Turning Tides (21 page)

The group nodded. I knew there were holes in my argument, and it wouldn’t be long before people thought to ask questions to which I didn’t have the answers. For now, though, they were caught in the spell of shared magic and my absolute certainty.

Then, the spell broke.

“Who are they? What are they doing here?” Michael Bay pointed one shaking finger toward the water, and the entire island turned to watch three shifters pulling to shore in a battered old rowboat.

Chapter 20

“A welcoming party? How thoughtful
of you.” Simon sounded entirely sincere, and only the glint in his green eyes gave any hint that he sensed the animosity rolling off the elementals in waves.

He stepped lightly from the boat, every movement precise. Simon was always graceful, but I thought he was emphasizing it now. The slit pupils he’d learned to hide during his time with Carmen had returned, and even his canines appeared a bit longer than usual.

He would not hide what he was, and he would not apologize for it.

Miriam stepped out next. She didn’t possess Simon’s grace outside the water, but she had at least twice his attitude. She looked at the elementals lined up before her, pale and reed thin, and the devil’s own grin appeared on her face. If I was translating otter to English, I’m pretty sure the message would be “bring it.”

Mac was last, and there was an audible gasp as he unfolded from the boat. Waters might be a tall group of people, but we had nothing on bear shifters. While anyone standing on that shore was powerful enough that, if unopposed, they could send him out to sea on a large wave, it was hard to remember one had the upper hand when faced with a man-shaped wall of pure muscle.

Part of me wanted to throw them into the boat and send it careening back to the houseboat. I was sure the waters would all be happy to pretend this visit had never occurred.

A bigger part sighed in relief, both at the sight of my friends and at the knowledge that one more secret was revealed. Besides, their presence posed no real danger, other than to the elementals’ understanding of the world—and if there was one group of people in the world that needed their preconceptions challenged, it was the people on this island.

Michael found his voice first. “What is that?” He pointed at Mac. I could practically see Mac’s hackles rise. I wasn’t sure if I had hackles, but if I did they were rising alongside his.

Josiah, Sera, and my close family stood behind me, lined up where the water met the shore. The rest of the island stood to the east in a large clump of prejudice and fear. The three shifters had landed about fifty feet to the north.

I stood between them all.

I suppose I made a choice, though I don’t recall doing so. I only knew that I walked to Mac, taking long, confident strides, until I was at his side. “I guess the council isn’t invited to the wedding.” I winked at him, letting him know I was teasing, but I saw no humor in his eyes. Only heat mixed with relief and something close to gratitude.

The rest of the island didn’t find the joke funny, either.

A moment ago, they’d all been ready to link arms and sing songs in the name of magical unity. Now, they looked like they were ready to fire up some torches and go in search of pitchforks.

Not all of them. A few looked surprised, even curious. My aunts studied the newcomers as if they were an unexpected specimen in a biology textbook. Grams glanced between me and Mac, likely making all the right connections.

I was thankful my great-grandmother wasn’t here to witness this. She was the one who’d raised me to believe shifters were nothing but myths, and I doubted her presence would have smoothed the current tensions.

“Everything okay?” Mac asked in a low voice.

“More or less,” I assured him. “Everyone’s alive, at least.”

I turned from him, needing to calm the side of the island that looked like they shared Great-grandma’s opinion. “So, these are shifters. They exist.” It seemed obvious to me, but there were still so many doubtful expressions I wanted to be extra clear. In addition to doubt, I saw anger and outrage, shock and disbelief. Basically, all the shades of horror one would expect from a group who would rather deny shifters’ existence than acknowledge we shared our magical heritage with those who possessed animal DNA.

“It’s bad enough that you allow three humans on the island, Ms. Brook. To lie about their origins is a step too far. We all know shifters are a myth.” Deborah Rivers wouldn’t even look at my friends, addressing her words to the waters gathered around her. Still, no one watched her. They couldn’t take their eyes off our visitors, trying to reconcile years of lies and denial with the counter-evidence standing on their shore.

