Authors: Virginia Kantra
Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Paranormal, #Suspense, #General
He used to dream his brother would come back. Show up at a ball
game or ring the bell one Christmas morning or be there by Caleb’s
hospital bed when he opened his eyes.
Not appear half-naked on his island, threatening his woman.
Caleb shook his head. If Dylan lived, he would be— what now?
Thirty-six? Thirty-seven. This guy couldn’t possibly be his brother.
“Nope,” Caleb said.
“I’m crushed.”
Caleb didn’t smile. “Can I see some identification, sir?”
“I don’t have any.” The guy jerked his head in Maggie’s direction.
“Ask her who I am.”
“Maggie, do you know this man?”
“Yes.” Her chin went up. Her big dark eyes hit him like a punch in
the gut, harder than the realization that she must have been lying to him,
playing him from the start. “And so do you.”
“The Prodigal Son returns,” Asshole said lightly. “Wasn’t that the
story Mrs. Pruitt liked so much? Aren’t you supposed to kill a fatted calf
or something?”
Caleb felt like killing something, all right.
Mrs. Pruitt . . . God, he hadn’t thought of her in years. Growing up,
every kid on the island had been forced to attend her week-long vacation
Bible school at least once.
Every
kid on the island, Caleb told himself.
Not just the Hunter brothers.
177
His gaze switched from Asshole to Maggie, standing between them,
drinking in every word.
“I’ll have to ask you to come down to the station, sir.”
“No,” the guy said.
“Why do you need him to go to the station?” Maggie asked.
He wasn’t questioning the guy in front of her. “Why did you slap
him?”
She shrugged. “He annoyed me.”
“Good enough for me. Jeep’s that way,” Caleb said, gesturing up the
hill.
Offshore, the waves churned, up and down, like a washing
machine’s agitation cycle. Caleb eyed the white water and thought,
Rip
current
.
“You can’t make me go anywhere,” Skinny sneered.
Caleb’s jaw set. What was this, fifth grade? He pushed away a
memory of Dylan yelling, tearful, dancing out of their father’s reach.
You
can’t make me
.
“You don’t have the power,” the man added scornfully. “I have
power.”
Caleb tapped his chest. “I’ve got a badge.” More than his anger,
more than his gun, that gave him authority to act. “Let’s go.”
And then the sea reared up like a living thing and struck the beach in
a ten-foot wave.
The surge smashed into Caleb, knocking him off his feet, carrying
him in a rush up the beach. Water and sand roiled around him, roaring in
his ears, blocking his nostrils, green and gray and gold speckled with grit
and bubbles.
178
The wave hurled and rolled him, scraped and raked him. His boots
dragged like weights over the rocks. He fought the surge, struggling for
balance. For breath.
Panic squeezed his lungs.
Maggie
.
He clawed free of the undertow, staggering to his feet, and saw her
standing a few yards away, her wet, white clothes clinging to every
perfect curve, ankle deep in foaming water.
She pushed her sopping hair back from her face. “Now I am really
annoyed.”
Caleb almost grinned. He coughed to clear his lungs and spat,
wiping salt from his mouth. “Where is he? Where’s—”
The man who claimed to be Dylan.
Maggie shielded her eyes against the bright sunshine, gazing out at
the impossibly calm sea. The quiet water withdrew, whispering, leaving
her bare feet planted firmly on a patch of sand. “There.” She pointed to a
sleek, dark head bobbing through the waves offshore. “Say good-bye to
your brother.”
“Fuck,” Caleb said wearily and reached for his phone. Would it still
work?
“What are you doing?”
“Calling for rescue. He’s caught in the tide.”
“He’s not caught. See?” She put her hand on his wet sleeve,
compelling him to look. “He’s swimming.”
Caleb watched. Instead of being sucked out to sea at top speed by the
current, the black, bullet-shaped head appeared to be moving easily,
parallel to the shore. “He’s still too far out. He can’t swim that long.
Nobody could.”
“No man.”
Caleb frowned. “That’s what I said.”
179
“No
man
can swim that long. Dylan can.” Maggie smiled at him, her
eyes sane and a little sad. “Your brother is not human, Caleb.”
180
Fourteen
CALEB’S FACE CLOSED LIKE A CLAMSHELL, SMOOTH and
hard.
Margred’s heart sank. He did not look like her lover. He looked like .
. . well, like a man who spent his days questioning the actions and
motivations of other men. She almost wished her words back.
Too late.
She had owed him the truth since he rescued her on the beach. Since
she learned of his mother’s identity. Maybe from the moment he first
came in her body and whispered his name in her hair.
“You’ve had a shock,” he said. Polite. Detached. “Let me take you to
see Donna Tomah.”
He did not believe her.
She had not expected him to, and yet she was tempted to smack him
the way she had slapped his brother.
“I do not need a doctor. I need you to listen.”
"Oh, I’m listening. You ought to have your head examined. ”
Her lips drew back from her teeth. “You said you wanted the truth.”
“That’s right. Facts, not fairy tales.”
“So you will not listen to any facts that do not fit your particular
theories?”
That got him, she saw with satisfaction. His mouth flattened to a
thin, grim line. “Right. All right. Go ahead.”
181
But now that she had his attention, the enormity of her task
overwhelmed her. She touched the necklace around her throat. For
reassurance? “I am not sure where to start.”
His expression did not soften, but his green eyes, meeting hers, were
patient and steady. Caleb’s eyes.
Cop’s eyes.
“The beginning is usually a good place,” he said.
Margred opened her mouth. Shut it. At the bottom of the tide pool, a
crab rummaged through a pile of periwinkle shells, tapping, weighing,
discarding.
