Tides (17 page)

Of course the dress must be Lo’s,
Noah realized, though he couldn’t remember his sister ever wearing it. He hoped Lo would be glad she and Mara wore the same size. Mara looked so beautiful—maybe it would help her.

Lo seemed to have the same thought. She stroked the sash at her waist and smiled.

She glanced up at the clock. “We’d better go,” she said. “It started half an hour ago, I think.”

Noah had watched the hotel staff preparing for the dance through his bedroom window. The sun was just setting when he came down, and the tent had lit up with the firefly yellow of a thousand tiny string lights. He could hear a subwoofer’s heavy thud carrying all the way across the harbor.

Lo grinned. “Well?”

“Don’t let me keep you, lovelies,” said Gemm, hugging each of them in turn.

They boarded the
Minke
and puttered over to Star Island. Noah tossed the line to a waiting deckhand and jump-stepped onto the pier.

Before he could turn around, the deckhand offered to help Lo out of the boat. She looked startled but took his hand with a shy smile.

Noah offered his own hand to Mara. She shook her head and jumped from the boat to the pier in one fluid movement, sliding her fingers into his only after she found her own footing on land. Noah was still trying to get used to the idea that she took his hand only when she didn’t need it.

The air glimmered with the last traces of twilight. Noah glanced behind him and saw Lo engaged in a halting, blushing conversation with the deckhand.

He, on the other hand, couldn’t think of anything to say to Mara. She held his hand, and she smiled at him expectantly, but he couldn’t think of a damn thing to say.

It was, thankfully, too loud to talk much once they got inside. Pop music blared at them through speakers hung in each corner. A wooden floor covered the mostly level ground, but the dancers still leaned against a slight tilt down toward the shore. The lights glowed with lurid, alien colors: orange, red, purple. Balloons clustered above everyone like a spoonful of caviar.

Not many people were dancing yet. Most milled around, eating from bowls of pretzels and candy or drinking punch dispensed from a small silver fountain.

Noah clicked the pieces of his courage together. “Mara—want to dance?” he called over the music. He turned around, but she was gone.

He panicked, then saw her on the other side of the tent, already dancing. She grabbed Lo’s wrist and pulled her away from the deckhand, twirling her into a quick-spinning whirlpool of shining fabric. They laughed as they circled each other, hands clasped, arms stretched out tight. They looked as if they’d always been friends.

Noah looked down at his own hands, which felt suddenly empty. He walked over to the table, lifted a glass of punch, and swallowed it down, but he couldn’t shake the empty feeling. He looked for Mara again; she was still with Lo. The two girls kept collapsing with laughter.

He told himself he should be happy they were having a good time together, but he still turned away. He didn’t realize he’d been chewing his thumbnail until his teeth cut too far and he cringed, clenching his thumb into his fist so it wouldn’t bleed.

He heard the music change, the dance beat fading into a slow guitar sparkle. He felt a tap on his shoulder.

He turned and saw Mara, her face still flushed with laughter, her chest moving up and down as she regained her breath. “Hello,” she said.

He cleared his throat. “Hi.”

“So.” She touched his hand. “Do you want to dance with me?”

Noah looked down. He could feel every single cell of his skin where her finger touched it. He looked back up.

“Well?” Mara’s brows arched into dark crescents.

He smiled, nodded, and took her hand in his.

Many of the dancers had retreated to the tent walls, eyeing potential partners warily, so they had the dance floor almost to themselves. Mara stood in front of him, waiting.

Tentatively, he touched the deep curve of her waist, sliding his other hand into hers.

Her arm wound around his shoulder. She smiled at him, and they moved into step together.

Noah took a deep breath. He focused on the music, wondering if his feet could follow the rhythm. The song’s beat was slow and clear. After a few moments he relaxed enough to look into Mara’s eyes, to notice how she felt against him.

She smelled like water and nighttime air. The front of her dress brushed his shirt, and it took all his willpower to pretend he didn’t feel it. Her hands were cool, her torso warm where it touched his.

She pressed closer to him and rested her head on his shoulder.

