Sea Lord (34 page)

Which accounted for that submerged stain.

At least he hoped Tan was the cause.

She came ashore in early twilight under a sky that smelled of snow. She raised her whiskered face to the

breeze that blew from inland, scented with wood smoke and spruce. Recognition pierced her exhaustion.

She knew this outcrop of rock and sand. This was the point on World’s End, a mile and a half from

home.

The gray sea reached long fingers over the frozen beach. The air was cold and still.

She struggled on the broken shore, levering her weight on the rocks. For one awkward moment, as she

flailed in the surf, panic swelled and threatened to swallow her. Would she . . . How would she become

human again?

Her flippers scrabbled. Her belly scraped the shale. She tightened her stomach to shove herself forward

and sprawled naked, half in and half out of the water, her wet hair in her face and the sea foaming around

her ankles.

Lucy gasped. Shivered with shock and cold. Her fingers curled into the gritty sand.

Fingers. She had fingers. And ankles. Toes.

She staggered to her feet to see. Ten toes. Webbed.

Like Conn’s.

She swayed, unsteady as a newborn foal or a hospital patient after surgery. Naked. Naked and cold,

tired and hungry. Her sealskin washed in the retreating waves like seaweed caught in the tide.

She raised her head, and the shore jumped out at her, etched in black and white, sharp and bright. Frost

coated the rocks. Ice encrusted the frozen bladders of weed. The clouds, the same turbulent gray as the

sea, were pregnant with snow.

Pregnant.

The word leaped in her mind like a flame, warming her, reigniting her sense of urgency.

Maggie was pregnant.

Lucy had to find . . . She had to warn her family.

She stooped for her pelt.

The fur rippled in the water. She hauled the heavy, wet pelt from the surf, streaming water. With

trembling hands, she stroked the fur, a brindled silver gray, smaller and lighter than Conn’s in both weight

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and color. In her arms, it felt no more than damp.

Selkie magic?
she wondered.

Why not?

She wrapped the pelt around her like a beach towel, over her breasts, under her arms. Her skin prickled

with goose bumps. She was cold, but not intolerably so. She should be freezing . . .

Her heartbeat quickened. And then she realized. She was different. Changed. Her journey through the

sea had changed her. She wondered if, when night fell, she would be able to see in the dark.

Her stomach growled.

She stumbled over the rocks on long, awkward legs and tender feet, picking her way up the beach to the

trees standing sentinel along the road. She needed shoes. Shoes and clothes and food.

She could not remember the last time she had eaten. Days ago.

As she stepped from under the trees, a light snow began to fall. The soft, wet flakes dissolved against the

black asphalt, softening the outlines of the trees, blurring the boundaries between earth and sky. She

trudged along the shoulder of the road. Going home.

She didn’t want to be seen. Noticed. What would she say to a driver, a neighbor, the parent of a student,

if they stopped and wanted to know why the teacher of the island’s first grade class was walking along

the snowy road half-naked and wrapped in a fur?

“
Think of it as wearing a fur coat,
” Conn had said.

She smiled.
Yes.

But the memory of Conn hurt her chest. Like poking a bruise. Like picking a scab. Bowing her head, she

concentrated on putting one cold, bare foot in front of the other. The gravel stung her soles. Her stomach

cramped. She was dizzy with hunger, trembling with fatigue.

Almost home.

She would not need to worry about encountering her father. At this time of day, he was always at the inn.

She spotted their rusting mailbox, lurching a little to one side ever since Bart Hunter swiped it in the truck

one night. Staggering in exhaustion and relief, Lucy turned up the driveway and climbed the steps to the

porch. The key was hidden under a lobster buoy by the door. But when she reached for the knob, it

turned easily in her hand.

Sick panic lurched to her throat.

Gau’s voice played in her head. “
Do you know what I’ll do to them when I get there? Your pathetic

excuse of a father. Your big brave brothers and their bitches.
”

She whimpered and opened the door.

Old smells, old memories rushed at her, must and mildew and old carpet. The house was cold and quiet.

“Dad?” She croaked and cleared her throat. “Dad?”

Silence.

Heart thumping, she closed the door behind her. She should go upstairs. She needed warm clothes and a

hot shower.

She shivered. She needed to call Caleb.

She went through the dark house to use the kitchen phone. A loaf of bread sat on the counter.

Oh, God, she was so
hungry
.

She seized the bread, ripping open the plastic sleeve, and jammed a slice into her mouth. It tasted so

good
. Her stomach demanded more. Still chewing, she grabbed a jar of peanut butter from the cabinet

and slathered a second slice.

She would call Caleb in a minute. In just a minute. She ate standing up, like a horse, tearing into the food

like an animal, almost choking in her eagerness to replenish her body. Water. She needed water. Her

hand shook as she reached for the kitchen tap.

She heard the creak of the front door, felt a rush of cold air, and froze with her hand under the faucet.

She blushed like a dieter caught on a midnight raid of the refrigerator, like a drunk with his hand in the

liquor cabinet. Like her father.

She swallowed hard. “Dad?”

Thumps. Footsteps, coming down the hall.

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Lucy turned, pulling her sealskin more closely around her, her heart thudding in her chest. She was home.

She didn’t need to hide what she was or be ashamed. Her mother was selkie. So was her brother. Her

father knew.

“In here! In the kitchen,” she called.

More footsteps. Bart Hunter appeared in the kitchen doorway, lean, weathered, and gray as driftwood,

all the life battered and bleached from him years ago.

His eyes rounded. His mouth dropped open in shock.

Lucy’s smile wobbled. So did her knees. “It’s okay, Dad. I’m really here.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” he said.