“Perhaps we should sit down,” she suggested.
His eyebrows rose, but he folded his long body and sat, stretching
out his injured leg, his wet boots scraping on the white limestone forts of
a barnacle colony. The sun teased golden glints from his damp hair,
touching his face with color. His throat looked strong and faintly
sunburnt, tempting her to test its temperature with her lips.
She sat a few feet away—she had to be able to think— and spread
her skirt to dry.
Caleb waited, his silence pulling at her.
She picked at a loose white thread, searching for an end. For a
beginning. Written texts were rare among her people. Their history was
passed and preserved for each generation, each incarnation, in the eternal
song of the whales. How would it sound to Caleb?
She took a deep breath. “Before—well, before anything was, the
Spirit of the Creator moved upon the face of the waters.”
Caleb’s mouth twitched. “Maggie . . . when I said the beginning, I
didn’t mean all the way back to Genesis.”
“What is Genesis?”
His expression closed again. “Never mind. Go on.”
182
Margred bit her lip in vexation. In centuries past, when the mer
revealed themselves to the sons and daughters of men, they were regarded
with awe and worship, lust and fear. Margred did not expect Caleb’s
worship exactly; but neither was she prepared for his studying her like a
scientist observing some new species of marine life.
It was easier, she found, not to look at him at all. “Out of the void,
He formed the elements. And as each element took shape, its people also
came into being—the children of earth and sea, of air and fire.”
“People,” Caleb repeated. “Are you talking Adam and Eve here?”
She shook her head. “Humankind came later. Much later, long after
life crawled from the sea and walked on the land. But then the Creator
breathed His immortal spirit into mortal clay. Many elementals resented
this new creation— particularly the children of fire. The children of air
defended the Creator’s decision, appointing themselves heralds and
protectors of humankind. While the children of earth and sea, forced to
cohabit with you, chose to avoid you as much as possible.” Margred
shrugged. “Sometimes it is not possible. And then legends—or
children—are born. Your own mother—”
“No,” Caleb said.
“Your mother came to your father out of the sea.” Now Margred
dared to look at him. “As I came to you.”
His eyes were splinters of green ice. “You’re telling me my mother,
Alice Hunter—”
“Atargatis.”
“And you are . . . mermaids?” His voice cracked in disbelief.
Margred nodded. “Well, not mermaids, exactly. Selkies.”
“What’s the difference?”
“The mer may take different forms. Fish or mammal or—”
“Prove it.”
“Excuse me?”
183
“Turn into a—what is it you turn into?”
She stiffened at his tone. “A seal.”
“Right. Turn into a seal.”
She struggled for patience. He wanted facts, he’d said. Proof. It was
his nature, the nature of his job.
It was not her nature to justify or explain. But for his sake . . .
“I can’t,” she admitted reluctantly. “The last time I swam to the
island, the night I was attacked, my pelt was stolen from me. I cannot
Change form without my sealskin.”
He raised his brows. “Convenient.”
“Not for me,” she snapped. “Nor, I imagine, for your mother.”
“Leave my mother out of this.”
“I would not even if I could.” Moved beyond her people’s customary
boundaries by her need to convince him, Margred reached out to him,
laying her fingers on his arm. His sleeve was stiff and sticky with salt, his
muscles hard as iron. “The sea is your heritage, Caleb.”
“Maybe,” he said, his tone dry. “But I don’t turn into a seal and bark
when the moon is full.”
Stung, she snatched back her hand. Stupid man. “The moon has
nothing to do with it. Most human-selkie offspring are mortal. Human
genes and the human soul are what you would call dominant traits.”
“But you said that guy—”
“Your brother, Dylan.”
“He’s not my brother. My brother is gone. Besides, he’s too young.”
“Selkies do not age as mortals do. Only when we are in human
form.”
“He sure as hell looked human to me.”
184
“It wasn’t until he reached puberty that his true nature revealed
itself. When Dylan was thirteen, he Changed for the first time.” She
gazed into Caleb’s cold, closed face, the chill settling at her heart. “That’s
why your mother returned to the sea. To protect her son.”
A muscle worked in Caleb’s jaw. “She had another son. And a one-year-old daughter.”
Margred heart ached for him. For them all. “She had no choice. And
she paid dearly for it. She lost her children and her life. Dylan—”
“Look, I don’t need some crazy story to justify what my mother
did,” Caleb interrupted. “And you don’t need to lie to cover up whatever
it is you’ve done.”
Margred scrambled to her feet. “I am not lying.”
“Maggie . . .” His expression was patient. Weary. “This guy—the
one you claim is my brother—did he hit you? Hurt you? Threaten you in
any way?”
She blinked. “No. I slapped him.”
“Good for you. How about before?”
She continued to stare at him, baffled.
“On the beach,” Caleb clarified. “The night you were attacked. Was
it the same guy?”
“Oh, no.”
“It was dark, you said. He came up behind you. Maybe you didn’t
get a good look at him.”
“I did not see him at all.” She had told him that much already. “But
it was not Dylan.”
“How can you be sure?”
“It was a demon.”
185
Silence fell. Long moments passed, filled only by the whispering
surf and the snickering wind.
Her throat clogged.
Dylan
had not believed her. Why did she expect
Caleb would? Because he was her lover? When had that come to mean
anything more than—
She trembled. When had that come to mean anything?
“All this talk about mermaids and demons . . . It’s a problem, ”
Caleb said, still in that measured, dispassionate voice.
Disappointment was sharp as salt in her mouth. “
Your
problem.”
“Say
ours
.” He stood. “I want you to come to Portland with me to
see Dr. Crawford.”
She lifted her chin. “I am not sick. Or stupid. I do not want to see