He slipped his hand around to the small of her back. His thumb came up just over the edge of her dress, and the soft warmth of her skin met his. He closed his eyes, moving his thumb slowly up and down. He felt her shiver under his hand, and heard her sigh.

The song ended.

Then Mara pulled away, and the front of Noah’s body grew cold. She wouldn’t meet his eyes.

He felt suddenly angry. She was the one who’d pulled him in close, leaned on him while they danced, sighed against his ear. Now she stared at the floor, her head turned away, her eyes down.

He was sick of her contradictions. They needed to talk.

“What did I do?” he asked.

She looked up at him, finally. Her lashes were thick with water.

She dashed out of the tent.

Noah stood still for a moment, staring. He shook his head and ran after her.

Outside, the air was still and hot. The flames of cheap torches flickered around the tent’s edges. He chased her until they’d left most of the light behind.

She stopped, spun, and faced him. “Why would you do that?”

Noah gaped. “What?”

“To me. That.” Her eyes narrowed to black slits.

He stepped toward her. She backed away.

“Mara, come on.” He stepped again, and she retreated again. “Mara, please, what did I do?”

“You—we—” She looked away. “You linked with me. I could read your feelings.”

Oh, God.
Noah didn’t know what linking was, but he definitely didn’t want Mara to know what he’d felt with her in his arms—his thoughts hadn’t exactly been chaste. He cringed, thinking of what she now knew.

“I’m sorry.” How was it this girl made him apologize so much? “I didn’t mean to do anything, I swear.”

She turned away, covering her face with her hands. “I didn’t think we could do it. I didn’t know if you could even do it at all.”

“Do what? Mara, please, explain. What is linking?”

She placed her hand on his chest. “Don’t you feel it?”

“No, I—”

He stopped. He could feel his own heartbeat, but another beat behind it too, not quite in sync, faster than his own. His chest was warm where Mara touched it. He chased his own thoughts from his mind, listening for that
other
that he could barely sense at the edge of himself.

He sensed fear, doubt, heat . . . and entwining everything was a desperate, thrilling connection. They were just like his feelings, but somehow he knew these were not his own.

“Yes,” he said, amazed. “Yes, I can feel it, a little.” He frowned—when he spoke, his sense of that
other
in him went away. “Maybe—” He pressed his own hand over hers. He listened to her breath and matched it, inhaling and exhaling when she did. “I’m not sure . . .”

He stood still, listening, struggling. He could hardly hear the music anymore, but the sound of waves rushed loud in his ears. He closed his eyes, waiting for something he wasn’t sure he’d recognize.

“Here.” A surge of determination crossed over his heart, and Mara closed the distance between them, pressing her lips to his.

Their heartbeats rushed through his body. His arms circled around her, just so he could keep himself from falling.

twenty-six

T
HE
kiss was not brief, but it ended sooner than Mara would have liked. Noah pulled back, gentle but firm, his link a tangle of confusion and joy. His pale eyebrows were raised and his mouth was still slightly open, with just the shadow of a smile at its corner.

When she smiled back, he pulled her in again, and she had to close her eyes, the better to taste the human sweetness of his mouth. She leaned into his kiss and could not help but slip farther into the link.

Then a rush of fear burned through her, scouring her bones and searing her skin. Her mouth broke away from Noah’s in a scream that at first she did not recognize as her own.

“What is it?” He reached for her.

She backed away, her body pleading with her to run toward the shore, to dive and swim and find her pod—find Ronan, whose pain and fear called more strongly through her link than anyone else’s.

She ran toward the ledge where she always hid her skin, slipped over the wet rocks, and crashed into the water. She felt scrapes sting her limbs, but she ignored them. It was only her humanskin, and soon she would be a seal.

She tried to cry in a seal voice, but her human mouth couldn’t make the sounds. She was still plunging her arms into the rocks, searching for her skin, when Noah reached her.

“Mara—oh my God, Mara, what’s wrong?” He climbed down into the water with her. He grasped her arms and drew her toward him.

Mara stared at him, then down at her hands. The webs between her fingers were torn from the rocks, some split down to her knuckles and pulsing blood.

She pushed at the fear screaming inside her. It wasn’t just Ronan—the whole pod was rent with horror and pain. It was coming from Appledore.

