“You need someone to watch your back,” a man said in a voice that suggested they’d been chatting for a couple of hours. “That time he almost got you.”

Duilio looked to his right. Leaning against the stone wall that surrounded the church’s grounds was the man who’d thrown water on him when he’d hit the ground. The man’s dark skin and short-cropped black hair hinted he might be from one of the old African colonies. His eyes were an odd shade of smoky green, hard to mistake should he turn up again. His suit looked to be well made, although of a foreign cut. Oddly, Duilio’s gift had given him no warning about this man’s approach, as if he wasn’t there at all.

Duilio rose, keeping the coat under his arm. He didn’t want to lose it—or the journal in one of the pockets. “Who almost got me?”

“Donato Mata,” the man said. “Do you know him?”

“No,” Duilio admitted. The name didn’t mean anything to him. “And you are?”

“Inspector Gaspar, Special Police,” the man said.

A frisson of worry slid down Duilio’s spine . . . but it wasn’t his gift warning him. It was simply the normal reaction to speaking with a member of that body. The man spoke in accented Portuguese—from Cabo Verde, if Duilio placed it correctly. The inspector extended a card in one gloved hand. “What exactly were you doing up there? Why is he after you?”

Duilio took the card. It bore the man’s name, Miguel Gaspar, along with his seal and a stated rank of special investigator. It looked impressive, but it wouldn’t be difficult to find a printer to falsify cards. Despite his doubts, Duilio tucked the thing into the damp folds of his coat. The rank put this man above Joaquim. Even above Captain Rios, Duilio suspected. “What did you mean when you said he almost got me this time?”

The man fixed his gaze on Duilio’s face. “He took a shot at you last night in a tavern. I assume your gift warned you in time, although it didn’t do you much good today.”

Duilio felt his breath go short again. Did the Special Police know he was a seer? That couldn’t be good.

“Then again,” the man added, “setting a fire isn’t acting directly against you, which would allow your gift to miss it. Probably why he chose that method rather than a direct confrontation this time.”

“My gift?” Duilio asked.

Gaspar’s smoky green eyes narrowed. “You’re a seer, although not a particularly strong one. I suspect your selkie blood limits your gift somehow.”

His instinctive desire to take a swing at the man and run seemed a good idea now. Why was his gift not helping him? If Gaspar knew that Duilio was part selkie, then he had every right to drag Duilio down to the station and throw him in jail. But he hadn’t done so. And how did he know? The number of people who were aware of both those things was limited. “I imagine your superiors wouldn’t approve of your conversing with me if that were true.”

Gaspar smiled mildly. “There are Special Police, and then there are Special Police. And then, Mr. Ferreira,” he added, “there are special Special Police.”

While that answer didn’t precisely make sense, Duilio understood. Within any police body there were divisions. He’d not heard any rumor of such, but merely because the regular police hadn’t heard of this didn’t mean the Special Police weren’t at one another’s throats. “And what makes you think those things are true about me?”

It was a dangerous question to ask, but at this point why not chance it?

“I see it, Mr. Ferreira,” Gaspar said. “I look at people . . . and I know.”

Duilio gazed at the man leaning against the stone wall. Did he correctly understand what Gaspar had just intimated?

He’d met different kinds of witches throughout the past several years—not just seers, but healers who could still a man’s blood in his veins, witches who could lay a curse that lasted for decades. There were Truthsayers who could weigh a man’s words, and Finders who could locate things gone missing. There were a myriad of little talents, and skills benign enough that they didn’t have names. But this was something different, a rarity that supposedly appeared only once a generation. “You’re a Meter?”

The inspector didn’t flinch. “Yes, Mr. Ferreira.”

Meters were the stuff of legends. A Meter was a witch who could see what others were. Duilio wasn’t sure how far that talent extended, what Gaspar saw in him, but if Gaspar truly was a Meter, the Spanish Church would love to have him in their clutches. They still hunted witches in Spain, and Gaspar could simply point out each one on the street. “So, what are you doing here?” Duilio asked him. “Were you following me?”

“What were you doing in that building?”

Admittedly, Gaspar had revealed something of himself—clearly hoping to gain Duilio’s trust—but he was a member of the Special Police. Duilio couldn’t be sure where the man stood on anything, least of all investigation of The City Under the Sea. For all he knew, Gaspar had set that fire himself or was in league with the man who’d attacked him at the tavern. After all, his attacker had probably been a member of the Special Police. Duilio didn’t answer.

Gaspar pushed away from the wall. “It would be helpful to me if I knew why Mata is hunting you, Mr. Ferreira. I understand your hesitation. I’m sure you understand mine.”

Yes, he did. It was always a game of trying to figure out whom to trust.

“You should go home, Mr. Ferreira,” Gaspar added, giving him a friendly pat on his shoulder. “You look a wreck.”

Duilio shook his head ruefully. Yes, I certainly do.

Oriana needed to return the fabric scissors she’d borrowed from Felis, so she headed down to the servants’ workroom. Halfway down the back stairs, she almost collided with Mr. Ferreira coming up.

She should have been warned by the smell. He carried the acrid scent of burned paper about him like a cloud. His coat was tucked under his arm, and she could see dried blood staining his shirtsleeve where he’d been injured the previous evening. His charcoal-gray waistcoat was liberally streaked with soot and ash. Even his shoes looked ruined. “Do you come home every evening like this, sir?” she asked, horrified.

He laughed, apparently not as perturbed as he should have been.

Is this normal? “What happened?” she demanded. “Are you hurt?”

Mr. Ferreira leaned against the newel post. “Someone walked into a room behind me and set it ablaze,” he said, sobering. “And the floor below that. I suspect it was the same gentleman from last night.”

Who seemed likely to have been a member of the Special Police. “They certainly don’t want you proceeding with this investigation, do they?”

He shrugged and then winced. “I’m beginning to have questions about that, Miss Paredes. I suspect my understanding of the Special Police might be insufficient to grasp what’s going on now.”

What does that mean? “Are you hurt?” she asked again.

“Oh, I’m fine,” he said dismissively, as if an attempt to burn him to death didn’t warrant concern. He began to search the pockets of his coat. “I went to investigate the place because we thought Espinoza might live there.”

“Did he?”

Mr. Ferreira tugged a leather-bound book out of one of the pockets. “Evidence suggests that he did but hasn’t been there for some time.”

When he held out the book, Oriana took it. It was damp, the edges of the pages already beginning to curl. “And this is?”

“A journal, likely his.”

He certainly disliked stating absolutes. He qualified everything he said. She peered down at the leather-bound book more closely. It didn’t seem to have been damaged by the fire, but she was going to have to let it dry. “May I look through this?”

“Yes,” he said. “I’m afraid it got wet. Someone dumped a bucket of water on me. I thought you might be able to determine if there’s anything useful inside. Perhaps some hint where the man is holed up. It would be helpful if he names any of his compatriots, particularly in the Special Police. Or who’s paying for his work. That would be nice to know.”