Sea Lord

by Virginia Kantra

  Right. Like he didn’t know. Like he couldn’t see.

  “I mean you no harm,” he said, almost gently.

  She stuck out her chin, resisting the urge to cross her arms over her chest. “Tell that to my brothers. They’ll come after me.”

  Wouldn’t they?

  Okay, so they weren’t all one big happy family. Maybe they had secrets. Maybe they’d even lied. But Caleb would search for her. She could count on Caleb. Even when she was a fourteen-year-old runaway puking her guts out in a gas station stall, her brother had tracked her down.

  “They will not find you,” Conn said.

  His assurance shook her. She was cold. So cold. The fur caressed her ankles. “Caleb will. He’s a cop.”

  “He is not even aware that you are missing. I left a claidheag in your place.”

  She was getting pretty tired of gawking and saying, “What?” So she didn’t say anything.

  “A claidheag is a simulacrum,” Conn explained as if she had asked. “A living image created by magic.”

  “You made an image of me.”

  He nodded.

  She sucked in her breath. “And you think my family won’t notice I’ve been replaced by some kind of pod person?”

  He shrugged. “Humans see what they expect to see. What they want to see.”

  She winced. Because, of course, he was right.

  That was how she got along. That was how she survived. By fitting in. By blending in. By making damn sure that when people looked at her—her fellow teachers, her neighbors, everybody—they saw quiet, well-behaved Lucy Hunter, who took care of her father and was good with children.

  Not the weird kid.

  Not the drunk’s kid.

  Not the superfreak.

  Her gaze dropped to the pelt at her feet. Although if Conn was right about all the rest, “freak” barely covered it.

  “What about Dylan? And Maggie? They’re not human, you said. Shouldn’t they be able to, um . . .”

  “They have no reason to suspect that you are gone. And the claidheag will learn very quickly to be what they want.”

  “It’s not the same.”

  “But it is. You also pretend.” His eyes were sharp as polished steel. His observation cut her heart. “Or will you deny that when your family looks at you, they see only what they want to see?”

  “My family loves me,” Lucy said, her voice trembling with rage. She hoped it was rage.

  “They do not know you.”

  “Neither do you. You don’t know anything about me.”

  “You are the daughter of Atargatis.”

  “My mother’s name was Alice. Alice Hunter.”

  “Your mother was the sea witch, Atargatis.”

  She set her jaw mulishly. “Prove it.”

  His brilliant eyes softened with what might have been sympathy. “I do not need to prove anything. The evidence is all around you. Within you.”

  Fur brushed her calves, tempting her to bury her toes in its warmth. She pulled her feet under her chair. “You mean, your pelt.”

  “I mean your power. Open your eyes. Look at the condition of the cabin. Your gift struck at me to protect you.”

  “Too late,” she muttered. “If I really had some kind of magic force field, it should have kicked in when you jumped me in the garden.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “It was hardly a rape, my dear. You are no defenseless virgin.”

  Her cheeks, her face, her whole body burned. She took responsibility for her own actions. But there was no reason to be insulting. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Merely that you are stronger than either of us imagined,” he said coolly. “As you proved again when you flung the contents of the cabin at my head.”

  “That wasn’t me.”

  “What, then?”

  “I don’t know. Wind. A whaddayacallit. Poltergeist.”

  “You believe in ghosts?”

  “You believe in selkies.”

  He laughed. “Indeed.”

  The laughter made him seem more approachable, almost . . . She bit her lip. Almost human.

  Conn regarded her thoughtfully. The lantern warmed the marble perfection of his face, softening the hard line of his mouth. “There was a teacher once on my island, on Sanctuary, who told stories to the children to make them understand. Do you do that?”

  “Sometimes,” she admitted cautiously.

  “Then let me tell you a story,” he said. “To help you understand.”

  He wanted something, Lucy thought. Or he wouldn’t be so gentle. “You can talk to me.” “They treat you like a child.” “Trust me.”

