“The finfolk are shape-shifters,” he explained patiently. “With enough skill, enough practice, we can control the Change and determine what we become. But your fears control you. You turn into a shark because you fear the shark.”
The boy’s chin jerked up. “I guess then you’re afraid of them, too.”
Morgan bared his teeth in a smile. “No.”
Zachary’s gaze dropped. He scooped his shirt from the sand. “Anyway, I’m not telling her.”
“She is your mother. She cares for you. She has the right to know.”
The realization made him deeply uneasy.
“Then you tell her.”
Morgan opened his mouth. Closed it.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Zachary said with bitter satisfaction. “You never told her either.”
“The children of the sea keep apart from humankind,” Morgan said stiffly.
But their neutrality had not preserved them in Hell’s war to regain primacy on earth.
Conn argued their people’s survival depended on a closer alliance with mortal kind. The old divisions were blurring, no more so than on World’s End with its muddle of human emotions and selkie bloodlines. Margred and Caleb, Dylan and Regina, Conn and the targair inghean . . .
“Not that far apart,” Zachary sneered. “Or you wouldn’t have me.”
The look, the tone were a younger version of Morgan’s own.
Another tie, another link, Morgan thought. My son. The recognition left him shaken and oddly moved.
“The point is, we did have you,” he said coolly, reaching for his customary distance. “And now we must all deal with the consequences.”
Zachary jammed his feet into boots. “We were dealing just fine before you showed up. We don’t need you.” He stomped for emphasis. “I don’t need you to take care of me.”
Morgan heard the bravado behind the boy’s boast. Little boy, he thought, you have no idea what you need.
“Zack!” Elizabeth opened the front door wider, as much caution as pleasure in her voice. She had changed her pants, Morgan observed, and caught her rich hair back in some sort of clip. Her cheeks were faintly pink. “How was your first day of work?”
“Fine.” He thrust the grocery bags at her. “For the cat.”
“Oh, that was so nice of you.” Her determined cheerful-ness was almost painful to hear. “Thank you! How much was it? Do you need—”
“No.”
Her gaze darted from him to Morgan. Responding, he guessed, to the tension in the atmosphere. “Something to eat?”
“No. Thanks.” Zack brushed by her on his way up the stairs. “I don’t really feel like talking right now.”
Insolent whelp.
But the boy was right about one thing. Elizabeth was not likely to accept the truth about her son without proof. Which meant any words tonight would be wasted.
He met her gaze, dark with confusion and the lingering shadows of desire, and was abruptly reminded he had been inside her only an hour ago. He wanted to be inside her again.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I ran into Zachary.” Quite literally. “After work.”
And hauled the boy’s ass home before he could take it into his head to flee.
Zachary shot him a cold look over his shoulder. It would have been more effective if Morgan hadn’t recognized the sneer from his own mirror. “I’m going to bed,” he announced.
Morgan let him go. Nothing could be settled tonight anyway.
“Good night,” Elizabeth called after him. She turned back to Morgan, her teeth denting her lower lip. “Do you want to come in?”
“Yes.”
Her flush deepened. “To talk.”
Ah.
“Not right now.”
“Then . . .” Her fingers tightened on the door.
“I do need to talk with you,” he said. “About Zachary.”
Apprehension darkened her eyes. “What happened?”
He could not tell her. But after tonight, he had a new understanding, a fresh sympathy for her fears. He hastened to reassure her. “About his future.”
“Tell me.”
Apparently he was not as reassuring as he thought. A lack of practice, perhaps. “I believe I have tested your . . . flexibility enough for one evening.”
Her eyes met his, a wry smile in their depths. “When you foisted that cat on me.”
Deliberately, he held her gaze. “When I foisted myself on you.”
Her throat moved as she swallowed. But she was not distracted, his Elizabeth. “You were going to tell me about Zack.”
“Tomorrow,” he said.
She searched his face. “He’s really all right?”
“He is fine.” Gau’s threat beat in his brain. “I will take them from you. The woman and the child both.” His jaw set. “I swear it.”
Elizabeth exhaled, her shoulders relaxing. “The clinic closes at two. Say, sometime after that?”
He would have another day with her, he thought. The relief he felt was new and troubling. “Tomorrow afternoon,” he agreed. “We will go to the beach.”
Her brows drew together. “The beach? But . . .”
“To talk about Zack,” he added.
“All right,” she said slowly. “If that’s what you want.”
It was not what he wanted at all. But he owed her the truth.
He could not rob her of their son without offering her even an explanation in return.
The next afternoon, Zack loaded groceries into the back of an SUV while its owner watched him closely. Like he was going to steal her beer or break her eggs or something.
“Thank you for shopping at Wiley’s,” he said before he closed the hatch.
Which was stupid, they were on a fricking island, where else was she going to shop? But Wiley said to say it, and Wiley was paying him, so he did.
He pushed her empty cart out of the way while the SUV backed up. The overcast parking lot was still half-full of cars from the two o’clock ferry. He jammed carts together, feeling the impact in his shoulders. He was stiff and sore from the night before, from hauling boxes and from the other thing.
