The Seat of Magic (11 page)

T
HURSDAY
, 23 O
CTOBER
1902

F
elis came to Oriana's bedroom with the dawn and chided Duilio for sitting up all night. Oriana slept on, looking peaceful, so Duilio went back to his own room to dress. After a quick breakfast with his mother, he walked down to the quay where his boats were moored to see whether his boatman João had heard anything about Gita's missing pelt. The young man had no news, so Duilio headed up to the police station to find Joaquim.

Joaquim's office held only a wide desk, a couple of plain wooden chairs, and a modern metal filing cabinet. More important, it was private. Duilio could hear other policemen walking past in the hallway outside and a faint murmur of voices, but experience had taught him they wouldn't actually be overheard by anyone in that hallway. “How is Miss Paredes?” Joaquim asked. “Any better?”

“Much,” Duilio admitted. “She was sleeping in her bed when I left the house. I talked to her last night, although she was very tired.”

“That's good. I hate to take you away from her, but I have something interesting to show you.” Joaquim handed him a sketch torn from a notebook, what looked to be another dead girl.

Duilio peered at the drawing. The young officer from the morgue must have done this. He was quite talented. “What am I looking at?”

Behind his desk, Joaquim sighed. “Another unknown girl. Her body was found on a backstreet Saturday.”

Duilio scowled at the drawing. “The same day Gita disappeared? Any relationship?”

“Gonzalo doesn't know, but it occurred to him to remind me of it this morning. She was killed Friday.” Joaquim tapped the drawing with a pencil. “What that doesn't show is that she was missing some of her skin, too.”

Duilio peered at the sketch, which didn't show that. “What was she missing?”

“Gonzalo said that part of her buttocks had been skinned, running up to a point in the middle of her back.”

Since the sketch showed a frontal view of the body, that detail was absent. But the likelihood of two such incidents occurring without connection seemed slim; surely the first girl was tied to the second somehow. After a moment of studying the drawing, Duilio decided the dead girl's features didn't look right for a selkie. He commented on that to Joaquim, who said, “Better to assume they didn't know Gita was a selkie. I'll proceed like the killer picked two girls at random.”

“Was this first girl picked up to sell to a brothel?”

“No one near where she was dumped had any idea who she was, and no one ever claimed the body. Also, my inquiries about the men who picked up your girl Gita have gone nowhere. I've had half a dozen officers asking around about it.”

Duilio peered at a smaller sketch on the corner of the sheet—a hand, the nails curving down like claws. “Is this supposed to be this girl's hand?”

“Yes,” Joaquim said. “Gonzalo told me she had ugly nails—his words, not mine—so he drew that.”

Duilio rubbed one finger absently over the sketch. A sereia's nails would curve downward like that if allowed to grow out, but if that girl had been a sereia, Officer Gonzalo would have noted the silver coloring of her belly and thighs. Duilio studied the girl's face again, her rounded cheekbones and pointed chin. “Joaquim, have you ever seen an otter girl in human form?”

Joaquim's brows shot up. “Have you?”

“No,” Duilio admitted. The otter folk rarely entered human territories, keeping to the rivers and the sea. They couldn't pass for a true human, if he recalled correctly. “Otter folk still have tails in their human form, don't they?”

Joaquim ran a hand through his short, dark hair. “How am I supposed to know?”

Duilio glanced down at the sketch again. “Can I show this to Mother? She might have met one before.”

Joaquim didn't look pleased, but nodded. “Meet me for dinner and let me know.”

Duilio took a moment before answering. He wanted to stay at the house to keep an eye on Oriana—but he couldn't do that forever. “Fine. I'll meet you at eight.”

*   *   *

H
is mother couldn't shed any light on the situation. He found her at her bedroom's dressing table, putting salve on her sore fingers. The fragrance of unfamiliar herbs drifted up from the blue glass jar. “I've never met one of the otter folk, Duilinho. They don't share beaches with my kind. They prefer the rivers. And they travel a great deal, I think. They don't remain in one place long.”