  She shivered.

  And yet she had sent for him because she wanted answers. What did she have to lose by listening to him now? Maybe a part of her even wanted to believe . . . What?

  “You are stronger than either of us imagined.”

  And maybe she was an idiot.

  The darkness was filled with rising and falling sound, with the rush of wind and water. Ropes creaked. The cabin rocked. The jagged light of the broken lantern danced on the ceiling and spilled like gold coins to the floor.

  Apparently her silence was all the assent Conn needed, because he began. “In the time before time, the Spirit of the Creator swept over the waters,” he said in his deep, mesmerizing voice. “From the void, He made the domains of earth, sea, and sky. He called the light into being. As each element formed, its people took shape: the children of earth and sea and the children of air and fire. You have this story.”

  “Um. Some of it.” Bart Hunter was not a churchgoing man. But like every other kid on the island, Lucy had attended Mrs. Pruitt’s Vacation Bible School. She could still summon hazy memories of Noah’s Ark, Popsicle sticks, and glue. She was pretty sure, however, that Mrs. Pruitt’s lessons on Creation didn’t go exactly like this. “Except God makes Adam out of dust.”

  “Man was formed later, after the earth flowered and life crawled from the sea. Not all the elementals—the First Creation—were pleased when the Creator turned His efforts and attention toward mankind. The children of air supported Him, in this as in everything. The children of fire rebelled. While those of us forced to share our elements, our territories, with humankind withdrew, the fair folk to the hills and the merfolk to the sea.”

  She struggled to understand. “You hid.”

  “We retreated. Yes.”

  His cool tone needled her. “So, what brought you to World’s End? Shore leave?”

  His expression grew even colder and more remote. “Not that.”

  “What, then? What do you want with me?”

  “I saw your face,” he said abruptly.

  She opened her mouth; closed it again.

  “In the waters of a tide pool. In a vision. In my dreams.” His gaze locked with hers. “I saw you, and I came for you.”

  Her heart beat faster. It was like something in a fairy tale. Or a dream. She whispered, “Why?”

  In the shadows cast by the lantern, his eyes were dark. “There is a prophecy that a female of your mother’s line will alter the balance of the elements, perhaps even restore our people to what we have been. We need you. I need you.”

  Yearning almost robbed her of breath. He was telling her what every child ought to hear, what every woman wanted to believe.

  For years, Lucy had been waiting to be wanted. For her mother to come back, for her brother to come home, for her father to look up from his bottle and actually see her. All through childhood, she’d believed there must be something wrong with her, because her mother had left them, because her father was a drunk. All her life, she had wanted to feel a part of things, normal, connected, whole.

  And always she had been aware that she was different. Flawed.

  There was a knot in her chest, an ache in her throat like unshed tears. Lucy swallowed. What if . . . Oh, God. What if Conn were telling the truth? What if she felt like a freak because she was a freak?

  Or her mother wa
s.

  Her heart hammered with the need to believe. Panic slithered over her skin.

  “I’m not . . . I can’t be what you think I am.”

  “You are your mother’s daughter.”

  She shook her head. “You don’t understand. I’m afraid of the water. I get seasick. I can’t even swim.”

  “You have her power. Her lineage. It is enough.”

  Enough for what? she wondered wildly.

  The sealskin lay on the floor between them, the elephant in the room.

  “You could have told me,” she said, shaken. “You could have explained.”

  “Would you have come?”

  No.

  “Maybe not,” she admitted. “But I should have had the choice.”

  His mouth was grim, his eyes bleak. “There is no choice. For either of us.”

  6

  EDITH PAINE, THE TOWN CLERK, STUCK HER NEAT gray bob into Caleb’s office. In addition to handling the town’s permits, billing, and filing, Edith served as the police department’s day dispatcher and the island’s twenty-four-hour news source. Caleb never walked past her desk in the outer office without feeling like he should wipe his shoes first.

