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 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.
The earth groaned. The tower trembled. Conn shifted his weight on the castle wall, riding the swell like a man on the deck of a ship.
His world was already shaken when Lucy left.
The demons’ work would only finish the job.
He gazed out over the horizon, a void where his heart used to be.
Griff climbed the wall to stand beside him. “They are gone?”
Conn nodded without speaking. The ship that bore Iestyn, Madadh, and the others had gradually disappeared from view, fleeing south before the wind he had summoned to carry them away. He had dispatched the ship at dawn, as soon as the first rumble made itself felt through the castle stones. There had been no time for long instructions, no delay for farewells, no interval for Kera’s pleas to stay and aid in Sanctuary’s defense. She was a talented weather worker. Better to preserve her gifts if the island fell.
At Conn’s insistence, she had boarded the boat, seething with resentment and distress. Iestyn had been pale, Roth subdued. Conn had known the children from the time he had taken them from their human families, from the time they had played with the hound’s many-times-great-grandsire on the rushes of the hall. They carried Sanctuary with them, a few small, precious objects for remembrance. They carried Conn’s prospects for the future and a closely guarded portion of his heart. They carried his dog, tied shivering and barking to the rail.
It was unlikely that Conn would see them or that they would see Sanctuary again.
He watched until their sails slipped out of sight, lost in the hazy blue curve of the sea, sailing south toward the Azores. And then he turned and looked to the west, where Lucy had gone, taking his soul and his hopes
with her. He watched the ocean where Gau and his cohorts labored under the earth, applying pressure to turn the sea itself against Sanctuary.
Griff stirred as another rumble vibrated through the stones at their feet. “My prince, you are not safe up here. Come down.”
Conn shook his head without taking his eyes off the ocean. “Not yet.”
The castle would not yield to the quake.
It would fall, if it fell, to the sea.
“What are you going to do about Lucy?” Regina asked.
Lucy looked up in mild annoyance. “I’m still here.”
Forever, she thought, and shivered with loss and grief.
“No, I meant . . .” Regina’s thin face flushed. “The one upstairs.”
Caleb rubbed the back of his neck. “Damned if I know.”
“Don’t look at me,” Dylan said. “I never made a claidheag . I don’t have the power. But I think she’s supposed to wither away when she isn’t needed anymore.”
“Perhaps she is still needed,” Margred suggested.
Dylan raised an eyebrow. “Needed?”
“By your father,” Margred said gently.
“Oh, Christ,” Caleb said. “This will blow his mind.”
“Or knock him off the wagon,” Dylan said.
Lucy bit her lip. She remembered their father’s face as he kneeled on the floor of the hall—“What the hell did you do to her?”—as he cradled the corn maiden in his arms. Her heart wept for him. For Conn. For herself.
What the hell had she done?
Caleb rubbed the back of his neck. “Maybe not. He’s been going to his AA meetings. And last time I checked, Lucy—the other one—was still breathing.”
“Yeah, but magic can’t keep her alive indefinitely,” Dylan said.
Margred looked at them both in dark-eyed reproof. “There is another magic that might.”
“What magic?” Dylan asked.
Regina poked him in the ribs.
Lucy hugged her arms to herself. “Love,” she said quietly. “Love could save her.”
In the silence, a candlestick fell and shattered on the hearth.
The windows rattled.
Regina pressed a hand to her stomach. “What was that?”
Somewhere down the road, a car alarm blared, muffled by distance and by snow.
“Felt like a bomb,” Caleb said.
Lucy’s stomach dipped in dread.
“Or an earthquake,” Margred offered.
“An earthquake.” Regina snorted. “In Maine.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Dylan said.
Caleb nodded. “Nineteen twenty-six.”
All the little hairs rose on the back of Lucy’s neck and along her arms. “What are you talking about?”
“Last recorded tsunami on Mount Desert Island was caused by an earthquake in nineteen twenty-six,” Caleb said promptly.
Regina laughed. “Boys and their fact books.”
But no one else smiled. Looking at Dylan and Margred, Lucy saw a shadow of the same instinct in their eyes.
Something in Caleb’s words, something in Dylan’s expression, tickled her memory. Griff, his face grave, hurrying to find Conn in the courtyard, saying . . . What had he said? “Ronat has discovered a new vent to the northwest.”
“An earthquake,” Lucy repeated slowly. “Not a vent? Or a volcano?”
Caleb narrowed his eyes, responding to some clue in her question or her voice. “What difference does it make?”
“Maybe none,” Lucy said.
That’s what she was afraid of. Maybe there was no difference at all.
The car horn continued to blare an intermittent warning.
In her mind, she saw the glowing line of fire in the caves beneath Sanctuary.
Her lips felt numb. Stiff. “What happens if there’s an earthquake?” she asked. “Here on World’s End.”
Caleb frowned. “Not a lot. Some structural damage. We’re mostly one- or two-story single-family dwellings. We might get some fires from downed lines or chimneys.”
“Fire?” Margred repeated.
“The island is warded,” Dylan said.
“Now, a bigger danger is an earthquake at sea,” Caleb said. “Depending on the magnitude and the distance and the tide, you could be looking at some serious flooding then.”