They might have clung more stubbornly to their disbelief if Simon hadn’t chosen that moment to turn into a cat.

As one, the crowd gasped, then subsided into silence as the small black creature walked toward them. He kept his distance, giving himself space to run if necessary, but to look at him, he was the pinnacle of feline confidence. He strutted down the line of gathered waters. Once he was convinced they’d all seen him, he returned to human form and strolled buck naked back to the clothes that had fallen from him when he changed to the smaller form. In no hurry, he pulled his jeans back on, then turned to face everyone with a smug, close-lipped smile.

While the elementals gaped, Miriam smacked Simon’s ass. “Drama queen,” she said with a chuckle, loud enough for everyone to hear.

That broke the spell. At once, everyone had something to say, a question or protest or, in some cases, panicked nonsense. I let it go on for a few minutes—sometimes, waters just need to get the words out before they explode—then nodded to Sera.

She put her fingers to her lips and gave a loud, piercing whistle, the kind I’d never figured out how to do myself. It caught everyone off guard, and I stepped into the silence.

“Once again, for the record: these are shifters. They exist, and despite what some will try to tell you, they are not our enemy. We have people and houses exploding, or being burnt to a crisp, and that happened long before these three stepped foot onto the island. So, you know, deal.”

It didn’t seem worth mentioning that Miriam and Simon had been hanging out on the island for days.

Sera snorted. It seemed she was improved enough to find my tactlessness amusing.

“This isn’t the big deal you all seem to think it is. There have always been shifters, and if you were unaware of their existence, you should probably make more of an effort to get off the island from time to time. So go home, open a bottle of wine, and know that reality hasn’t actually changed. Just your knowledge of it. Sera, Josiah, the shifters and I will all be heading out to the boat, unless someone offers their guest room to two fires and the three shifters you want to pretend are figments of your imagination. Anyone?” I finished with a bright and wholly insincere smile.

To no one’s surprise, my offer fell flat.

“Fine. We’ll see you in the morning.” With that, I turned my back on the waters who’d once called me family.

Tomorrow was going to be a bad day. Once the island had time to process what they’d seen, to fit it into their understanding of the world and start looking for someone to blame, things would get complicated. That was tomorrow, though. Tonight, we all just needed to sleep.

Sera and Josiah climbed into the boat with the shifters. That left no room for me, particularly as the tension that still existed between my father and Mac practically required its own seat.

Miriam glanced at the overcrowded boat and started undressing. “I’m counting on you to be on orca patrol, Brook. I don’t plan to meet my maker anytime soon, and I intend to do so while riding some pretty young thing, not as a midnight snack for some fucking oversized fish.”

I grinned, taking a moment to let go of all that day’s horrors. “Like I’d deny any of those pretty young things the glory of your presence, Miriam. Let’s go.”

She stepped into the surf, and a second later an otter poked its head above the water, waiting.

For the final time that day, I jumped into the surf and headed toward the houseboat, pulling a rowboat and its motley crew behind me.

It wasn’t late,
the sun only just setting, but no one seemed interested in staying up and talking. It had been a long day, and we were too exhausted to do anything but sleep.

The houseboat didn’t have room for all of us, particularly as I was unwilling to
share Mac’s bed with Josiah nearby. Shifter ears only meant we risked embarrassment. Having an overprotective father on board meant we risked Mac being set on fire if Josiah felt he crossed some line.

Instead, Simon and Miriam took blankets to the roof. They muttered something about a clear night and the stars, but since the sky was still covered with heavy clouds, I suspected they really wanted to put as much distance between themselves and Josiah as possible. Josiah was many things, but a paragon of elemental tolerance wasn’t one of them. He would always believe shifters were inferior to elementals, and he made little effort to disguise this fact.

Sera and I agreed to share the second bedroom, leaving Josiah to the couches.

Silently, we prepared for bed, washing our faces and raiding the houseboat’s limited food supply. Despite everything that happened that day, I felt no desire to sleep. I was too wired, too aware of Mac’s presence just a few feet away.

