Sea Witch (35 page)

human fingers.

She followed Caleb’s dwindling spirit and the demon’s dark spoor

down, down, to where Caleb’s blood curled like a plume of smoke

through the water.

Almost . . .
There
.

Her heart stopped.

288

Caleb drifted in his chains, his strength gone, his air gone, his skin

like wax. His body swayed to the gentle urging of the surge like unheard

music.

A terrible mix of hope and grief swelled her lungs. Her throat

constricted. Her chest burned. Was she just in time? Or too late?

The current nudged Caleb’s head, lolling on his neck. His lids lifted

lazily.

And the demon looked out of his eyes.

She stumbled back.

Tan
, Caleb had named him, or he had named himself. The old Welsh

word for “fire.” His spirit flamed.

The thin, bright thread connecting her to Caleb snapped.

Her mouth opened in a silent cry of grief.

The demon was trapped, drowning, dying with Caleb, but he looked

at her with hate and no thought of defeat in his eyes. He was older than

she was. She could feel his age press on her, centuries of malice and

resentment and power, immortal, elemental. He did not believe he could

lose.

Margred’s heart quailed. The pressure in her sinuses built.

She did not believe he could lose either.

Tan saw her—another body, another host—and hurtled himself at

her, a fireball at her head, smoking through the water in a gout of fury

and will that sent her tumbling and scraping along the ocean bottom. She

fought for balance, for boundaries, for breath.

“
You have power in the water
.”

But she could not breathe.

Dimly, she was aware of Dylan’s great black seal form plunging

through a cloud of bubbles. Too late. Tan’s malice overwhelmed her. He

289

was fire, seeking, consuming, hot. He assailed her, the tender tissues of

her mouth and eyes, the secret places of her womb and soul, shriveling,

probing, possessing. Margred recoiled. He was strong, stronger than she

was, an elemental fixed on her destruction. She was only human, and

Caleb was dead.

Just for a moment, temptation licked along her nerves and flickered

in her brain, a spark, a flame. If Tan took her over, if he possessed her,

her demon lover, would she be made immortal again?

“
There are worse things
,” Caleb had said, “
than death
.”

Ah.

She stopped thinking. She stopped breathing. She could feel her

heart—her puny, human, broken heart—still beating. She was not

defeated yet. If Caleb had died . . . Loss shuddered through her. Well, it

was up to her to make sure he had not died in vain. She pulled the water

to her, called her power to her, drank it in like blood, like wine. Life-giving. Intoxicating.

She felt the demon’s surprise, his pain and surprise, as her magic

rose within her like water and flooded her, enveloped her, enveloped

them both, forcing him back, forcing him out. She cast her spirit around

him, arched like the curl of a wave, shining as pearl.

Tan, I bind you
!

She poured her soul in a shining silver membrane that wrapped him,

trapped him, like a globe of melted glass. The demon’s rage pulsed like a

heartbeat through the translucent walls. Colors battled and slid over the

curved surface, red and blue, green and gold, as Tan battered and blazed

against her. Layer upon layer, each one harder, stronger, more opaque,

exhausting her spirit, extinguishing his.

Layer after layer encompassing him, encasing him, in a great, blue

green, glowing ball, until the demon’s fire snuffed out.

And everything went dark.

Maggie
.

290

She floated like one of the seaborn, a thing of tide and foam, without

body or conscious thought. Without pain. Without memory. Was this

death? It was very peaceful. “
There are worse things than death
.”

Oh, Caleb . . .

A shaft of pain pierced her, light in the darkness. She winced from it,

struggling to stay, to drift in the cool, quiet dark.

“Maggie.”

The voice disturbed her, hard and urgent, like a stone flung into a

pond. It rippled through her, drawing her toward the light. She

floundered, gasping. She did not want to go there. She did not want to

remember . . .

Caleb was dead
.

“Maggie, honey, come on.”

He did not sound dead. He sounded . . . hoarse. Upset. She opened

her eyes and saw his haggard face above her, haloed by the sky. She

blinked. Coughed. “Where are we?”

Selkies did not go to Heaven . . .

Caleb made a sound between a laugh and a groan. “On the dock.

Dylan pulled you out of the water. He rescued us both.”

Dylan wavered into view, a shadow behind Caleb’s shoulder. “A

waste of effort. You’re going to bleed to death anyway. Unless you do

something about that gunshot wound. Ah, that brought her around,” he

said, satisfaction in his voice.

“Shut up,” said Caleb.

He was going to bleed to death . . .

Margred struggled to sit. Her hands burned. Her legs bled, scraped

raw by the rocks. She hurt everywhere, her joints, her lungs, her throat,

her womb, as if the magic filling her had stretched things, moved them

around, pushed all her internal organs out of the way.

291

Caleb looked even worse—drowned, battered, shot—his lips blue,

his face stark, his eyes exhausted. Vulnerable.

Worry wrenched her heart.

“You need a doctor.” She turned to Dylan. “You must take us in

your boat.”

“I am at your service, always,” Dylan said dryly. “Anything else?”

Caleb shook his head. His face was drawn with pain. “We need to

stay here. Radio the marine patrol.”

Dylan raised his eyebrows. “Why? I could have you to World’s End

before their boat gets here.”

“A man is dead,” Caleb said. “There will be an investigation. I need

to stay with the body until the scene is secured.”

“Oh, please. Do you really want to involve your human police in

what happened here? What are you going to tell them?”

“The truth,” Caleb said evenly. “As much as I can. Whittaker

followed us here, he shot me, and I killed him in self-defense. ”

“And how do you plan to explain your long-lost selkie brother?”