Lucy worked moisture into her dry mouth. Swallowed. “I’m home.”

Behind her father was a girl. A blond girl, with a face . . . With
her
face.

Lucy’s heart lurched.
Oh, no.

The girl took one look at Lucy and froze. A sigh escaped her before she fell, crumpled on the floor of the

hall.

Lucy pressed her hands to her mouth.

Bart turned in time to see the corn maiden slither to the floor. He dropped to his knees at her side.

He looked up at his daughter, his face twisted in grief, his eyes hard with accusation. “What the hell did

you do to her?”

“I ...”

“What have you done to Lucy?”

Stricken, Lucy watched as he pulled the unconscious girl into his arms, cradling her head against his

chest.

“Dad,” she whispered. “I am Lucy.”

But he did not hear.

19

“ LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT,” CALEB SAID EVENLY. “You’re not just selkie; you’re the one

the demons have been sniffing around for. The daughter in the prophecy.”

Lucy clasped her hands together tightly in her lap. They had all come over as soon as she called, all of

her family. First Caleb, in his marked police Jeep, to carry the unconscious-but-still-breathing corn

maiden to Lucy’s bed and convince their father not to call the doctor. Then Dylan, driving Regina and

Margred carefully through the falling snow in the white restaurant van.

Bart remained with Lucy—the
other
Lucy—upstairs.

The rest of them sat in the drab brown living room, Caleb on the arm of Maggie’s chair, facing the door,

and Dylan and Regina together on the couch. Caleb’s hand rested on Maggie’s shoulder. Dylan had an

arm around Regina’s waist.

Matched sets, Lucy thought dully, like the candlesticks on the mantle or the fireplace tools on the hearth.

She perched on the edge of her seat, her feet flat on the floor. The whole setup looked remarkably like

the family conference she had interrupted three weeks ago.

Only this time she was a part of it all.

This time she was the center of attention.

She had never felt more alone.

“Yes,” she said. “But that’s not why I’m here. I came because Gau threatened you.”

Dylan leaned forward, his face tense and concerned. “I know the demon lord Gau. Know of him,” he

corrected. “He’s a powerful enemy.”

“And he’s here,” Caleb said. “On World’s End.”

“Yes,” Lucy said.

“No,” Dylan said just as certainly. “I’ve crawled over every inch of this island. I would know if the wards

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were broken or tampered with.”

Gau’s voice seared Lucy’s brain. “
I am already on my way to World’s End to visit your family.

Since you couldn’t take the time.
”

“Then he’s on his way,” Lucy said.

“Maybe . . . a visitor?” Regina suggested. “If this Gau person possessed somebody—”

“I would still know,” Dylan said. “Newcomer or not.”

“Nobody comes to the island in November anyway,” Caleb said. “It’s too damn cold for tourists. Even

the homeless camp’s cleared out.”

Lucy’s fingernails dug into her palms. She was exhausted and grieving and wracked with fear and guilt,

and they weren’t taking her seriously enough. They weren’t taking their own danger seriously enough.

“Does it really matter how he gets here? The important thing is you’re in danger. All of you. I saw . . .”

Impossible to describe the horrors she had seen with Maggie and Regina sitting there. “He threatened

you. Hurt you. In a vision.”

Caleb nodded. “Okay. So you came home—”

“Swam home,” Lucy said.

He shot her an older brother look, running his hand over his short hair. “Swam home to warn us.”

“To protect you,” Lucy said.

Dylan raised his eyebrows. The expression made him look fleetingly like Conn. She pressed her hand

against the pain in her chest.

“Protect us, how?” Dylan said.

Lucy swallowed. “I, um . . . On Sanctuary, I was kind of a link, an enhancement. Like a . . . a channel

for the other wardens’ power.”

Margred’s eyes widened. “You were in the hall,” she said. “The first time I stopped the rain.”

Dylan stood. Paced. Turned. “When I warded the restaurant . . . That was you?”

Lucy nodded, her throat tight.

“Well.” Caleb smiled at her wryly. Admiringly. “The daughter of Atargatis, huh?”

Tears pricked her eyes. To have him see her . . . To have him accept her . . .

“Conn knew this?” Dylan asked.

Pain speared her heart. “
You can be spared least of all,
” Conn had said. “
We need you here. I need

you here. I cannot do this without you.
”

She cleared her throat. “He . . . Yes.”

“Then I am surprised he let you go,” Margred said.

Lucy stared at her, stricken.

“Oh, my God.” Regina’s dark eyes widened with feminine instinct. “He didn’t. He doesn’t know she’s

here.”

“He knows,” Lucy forced herself to say. “We talked before I left.”

“You mean, you fought,” Regina guessed shrewdly.

“The important thing is, she’s here,” Caleb said. “She’s home. Where she belongs.”

Something turned over in Lucy’s chest, like a small animal startled into flight. “Not to stay,” she said. “I’m

only here until you’re not in danger anymore.”

“And when,” Dylan said, “will you know that?”

Lucy opened her mouth. Shut it.

Her brothers exchanged a long look.

“In the military, you have a defined objective,” Caleb said. “Identify the threat, take it out. But you can’t

neutralize a threat you can’t see. We don’t know where this demon, Gau, is coming from. How he’ll

strike. Which means we’ll be running patrol a long time. You can’t leave.”

Panic beat strong wings in her chest. She caught her breath in despair.
Never
leave? Never return to

Sanctuary? Never see Conn again?

But she had always known in her heart that she could not go back, she accepted numbly. She had made

her choice. Taken her stand. She was home now.

She had only herself to blame that it didn’t feel like home anymore.

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