The shark thing.
His throat closed. The parking lot blurred like the world underwater. Blinking fiercely, he grabbed at another cart. What was he going to do? He couldn’t escape what he was anymore. Couldn’t hide. Not with Morgan here, watching him. Knowing.
Sweat broke out on his face. What if Mom found out? Or Em. He felt sick to his stomach just thinking about it, guilty and excited and miserable. He’d always known he was different from the rest of his family, but at least when his dad . . . when Ben was alive, he’d felt like he belonged.
Where did he belong now?
He should never have left them alone last night, his mother and Morgan. The words ran together in his head, hismotherandmorgan, making him uneasy in a different way.
Had he told her yet? Maybe not. Probably not. She hadn’t said anything this morning. Just drank her coffee and packed Emily’s lunch and asked him the usual mom sort of questions. But it was getting harder and harder for both of them to pretend that everything was normal. That he was normal.
Morgan’s deep voice rolled in his head. “You are not a freak. You are finfolk.”
Whatever.
At least while he was at work he could forget for a little while. He rolled the carts toward the store entrance, letting their rattle jar his arms and fill his head.
He wasn’t going to think about it. Any of it.
He dumped the carts at the front of the store. While he was outside loading groceries, Wiley had taken his place bagging for the older cashier, Dot. Which meant . . .
Gritting his teeth, Zack walked to the station at the end of Stephanie’s checkout line.
She tossed her red-black hair without looking at him. “Where were you?”
“I had to take some woman’s groceries out to her car. Paper or plastic?” he asked the customer.
“Oh, plastic.”
Stephanie’s hands never missed a beat, pushing, weighing, ringing up the items sliding past her register. Her nails today were painted dark purple. “I meant last night.”
His mind slid away from the memory of the orb and the cold, terrifying rush through the water.
“I was here.” He piled cold cuts into a plastic bag, topped off with napkins. “Working.”
“After work.”
“Like you care,” he said bitterly.
“I do. I thought we were friends.”
He dropped a can of baked beans on top of some Kaiser rolls. “Right. That’s why you were home waiting for some guy last night.”
“Waiting for . . . Your total is seventy-three dollars and twenty-nine cents,” she said to the man standing in line. “Thank you for shopping at Wiley’s.”
She waited until the shopper collected his bags before she hissed at Zack, “I was waiting for you, dummy.”
His mouth gaped.
She turned to the next customer in line. “Did you find everything you need today?”
Zack’s mind whirled as he bagged the items that came at him down the line, crackers, dish soap, chunky chicken soup, two-sixty-nine.
Stephanie’s voice broke into his concentration. “So, if you weren’t with me, who were you with last night?”
She couldn’t be jealous. Jesus, he was a freak, whatever Morgan said.
“My father,” he mumbled.
She shot him a sharp look over her shoulder. “I thought your father was dead.”
“My biological father.”
“Oh.” Her fingers paused their dance over the register. “Wow. Wait . . . Is he the really hot guy staying at the inn? Looks kind of like you, but older? Blond.”
Zack felt his face get red. “I don’t know.” Was he hot? Did she think he was hot? “He’s got light hair.”
“That’s the one. Your total is thirty-two dollars and eighty-five cents,” she said to the woman in line.
Cans were piling up in front of Zack. He stuffed them into a bag.
“I’m sorry, this register is closed now. Dot can take you over there. Dad.” Stephanie raised her voice, calling over to the other register. “I’m taking my break now.”
“Stephanie, it’s Friday.”
“I get breaks on Friday.” She flashed him a grin. “Please.”
He huffed. “Fifteen minutes. Not one second more.”
“Thanks, Daddy. Come on,” she said to Zack.
He finished loading the woman’s cart. “Where?”
“Break. Hurry up.”
He followed her back to the storeroom, drawn by her quick, firm steps and smoothly moving hips, helpless as a fish on her line.
She dropped into a metal folding chair, waved him to another. “So, what did he want?”
“What?”
“Your father. What’s he doing here?”
He looked into her sharp, interested face. Some of the tension churning inside him eased. “I don’t know.”
“Maybe he’s dying and he wants to leave you all his money.”
He shot her a disbelieving look.
She shrugged. “Okay, my fantasy, not yours. He probably has another family tucked away somewhere.”
“I don’t think so.” Zack swallowed. “According to my mom, he never got married.”
“He could still have kids. You could have, like, half brothers and sisters running around someplace and never know it.”
Zack’s chest felt tight. He was having enough trouble figuring out where he belonged without the thought of others like him out there somewhere.
“I have a half sister already,” he said. “I don’t need anybody else.”
“Still, it’s kind of cool. Him looking you up after all these years. Although it’s weird, him waiting so long.”
“He didn’t know about me,” Zack heard himself saying. “When my mom got pregnant. She didn’t know how to get in touch with him.”
At least, that had been the story she’d always told him. Who knew anymore what was true or not?
“So it was kind of not his fault,” Stephanie said.
Zack jerked one shoulder, unwilling to admit it.
