Sea Fever

by Virginia Kantra

  “I don’t think so.” They walked on, past gardens edged with day lilies and yards full of rusting cars and lobster traps. “At least you have a stake in this thing.”

  A stake? He stared at her in disbelief. That’s what she called this sickening weight of responsibility, this agonized awareness of being found wanting, insufficient, at fault . . .

  “There must be somebody you could ask for advice,” she continued, apparently oblivious to the storm raging inside him.

  He forced himself to fasten on her words, to quell the nausea of his stomach. “There is,” he replied. “The prince.”

  “You have a prince? Of course you do,” she answered her own question. “Because this situation wasn’t unreal enough before.”

  He wished he knew some way to reassure her.

  “Conn ap Llyr, lord of Sanctuary, prince of the merfolk. He took me under his patronage after my mother died.”

  “Like a . . . father figure?”

  Dylan pictured the aloof, inscrutable selkie ruler isolated in his tower at Caer Subai. “I was never tempted to call him ‘Daddy,’ ” he said with perfect truth.

  Regina studied him a moment. Something flickered in her eyes, a perception that made him squirm, a sympathy that tore old wounds and half-healed scars. He stiffened in rejection. He was no longer that fourteen-year-old boy crying for his mother. He was selkie. He did not need her pity.

  But all she said was, “Can’t argue with you there. Mine split when I was three years old.” He thought he heard her sigh. “Must be a family tradition.”

  As if he would leave her.

  He’d intended to leave her. But . . .

  “Must it?” he heard himself ask and held his breath for her answer.

  She smiled crookedly. “I guess we’ll find out.”

  Perversely, he was irritated. He did not need her sympathy. But he would not mind if she admitted to needing him.

  She paused at the curb of the clinic. “You want to contact this prince of yours while I’m in my doctor’s appointment?”

  He shook his head. “It’s not like I can call him on his cell phone. I have to go down to the beach.”

  “So go.”

  He opened the clinic’s outer door for her. “I’m coming with you.”

  “No, you’re not. I don’t want you in the room while I’m flat on my back in a paper drape getting a pelvic exam.”

  The image made him clench uncomfortably. But he said, “I’ve seen you in less.”

  “Forget it.”

  He narrowed his eyes. Was she actually blushing? “Then I will wait for you.”

  “Suit yourself. But . . .” She broke off.

  A thin, bearded man in a stained hooded sweatshirt was walking toward them across the waiting room. Dylan recognized him from the group around the fire in the homeless encampment.

  Regina trembled.

  Dylan put his arm around her without thinking. The man passed them, his gaze lowered. Dylan scanned the room. There was something there, something in the air that wasn’t right. But when he breathed in, all he smelled was Regina’s shampoo like apricots.

  “It’s not Jericho,” he told her quietly.

  “I know. Caleb said he brought another patient in yesterday.” Her throat moved as she swallowed. “The day before yesterday.”

  She had lost almost a day in the caves.

  Dylan tightened his arm around her.

  A woman in a printed smock looked up from behind the counter and smiled. “Hi, Regina. The doctor is ready for you now.”

  And he had to let her go.

  * * *

  Regina sat up, hitching her paper sheet around her waist and over her thighs. Thank God that was over.

  Donna Tomah scrubbed her hands at the tiny sink. “Everything seems to be normal. I’d say you’re about five weeks along.”

  Stars wheeling, rocks shifting, Dylan plunging thick and hot inside her . . .

  “Four,” Regina corrected.

  Donna glanced over her shoulder. “Your due date is calculated from the beginning of your last cycle. We can’t really pinpoint the date of conception.”

  She could. Heat crept into her face.

  “Do you want to talk?” Donna asked gently.

  “What about?”

  “Your options. If you’re not comfortable talking with me, there’s a family planning clinic in Rockland . . .”

  “Oh.” And then, as the implications sank in, “Oh.”

  Just for a moment, she let herself be tempted, felt the possibility expand her lungs like air. Her old life beckoned. To have options . . .