“I’m not. I’m not going to mention you at all. I want you and your

boat out of here before the police arrive.”

“I don’t want them here. This is my island.”

“Yours.”

The brothers faced off like two bull seals on the beach. “Yes.”

Dylan’s smile flashed like a knife. “A bequest from our mother.”

“I searched for you,” Caleb said abruptly.

Margred, watching, understood him well enough now to recognize

the gift he was offering. Caleb wanted his brother to know he had not

forgotten him. The children of the sea flowed as the sea flowed, uncaring

and unconnected. But Caleb’s roots struck as deep as an oak tree. His

292

shelter extended to everyone around him. In seven hundred years, she had

never known anyone as committed, as concerned, as compassionate as

Caleb.

“I searched for you both,” he continued. “Driver’s license, county

property tax, graduation records. I never found you.”

“I never intended you to,” Dylan said coolly. “I don’t like visitors.”

Caleb nodded, accepting the rebuff. “Then get the hell out. Take

your gold and the pelt with you.”

Margred’s reaction was instinctive, selfish and sharp as a child’s

who sees her toy taken away.
No. Mine
. Caleb gave the sealskin to her.

Every intuition honed in seven hundred years of survival told her to

snatch it and return to the sea.

“
Take it, and be free
,” Caleb had said when he thought he was dying.

When they both thought he was dying.

But Caleb lived.

Margred’s breath snagged. And she could not imagine her life

without him.

Dylan scowled. “The pelt is not mine to dispose of. Or yours either.”

Caleb rubbed his face with a blood-encrusted hand. “You leave it

here while they search the island, somebody from CID could decide it’s

in violation of the Marine Mammal Protection Act and turn it over to the

feds as evidence.”

He wasn’t trying to take the pelt away. He was trying to save it. Save

her. His consideration stung her eyes.

“Fine,” Dylan said. “I’ll take it. For now.” He looked at Margred

with flat, black, challenging eyes. “You’ll want it when Caleb is through

with you.”

293

Twenty-three

THE LONG SUMMER EVENING STRETCHED INTO night

before Caleb pulled into his driveway. Beyond the black spruce, the

ocean sparkled, dark waves caught in a silver net. The crescent moon, as

white as a sail, rode bright-edged billows of cloud. Beautiful. Peaceful.

294

Lonely.

He switched off the engine and sat staring at the reflected light in his

windows, too sore to move, too weary to think. Trying to summon the

will and a reason to get out of the Jeep.

He should have gone to his sister’s. Maggie was there.

He didn’t want to sit alone in the dark, nursing his wounds and a

drink like his father.

But he hurt, and he stank. He needed his pills, a shower, and a clean

shirt. He climbed heavily from the Jeep, setting off a chorus of pain as all

his injuries, new and old, made themselves heard.

He had refused to be medevaced to the hospital in Rock-port. He’d

had enough of hospitals. According to Donna Tomah, the bullet had

plowed straight through the fleshy part of his upper arm, missing the

collar bone, the bundle of nerves above it, and a major artery below. He

would recover.

Of course, he looked and felt like shit.

Regina’s eyes had widened when she saw him. She had dropped by

the station to deliver pizza to Sam Reynolds and Evelyn Hall, encamped

more or less permanently in Caleb’s office. Caleb didn’t know if the state

cops had been assigned to him as jailors or nurses, but as the evening and

the case progressed, Reynolds at least began to treat him more and more

as a colleague.

“Wow.” Regina set the pizza on the counter above Edith’s desk.

“The weasel lawyer really kicked your ass, huh?”

“Pretty much,” Caleb admitted.

“Mom said to tell you she thought you were tougher than that.”

Regina’s teasing tone failed to disguise the concern in her eyes.

Caleb’s smile cracked his split lip. “I am. He had to shoot me before

he beat me up.”

Regina laughed, as he intended, and fingered the little gold cross

around her neck. “Seriously, Cal, everybody’s glad you’re . . . you

295

know.” She stopped, searching for a sentiment that wouldn’t violate New

England standards of reticence. “Here,” she finished.

“Me, too,” Caleb had said.

Here on the island.

Here, alive.

He wouldn’t be if it weren’t for Maggie and his brother.

Dylan had surprised him, Caleb acknowledged as he limped up the

walk. He hadn’t expected his brother to be there for him at the end. But

Dylan had definitely saved his ass. Caleb even had a vague memory of

his brother administering rescue breathing—something he was sure Dylan

would prefer Caleb forget.

And Maggie . . . Caleb shook his head. He didn’t know exactly what

she’d done on the bottom of the ocean to defeat Tan, but whatever it was

had drained her of color and almost of life. When Caleb came to, she’d

been lying cold and stiff on the planks of the dock like an ancient warrior

on his shield.

He’d thought . . . Oh, God, he’d been so afraid that he had lost her,

that she was gone somewhere beyond his reach, even beyond death. A

selkie without a soul. But she’d come back to him.

She’d come back.

Even with the scar fresh on her forehead from the demon’s attack,

even after seeing what Tan had done to her murdered friend Gwyneth,

Maggie had turned to fight. For Caleb’s sake. When the chips were down,

she hadn’t folded. She hadn’t run.

Loyalty and grit, Caleb thought. A man couldn’t ask for anything

more.

Except for her to stay.

He stumbled over something in the shadows of the porch. Somebody

had left a package by his front door, a bundle, a—

Sealskin.

296

Caleb froze, his hands clenching on the thick, coarse fur. Its musk

rose in the darkness. Gwyneth’s pelt. So his brother had already been by.