Lucy trembled. She had always dreamed of the sea. The sea and drowning. In her dreams, the oceans came for her, a hungry wall of water that swept everything, destroyed everything, killed everyone she loved.
She raised her head and looked at her family.
“Then I know where Gau is coming from,” she said steadily. “I know how he’ll strike. The demons caused that earthquake. And unless we stop them, they will flood World’s End.”
Lucy watched Caleb anxiously as he ended his radio call. Not because she didn’t expect it to confirm everything she said. But because she did.
“That was the county sheriff.” Her brother’s voice was grim. The last time she’d heard him speak in quite that tone, Maggie was missing. “The U.S. Geological Survey is reporting a six point two magnitude earthquake south of the Bay of Fundy. Damaged cable lines from here to Halifax. They’ve ordered mandatory evacuations along Penobscot Bay.”
“What about World’s End?” Regina asked.
Caleb’s mouth tightened. “No evacuations.”
“In a fast boat—”
“Not in the dark. Not through the surge. The first wave will hit us in less than an hour.”
Dylan put his arm around Regina. “What about helicopters?”
“Not in this snow. We couldn’t get more than a few people off that way anyway.”
“I only care about a few.”
“Wait,” Lucy said.
“Can’t,” Caleb answered briefly. “I need to sound the hurricane warning, get everyone up to high ground.”
“The community center,” Regina said.
Caleb nodded. “Tell your mother. She’s mayor. Get her started making calls. We’ll need volunteers to get the word out, move folks along.”
“We’ll need food,” Regina said. “I’ll load the catering van.”
“You’re pregnant. You’re not loading anything,” Dylan said.
She patted his cheek. “Fine. You lift, I’ll drive.”
Lucy pushed to her feet. She could feel the pressure building outside her, inside her, the wall of water bearing down, the power boiling up. “I need Dylan to stay with me. Dylan and Maggie.”
Dylan’s black eyes blazed. “Then you can help load the van. I’m not leaving Regina.”
“Maggie’s going to the community center,” Caleb said. “Where she’ll be safe.”
Lucy’s legs shook under her. All her life, she had shrunk from confrontation. All her life she had given in to avoid raised voices and hard looks. Until Sanctuary. Until Conn.
“You are stronger than either of us imagined,” he had said.
Strong enough to leave him.
Strong enough to do what needed to be done.
Lucy raised her chin and stared down her brothers. “You can’t save them,” she said. “I can.”
“You should listen to her,” Bart Hunter said.
Lucy’s heart thumped. They all turned.
The old man stood in the hallway at the bottom of the stairs, in almost the exact spot where Lucy had stood however many weeks ago.
“You should trust her,” he said. “That was my problem. I never trusted your mother. I didn’t listen.”
Lucy’s throat ached. “Thank you,” she whispered.
Something flickered in his eyes that might have been sorrow or pride or regret. “You were always a good girl,” he said and shuffled away.
“Dad,” Caleb called urgently.
Bart stopped.
“You need to get the . . . girl ready to move to the community center,” Caleb said. “My Jeep. Five minutes, okay? Bring plenty of blankets.”
Bart nodded and continued up the stairs.
Lucy blinked back tears and found Margred watching her. Her sister-in-law’s lips curved in a faint, approving smile. “Tell us what to do,” Margred said.
Small waves slapped the rocks below the towers of Caer Subai, rushed in, and drained away. Conn watched them ebb and flow, ebb and . . .
Ebb again.
He sucked in his breath through his teeth, fear cold in the hollow where his heart had been. It had begun.
“Call the wardens,” he ordered quietly.
As Griff ran to obey, Conn watched the water crawl away from the shore, exposing the fragile communities that live at the water’s edge, crabs and mussels and shining weed, barnacles and starfish abandoned by the grumbling tide.
And still the water drained away, drawing down, pulled by the waves still building out at sea, the powerful waves of displaced water created by the demons’ activity offshore. Soon those waves would reach the shallower waters around the island; and then the roaring flood would crest and fall on Sanctuary.
Unless Conn could hold his wardens together and hold back the sea.
“I cannot do this without you,” he had told Lucy.
He eyed the retreating water bleakly. He had no choice.
But he would have liked to see her one last time.
To tell her he loved her. To say good-bye.
The wiper blades scraped ineffectually at the windshield as Dylan drove their father’s truck through the dark and snow to the headland above the point. Lucy squeezed shoulder to shoulder between Dylan and Margred on the bench seat. A cold wind whistled through the faulty seals. The ancient heater blasted at their knees.
“You do realize,” Dylan said as the truck caromed over another icy bump, “that if we had any sense at all, we’d be driving the other way?”
Margred showed her teeth in what might have passed for a smile. “Bitch, bitch, bitch. At least you still have your pelt.”
Dylan threw back his head and laughed.
After a shocked moment, Lucy joined in.
They were going unprepared into battle together. Her long lost brother. Her newly acquired sister. Her unborn niece or nephew. She thought fleetingly of Caleb, risking his own safety to bring in the sick, the elderly, and the reluctant from all over the island, and Regina at the community center, cooking enough food for the entire town. Or an army.
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