Page 121 of A Winding Wave of Magic
I glanced sharply, but he shook his head.Later.
“Do you think showing off a keener to all the lowlifes in Dublin is the best way to protect your anonymity?” Cary finished as if nothing had been exchanged between us.
I froze. We were supposed to be hiding in plain sight, weren’t we?
Don’t worry. It’s fine.
Is it?
Yes.Jonathan waved Cary’s concerns away with his free hand. “She was spotted the minute we landed. If they think she’s a prostitute then, frankly, it’s all the better. No one ever asks a sex worker’s name anyway, and we’ll be gone tomorrow.”
“If they mistake her for a whore, Jonny, it won’t be for long.” Cary leaned forward and sniffed in my direction. “Sure, and she smells like power. No tricky little seer is this one—she’s a proper keening woman, all right, and I’d wager that everyone who’s seen her knows it.” He nodded toward the crowd around us, whom I suddenly felt watching as sure as if I were touching all of them.
I shivered.
Cary’s eyes were black, a deep, shining ebony the same color as the thick hair tied at his nape. His skin was fair, common among the Irish, but still dappled with an odd sort of sheen. A clear scent of salt water and kelp permeated through the bar’s general odor of stale beer and tobacco.
A murúch, Jonathan confirmed. One of the seal folk. A shifter.
Like any student of Irish folklore (or granddaughter of Penny Monroe), I knew the basic mythology. Selkies, merrows, ormurúchawere faeries who played in the waves as seals and slipped off their skins to seduce lovers on land before returning to their true home in the sea. No fae child hadn’t heard stories of the charismatic tricksters. And been instructed to stay away from them.
Selkie, Jonathan had called me once at the beach, when I had been dripping with water after a long surf.
But this was different. Of all the reasons Gran had tried to keep me from the ocean, the merfolk, especially those who shifted to seals, topped her list. Cary was the first I’d evermet personally. In Jonathan’s mind, the head of a harbor seal popped through dark waters before vanishing beneath the waves, less seductive and more playful.
Something must have changed in my expression, for Cary’s gaze moved to the place under the table where Jonathan’s hand and mine were joined. He inhaled, long and slow.
“Like that, is it?” he said. “I’d not thought you the type, Jonny.”
Jonathan released my hand with a light brush on my knuckles, but not before alarm skipped through his touch. He clasped both his hands together on the tabletop, and I did the same.
“It’s like nothing,” he said. “No need to jump to conclusions.”
Cary snorted and took a long, leisurely drink of his ale.
“Since we’ve had the good fortune of finding you on dry land this evening, perhaps you might enlighten me with some of the news,” Jonathan said as he swirled his glass, making the deep amber liquid twinkle as it caught the light. “You know I’ve a fondness for local gossip.”
Cary grunted and raised a bristly black brow. “Well, a lot of people have been asking for news, Jon. And after seeing the two of you tonight, perhaps I’ll have a bit more to tell them.”
“Once a pirate, always a pirate, Cary.” Jonathan chuckled and dug into his pocket to pull out a wad of bills bound with a rubber band. His knee touched mine under the table, urging me to trust him as he tossed the cash across the table. “Talk and keep quiet after, won’t you?”
Cary quickly flipped through the stack before pocketing it, and then grinned, showing off a bright gold incisor that glinted in the dim light. “Always a pleasure, Jon. Sure, and there’s been more and more talk of coming out.”
“Coming out?” I asked.
Cary jerked his head at me. “She’s a bit young for this, isn’t she?”
I frowned. I couldn’t have been more than a few years younger than him. Some slight lines over his brow made him look somewhere in his late thirties, but that could also be from the harsh conditions of making a living from the sea.
He was a fisherman, Jonathan confirmed.A few years back, he purchased the raider, but he still owns a small fleet moored to the south.
Enterprising fellow, I replied.
Not much happened in the fae world of Dublin without him sanctioning it, Cass. Best to be friends with this one.
“It’s impolite to have secret conversations in front of ones who can’t hear them,” Cary cut in. He tapped his nose. “They smell, you know.”
I flushed. I didn’t know, actually.
