Sea Witch (11 page)

“Pretty much. Yeah. All part of the job.”

All part of the man. Margred gave herself a moment to admire him,

the thoughtful green eyes, the long, strong jaw, the sensitive mouth. He

was dogged and concerned, observant and conscientious.

Easy to use, she thought, but difficult to deceive.

She changed the subject. “Where am I sleeping?”

“In here.” He opened a door for her.

Margred glimpsed the pair of neat beds with plain brown spreads,

one turned down invitingly to reveal crisp white linens, and arched one

eyebrow. “Two beds?”

Had he decided to stay with her after all?

“This was my room,” Caleb explained without a blink. “Mine and

my brother’s.”

“And where is he sleeping?”

“No idea. He moved out when I was ten.”

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She stood in the center of the worn beige carpet to survey the small

paneled room. Bare walls with a king’s ransom in books crammed

casually on one shelf. No pictures. No decorations. Only some shiny

statuettes holding laurel wreaths and a few photographs tacked over a

desk. She identified a row of unsmiling young men as an athletic team

and the child with the baby on his lap as Caleb holding Lucy. The boy

standing beside them was a few years older.

“This is your brother?”

Caleb hitched his thumbs into his back pockets. “Yeah.”

She bent to look. Something about those brooding black eyes, that

tumbled dark hair, that slightly sullen mouth . . .

Her heart beat faster. Would that explain . . . ? No. Yes.

No.

“What is his name?” she asked.

But she knew. In her heart, she knew.

“Dylan.”

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Seven

CALEB WATCHED LUCY BUSTLE AROUND THE kitchen,

touched and more than a little amused by her attempts to mother him.

Like they were four and fourteen again, and she’d coaxed him to one of

her teddy bear tea parties.

“Ice.” She plunked a plastic bag on the table in front of him. “For

your leg.”

“My leg is fine,” he lied. He balanced the ice on his knee.

“Tea?” she offered next, brandishing the kettle.

He needed coffee. Or a Scotch.

But he still had a long night ahead, and he never drank in front of his

sister. In her eyes, at least, he wanted to be different from their father.

“Tea would be great. Thanks.”

She dropped two tea bags into mugs and then hesitated, her hand

hovering over the canister. “Do you think Maggie would like a cup?”

“Not yet,” Caleb said. “She wanted to wash up. I got her some

towels and showed her the bathroom.”

“
You are very kind,
” Maggie had said as he turned on the taps and

adjusted the water temperature.

Kind, hell.

He wanted to see her naked. He wanted to undress and bathe her

himself, to touch her pretty breasts with their pale pink nipples, her

smooth, amazing skin.

No, he wasn’t kind. But he wasn’t a total jerk either. So he told her

to call if she needed anything and he’d left, unable to trust his own

control.

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Lucy nibbled her lower lip. “Do you think that’s a good idea? She

could faint. Slip.”

“The door’s open.” Visions of Maggie, naked, wet, and vulnerable,

invaded his brain. He cleared his throat. “I told her to use your soap and

stuff.”

“Of course.”

He watched his sister’s face, trying to see if she minded having her

sleep interrupted and her home invaded. When she was a big-eyed little

kid, he’d known what made her laugh. What made her cry. What made

her tick. Now . . . He didn’t know. Hadn’t made the effort to know, for

too many years. “I’m sorry to dump this on you.”

“You’re not dumping.”

Truth? Or just the desire to please? Except for a few anxious

occasions when Lucy was in her teens, she’d never liked to make trouble,

never wanted to call attention to herself.

“But she must have family somewhere who will be worried about

her. Friends.” Lucy set his tea in front of him and added sugar and milk to

her cup, not meeting his eyes. “A husband.”

“She’s not married,” came out of his mouth.

Lucy laid down her spoon. “How do you know?”

How did he? Did he? His ignorance chafed him.

“She told me.”

“But . . . on the phone you said she couldn’t remember anything.”

Tension crept into his shoulders. “She told me before,” he said

evenly. “When we had dinner.”

“Cal!” His sister’s eyes brightened. “Is Maggie the one? The one you

said wasn’t coming . . .”

“Back,” he finished for her. “Yeah.”

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“That’s fan—” Lucy’s brow pleated. “Wait. You had dinner, and

you don’t know her last name?”

Worse. They’d had sex, and he didn’t know her last name.

Which had to be on the Top Ten List of Things You Don’t Say to

Your Sister. Hell, it was something Caleb hated admitting to himself.

“We had dinner,” he repeated. “We didn’t swap life stories. ”

Just bodily fluids.

Shit.

“So, how will you find her family?” Lucy asked.

“I’ll call the sheriff’s office on the mainland in the morning. ” Caleb

sipped his tea. Too hot. “He’ll run her description through the NCIC

database, see if he can find a match in missing persons.”

“How long will that take?”

“Depends on what he turns up. If I have to chase down partial

matches in several states, it could be days.”

Lucy twisted her napkin in her lap. “Can’t you, I don’t know, take

her fingerprints or something?”

Caleb was used to working in a department, as part of a unit, a team.

He’d had female partners—good ones. But he wasn’t used to kicking

cases around with his baby sister, or discussing his love life. “You sure

ask a lot of questions.”

Lucy shook out her napkin. Grinned. “I teach six-year-olds. They

respond well to simple, direct questioning.”

“I’ll remember that the next time I interview one,” Caleb said.

“They also like to change the subject.”

