Sea Witch (22 page)

He used to dream his brother would come back. Show up at a ball

game or ring the bell one Christmas morning or be there by Caleb’s

hospital bed when he opened his eyes.

Not appear half-naked on his island, threatening his woman.

Caleb shook his head. If Dylan lived, he would be— what now?

Thirty-six? Thirty-seven. This guy couldn’t possibly be his brother.

“Nope,” Caleb said.

“I’m crushed.”

Caleb didn’t smile. “Can I see some identification, sir?”

“I don’t have any.” The guy jerked his head in Maggie’s direction.

“Ask her who I am.”

“Maggie, do you know this man?”

“Yes.” Her chin went up. Her big dark eyes hit him like a punch in

the gut, harder than the realization that she must have been lying to him,

playing him from the start. “And so do you.”

“The Prodigal Son returns,” Asshole said lightly. “Wasn’t that the

story Mrs. Pruitt liked so much? Aren’t you supposed to kill a fatted calf

or something?”

Caleb felt like killing something, all right.

Mrs. Pruitt . . . God, he hadn’t thought of her in years. Growing up,

every kid on the island had been forced to attend her week-long vacation

Bible school at least once.

Every
kid on the island, Caleb told himself.

Not just the Hunter brothers.

177

His gaze switched from Asshole to Maggie, standing between them,

drinking in every word.

“I’ll have to ask you to come down to the station, sir.”

“No,” the guy said.

“Why do you need him to go to the station?” Maggie asked.

He wasn’t questioning the guy in front of her. “Why did you slap

him?”

She shrugged. “He annoyed me.”

“Good enough for me. Jeep’s that way,” Caleb said, gesturing up the

hill.

Offshore, the waves churned, up and down, like a washing

machine’s agitation cycle. Caleb eyed the white water and thought,
Rip

current
.

“You can’t make me go anywhere,” Skinny sneered.

Caleb’s jaw set. What was this, fifth grade? He pushed away a

memory of Dylan yelling, tearful, dancing out of their father’s reach.
You

can’t make me
.

“You don’t have the power,” the man added scornfully. “I have

power.”

Caleb tapped his chest. “I’ve got a badge.” More than his anger,

more than his gun, that gave him authority to act. “Let’s go.”

And then the sea reared up like a living thing and struck the beach in

a ten-foot wave.

The surge smashed into Caleb, knocking him off his feet, carrying

him in a rush up the beach. Water and sand roiled around him, roaring in

his ears, blocking his nostrils, green and gray and gold speckled with grit

and bubbles.

178

The wave hurled and rolled him, scraped and raked him. His boots

dragged like weights over the rocks. He fought the surge, struggling for

balance. For breath.

Panic squeezed his lungs.
Maggie
.

He clawed free of the undertow, staggering to his feet, and saw her

standing a few yards away, her wet, white clothes clinging to every

perfect curve, ankle deep in foaming water.

She pushed her sopping hair back from her face. “Now I am really

annoyed.”

Caleb almost grinned. He coughed to clear his lungs and spat,

wiping salt from his mouth. “Where is he? Where’s—”

The man who claimed to be Dylan.

Maggie shielded her eyes against the bright sunshine, gazing out at

the impossibly calm sea. The quiet water withdrew, whispering, leaving

her bare feet planted firmly on a patch of sand. “There.” She pointed to a

sleek, dark head bobbing through the waves offshore. “Say good-bye to

your brother.”

“Fuck,” Caleb said wearily and reached for his phone. Would it still

work?

“What are you doing?”

“Calling for rescue. He’s caught in the tide.”

“He’s not caught. See?” She put her hand on his wet sleeve,

compelling him to look. “He’s swimming.”

Caleb watched. Instead of being sucked out to sea at top speed by the

current, the black, bullet-shaped head appeared to be moving easily,

parallel to the shore. “He’s still too far out. He can’t swim that long.

Nobody could.”

“No man.”

Caleb frowned. “That’s what I said.”

179

“No
man
can swim that long. Dylan can.” Maggie smiled at him, her

eyes sane and a little sad. “Your brother is not human, Caleb.”

180

Fourteen

CALEB’S FACE CLOSED LIKE A CLAMSHELL, SMOOTH and

hard.

Margred’s heart sank. He did not look like her lover. He looked like .

. . well, like a man who spent his days questioning the actions and

motivations of other men. She almost wished her words back.

Too late.

She had owed him the truth since he rescued her on the beach. Since

she learned of his mother’s identity. Maybe from the moment he first

came in her body and whispered his name in her hair.

“You’ve had a shock,” he said. Polite. Detached. “Let me take you to

see Donna Tomah.”

He did not believe her.

She had not expected him to, and yet she was tempted to smack him

the way she had slapped his brother.

“I do not need a doctor. I need you to listen.”

"Oh, I’m listening. You ought to have your head examined. ”

Her lips drew back from her teeth. “You said you wanted the truth.”

“That’s right. Facts, not fairy tales.”

“So you will not listen to any facts that do not fit your particular

theories?”

That got him, she saw with satisfaction. His mouth flattened to a

thin, grim line. “Right. All right. Go ahead.”

181

But now that she had his attention, the enormity of her task

overwhelmed her. She touched the necklace around her throat. For

reassurance? “I am not sure where to start.”

His expression did not soften, but his green eyes, meeting hers, were

patient and steady. Caleb’s eyes.

Cop’s eyes.

“The beginning is usually a good place,” he said.

Margred opened her mouth. Shut it. At the bottom of the tide pool, a

crab rummaged through a pile of periwinkle shells, tapping, weighing,

discarding.

“Perhaps we should sit down,” she suggested.

