“Maurice,” I begin.
He throws out a hand, but Reijo is faster. Maybe I distracted him. Maybe Reijo is more prepared than he seems.
Whatever it is, pain judders through me, and I fall to my knees. Maurice whirls on me in an instant, Reijo all but forgotten, and I watch, vision hazy, as the selkie disappears into the night.
Chapter Eleven
Maurice
Fuckingfuck.Thiscouldn’thave gone worse.
Reijo’s heels clack on the pavement as he flees, but I can’t focus on what he’s doing. Not when Njáll is on his knees, hands bracing him on the pavement, struggling to stuck in a breath.
Reijo is strong for a selkie, but he has nothing on me. Nothing on what the Huntsman gave back to me. I unwind the magic from around Njáll’s ribcage with barely a thought, but it takes him a few moments more to come back to himself.
Not breathing shouldn’t technically kill any vampire—the death magic driving us would keep us in stasis—but it is still an unpleasant feeling and mixing fae magic in with that can only make things worse.
Njáll sits back on his heels and looks up at me as though he is expecting me to be angry. I am but not with him. I should haveknown better than to bring him here and, even if that proved to be inevitable, I should never have allowed him to be injured.
“Come on,” I say and extend a hand to help him up.
Njáll stares at my outstretched palm for a moment before he grasps my hand and gets to his feet. There is a bench just across the road, so I lead him there, noting absently how warm his skin is against my own. He blinks at me, confused when I usher him to sit down.
I cannot feel any disturbance in Njáll’s death magic, but his hands shake a little when I let go of him. I reach out with the magic I have, soothing him, then with my hand, taking hold of his chin and turning his face from side to side.
“Maurice?” Njáll asks. He sounds almost breathless, and my frown deepens.
“What did you feel?”
“Pain. Just… pain.”
Reijo was not trying hard, then. All selkies have magic—stories are one thing, but a person who steals a selkie’s sealskin rarely makes off with it for long. I want to go after him, but I know better than that. I will tell Vlad, instead. Reijo ishiscontact; he can deal with him.
“And now?” I ask. “Has it gone?”
“Yes. Did you get rid of it?”
I nod and let go of Njáll’s chin. “Do you need blood?”
His eyes darken. He was not badly injured, but my blood will bolster his nerves if nothing else. To my surprise, he shakes his head. “I am fine, Maurice. I need to be level-headed.”
Fair. I sigh and lean back on the bench. We should head back—the clan will be missing Njáll, and I am not inclined to hunt down any more of Vlad’s contacts tonight, since I have no way of knowing if Reijo has let them know ahead of time that I might be on my way.
“How do you do that?” Njáll asks, and when I sweep my gaze over to him, he shakes his head. “Magic. I thought vampires couldn’t do magic after we’re turned.”
“We can’t,” I reply. I should keep this to myself. Technically, it is part of the Hunt’s business and therefore should remain with us. But Njáll is not a fool. He has already figured it out, so I would only be confirming what he already knows. “But when I joined the Wild Hunt, I received the Huntsman’s blessing. Not unlike your mages. My magic returned to me.”
“Like the mages?” Njáll’s brow furrows. “They’re… It’s all rather confusing.”
I hum and fidget around until I’m in a comfortable position, my left ankle resting on the opposite knee. “I was a witch before I was turned,” I say, “so I had magic that came from within. Then I was a vampire, so I had no magic at all except that which kept me alive.”
Njáll nods. “Okay…”
“When the Huntsman asked me to join the Hunt, he gave me a fae blessing. It allows me to access the magic I used to have, and to some extent, to pull from the natural world, like the fae do.”
“The humans we have with magic, are they like you?”
“There used to be more of them,” I say. “Many mages, descended from a handful of fae-blessed witches. They mostly wiped each other out, so most humans you meet with magic now will be witches—they only draw from their own internal power.”