  “No.” She met the doctor’s eyes. “It’s not like I haven’t done this before.”

  “Hm.” The doctor shut off the water with her elbow. “If you’re sure . . .”

  Regina rubbed the bare skin below her collarbone. “Sure.”

  Donna dried her hands on a paper towel. “All right, then. Nancy will get your blood and a urine specimen. You should pick up some prenatal vitamins. Why don’t you get dressed, and I’ll give you a sample to get you started.”

  “Thanks.”

  Regina hopped off the table as the doctor left the room, hissing at the pain of her swollen toes. Before she finished dressing, the door reopened. She clutched her pants, oddly uncomfortable at being caught in her underwear by the doctor who had just seen her naked. Stupid.

  Donna appeared flustered, too. Her face flushed as she set a little paper cup of medicine beside the exam table. “Here you go.”

  Regina reached for the vitamins. They were small. Like yellow aspirin. “Three?”

  “One for now, two for later,” the doctor said smoothly, avoiding Regina’s eyes. She filled a cup at the sink. “In case you don’t want to face the gossip at the drugstore right away. Water?”

  Regina accepted the cup, aware of the doctor’s eyes on her as she forced the tablet down her throat.

  “Good,” Donna said, whisking the water away. She sealed the remaining pills in a tiny plastic bag. “Don’t forget to take these now. And tell Nancy to set up another appointment in a couple of days.”

  “So soon?” Regina asked, surprised. When she was pregnant with Nick, she’d only seen a doctor every six weeks or so. But then she’d been on her own in Boston, trying desperately to make ends meet and grabbing appointments at the free clinic.

  “With all you’ve been through lately . . . Better safe than sorry.”

  Anxiety snagged her breathing. “You said everything looked normal.”

  “Everything looks fine,” Donna assured her. “Any questions? Concerns?”

  Regina swallowed a hiccup of completely inappropriatelaughter. No way could she share her real concerns. “Is there any way to tell the baby’s sex yet?”

  “I can schedule an ultrasound in the middle of the second trimester. Let’s say, at eighteen weeks.” Donna scrawled the prescription and handed it to Regina. “Do you want another boy? Or are you hoping for a girl this time?”

  Just for a moment, Regina felt the draw of the baby at her breast and the warm weight of it in her arms, saw the cap of soft, dark hair and the fan of lashes against a smooth, flushed cheek.

  A boy or a girl? “A daughter of the house of Atargatis, who will change the balance of power between Heaven and Hell”?

  Or a black-eyed boy who would run away to sea and break her heart?

  Some choice.

  She moistened her lips. “You know what they say. As long as the baby’s healthy . . .”

  And safe.

  Her heart clenched like a fist. Please, God, keep her baby safe.

  * * *

  Caleb shifted the paper on his desk a half-inch to the left and tapped the top sheet.

  Regina’s heart drummed in time with his fingers.

  “If I take this to the DA, he’s going to assume you’re lying or crazy or both,” Caleb said.

  Regina’s stomach dropped. Her chin jutted. “Dylan said you would believe me. Because of Margred.” />
  “I do believe you.” Caleb’s voice was firm, his eyes kind. “Which is why I’m suggesting you reconsider your statement before you sign.”

  Regina trusted Caleb. She always had. But under the circumstances . . .

  “I want to talk to Dylan,” she said.

  Caleb frowned before rising stiffly from his desk and opening his door. “Edith, would you—”

  Before he could finish his instruction to the clerk, Dylan strode into the room, his mouth a tight line, his gaze locking instantly on Regina’s.

  She released a breath she hadn’t been aware of holding.

  “That took long enough,” he drawled. “Should I be jealous?”

  “Your brother thinks the DA won’t like my story,” she said.

  Caleb closed the door on Edith Paine, hovering in the outer office. “Parts of it. Sit down,” he said to Dylan.

  Dylan raised an eyebrow and draped himself in the chair next to Regina’s. In the small, cramped office she could feel the heat under his cool. “So don’t tell the DA. Drop the charges or whatever you call them.”

