn't buried in water.
A strong hand grabbed my tail and yanked hard. It hurt, but I didn't protest because the water was retreating, and without that grip, it would have carried me out with it. As soon as the water had subsided to my knees, Zee released his hold.
Like me, he was drenched, though he wasn't shivering. I coughed to get out the saltwater I'd swallowed, shook my fur off, then looked around, but the sea fae was gone.
Zee touched my back. "I'll have to carry you to take you back." He didn't wait for a response, just picked me up. There was a nauseating moment when all my senses swam around me, and then he set me down on the tile of the bathroom floor. The room was dark as pitch.
Zee turned on the light, which looked yellow and artificial after the colors of the sunset.
"Can you continue?" he asked me.
I looked at him, but he gave his head a sharp shake. He didn't want to talk about what happened. It irked me, but I'd read enough fairy tales to know that sometimes talking about the fae too directly lets them listen in. When I got him out of the reservation, I would get answers if I had to sit on him.
Until then, I put my curiosity aside to consider his question. I sneezed twice to clear my nose and then put it down on the floor to collect more people from this house.
This time Zee came with me, staying back so as not to interfere, but close on my heels. He didn't say anything more and I ignored him as I struggled for an explanation of what had just happened to me. Was this house real? Zee told the other fae that I had broken the glamour - wouldn't that mean that it was the other landscape that was real? But that would mean that there was an entire ocean here, which seemed really unlikely - though I could still smell it if I tried. I knew that Underhill was the fairy realm, but the stories about it were pretty vague where they weren't outright contradictory.