“I wonder if he’s carrying a torch for your mom.”
He recoiled. “What are you talking about?”
“You know, because he never married. And then your dad dies and your other dad, he finds her again and—”
“Stop,” Zack said.
“Sorry. Awkward.”
“Yeah.”
“I hate to think about my parents doing it.”
“He’s not my . . .” Zack’s voice cracked, humiliating him. It hadn’t done that in months. He cleared his throat. “My father is dead.”
Under the black liner, her blue eyes were serious and sympathetic. “It doesn’t take anything away from your dad if you get to know the new guy.”
Morgan’s voice rolled through his memory. “You have no idea of the dangers out there.”
“I was fine until you came along.”
“Which only proves how little you know.”
Zack stood, his chair scraping on the concrete floor. “I don’t want to know him. I don’t want anything to do with him.”
“Why not? You might have more in common with him than you think. You probably take after him, at least a little bit.”
Zack’s pulse pounded in his head. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“It’s not like he’s an axe murderer or something.”
His hands clenched into fists at his sides. Inside his boots, his toes curled. Not an axe murderer. A shark. Merfolk. Finfolk.
Whatever the hell he was.
She studied his face. Her own expression softened. “Anyway, he made the first move. I guess what happens next is up to you.”
Her words steadied him, made him feel as if he had a choice, a measure of control.
It was up to him.
He met her gaze, profoundly grateful. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” She strolled closer, tilted her head up. She was so pretty, so forceful, it was almost a shock to realize he was actually taller than she was. Standing on tiptoe, she touched her lips to his. Her lips were sweet and slightly sticky. Cherry Chapstick. Her silver lip ring brushed the corner of his mouth.
His head swam. He put his hands on her waist, tried to kiss her again.
She shook her head and took a step back.
He was wanting, aching, confused. “Stephanie . . .”
“Break’s over. My dad will be looking for us.”
“But—”
She tossed her red-black hair. “I made the first move. What happens next is up to you.”
The forecast called for fog and rain. Summer in Maine, Liz accepted with a shrug. There would be no walk on the beach today.
They could meet in her office.
All those interruptions, her practical side protested.
Or at the inn.
All those beds, temptation whispered.
But when she called the inn to suggest a change of location with Morgan, he dismissed her concerns.
“The weather will clear,” he had predicted.
He was right.
By the time they emerged from the trail, blooming with Queen Anne’s lace and goldenrod, overgrown with blackberries and beach roses, the clouds had pushed offshore. Liz could see the storm over the mainland, the dramatic gray slant of rain over the water. But here was sunshine and the piercing cry of gulls.
The cove was wild and deserted. No picnic tables or access signs disturbed the natural landscape, only a peeling wooden rowboat and an orange fiberglass canoe drawn up above the water line.
Liz sat on rocks warmed by the sun, listening to the sigh of the wind and the murmur of waves, soothing as a child’s bedtime story. Heat soaked the shoulders of her sensible blouse. She looked up at Morgan, the shape of his head black against the bright sky, and everything inside her flowed and moved to t
he rhythm of the wind and the waves. All the muscles she’d used last night went lax, all the nerves woke and reminded her they’d like to be used again.
He dropped a couple of towels from the inn on the sunlit rock.
She blinked. “You’re not going to swim. It’s too cold.”
“I may.” His eyes were opaque, his mouth a hard, flat line. “If it becomes necessary.”
Necessary?
She couldn’t imagine any circumstances that would drive her into that water. Someone drowning, maybe.
He nodded toward the two craft beached above the straggling brown line of seaweed. “I thought we would take a boat.”
She felt a spurt of surprised pleasure. She hadn’t expected him to plan a romantic interlude on the water. “You rented a boat?”
“No.” He padded across the hard, damp sand and ran an assessing hand over the rowboat’s upturned prow.
She expelled her breath. “We can’t simply row off in someone else’s property.”
“I am an excellent oarsman,” he assured her. He tugged off his boots, set them on the sand.
“Yes, but . . .”
His feet, she thought. Something about his feet . . .
His muscles bunched. She watched, distracted, as he flipped the heavy boat and hefted it into the air as if it weighed no more than a canoe. Goodness, he was strong.
“I’m sure you are,” she said. “It’s still stealing.”
He turned. His smile revealed an edge of teeth. “My people do not see it that way.”
She had noticed islanders had a more relaxed attitude toward crime and property than people who lived on the mainland: doors left unlocked, cars left running with their keys in the ignition. One of the advantages, she supposed, of knowing all your neighbors.
But Morgan was no more an islander than she was.
Barefoot, he waded into the shallows. The surface of the water heaved and sighed, expanding in ripples around his legs. Wet denim clung to his calves.
“Come.” He swung the boat down with barely a splash. Its bottom scraped sand. “I have something to show you.”
Her heart fluttered. It felt dangerous, delicious, to be doing something as illicit as joyriding in a borrowed boat. He made her feel like a girl again, irresponsible, carefree, sneaking onto the locked grounds of Kastellet in search of adventure.
Immortal Sea Page 16