  “You’ve got a fax from Marine Patrol,” she announced. “They want you to keep an eye out for a boat missing from its moorings in Rockland. Caroline Begley from the inn is on line one. And your brother’s here to see you.”

  Caleb pressed a button on his computer keyboard, blanking the screen. “Thanks, Edith. I’ll take the call. Tell Dylan to wait.”

  But Edith stayed in the doorway. She nodded toward his blank monitor. “You’re not shopping for cradles already.”

  Caleb’s face heated as if she’d had caught him using the town’s computer to surf for porn instead of woodworking plans. “I was thinking of building one.”

  She gave him what might have been an approving look over the top of her glasses. “Well, a woman does like a man who can handle his tools.”

  “When you’re done sexually harassing my brother,” Dylan said from the doorway, “I need to talk to him.”

  Caleb cleared his throat. “Later. I should take this call.”

  “Conn’s gone,” Dylan said.

  Adrenaline shot through Caleb’s system like a jolt of bad coffee. “When?”

  “If you mean Mr. Llyr, he left yesterday,” Edith said. “Without paying his bill at the inn. That’s why Caroline called. She went to change the sheets today, and his bed hadn’t been slept in.”

  The brothers exchanged a look.

  “Thank you, Edith,” Caleb said. “Close the door on your way out, would you?”

  “But Caroline—”

  “Tell her I’ll be along to take her statement as soon as I’m finished here.”

  Edith sniffed. The latch clicked softly behind her.

  Dylan propped a hip on a corner of Caleb’s desk.

  “What do you know about this?” Caleb asked.

  “Less than your clerk, obviously. I went to the inn, and he was gone.”

  “Maggie? Regina?”

  “Are fine,” Dylan said. “I stopped by the restaurant on the way here.”

  Caleb released a breath he hadn’t been aware of holding. “Lucy?”

  “She stayed home sick today.”

  Caleb frowned. “Again?” Even when they were kids, Lucy had never missed more than a day of school in her life. Caleb sometimes thought the classroom provided the stability their home life had lacked. “Have you seen her?”

  Dylan nodded. “This morning. She said she was feeling a little better. Apparently our father made her some tea.”

  “Our father?”

  Dylan’s lips twisted. “That’s what she said.”

  “So, everybody’s accounted for,” Caleb said slowly. “Everything’s all right.”

  “Not everyone,” Dylan said. “Not Conn.”

  “He’s off my turf. Out of my jurisdiction.”

  “And it doesn’t bother you he left without telling us.”

  “He’s selkie. That’s what selkies do.”

  Dylan lifted a brow. “Still sore about our mother, little brother?”

  Caleb’s jaw tightened. “This isn’t about our mother.”

  “The prince thinks otherwise. If the prophecy is true—”

  “If he gave a shit about the prophecy, he would have stuck around.”

  “Unless he couldn’t,” Dylan said. “I would know if the demons broke through my wards. But something must have happened to call Conn back to Sanctuary.”

  The bad coffee feeling came back to burn in his gut. “That’s his problem,” Caleb said grimly.

  Dylan’s flat, black gaze met his. “Until it becomes ours.”

  The boat flew before the wind, rising and falling with the waves, its sails nearly at right angles to the hull, wing on wing. Conn’s hair whipped his face.

  He bared his teeth, enjoying the rush and control, the speed as heady as freedom. His presence at the helm was hardly necessary. Magic drove the wind that filled the sails. But he liked knowing he had not lost his touch with the sheets, despite the centuries since he’d last left home.

  The island burst from the surrounding sea between the deep kelp forests and swirling sky, solid as an anchor. Shining like a dream.

  Sanctuary.

  A possessive ache tightened his chest. He squinted through the strands of his hair, trying to see his home through the eyes of a stranger. Through Lucy’s eyes.

  The green hills had faded with the passing of summer, but today the sun had pierced the mists and magic to glaze the ancient towers with light. Rock spray sparkled like flung fistfuls of fat diamonds. A cloud of sea birds drifted around the southern cliff face, crying a faint and far-off welcome.

