Sea Witch (8 page)

sticking out of his thigh, trying to return enemy fire with an M9 while the

nineteen-year-old kid next to him bled out into the dirt.

56

Sometimes you had to work with what you had.

He reached again for his cell phone and felt Maggie’s presence like a

breath on the back of his neck.

stay put just because he’d told her to. (His last words to her three

weeks ago—
Hurry back
—whispered in his head.)

He turned.

She stood on the beach behind him, her body shining like pearl

through his open jacket, the blood on her forehead gleaming black, and

her hair a wild glory in the moonlight. A wave of emotion—rage, desire,

frustration—rushed him, cramping his gut.

“Why don’t you tell me what happened,” he invited quietly, his eyes

on her face.

Her gaze flicked past him to the fire. “You said you would look,”

she accused.

Hostility was easier to handle than hysterics, but a part of him

wished she would cry or cling to him or something— anything that would

allow him to comfort her.

“I looked,” he said. “I’ll look again in the morning.”

“The morning will be too late.”

“Maggie . . .” He was jealous, he realized. And appalled that his

personal reactions were intruding on what was now police business. “It’s

already too late for him.”

Her lips drew back from her teeth. “Not
him
. You won’t find him. I

need what he took from me.”

Caleb rubbed his smarting forearm thoughtfully. She had bitten him.

Like an animal. She must really want . . . whatever it was.

“And what’s that?”

“In the fire.”

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“What did he take, Maggie?”

She stared at him blankly.

Shock, he thought. He’d seen it before, in victims huddled at the side

of the road after a car accident, in soldiers on stretchers after an enemy

attack: the rapid breathing, the dilated pupils, the insistent repetition. She

was in shock.

Or concussed.

He felt a quick lurch of concern. He couldn’t rush her with questions

like an overzealous rookie conducting his first interview. She needed time

and medical attention before he could begin to make sense of what had

happened.

What
had
happened? He had seen—Caleb could have sworn he’d

seen—a man jump into a bonfire without leaving a trace behind. How the

hell did you make sense of that?

He flipped open his phone.

“What are you doing?” Maggie asked.

“Calling Donna Tomah—our island doctor. You need somebody to

check out that bump on your head.”

And do a rape workup,
he thought. Deadly anger coiled in his gut.

She put her hand to her head and looked at her fingers as if she’d

never seen blood before. Her eyes were dark and dazed.

Caleb’s jaw set. When he found out what had happened, when he

found the bastard who did this to her, he’d heave him into the fire

himself.

Her pelt was gone.

Stolen.

Burned.

Destroyed
.

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Fear welled thick and cold inside her, smothering her chest. Margred

forced herself to breathe. She had survived, she reminded herself. Things

could be worse.

She stared at her blood-smeared fingers. How could this be worse?

Yes, she was alive now, but without her pelt she could never return to the

sea. Never return to Sanctuary. Away from the enchantment of the island,

she would age. She would live a span of human years and die, never to be

reborn.

The fear spilled over, paralyzing her. Margred tried to force it down,

but it was like trying to hold back the sea with her cupped hands.

Endless existence has its own . . . burdens
, she had said to Dylan

mere hours ago. But now . . . Now

She closed her eyes in terror and despair. She was such a fool.

The device in Caleb’s hand snapped shut. She opened her eyes and

found him watching her, a terrible compassion in his eyes.

Her backbone straightened reflexively.

“Donna can meet you at the clinic,” he said. “I’ll get Ted Sherman to

drive you. He’s one of our volunteer firefighters. ”

A firefighter, she thought dully. Well, that made sense. She had

caught a whiff of something—demon—right before the attack that

knocked her unconscious. She had not supposed humans would have the

knowledge to set a firefighter against a fire demon, but . . .

And then the rest of his meaning penetrated her numb consciousness.

“No,” she said. “I can’t leave the beach.”

“Why not?”

She opened her mouth, but no words came out. She had no reason to

stay. There was nothing for her here. No sealskin. No escape. No hope.

The realization struck her soul, bleak as the dawn over mudflats. A howl

built in the back of her throat.

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The human watched her, his mouth kind and his eyes shrewd. “I’ll

join you,” he said. “As soon as I’ve secured the scene.”

He was leaving her?

He was leaving. Her.

Margred shivered with loss and indignation. Everything she knew

was slipping away. She felt herself dissipating, escaping like water

through her fingers. She wasn’t about to let the one person she did know

out of her grasp.

Caleb might be human, but at least he was familiar.

“I won’t go. Not without you.”

“Is there anybody I can call?” His voice was deep and very gentle.

“To stay with you.”

“No.”

“A friend? Family member maybe.”

Margred barely remembered the face of her mother, who had

followed the sea king beneath the wave centuries before. She did not

know the fate of her father. She had no mate, no child. She hunted, slept,

lived alone.

She shook her head and then winced.

A crease appeared between Caleb’s eyebrows. “No one?”

Her hands clenched beneath the long jacket cuffs. She did not relish

his pity. She was selkie, one of the First Creation, a child of the sea.

Or she had been.

In the sea, in her own territory, her lack of connections had never

troubled her. But in the human’s world, maybe everyone was tangled and

bound together.

He must not suspect she was not of his world.

60

She let herself sway on her feet, let the jacket fall open over her bare

breasts. It was not so hard to pretend dizziness. Her head throbbed. Her

legs trembled. The demon’s attack had frightened her—weakened her—more than she wanted to admit. “I . . . can’t think. I don’t remember.”

