Sea Fever (17 page)

whatever ailed you— into bowls. “Candlelight improves the food.”

He carried the bowls to the table. “And the company.” She joined

him. “Are you saying I look better in low light?”

“It suits you.” His gaze met hers across the table. “Your eyes shine.”

Another arrow, straight to the heart. She clenched her spoon to hide

her hand’s trembling.

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“Good soup,” Dylan remarked.

“Two compliments in a row. Be careful, or I’ll start to take you

seriously.”

“Why shouldn’t you? Your mother is a good cook.”

Regina let the soothing broth trickle down her throat. It brought back

memories, of being sick, of being sad, of being fed. “More than that. Ma

supported herself and me and Nicky on an island where a lot of

businesses pack up or die in the winter.”

“She is a stubborn woman.”

“I’m proud of her.” How long since she had told her mother so?

“Yet you left.”

Regina sipped her water. This was so not the discussion she expected

to be having with him. This was not a conversation she would have with

anybody on World’s End. Everybody here knew everybody. Knew

everything, or thought they did. “Antonia’s is . . . Antonia’s. It’s good. It

could be great. It’s just not . . . mine.”

“Your mother is afraid of change.”

She shrugged. “Maybe.”

“And you are not.” His tone was faintly challenging.

“I . . .” She stopped, struck. Was she afraid? When she’d crawled

home eight years ago, exhausted, broke, and defeated, she’d seen few

choices and little future for herself. But now . . . it was one thing to settle

for her mother’s menus. At what point had she begun to settle for her

mother’s life?

“I try to keep an open mind,” she said.

“That is fortunate,” Dylan murmured.

She frowned, uncomprehending.

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He stood to clear their bowls, carrying them to the sink. She pushed

back her chair to help him, but he kept her in place with a quick shake of

his head. She’d spent years in the kitchen with men. Yet despite Dylan’s

obvious grace— or maybe because of it— watching him perform the

small domestic chore made her breathless and slightly uncomfortable. He

ran water over the dishes before he retrieved his duffel from the floor by

the front door and brought it to the table.

Her vocal chords tightened. “What’s this?”

In answer, he unzipped the bag, reached in, and pulled out a fur, a

fur coat, a . . .

Regina stared at the thick, black pelt gleaming in the candlelight.

Her heart moved into her throat and choked her.

A sealskin.

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Eleven

DYLAN’S HEART POUNDED.

Regina raised her gaze to his, her brown eyes wide with shock. “It

was you,” she whispered. “In the caves.”

She must have known. She’d seen. She’d even thanked him for

rescuing her. But now she knew how.

He held himself stiffly, braced for her rejection, his messy human

emotions tucked safely out of sight. “Yes.”

“In . . . this.” Her fingers flexed in the pelt.

He flinched. “Yes.”

Her hands, her gaze, returned to her lap. He watched her fingers

twist together. His insides knotted.

Moments passed, measured in the mad drumming of his heart and

the slow release of her breath.

“I wondered why you weren’t wearing a wet suit.”

Dylan scowled to cover his surprise. He was a creature of legend. A

fairy tale. A freak. His own father couldn’t stand the sight of him. He did

not expect Regina— hard-headed, practical Regina— simply to

accepthim or his explanation. “That’s it? You’re not going to . . .”

Scream. Run away in horror. “Demand proof?”

She shook her head. “I saw you. I saw . . . I thought I was crazy.

This is . . . Well.”

“A relief?” he suggested dryly.

She met his eyes. “Not exactly.”

His gut clenched. No, of course not.

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At least she wasn’t hysterical. At least she hadn’t recoiled from him.

Not yet.

She moistened her lips. “So, how . . . That is, what . . .”

“I am selkie.”

“Well, that explains everything.”

Her tart tone almost made him smile. “I am a man on the land and a

seal in the sea.”

“But how do you do it? Are you . . . Which are you?”

“I am both, and I am neither. Not human or animal. Before God

made humankind, He created the heavens and the earth, the water, and

the fire. With each creation, the elementals took form, the children of air,

earth, sea, and fire. Selkies are the children of the sea.”

“Um. That’s very interesting. Except I know your family. I know

your dad, and—”

“My father is human.” He was nothing like his father. “I am selkie

by my mother’s blood.”

Regina’s throat moved as she swallowed. Dylan waited rigidly,

watching as her practical mind sorted through the implications of his

story. “But your brother and sister—”

“Take after our father,” he said evenly. “Most human-selkie

offspring are human.”

Did he imagine it, or did she touch her stomach under her bulky

sweatshirt? Did she think about their offspring? Their child. His hands

clenched.

“So, when did you know that you were . . .”

“Selkie.”

“Different?” she finished.

137

He didn’t like to think about it. He didn’t want to remember.

“Thirteen.”

“Wow.” She regarded him thoughtfully. He felt his palms grow

clammy. “Like puberty didn’t suck enough.”

Her humor eased the tight knot in his gut.

“That was right before you and your mother left World’s End,” she

observed.

“Yes.”

“Tough on you.”

He shook his head. “Leaving was my idea. My choice. My . . .”

Fault, he thought but did not say.

“Oh, please. You were thirteen. Your mother was, what, like, forty?”

His mouth was dry. “Older than that.”

Regina looked at him questioningly.

“Selkies are immortal. We do not age as humans do.”

“Oh.” Another silence, while she absorbed this fresh bit of

information and he wished he were somewhere far away in the cool, dark

depths of the ocean. “But she died. Didn’t you say she died?”