  Would the girl sleeping belowdecks appreciate the cold, stark beauty of his island? How could she not?

  Unbidden, her words blew back to him. “I didn’t ask to be brought here. You need to take me home.”

  Conn’s hands tightened on the wheel, his light mood dropping like the wind. He was as bound by his duty as she was by her destiny. Her fears and his own regret were equally irrelevant. There could be no turning back, he thought bleakly.

  For either of them.

  He heard her before he saw her, the scrape of the hatch, a soft footfall. He smelled her, human, female, sweet.

  He turned his head.

  Lucy clung to the rail, legs braced against the swell. He had an impulse to go to her, to steady her with a hand beneath her elbow. But the selkie did not touch. Only to fight or to mate, acts of possession as much as passion.

  She would not welcome his assistance anyway. In the cabin, she had recoiled from him, from the touch of his fur.

  Yesterday she had found an enormous yellow rain slicker and navy overalls in one of the lockers to replace the warmth of his pelt. With the jacket hanging below her knees and the sleeves rolled back from her wrists, she looked ridiculous, appealing, and very, very young.

  Old enough, she had said.

  For sex? No doubt.

  For the rest? He was not sure. He had ruled for nine centuries. He had lived much longer than that. But Lucy was young, even by human standards. To her, even Dylan was old. She could have no idea of real age, no clue what was required of her.

  His gaze dropped to her narrow feet, bare beneath her cuffed pants.

  And suddenly she was in his head, the air ripe with sweat and sex and the scent of growing things. Her long body rising from the earth to meet him, mate him, take him. The tiny jewel glinting against her smooth belly. The sun searing his shoulders as he plunged into her, male to female, sex to sex, power to power . . .

  Stunned, he stared, stirred to the heart and the root. His pulse drummed in his ears.

  The wind slipped his distracted grasp. The boat veered. The boom swung.

  “Look out!” she cried.

  The heavy boom swept the cockpit as the wind, freed from the force of his magic, shifted direction. Conn ducked, cu
rsing the sails and his loss of control.

  The deck pitched.

  He grabbed for the wind and the main sail, pulled the jib sheet on the leeward side. The breeze surged. The sails rattled together and swelled. The boat heeled, collecting itself like a skittish horse, and leaped forward into the waves.

  Lucy staggered toward the bench and sat down hard. Water shot over the side. She recoiled from the spray like a cat.

  Conn winched the main sail taut. “Thank you.”

  She stared at him blankly.

  “For your warning,” he said.

  “Well, I could hardly let you get knocked overboard.”

  He was gratified. “Indeed.”

  “I mean it,” she said. “I can’t sail. Or swim.”

  Ah. He remembered. She was afraid of the water. Unthinkable, for a daughter of a selkie.

  “You must learn to live with the sea,” he said.

  She straightened inside her bulky clothes. “I’m fine with the sea. As long as it stays on its side and I stay on mine. I only get nervous when the boundaries get crossed.”

  He recognized her challenge. Very few dared to challenge him.

  He should have been affronted. He found himself oddly pleased instead. She was not without spirit, this daughter of Atargatis.

  He looked down his nose. “It is only water.”

  Her throat moved convulsively as she stared over the surging swells running beside the hull. The wind drummed in the sheets. “Right. I guess I should be grateful you bothered with a boat.”

  “I chose it for you. After . . .” After he had taken her, among the vines and pumpkins. “After we met,” he amended smoothly.

  “Chose it?”

  “From your harbor.”

  Her brows drew together, making her look like her brother Caleb. “You mean, stole it.”

  Conn shrugged. “The selkie do not hold possessions as humans do. We flow as the sea flows. We accept the gifts of the tide.”

  “So you just take what you want.”

  The judgment in her tone annoyed him. He was selkie, one of the First Creation. He did not require her approval. “We take what is needed.” He met her gaze, letting the memory of their coupling burn between them. “And what is offered.”