At least I had an excuse to visit him once before bed. I closed the door to his bedroom, needing at least one private moment, even if I had to resort to mime to get my message across without anyone eavesdropping.

“Do you have a t-shirt I can borrow?” All our belongings were either burnt or in pieces, so it seemed a reasonable request. At least it did, until he removed the shirt he was wearing and held it out to me. Reason pretty much disappeared altogether.

“Thanks.” I took it and pressed it against my chest, as much to feel his warmth as to create a highly ineffective barrier between us.

His eyes slid toward the door. “Why is Josiah here?” He pitched his voice low. The shifters above us might be able to hear, but elementals were stuck with standard human hearing.

I shook my head, trying to clear it of the fog caused by his half-dressed status. “His house exploded, and no one else would take him. Or if they did, that house might blow up next. I couldn’t very well leave him to sleep on the beach.”

“Why not? You hate him.”

“It’s complicated.”

“And yet, I’m capable of holding more than one thought in my head at a time. What’s going on?”

“It’s not that you won’t understand. It’s more that they’re words I’m not ready to say out loud.” I stared at him, begging him to allow me this moment.

He shook his head, and though his voice remained quiet, the words held an edge they hadn’t before. “That’s not good enough. You’re off, Aidan. There’s this energy coming off you, this manic desperation. It was there earlier, when you came to me. I wanted to believe it was because you stopped fighting this thing between us, but there’s more to it, isn’t there? A man you’re supposed to hate, a man who actively despises me, is just outside that door, and you’re acting like you’re okay with this.”

“I’m not.” I was glad we were whispering. The words and thoughts crowding my head were too unbearable to be spoken at full volume.

I stepped toward him, laying my hand against his chest. It wasn’t a lascivious touch, nor one of invitation. I only wanted to feel the steady beat of his heart. I wanted to believe the connection we shared went beyond magic and desire and the friendship we’d built over the past months. I wanted his heart, and I didn’t know if I’d have it once I spoke the truth.

“I lost control today. Josiah stopped me from killing a woman by killing her himself. I set it all in motion, Mac. She’s dead because of me.” I paused, just long enough for the words to sink in. I watched his face closely, seeing the shock and the brief recoil. He recovered quickly, but it was there. “The madness is starting. We’re not meant to hold two magics, Mac, and the schism has been forming in my psyche since the first time I touched the fire. Earlier, even the water wanted Rachel’s death, and that’s never happened before. Soon, I won’t be the person I am now. The woman you want to be with, she’ll be gone. So yes, I’m desperate. I want everything I can get before it’s too late, and that includes you. It may not be fair, but I want you. Sometimes, it feels like that’s the only thing I want in this world.”

When I finished my speech, Mac opened his mouth to reply. At that moment, I knew more fear than I had when I heard my sentence, when I saw Sera accused, when the fire blazed through me. His words could change everything, and I wasn’t ready for that. Maybe in the morning, when the sun was bright and full of the day’s promise, and the blue ocean stretched all around me, I could handle whatever he needed to tell me, but the night felt dark and full of quiet monsters ready to steal my last hope.

Instead of letting him speak, I backed away. I tried to smile, but even I could feel how false it was. “Tell me tomorrow.” I gestured upstairs, where Simon and Miriam were certainly hearing every word, and past the closed door, where Josiah was likely making a list of all the reasons I shouldn’t date any man, ever, and certainly not a shifter. “Tell me when we’re alone, and when we’ve cured you. When you aren’t bound to me anymore, tell me then if you think you can handle being at my side.”

He only watched me, and whatever he was thinking, it didn’t show on his face.

My throat began to close, and I stepped through the bedroom door before he noticed.

I kept my face down, avoiding Josiah and Sera’s eyes, and rushed to the second bedroom. With Mac’s shirt wrapped around me, I crawled into bed. When Sera entered soon after, I feigned sleep.

Long after she’d fallen asleep herself, I remained awake, taking long breaths, trying to absorb Mac’s scent and, in some small way, keep him with me always.