“She was killed. Drowned in a fisherman’s net within a year of her

freedom.” He blamed himself for that, too.

Regina winced. “Well, but that doesn’t change my point. Your

mother was the grown-up. She could have split with you anytime. Or

made sure you stayed.”

“She could not leave. Before.”

“Why not?”

138

Black resentment boiled in him. He swallowed it. “We cannot

change form, we cannot return to the sea, without our sealskins. My

mother used to come ashore to . . . visit my father. Before we were born.

Before they married. I think they married.” Dylan chose his words with

care, but it was impossible to disguise the bitterness in his face. “One

night, while she lay sleeping, he took her pelt and hid it.”

“She used to visit him,” Regina repeated.

He should have known she would focus on the wrong thing. She was

human and female. Incapable of understanding the needs that drove his

kind.

“Yes.”

“So she must have been at least attracted to him at some point.”

“That did not give him the right to try to contain her,” Dylan said

tautly. “To control her.”

“She still stayed with him for thirteen— fourteen?— years.”

He glared. “She had no choice.”

“They had three kids.”

Dylan could not answer. He was the one who had found his mother’s

pelt. He had brought it to her. He had destroyed his family.

He met her gaze, speechless, appalled by the emotions that raged and

wept inside him. As if he were thirteen again, mortified and distracted by

the changes in his own body, torn between his childhood loyalties and

affections and his deep, desperate desire for the sea.

He steadied his breathing. He was not that child, he reminded

himself. He was not the victim of emotion or anything else. He was

selkie, impervious, immortal.

“Does Caleb know?” Regina asked, plunging him back into the

torrent of human feeling and connection again. “That you and your

mother are some kind of . . .”

He narrowed his eyes. “Freaks?” he asked softly.

139

She crossed her arms over her stomach. “I was going to say

mermaid, but you can call yourself whatever you want. Does he know?”

“He does now. He’s had some recent experience with . . .

mermaids.”

Her mouth dropped open. “Oh my God,” she breathed. “Maggie?”

Margred was her friend, Dylan thought, an odd pressure in his chest.

Surely Regina, with her fierce loyalties and her kind heart, would not turn

from Margred, who had been selkie. And if she did not turn from

Margred, then . . . But he would not let himself complete that thought.

He nodded.

“Wow. That’s . . . wow.” Regina reached for her water. She took a

sip, her hand tight on the frosted glass, watching him over the rim. “What

about Lucy?”

“Lucy is human. I told you.”

“Yeah, but does she know?”

“There is no reason for her to know. She was only a year old when

we . . . left.”

“Nick was only three months old when we moved from Boston, but

he still knows who his father is.” Regina gulped more water. “What his

father is.”

“The situation is not the same,” Dylan said stiffly.

“No?” She set down her glass, her hand trembling. “Then why are

you telling me?”

To keep her safe.

Whether the child in her womb was the fulfillment of an ancient

prophecy or merely a pawn in the elementals’ border wars, the demons

would not back off when their first attack failed. The child was still

threatened. Regina was still in danger. Dylan’s gut knotted.

140

“You deserve to know,” he said coolly.

She hunched in her chair, her eyes bright and challenging in her

white face. “So you’ve told me. Now what? Are you going to visit me,

like your mom visited your dad?”

He recognized the strain under her flippant tone, the tension hiding

behind her casual posture. Hadn’t he learned to mask his own fears and

uncertainties the same way?

Dylan scowled. It was one thing for him to deny or disguise his

feelings. He wasn’t human. He wasn’t female and pregnant. He hadn’t

been half strangled and thrown down a hole by a demon intent on his

destruction. Her strength of mind, her practicality of purpose, as her

world turned upside down awed and annoyed him. Couldn’t she let her

guard down this once and let him take care of things?

Of course not.

In her eyes, he was one of the things she was guarding against, a

threat to the life she had built with her son. She was probably dying to get

rid of him. Circle the wagons. Repel the alien invader. “Nicky and I will

be fine on our own,” she’d said.

But she wouldn’t. They wouldn’t. They needed him, whether Regina

admitted it or not. Whether she liked it or not. Now he just had to figure

out how to tell her.

“You should get some rest,” he said.

She gave him a disbelieving look. “You think that’s going to solve

anything?”

“I think,” he said carefully, “you need to sleep. We can decide what

to do in the morning.”

“We don’t decide,” Regina said. “I decide.”

“Not tonight,” Dylan said.

He knew she prided herself on her independence. This situation,

however, was outside her experience and beyond her control. Eventually,

she would have to accept that. Accept his protection.

141

At least she would be safe tonight. He was here. She was warded. In

the morning, he would find some way to confer with Conn, to make

arrangements to bring her to the selkie island until her baby could be

born. In the meantime . . .

He reached into his pocket. “I have something of yours.”

Her eyes rounded as he withdrew the bright gold cross on the broken

chain. “Oh.” Her hand went to her neck in a habitual gesture. “I thought I

lost it. Where . . .”

“In the kitchen.” He poured the fine chain into her cupped palm,

keeping his hand carefully apart from hers. “The clasp is snapped. You

need another.”

He should have gotten her another, he realized belatedly. But there

hadn’t been time.

“Thank you,” she said, smiling up at him, her eyes glowing as if he’d

brought her diamonds instead of a broken necklace that already belonged

to her.

His heart constricted. “You’re welcome. You should wear it. For

protection.”

Her smile turned rueful. “It hasn’t done a very good job of protecting