when I reached my flat, to find it somewhat less empty than expected.
As I let myself in at the front door, I became aware at once of a faint glow of light somewhere within. Someone sat in an armchair by the window, nearly in darkness, save for the small table-lamp she’d switched on.
Silise.
She watched me in silence as I carefully laid my precious sealskin over the back of my sofa.
‘I can’t believe you didn’t change your damned hiding-place,’ she said after a while. ‘Really, how easy could you make it?’
‘Clearly, I should have,’ I agreed, keeping my eyes on her. ‘Somehow I didn’t expect that my erstwhile best friend might still be alive, and planning to enslave me with it.’
‘That wasn’t the plan,’ she countered, sounding annoyed that I could even suspect her of it. ‘Look, nobody wanted to do that to you. All right? Not even me.’
I remembered Brianne’s words as she’d taken up my sealskin, and the flash of real regret in her eyes. Might be some truth there. ‘Then why did you take it?’
She shrugged. ‘Insurance. You always used to be stubborn as a mule. Nothing’s changed there.’
‘Sil.’ By now it seemed apparent she wasn’t planning to attack me; cautiously, I took a seat. ‘If you’d needed the kind of help I could provide, you could have just asked.’
She looked long at me. ‘I could have,’ she agreed.
I waited, but Silise did not seem disposed to elaborate.
‘What’s it been for, Sil?’ I said quietly. ‘What were you trying to do?’
She shrugged again, avoiding my eye. ‘A… game. At first. I was fucking angry, all right? They say everything gets better with time, but this didn’t, and I…’ She paused, and the anger in her faded. A kind of desolation replaced it. ‘I wanted to hurt you. All of you. As much as you hurt me.’
‘You enslaved half a dozen people. Sold them like cattle.’
‘Please. They were in no real danger. I knew the fatales would save the day.’ Her voice was acid.
‘So they were what, a red flag? Some kind of twisted pantomime to get our attention?’
She actually had the effrontery to grin. ‘You have to admit, it was a good game. We got you at every turn. Daix and her intel! So predictable.’
‘Your game got a selkie killed.’
‘That wasn’t supposed to happen either.’
‘But it did. If you couldn’t call off your games before someone died, that was the point where it should’ve been over.’
Silise waved this off with an impatient gesture. ‘Spare me your damned sanctimony, please? I know. But we’d gone too far to turn back.’
I just watched her for a time, trying to read the once-familiar contours of her face. Anger she had aplenty, and… something else. I didn’t think it was regret, or, not much. ‘You’ve had a small taste of what it’s like to be someone’s puppet,’ I said at length. ‘Courtesy of Tai. And while siren-thrall doesn’t even touch the deep wrongness of a stolen sealskin, maybe you’ve a glimmer of an idea of what you did to me. To Mea, and Narasel, and Melly.’
‘The thing is,’ said Silise, rising from her chair. ‘I’d do it again. All of it. Just for the sight of you bound and helpless at my feet.’
‘What did we do that was so terrible?’ I whispered, appalled by the burning resentment of her tone. ‘We tried, Sil. We tried.’
‘It wasn’t enough.’ She walked to the door; I didn’t try to stop her. ‘You abandoned me, Fionn. Left me for dead, walked away. Forgot me. And I won’t let it go.’
No sense reasoning with her; she couldn’t hear me. ‘Watch your back, Sil,’ I said quietly. ‘We know you’re out there, now.’
‘Right,’ she said. ‘Why stab me in the back once, if you can do it over and over again?’
The door closed behind her, leaving me alone in the near-dark.
I bore the profound silence for all of five minutes before I took out my phone.
Tai answered so fast, she must have been watching for a call. ‘Fi. You okay?’
‘Not… not really, no. Are you still at the cellar?’
‘All of us.’
I took a shaky breath, and let it out. ‘Put the kettle on, will you? I’m coming back.’