Page 165 of A Winding Wave of Magic
His question hit a little too close to home, considering I had tried to do that for a very long time.
“It’s useless,” I admitted. “I still See everyone’s thoughts, and I See things I don’t want to. Sometimes I wonder if fighting it for so long made my training that much harder. Like everything is coming at once because I never tried to See it before—just to stop it. Most of the time, I feel like I’m going crazy.”
He nodded. “Yes, well, being a shifter’s something like that. Only that part of you literally changes all of you, and if you don’t give it a chance to run—or swim, in my case—you risk it taking control completely. Very bothersome, as there are moments where you really need to be human.”
“Like when?” I wondered.
“Well, I recall a time when I was a lad. Me mam hadn’t let me swim for three or four days as punishment for eating a whole pie she’d made for Christmas. I was fair dying for the water. We went to Mass, and as soon as I put my fingers in the font, I let outthe biggest bark you’d ever heard and kept doing it throughout the whole service. Embarrassed the shite out of Mam when I barked every time the priest invoked the Lord’s name.”
I giggled, imagining him imitating a seal whenever the priest mentioned God. “Is that where Jonathan is? Off being a cat somewhere so he won’t start hissing in the middle of his lectures?”
Caomhán snorted. “Well, Jonny’s cat is a smaller part of him than most of us, considering he’s only a bit shifter. Knowing him, though, he still probably only changes every few months. Do you know when last he did?”
I thought briefly of that terrible night in Manzanita when his cat form chased off another hybrid shifter-sorcerer amidst a fire. I shivered, and it had nothing to do with the water temperature. “I don’t actually know him that well.”
Caomhán cocked his head.
“What?” I asked. “Idon’t.”
“That’s not what it sounds like when you talk about him. And sometimes it doesn’t take much time to know someone. Especially for abean feasa.”
“Is that what I am?” People used the title, but I still seemed to be the most defective seer in existence. Most of the time I couldn’t keep people out. And then, of course, with the one person whose internal life I’d wanted to See, I couldn’t.
So much for being an oracle or whatever Caitlin claimed I was.
“Shifters just know what all fae should,” Caomhán interrupted my brooding. “You can’t bottle your power. It’ll come out one way or another.”
I sighed. “Sometimes I wish I were plain. Don’t you ever wish you didn’t have to spontaneously turn into a seal to keep yourself whole?”
Caomhán looked shocked. “Why would I want that? It’s all I’ve ever been. And it’s fun.”
He demonstrated just how much fun with another dive into the water, and through the depths I saw a flash of something dark and sleek before he popped out, ruddy-skinned as before.
“You know, I’ve never had to explain it to anyone,” he told me. “Most of the others”—by which I gathered he meant other fae who didn’t shift—“tend to think it below them. They think we’re nothing but dogs.”
I cringed, remembering even Gran using the term “mutt” to refer to shifters. “Well, I don’t,” I said. “My grandfather was a shifter. He was a seal like you.”
“Ciarán.” It was a statement, rather than a guess.
“How did you know? Friend of yours.”
Caomhán hoisted himself up onto my board so his nose was very close to mine, though the lower half of him remained in the water. It took nearly every bit of self-control I had to stay where I was rather than lean away from him. I wasn’t used to anyone being in such close proximity, and definitely not when he wasn’t wearing a shred of clothing.
“What—what are you doing?” I stumbled.
His gaze traveled up and down my face, taking its time. For a moment, I thought he might kiss me and just as quickly realized I had absolutely no interest in it. Was honestly a little repulsed by it. It wasn’t that Caomhán wasn’t handsome—I could objectively say he was. But there was no connection like that between us. If anything, he was more like the annoying brother I’d never had.
Then he surprised me by taking a deep, long sniff.
“You smell like something else, you know,” he told me. “Under your power, your age, and the lies you tell yourself about who knows what, you smell like something I know very well.”
“Oh?” I asked. I wouldn’t lean away. I would not flinch either.
“You smell like family,” he said before flashing a brilliant white smile. “You smell like us.”
Then he shoved off my board and back into the water, causing me to flip in with him before I could get out the question. “Us?”
I floundered up to the surface, blowing salt water out my nose. By the time I managed to scramble back on my board, Caomhán had swum well out of retaliation distance.