Mara flinched. All at once, she knew what had happened.

She clenched her bloody fists, yanked her arms away from Noah’s grasp, and dove into the water.

“Mara!” Noah’s calls grew faint, blending into the rush of waves.

Lo’s dress sagged heavy on her as she swam. She kicked off the high-heeled shoes and tore a few strips off the skirt before giving up. She’d move faster if she thought only of swimming.

But swimming was painfully slow in this form, without a seal’s flexible spine or powerful flippers to help her. In her humanskin the water was cold, so cold.

Her link pulled her toward Appledore, and she told herself to keep moving, struggling with her long and useless human limbs.

Her feet touched bottom and she ran, spray swirling and splashing around her. Lo’s headband fell over her eyes, and she pushed it back. Her chest heaved, unused to such a constant need for oxygen.

She thought she’d find the whole pod on the shore, but Ronan stood there alone. He wrung his sealskin in his hands and paced the rocks like a trapped beast.

“Mara!” he hissed, running to her through the shallows. “What took you so long?”

“I—” She gasped, willing her breath to slow. “I tried to come quickly. I—”

He cut her off. “It doesn’t matter.” His gaze jumped past her, out to the open ocean. “It’s too late now.”

“Oh, Goddess—please, Ronan, just tell me.”

“It’s Lir.” Ronan met her eyes. The guilt in his link hit her like a rogue wave. “He’s gone.”

“Gone?” The panic Mara had felt before vanished. Everything inside her grew empty and blank. Even the air seemed grayer, drier. Her skin turned cold.

She thought of the other younglings. For their sake, she managed to collect herself enough to speak, enough to act. “And the others?”

“Maebh has them, out by Whale Rock. We haven’t told them everything yet, but of course they know he’s gone.” Ronan’s shoulders convulsed. Thin tracks of salt shone on his cheekbones. “I can’t believe I let it happen again.”

“It wasn’t you.” Was it Maebh’s fault, for insisting she go with Noah and Lo to the dance? Was it her own, for agreeing? She couldn’t tell now. She tried to send Ronan comfort, but all she could find in herself was that suffocating blankness. She had no comfort to give.

She tried to think of something that would stop him from drowning in his guilt and panic, something that could occupy him and help the younglings. “Go hunting. Find something for them to eat. They’re hungry, and probably even more frightened than—well, than we are. They need you. I’ll stay here and look for answers. Just because Aine—” The name caught like a barb in her throat and she could not speak. She took a deep breath and tried again. “I’ll stay here. Go to the younglings, Ronan.”

She felt him wanting to protest. She straightened herself to her fullest height and stared him down with all the authority of an Elder.

A growl rumbled in his throat. She kept looking into his eyes.

He lowered his head and nodded.

She felt almost triumphant for a moment. Then she remembered why they were doing this, and she hated herself for taking pleasure in besting Ronan.

“You’re right,” he said. They both knew the younglings’ safety was the most important thing to him.

He wrapped his sealskin over his shoulders and waded into deeper water.

Mara watched him swim away. She reached out with her mind, searching for the pod. The Elder was easy to find, and the younglings’ links surrounded hers like a faint halo. They were all frightened, of course, the little ones overwhelmed with exhaustion and hunger. The guilt flowing through Maebh was like the pressure of another ocean.

Mara pushed the doors of her link closed, knowing she couldn’t think with the pain of her pod filling her senses.

It seemed impossible that another of their number was gone.

No,
she told herself,
not gone. Taken.
This was a kidnapping, just like Aine’s.

Mara’s jaw tightened. She wished she could be both seal and human when she found Lir’s captor, so she could wring his neck and sink her sharp teeth into it at the same time.

She waded through the shallows, flaring her nostrils to sniff out Lir’s scent. She could smell every member of her pod, their excitement during the ceremony, the rank scent of their adrenaline and fear when they realized Lir was gone.

A faint smell of rot slithered up from the pools between the rocks. The tide was at its lowest now, and the corpses of trapped fish and mollusks were exposed to the air. It was a richly sour smell, so close to the scent of food that for a moment Mara found it appealing.