He smiled, acknowledging her point. She had changed. He admired

the competent, good-humored young woman sitting across from him, but

a part of him was wistful for the kid he remembered. Or maybe he missed

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being the brother she could look up to. The guy with all the answers. “Her

fingerprints won’t be in the system. Not unless she has a criminal

history.”

Which he didn’t believe.

He pushed back from the table. “Thanks for the tea. D’you mind

keeping an eye on Maggie tonight?”

“Of course not. Should I sit up with her?”

“You don’t have to do that. Wake her every two or three hours and

ask Maggie her name. As long as she can answer and she isn’t vomiting

or having seizures, she should be all right. If she develops bruising

around her eyes or her headache gets worse, I want you to call me.”

Lucy nodded, her expression solemn again. “Anything else?”

“I’ve got the instruction sheet from the doctor. I’ll leave it with you.”

He hesitated. He was asking a lot of the little girl he remembered, this

sister he barely knew. He couldn’t do his job without first ensuring

Maggie was somewhere safe and taken care of. But . . . “You sure you’re

okay with this? Getting up every couple of hours?”

“School’s out. I don’t have to wake up early.”

“She’ll still be here in the morning.”

“So, I’ll have company.”

He hadn’t realized how nice it would feel to be able to depend on a

member of his family.

“Great. Thanks. Well.” He stood. “I should get going.”

“You should get some sleep, too,” Lucy said.

“I’ve got to get back. I can’t count on a bunch of volunteer

firefighters to preserve the scene indefinitely. As soon as it’s daylight, I’ll

search the area.”

Lucy carried their mugs to the sink. “You mean, for her clothes?”

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Caleb shrugged. “Clothes, purse, keys.”

A body.

Nobody jumped into a bonfire and simply disappeared. There had to

be traces, either of a survivor or a body.

He would find them.

“
You won’t find him
,” Maggie had said, curling her lip in scorn. “
I

need what he took from me.
”

“
And what’s that?
”

“
In the fire.
”

“
What did he take, Maggie?
”

She hadn’t answered him. Distress or distrust had kept her from

speaking. Her silence cut him like a broken bottle.

“I’m going upstairs,” he said. “To say good night.”

His sister gave him a dubious look, but she didn’t question him.

Which was good, because he couldn’t explain even to himself this restless

need he had to see Maggie, to get things straight between them. By

talking, if she’d talk.

Or by any other means.

He climbed the narrow stairs, rubbing absently at the bite on his arm.

What did Maggie know? What did she remember? How could he protect

her unless he knew?

He stopped in the darkness on the stairs. In the shadows of his own

mind, he saw again the tall, thin figure waver against the flames before it

whirled and leaped into the fire.

And disappeared.

Sweat crawled down his back. He hadn’t had a flashback in weeks.

His nightmares were getting better. But he had to face the possibility that

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Maggie’s danger had triggered some kind of stress reaction, a

hallucination or something.

No wonder she didn’t trust him.

He couldn’t trust himself.

* * * *

Brothers
, Margred thought dazedly.

If the blow to her head hadn’t already made her temples throb, this

new revelation would have done it.

Caleb was Dylan’s brother, the son of a human father and a selkie

mother. Did that make him half selkie, then?

Dylan’s words echoed in her memory. “
It’s impossible to be half

anything. You are selkie, or you are not. You live in the sea, or you die on

land
.”

You die
.

As she was dying. Drying up.

Margred huddled in the tub, her flesh shrinking from the strange

shining pipes and cold, slick surfaces. Outside of Sanctuary, away from

the magic of Caer Subai, selkies in human form aged at almost the rate

that mortals did—one reason the very old, like the king, chose to live

“beneath the wave,” rarely assuming human shape.

Margred imagined the threat of aging, more than the fear of death,

would have driven Caleb’s mother to leave her husband and two children

behind.

Thirteen years on land?

The prospect made her shiver.

No wonder when the Change had come on Dylan, his mother had

seized her chance to return with her firstborn son to the sea. Caleb would

still have been a child then. Lucy must have been an infant.

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But . . . Margred frowned, unsettled. How could their mother have

known that the Change would not come upon them, too?

How could she have left them, not knowing?

Maybe . . . Margred spread her toes beneath the water, swishing

them idly back and forth. Maybe their mother had intended to return?

Dylan said his mother had died, drowned in a fisherman’s net. So the

selkie woman had never seen her younger children come to adulthood.

Most children born of mer-and-mortal unions were human, Margred

reminded herself. Caleb might have the sea in his blood, but he was

solidly of earth, as firmly grounded as an oak tree.

As for his sister, Lucy, well . . . Margred sank deeper into the tub.

She could not dismiss the punch of power that had greeted her arrival or

wash away the niggling suspicion there was more to Caleb’s sister than

her shy welcome and anxious eyes.

How much more?

You are selkie, or you are not
, Dylan had said.

If either Caleb or Lucy were selkie, if they had ever experienced the

Change, Margred would know. It did not take any great magic to sense

the aura of another elemental. She could smell it. Neither Caleb nor Lucy

had betrayed any awareness of who they were.

Any recognition of what Margred was.

She felt a queer twist of heart. What was she now? Now that her pelt

was gone.

She fought a flutter of panic. The children of the sea lived in the

moment. She was not used to having to think, to weigh and calculate and

discard her options.

But she could not lie here like a pup on an ice floe waiting for the

hunter’s club. She had to plan. To act.

Was there any way to restore what had been taken from her?

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Conn would know, she thought. The king’s son had made a study of