Caleb did not look at her breasts. Those clear green eyes remained

fixed on her face with an intensity that made her uncomfortable. “All

right,” he said slowly. “You can wait in the Jeep until Ted gets here, and

then I’ll drive you to the doctor.”

The inside of his vehicle—Jeep, Margred repeated silently to

herself—was dark and warm and smelled of metal and oil and man. Land

smells. Alien smells. In the quiet dark, reaction seeped in, corroding her

fragile composure. The roof and frame pressed in on her like the iron bars

of a cage. She shifted on the slick upholstery, her blood pounding in her

head, staining her fingers through the folded white square he had given

her.

She opened her mouth to breathe.

The driver’s side door popped open and Caleb slid into the seat

beside her, his big body looming out of the darkness. She managed not to

jump.

“All set,” he said. “You keeping pressure on that cut?”

She nodded carefully, as if her head might fall off.

His lips curved. “Atta girl. Still bleeding?”

Her fingers were warm and sticky. “Not as much.”

“Good. That’s good.” He thrust a key into the side of the wheel, and

the Jeep shuddered to life. He glanced at her. “Buckle up.”

She blinked.

His mouth compressed before he reached for her. She inhaled once,

sharply, as his shoulder flattened her back against her seat, as his hard

arm brushed her breast. His hand was almost in her face. He drew a strap

down across her body, securing it with a click beside her hip.

The pressure on her chest increased.

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He leaned back. “There you go.”

Her mouth was dry. She could not go anywhere. She was strapped

in. Tied down. Trapped.

He twisted in his seat to pull a similar belt over his own broad body,

grunting as his knee connected with the steering wheel. A little of her

panic leaked away.

“You’ll like Donna. Dr. Tomah,” he added when Margred didn’t say

anything. “She retired to the island about five years ago before she

decided retirement wasn’t really her thing. Talked the town into building

her a clinic, and now she handles pretty much everything that doesn’t

require a trip to the hospital in Rockport.”

She forced herself to listen as if his words held some clue to her

dilemma. As if she cared. She didn’t. But there was something soothing,

all the same, in his quiet manner and deep, easy voice.

He was talking now about the council budget and a new X-ray

machine, soft, meaningless words that filled the silence and washed over

her like water. She leaned her aching head against the cool glass and

stared out at the darkness rushing beyond her window.

His voice stopped. The vehicle stopped.

Margred roused to find him watching her. “Did you do that on

purpose?”

“Do what?” he asked, straight-faced.

“Bore me to sleep?”

Caleb smiled. She had the sense he was not a man who smiled often

or easily. A trickle of warmth eased the ice in her belly. “All part of the

job, ma’am.”

She fingered his jacket over her shoulders. Studied the badge

gleaming on his shirt pocket. “This is a job?”

“Sometimes.” His gaze met hers. She felt it again, that curious

melting in her stomach. “Sometimes it’s personal.”

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It was personal now, Caleb thought. Whether he liked it or not.

Maggie sat upright on a padded table, her shoulders straight and her

eyes wide and blind. She had exchanged his bloodied handkerchief for a

clinic cold pack and his jacket for a cheap paper gown. Even though he

understood the need to reduce swelling and preserve whatever evidence

remained, he wanted to wrap her, warm her, take care of her somehow.

She hadn’t clung to him or cried. But when Donna Tomah had

questioned Caleb’s presence in her examination room, Maggie had said

flatly, “He is with me.”

So now Caleb crowded the corner near the head of the table while

the doctor sat at the foot. Despite his aching leg, he didn’t sit. He couldn’t

sit. He’d pulled off the big reassuring act in the Jeep, but inside he was

churning with the need for action, with pity and admiration and cold,

deep rage.

Motionless, he watched as Maggie checked little boxes on a medical

form and handed the clipboard back to the doctor.

Donna’s round face, unlined beneath her salt-and-pepper hair,

creased in a frown. “You’ve left a lot of blanks.”

Maggie’s hands twitched in the paper drape across her lap. “I did not

know what to write.”

Donna pursed her lips. “Last name? Age? Address?”

Deliberately, Maggie loosed her grip on the drape and replaced the

cold pack on her head. “I don’t remember.”

Caleb stirred in his corner.

“Did you lose consciousness?” Donna asked Maggie.

Caleb answered for her. “Yes.”

“How long?”

Maggie hesitated.

“She was out when I arrived at the scene. Say, at least five minutes.”

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“Was this injury intentionally caused by another person?

Maggie looked at Caleb.

“You’re safe now,” he said gently. “You don’t have to protect him.”

Her full lips pressed together. “I am not protecting anyone.

“So, intentional injury?” the doctor asked.

“I . . . think so.”

“Somebody was standing over her when I got there,” Caleb

volunteered. “He may have hit her with a stick. Plenty of firewood on the

beach.”

“Is that what happened?” Donna asked.

Maggie shrugged. The paper gown shifted on her shoulders.

“Do you remember arriving at the beach?” Caleb asked.

A slight hesitation. Victims were often unreliable witnesses, too

eager to please or afraid of reprisal. She could be unsure or in shock or

struggling with the language. She could be confused.

Or lying.

“Not really,” she said.

“Did you see anybody when you got there?” he persisted.

“I . . . no.”

“Tell me what you saw.”

“The fire.”

“What else?”

She shook her head, in denial or frustration. “I don’t remember.

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Donna’s gaze met his. “Trauma to the head,” she murmured. “It’s

possible.”

“Retrograde amnesia? Doesn’t that usually only affect recent