Duilio didn't bother to take the sketch out of his coat pocket. He drew over a delicate chair to sit down behind her where he could see her face in the mirror. “Do you recall ever hearing of one coming into the city?”

“No,” she said, tugging on one of the sheepskin mittens. “Has one?”

He shook his head. “A stray inquiry Joaquim and I are pursuing.”

She looked into the mirror to see his expression. “Does this have anything to do with Erdano's girl?”

“Perhaps,” he admitted. “I think we've found her, Mother, but . . .”

“But she's dead, as you predicted.” She sighed heavily.

Duilio reached over to the dressing table and grabbed the jar of ointment. He sniffed it and then put the lid on it, wondering if it might benefit Oriana's burns. “Mother, I need to ask you an upsetting question.”

She gazed at him from under a lowered brow. “Duilinho, honestly.”

He sometimes forgot that although his mother had been raised among humans, she'd spent a couple of years living in the sea, a very different life from the one she had now—a harsher life. “The girl was skinned,” he said. “Not her pelt, we haven't found that, but her
skin
. Does that have any significance to you?”

She turned halfway about on her seat to face him. “Our skin and our pelts are inseparable.” She held up her uncovered hand to display the reddened fingertips. Better, but still far from healed. “Damage to one is damage to the other. But there's no value to taking the skin rather than the pelt. The pelt can be sold. Skin can't.”

She had a point. A human skin couldn't be sold.
Well, one can be,
he admitted to himself, if done in absolute secrecy.

“Miss Paredes ate this morning,” his mother said, interrupting his thoughts. “But fell asleep again directly afterward. Felis told me you'd made a dreadful mess of the bathroom.”

He almost laughed at the exasperation in her voice. “Miss Paredes asked to sleep in her bed to rest her gills. Getting another person out of a bathtub is far more difficult to do neatly than I expected, Mother. I did try to mop it up.”

“You're smiling,” she said, a glint of laughter in her warm eyes.
“Felis reports that Miss Paredes was put to bed without her nightgown.”

He could well imagine Felis reporting to his mother, her spine stiff, wrapped in offended propriety. “You do understand that wasn't embarrassing to Miss Paredes at all, don't you?”

“Yes, of course, Duilinho,” she said, “but Felis is lurking in the halls, waiting to box your ears, so be warned.”

Fortunately Felis was with Oriana at the moment, so Duilio didn't have to worry about avoiding his mother's maid on his way to the library. Cardenas had left a handful of correspondence on his desk, and Duilio thumbed through the pile. He found a pair of worried inquiries, both related to Alessio's journals, and sighed. He set them aside and sorted through his other correspondence, a handful of invitations to this ball and that soiree, when he had no time or stomach for such frivolity.

His man of business had also sent a baffling note, asking if there was some matter Duilio didn't find him capable of handling. It took a moment to determine that the man had heard of the visit by Lady Pereira de Santos' man of business—Monteiro—and feared replacement. Duilio penned a calming note to the man, explaining that Monteiro had called on a personal matter rather than a professional one.

That train of thought brought something else to mind, though, and Duilio opened the drawer and located the note Monteiro had given him. The man's handwriting was exceptionally neat, a good thing in a businessman. Duilio folded the slip of paper and secured it in a pocket.

He stopped by to check on Oriana before leaving the house again. She slept peacefully while Felis scowled at him over her needlework. Softly, so as not to wake her, he told the maid, “I'll look in on her again tonight after dinner.”

The old woman's eyes narrowed, but she didn't argue.

Dr. Esteves had his office on Fábrica Street, not far from the
Torre dos Clérigos, so Duilio headed up to that part of the city afoot. The doctor's thin-faced receptionist wasn't any friendlier than Felis, but after Duilio promised to take no more than a few minutes, she reluctantly agreed to let him in to see the man. He settled in an anteroom that smelled of lye and ammonia. Three women sat there, one an elderly and wizened creature in mourning garb, clutching a driftwood cane. The other two were younger, one pretty, one not as much. None of the trio looked to be particularly wealthy. The pretty one sniffled and clutched her handbag close to her, making Duilio suspect she was afraid. Not so much of the doctor, but perhaps of his diagnosis, or the cure.