His eyebrows rose, but he folded his long body and sat, stretching

out his injured leg, his wet boots scraping on the white limestone forts of

a barnacle colony. The sun teased golden glints from his damp hair,

touching his face with color. His throat looked strong and faintly

sunburnt, tempting her to test its temperature with her lips.

She sat a few feet away—she had to be able to think— and spread

her skirt to dry.

Caleb waited, his silence pulling at her.

She picked at a loose white thread, searching for an end. For a

beginning. Written texts were rare among her people. Their history was

passed and preserved for each generation, each incarnation, in the eternal

song of the whales. How would it sound to Caleb?

She took a deep breath. “Before—well, before anything was, the

Spirit of the Creator moved upon the face of the waters.”

Caleb’s mouth twitched. “Maggie . . . when I said the beginning, I

didn’t mean all the way back to Genesis.”

“What is Genesis?”

His expression closed again. “Never mind. Go on.”

182

Margred bit her lip in vexation. In centuries past, when the mer

revealed themselves to the sons and daughters of men, they were regarded

with awe and worship, lust and fear. Margred did not expect Caleb’s

worship exactly; but neither was she prepared for his studying her like a

scientist observing some new species of marine life.

It was easier, she found, not to look at him at all. “Out of the void,

He formed the elements. And as each element took shape, its people also

came into being—the children of earth and sea, of air and fire.”

“People,” Caleb repeated. “Are you talking Adam and Eve here?”

She shook her head. “Humankind came later. Much later, long after

life crawled from the sea and walked on the land. But then the Creator

breathed His immortal spirit into mortal clay. Many elementals resented

this new creation— particularly the children of fire. The children of air

defended the Creator’s decision, appointing themselves heralds and

protectors of humankind. While the children of earth and sea, forced to

cohabit with you, chose to avoid you as much as possible.” Margred

shrugged. “Sometimes it is not possible. And then legends—or

children—are born. Your own mother—”

“No,” Caleb said.

“Your mother came to your father out of the sea.” Now Margred

dared to look at him. “As I came to you.”

His eyes were splinters of green ice. “You’re telling me my mother,

Alice Hunter—”

“Atargatis.”

“And you are . . . mermaids?” His voice cracked in disbelief.

Margred nodded. “Well, not mermaids, exactly. Selkies.”

“What’s the difference?”

“The mer may take different forms. Fish or mammal or—”

“Prove it.”

“Excuse me?”

183

“Turn into a—what is it you turn into?”

She stiffened at his tone. “A seal.”

“Right. Turn into a seal.”

She struggled for patience. He wanted facts, he’d said. Proof. It was

his nature, the nature of his job.

It was not her nature to justify or explain. But for his sake . . .

“I can’t,” she admitted reluctantly. “The last time I swam to the

island, the night I was attacked, my pelt was stolen from me. I cannot

Change form without my sealskin.”

He raised his brows. “Convenient.”

“Not for me,” she snapped. “Nor, I imagine, for your mother.”

“Leave my mother out of this.”

“I would not even if I could.” Moved beyond her people’s customary

boundaries by her need to convince him, Margred reached out to him,

laying her fingers on his arm. His sleeve was stiff and sticky with salt, his

muscles hard as iron. “The sea is your heritage, Caleb.”

“Maybe,” he said, his tone dry. “But I don’t turn into a seal and bark

when the moon is full.”

Stung, she snatched back her hand. Stupid man. “The moon has

nothing to do with it. Most human-selkie offspring are mortal. Human

genes and the human soul are what you would call dominant traits.”

“But you said that guy—”

“Your brother, Dylan.”

“He’s not my brother. My brother is gone. Besides, he’s too young.”

“Selkies do not age as mortals do. Only when we are in human

form.”

“He sure as hell looked human to me.”

184

“It wasn’t until he reached puberty that his true nature revealed

itself. When Dylan was thirteen, he Changed for the first time.” She

gazed into Caleb’s cold, closed face, the chill settling at her heart. “That’s

why your mother returned to the sea. To protect her son.”

A muscle worked in Caleb’s jaw. “She had another son. And a one-year-old daughter.”

Margred heart ached for him. For them all. “She had no choice. And

she paid dearly for it. She lost her children and her life. Dylan—”

“Look, I don’t need some crazy story to justify what my mother

did,” Caleb interrupted. “And you don’t need to lie to cover up whatever

it is you’ve done.”

Margred scrambled to her feet. “I am not lying.”

“Maggie . . .” His expression was patient. Weary. “This guy—the

one you claim is my brother—did he hit you? Hurt you? Threaten you in

any way?”

She blinked. “No. I slapped him.”

“Good for you. How about before?”

She continued to stare at him, baffled.

“On the beach,” Caleb clarified. “The night you were attacked. Was

it the same guy?”

“Oh, no.”

“It was dark, you said. He came up behind you. Maybe you didn’t

get a good look at him.”

“I did not see him at all.” She had told him that much already. “But

it was not Dylan.”

“How can you be sure?”

“It was a demon.”

185

Silence fell. Long moments passed, filled only by the whispering

surf and the snickering wind.

Her throat clogged.
Dylan
had not believed her. Why did she expect

Caleb would? Because he was her lover? When had that come to mean

anything more than—

She trembled. When had that come to mean anything?

“All this talk about mermaids and demons . . . It’s a problem, ”

Caleb said, still in that measured, dispassionate voice.

Disappointment was sharp as salt in her mouth. “
Your
problem.”

“Say
ours
.” He stood. “I want you to come to Portland with me to

see Dr. Crawford.”

She lifted her chin. “I am not sick. Or stupid. I do not want to see