Chapter 21

Though I fell asleep with
my thoughts muddled and my general sense of well-being threatening to pitch itself into the pit of despair, I woke with excess energy and a clear mind, my plan for that day worked out during the wee hours by my subconscious.

At some point during the night, my brain found space for the previous day’s events, for Rachel’s death and my loss of control. It wrapped the memories in fragile tissue paper, a delicate container that would crumble at the slightest touch. It wasn’t much, and it wasn’t a permanent solution, but it might let me get through another day.

Truly, there’s a lot to be said for a good night’s sleep surrounded by water.

My optimism lasted as long as it took me to reach the houseboat’s tiny kitchen and discover there was no caffeine to be had.

Sera was already there, opening every cabinet and drawer in search of anything that might resemble coffee.

Josiah’s couch was empty, and the rowboat was missing. His presence tended to complicate matters, so I wasn’t sad to see him gone.

“Screw this,” Sera announced, not bothering to lower her voice. “We’re making a break for it. If there’s no morning coffee, there’s nothing to live for, anyway.”

At her words, I gathered water behind us and started pushing, urging the boat closer to the island. Now that the secret was out, there was no reason for me to keep swimming back and forth. Besides, I was fairly certain my fire side enjoyed the physical activity, and I was determined to do everything in my power to keep the fire sullen and unresponsive—and if that meant not burning a single unnecessary calorie then, by jove, I’d do what needed to be done.

There was rustling on the roof, and it was only a matter of time before the shifters joined us. Miriam’s phone lay on the table. As mine and Sera’s hadn’t survived the explosion, we needed the loaner for the day. I shoved the phone into my pocket, then scrawled a quick note apologizing for the theft.

As the houseboat approached the shore, I stepped onto the deck, knowing Sera would follow. Together, we jumped into knee-high water and walked toward dry land.

Some might say I was avoiding my shifter friends, now that they all knew what was happening to me. I preferred to think of it as working for truth and justice in a way that didn’t involve me answering unpleasant questions. But the emphasis was totally on the truth and justice part.

As soon as we were on shore, I rang my mother, hoping the cameras had managed to catch something this time. I knew what she’d say before she answered. There was nothing to see. The camera had exploded along with the rest of the house, and the backup file had been wiped clean.

“So, what’s the plan?” asked Sera when I hung up. I faced my best friend and got my first good look at what she was wearing. While I still had the clothes I’d worn the day before, hers had been victims of the explosion. Lacking anything of her own, she’d been forced to borrow from Miriam, who was several inches taller than she was. She’d picked an old concert tee featuring The Who, probably because it was the closest she could come to her beloved punk, and had knotted it at her waist so it mostly fit, though the sleeves neared her elbows. The pants were cinched with a belt, keeping them from pooling at her ankles, but the thighs bagged and the legs had been rolled up several times. The end result looked like a child playing dress-up while on her way to a classic rock clambake.

“Don’t even laugh. You know I’m totally making this work.”

“I’m sorry. I hadn’t realized your brief imprisonment affected your mind so much.” Silence greeted my jab. Sanity jokes just didn’t land like they once did. “So, Josiah told you?”

“That you tried to turn Rachel into a sparkler for the Fourth of July? Yeah, he might have mentioned something.”

“Come on. As uptight as that woman was, you know she’d explode like a bottle rocket.” Sera didn’t say anything. Instead, she studied her shoes, avoiding my eyes. “Don’t do that. Don’t you dare do that.”

“Do what?”

“Start acting awkward, or trying to say the right thing. There is no right thing here, and even if there was, we’ve never been the people who find the right thing to say. See exhibit A, that completely insensitive bottle rocket comment. You think you’ll help me by acting like someone else? I’m barely keeping it together as it is. Just be the same person you’ve always been.”

“You mean the sort of person who makes inappropriate jokes while her best friend slides toward insanity? That’s who you want me to be?”

I nodded vehemently. “Yes. God, yes please. I seriously can’t handle another soulful and worried gaze from someone who claims to only want the best for me. I’m worried enough about myself. I can’t be weighed down with everyone else’s worries on top of that.”