After a short while spent in uncomfortable silence, the doctor came to the doorway. He was an older man—likely in his late fifties. His graying hair and black coat gave him a serious air. He glanced at the three women, and said, “This is a professional inquiry, ladies. He'll only be a moment. Miss Victore,” he added to the receptionist, “no interruptions, please.”

The doctor turned his eyes on Duilio and gestured for him to follow. Duilio pursued the man back to an office, where a cup of tea sat cooling on a desk. “Mr. Ferreira? Can I assume this has something to do with a police inquiry?”

He hadn't said as much to the receptionist, so that startled Duilio. “You're aware I work with the police?”

“Dr. Teixeira told me you paid him to perform an autopsy for the police.” He gestured for Duilio to sit. “I for one find it refreshing when a gentleman uses his influence for good, or his funds. My father was the Duke of Heranas, but my family doesn't approve of my clientele and they no longer associate with me.”

The current duke lived farther up the Street of Flowers, close to the palace. Duilio could imagine the man's horror at seeing the collection of impecunious women in his brother's waiting room. “I see.”

“I imagine you do,” Esteves said. “Now, young man, what brings you to this part of town?”

Duilio shifted on his chair, then straightened his necktie. “I have questions of a delicate nature,” he said. “Ones a police officer would be forbidden to ask, but as a private citizen I can.”

The doctor sat in a straight-backed chair across from him. “Is this regarding my practice here?”

“Not directly, sir. I wanted to ask if you've ever treated one of the otter folk.”

“It's been a very long time,” the doctor said, “but yes. Before the ban on nonhumans, I did have one come into the hospital where I was working. That was the only time.”

Duilio slipped the sketch from his pocket and began to unfold it. “In human form, I assume.”

The doctor looked amused by the question. “Well, as human as they get. He did have an impressive tail.”

Since that confirmed Duilio's suspicion, it led to other questions. He passed the sketch to the doctor. “If you look at that hand, could it, in your opinion, be the hand of one of the otter folk?”

“Who is she?” the doctor asked, pushing the drawing back toward Duilio. “If you're trying to hunt her down, I won't help you.”

He had to admire that resolve. “She was found dead in an alley five days ago, Doctor,” he said, “partially skinned. In the area where a tail might have been, if she had one.”

The doctor appeared to be weighing his honesty. “Why come to
me
with this matter?”

“You were recommended to me as a discreet doctor, should a certain member of my household need care. By a Mr. Adriano Monteiro.” The statement was essentially an admission that there was a sereia living in his household. He hoped the display of trust would buy the doctor's willingness.

The doctor nodded, apparently appeased. He picked up the sketch, drew a pair of spectacles out of a pocket and set them on his nose, then peered at the paper. “The nails in this drawing,” he said, pointing. “The sereia have similar nails, but they're far more
fastidious about such things. I can't see a sereia allowing her hygiene to lapse to this point. The girl's facial structure could belong to a selkie, I suppose, but selkies don't have nails like this in human form—or a tail. Given this drawing, I would say it's a
possibility
she was one of the otter folk, but that's as far as I'll go. Without a tail, you have no proof.”

Duilio tucked that statement away in his mind. “She was missing skin about her buttocks and part of the way up her back. Would it be difficult to remove that much skin?”

“Hunters do it all the time,” Esteves said matter-of-factly, handing the sketch back to Duilio. “Is that what you came to ask after?”

“Yes.” Duilio rose. “Thank you for your time, Doctor.”

Esteves escorted him to the door, but Duilio's mind suggested another question. “If this
was
an otter girl, do you know of any reason for removing her tail?”

The doctor shook his graying head, his brows drawn together as he considered the last-minute question. “There are those who believe the magic of the otter folk is in their tail, but so little is known of them that it can't be substantiated.”

A strange thought occurred to Duilio. “What about the selkies? Where is their magic?”

“Ah. It's said to be in their skin.”

“You mean their pelts?” Without their pelt, a selkie couldn't resume seal form, a fact his family knew all too well.