The Luidaeg’s eyebrows rose. “You’re thinking conspiracy?”

“Does Rayseline strike you as smart enough to pull this off without help?”

“Smart, maybe; stable, no. I’m surprised she can put her own shoes on without written directions.” The Luidaeg took another bite of ice cream. Finally, she asked, “What else?”

I took a deep breath. “I need to meet with the Lordens. Can you arrange it?”

“I can,” said the Luidaeg. “Your reputation may actually help for once, since everyone knows the Queen hates you. That’s still not enough to make you come here, instead of calling me.”

“I missed your smiling face?”

She lifted an eyebrow.

So much for that. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to find the kids if I can’t search the place where they were taken. That means I’m going to need a way to travel to Salt-mist without drowning.”

The Luidaeg nodded. “I hoped you’d figure that out before I explained it to you. It comes easier this way.”

“Yeah. I guess so.” The Luidaeg knows how much I hate water. More, she knows how much I hate having anyone use transformation magic on me, and even the simplest water-breathing spell is a kind of transformation. She’d probably been expecting me to pitch a fit.

“There are ways for an air-breather to survive underwater—Patrick Lorden proves that—but he gets his enchantments from his wife, and he doesn’t spend much time in the open sea without her. You’ll need something longer-lasting.”

I’d worked out most of this for myself. That didn’t make hearing it any better. “Longer-lasting? You’re not coming with me?”

“I can’t. If I enter the water right now . . .” She let the sentence trail off.

“The sea witch traditionally owes her allegiance to the Undersea,” said Tybalt. His voice was studiously neutral. “I believe that, if she were to enter the waters, she would not be able to return until this conflict was done.”

The Luidaeg nodded. “Bingo.”

“As I thought.” Tybalt crossed his arms. “What, then, are you proposing?”

“Can’t you guess?” asked the Luidaeg.

I glared. “Could you just answer the damn question?”

The Luidaeg sighed, throwing her half-empty container into the corner. It splashed ice cream across the wall as it fell. “Both of you, come with me.” Tybalt blinked. She sniffed, standing. “Yes, you, kitty-boy. I don’t leave anyone alone in my apartment without good reason.”

“Besides, you’d just make me tell you what she says anyway,” I said, smiling weakly as I stood. “At least this way, we’re cutting out the middleman.”

Tybalt snorted. “I suppose that’s true. Very well, then. Let us go.”

We followed the Luidaeg to her bedroom. She knocked three times on the doorframe before opening the door, either to dispel some ward too subtle for me to see or to warn something inside to get out of view. Then she turned the knob, waving for us to follow her into the dazzling candlelight on the other side.

If most of the Luidaeg’s apartment is decorated in “early decay,” her bedroom is more like a cross between a movie version of a medieval castle and an aquarium. Candles cover every available surface, and saltwater tanks filled with strange fish and stranger creatures line the walls. A sea dragon the length of my arm swam in the largest tank, casting a disapproving pearl-eyed gaze over everything it surveyed. I couldn’t sleep in that room if you paid me, but the Luidaeg likes it; it’s the one room in her apartment that she bothers to take care of. The few times I’ve seen it, it’s been spotless, lit by those ever-burning candles . . . and candlelight is no comfort to me. Not since Blind Michael.

The Luidaeg saw my shudder. There was a trace of sympathy in her expression as she closed the door, saying, “My little brother left his marks on people who knew him.”

“You can say that again.” I tried to focus on a tank of orange-and-white-striped hippocampi—tiny, literal sea horses that chased each other in and out of the colorful anemones lining their tank, their miniature hooves lashing. “So what are we in here for?”

“You need to go to the Undersea.” The Luidaeg opened a drawer in her nightstand, pulling out a long, wicked-looking pin crusted with pearls and loops of verdigrisstained silver. Straightening, she said imperiously, “Give me your hand.”

“Is this one of those things where you injure me to make a point?” I asked, already extending my left hand toward her.

“Yes.” She lashed out like a striking snake, burying the pin in the meaty part of my thumb. I’d been expecting the pain—I’ve learned to anticipate bleeding once the Luidaeg has a weapon—but I yelped all the same, jerking my wounded hand away from her. Tybalt hissed, suddenly beside me.

“Settle down, kitty-cat; I’ll be needing your blood in a moment,” said the Luidaeg, right before she drove the pin into the palm of her own hand. Voice still calm, she continued, “It’s all a matter of getting the right mix. Toby’s not a shapeshifter, which is bad for our purposes, but she’s easily changed, which is good for them. It’s just a matter of telling her what to be—and how to come back to what she is.”

“No big, then,” I said numbly, trying not to look at the pin sticking out of the Luidaeg’s hand. I hate the sight of blood.

Tybalt’s hand was a heavy, welcome weight on my shoulder. “My blood only knows one transformation, and cats can’t breathe underwater,” he said.

“True. But your blood knows what it is to go from one thing to another and back again.” The Luidaeg smiled, pulling the pin free. “Mine’s a bit more malleable, and I figure she’d like to go back to her semi-original shape when she’s done.”

“The word ‘semi’ is a problem for me in that sentence,” I said.

“Like you’re mint in the box right now? You are what you were made to be, you’re not what you’ve always been—your poor body is almost as confused as you are.” She walked to the tank where the sea dragon swam and knocked her finger against the glass. “Come to the surface, Ketea. I need you.”

“What, precisely, are you attempting to do?” demanded Tybalt.