She was quiet again, but it was the silence of thought rather than avoidance. Finally she shook her head, clearing it. “If you’re getting more in touch with your fire side, does that mean you’ll stop listening to that country shit one of these days?”

“Please. The day you catch me listening to the Cramps is the day you’ll know I’ve lost my mind. Just stick me in a padded room. A non-flammable one, of course.”

“Of course.” She reached up to tug on her curly hair, the agitated movement showing she wasn’t as glib as she wanted to appear. “I am worried though. You can’t tell me not to be.”

“I know. Me too. I just don’t know how much good that will do either of us. And until we come up with a better plan, I need my friends. I need my sister. I need to not be the pariah and the freak. Please, Sera.”

Her face was immobile, the surest sign that her emotions were in turmoil. “You know I’m here. I’ll always be here. Though, really, you were always a freak. Let’s not pretend this is a recent development.”

I pulled a small ball of water from the air and dumped it on her in response. She gave me an impressive side eye, but she didn’t protest. Any sign that I was in touch with my water side was welcome, it appeared. The shower broke the tension, and we walked for several minutes in companionable silence.

I broke it when we were half a mile from the Brook family estate. “You sure you want to come with me? Josiah may have cleared your name, but I’m guessing you’re going to get the stink-eye from most people just for being his daughter, and you know some will still suspect you.”

“One near death experience and you think I’ve gone soft? I can handle a bunch of waters. There’s not a single person on the island who can out-stare me.”

“Only cause Great-grandma’s scaring the bejeezus out of everyone in Martha’s Vineyard.” She couldn’t argue. She’d met my great-grandmother.

We strolled along the back streets, working our way to the house. We didn’t pass anyone, and I was glad of it. There’d be plenty of confrontations soon enough.

Sera seemed to pick up on my train of thought. “So, what’s the plan? Start accusing people until someone snaps and tries to set us on fire?”

“Amazingly, I’ve heard worse plans. If we are dealing with a dual magic, we have to assume they’ve been riding the crazy train longer than I have, to be using the fire magic so cruelly. But we should probably save that one as a last resort.”

“You’re still thinking dual magic?”

I held my hands up, palms out, showing just how little idea I really had. “It makes the most sense. You and Josiah are the only fires we know about, and the island isn’t big enough to hide another one for so many days, particularly when everyone is paranoid and paying extra attention. Plus, Josiah’s been testing for magic pretty consistently, and he hasn’t found any yet. A fire pretending to be a different elemental would need to tap into their magic by now, but dual magics don’t. Hell, I went most of my life just accessing water. So if there’s another answer, I haven’t thought of it yet.”

“I still think something’s off with David. He’s not just here as Lana’s guest.”

“Maybe. He did get more upset than a stone should when I wouldn’t help him escape from the island.”

“There you go. How can you not think he’s suspicious? Everyone else on the island is either a local or from a seriously old family. They wouldn’t be able to keep such a secret for long.” I pointed to myself, noting out the error in her logic. “Yes, but we’ve already established you’re a freak. And we can’t really say you’re doing great with that whole secrecy thing, either.”

She was right. Grams knew, and I had to trust she’d never tell. The Tahoe shifter contingent all knew. Hell, even two FBI agents knew what I was, and they were human.

“I forgot to ask, with everything going on. Did Vivian get back to you with info about the rest of the names? My phone is currently buried in the rubble from the explosion, so she can’t call me.” As I spoke, I pulled Miriam’s from my pocket. I hadn’t memorized Vivian’s number, so I couldn’t text her, but I logged into an email program and sent her a short message, telling her how to reach us.

“No. Though my phone also blew up, so she’d have a really good excuse for not contacting us. Maybe we should get the agents working on that list of names Robin gave you. I know they’re not as good as Vivian, but they at least want to be part of the gang.”

I stopped dead, the name triggering a thought I should have had days ago. “Oh.”

Sera waited for the gears in my head to slowly turn.

“Oh hell. We might have been idiots.”

“How so?”

“Robin. All this time, we’ve been thinking she knew something about a person who came to the island, or maybe left it. What if she was coming to tell me about a delivery? Not someone, but something that wasn’t included in the manifest she photocopied for me.”

It only took a second for Sera to catch up. “You’re thinking someone shipped explosives to the island.”

“I think we’ve been as narrow-minded as any old one, focused all this time on magical solutions instead of human ones. If it was explosives…”

“It changes everything,” she finished. “It could have been anyone. Water, stone, fire, even shifter. It could be a human. They wouldn’t have even needed to be in a hundred foot radius. They could have detonated it from anywhere on the island. Hell, they could have done it from a boat anchored offshore.”

She sounded disgusted, either by how slow we were to consider this option or by the way our homicidal pyromaniac played dirty.

My excitement at finding a new theory was short-lived. “It doesn’t explain Robin. She was still in one piece when we found her. No one blew her up.”

“Maybe it doesn’t explain everything, but it’s at least a place to start.”

I was sick of this. I was sick of being stuck on a small island with small-minded people, waiting to hear my sentence. I was tired of being stared at by the people who’d raised me as if I was a stranger. I was tired of watching people die.

Not today, though. Today, I was going to stop it. I didn’t have much investigative experience, but I was stubborn, and I was homesick, and that would have to be good enough.

Robin’s post remained
abandoned, the seaplane and boats still sitting neglected in the water. Despite the previous night’s explosion, no one was attempting to leave, though that didn’t mean the
y felt safe. Our walk across the island had been a silent one. I saw a few curtains twitch as we passed, but no one greeted us and doors remained resolutely shut. Whatever sense of unity I’d created last night, it lasted only so long as it took people to remember their lives were in danger.

“So, what are we looking for?” Sera asked.

There wasn’t much to see. Robin’s desk outside. A shed converted to an office where the files and copy machine were kept. A metal table that held a microwave and a coffee maker so old the brand name had rubbed off.

“Suspicious stuff.” I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, trying to clear my mind of its preconceptions and see the scene afresh. “You know, murder weapons, confessions written in blood, that sort of thing.”

“Or a leftover crate of C4?”

“Now you’re talking.”

The entire area was pristine, not a single package waiting to be picked up.

Robin’s desk was spotless, more than it had ever been while she was alive. There were no half-full mugs, no disorganized piles of paper, no romance novels with their spines cracked at the juicy parts. My throat tightened at the sight. It made Robin’s death feel so sanitized, almost as if the woman had been erased.

I rifled through Robin’s papers, looking for any possible information so important it cost her life. Any hope I had was extinguished as soon as I opened the file cabinets. They were too organized. Someone had already gone through them, probably days ago.

Everything was in perfect order, the log maintained in Robin’s neat script. The last entry was the same one she’d copied for me.

Except it shouldn’t have been the last entry. There was no record of either our arrival on the island or David’s trip to Bellingham, though I knew Robin would have noted both flights. She’d been too conscientious for such a large oversight.

No, the last page had simply been removed. I might be a rank amateur with this whole sleuthing thing, but I was pretty sure those in the detecting business would call this a clue. If nothing else, it confirmed that someone was trying to hide information we needed.

Sera gestured at the plane. “It’s only a six-seater. Not much room for cargo, right?”

“Not really. How much, um, explosive stuff does it take to blow up a house?”

“Truly, it’s a mystery why the FBI didn’t fight harder to keep us.”

“Hey, they’re practically begging to work with us again.”

“Probably because we’re the only elementals who will speak to them.”

“There is that. So, we’re not exactly explosives experts, but I’ve seen enough movies to know they’re unstable. They wouldn’t have come in on a dinky seaplane. It would be too risky. They would have been locked up on a boat, with all kinds of precautions, and sent separately. The killer picks up the package, and there you have it. Bing, bang, lots of boom.”

“We’re assuming an awful lot here.”

She was right. I pulled out Miriam’s phone to call the agents and add “research explosives” to their to-do list. Before I could dial, voices reached me, what sounded like a man and a woman walking toward the pier.