  “I can’t do that.” Caleb positioned himself behind his desk. “Criminal charges are filed by the state, not the victim. And with three unrelated attacks in two months making headlines across the state, you can bet the DA is bringing charges against somebody.”

  Regina sat forward. “But Jericho isn’t really guilty, is he? I mean, if he is possessed—”

  “Was possessed,” Dylan corrected. “The demon left him.”

  “That’s the part the DA is going to have problems with,” Regina said.

  Caleb sighed. “Actually, the DA will assume— correctly— that the defense will use demonic possession as an insanity plea. The court will take into account that this is Jones’s first offense. They’ll consider his military service, probably do an alcohol and drug assessment. Even so, he’s facing charges of aggravated assault and kidnapping.”

  Dylan shrugged. “You said yourself the charges have nothing to do with us.”

  “Unless you’re called to the stand. Kidnapping is a Class A crime. The defense will try to reduce it to a lesser charge by arguing that Jones voluntarily released the victim in a safe place.”

  Dylan lifted an eyebrow. “Since when is dumping a woman in a flooding cave considered ‘release in a safe place’?”

  “It’s not,” Caleb said. “I’m telling you what the defense will argue. You’ll both be called to testify. Do you really want to explain under oath where and how you found her?”

  “Your oaths do not constrain me,” Dylan said.

  “No? How about being locked up for contempt of court?”

  “You guys want to settle this over a game of hoops?” Regina asked. “Or pistols at dawn?”

  They turned to her with almost identical expressions of annoyance.

  “What if I refuse to testify?” she asked.

  Caleb rubbed his jaw. “That would definitely weaken the prosecution’s case. The DA might be willing to settle in Sessions Court in return for a guilty plea to a lesser charge— say, misdemeanor assault. The case wouldn’t actually go to trial.”

  She reached for the cross around her neck. It was in her pocket. She flushed and tucked her hands into her armpits. “And Jericho would go free?”

  “He’d serve some time. Long enough, maybe, for me to get him into the new veterans’ housing program downstate.”

  “Whether Jones is in jail or not is irrelevant,” Dylan said.

  “Not irrelevant to him,” Regina muttered.

  Dylan’s black eyes glinted. “His fate is not my care or responsibility. Yours is.”

  “What about the rest of the island? Other threats? Other demons?” Caleb asked.

  Dylan shrugged. “There has been . . . activity on and around World’s End before this. But they want Regina now.”

  “And are willing to possess anybody else to get at her,” Caleb said grimly.

  “Not anybody. There are limits to their power.”

  Caleb’s eyes narrowed. “The cross.”

  “And my tattoo,” Regina said.

  Dylan nodded. “They could not kill you. And they did not anticipate me. They cannot afford to attract Heaven’s attention with a series of botched attempts. They will choose the next time and their next target very carefully.”

  “Are you trying to make me feel better?”

  Dylan’s expression did not change. “I’m trying to scare you.”

  “So that I’ll run away with you to Sanctuary.”

  Caleb cleared his throat.

  Dylan ignored him. “Yes.”

  “For how long?” Regina demanded.

  “Until we know you and the child are safe.”

  “And how long will that take?” She pressed her hand to her stomach. “Nine months?”

  He was silent.

  “Thirteen years?”

  He glared, his dark eyes stormy. “Sanctuary is the best solution.”

  She squeezed her hands together in her lap at the tumult in those eyes. “The safest, maybe. Not the best. Not for me or my children. In thirteen years, my mother could be dead. If the heartbreak doesn’t kill her sooner.”

  “Regina . . .”

  Her heart shook at his tone. She could not afford to give in to him. She would not give in. She had crawled and fought and worked damn hard for the life she had made with her son. She would not give it up. “No.”

  He flung himself from his chair; stalked to the window. “I could leave you here.”

  “But you won’t,” she said softly.

  He glanced over his shoulder. A corner of his mouth rose. “No.”

  Her heart beat faster. “Because of the child.”

  He inclined his head. “If you like.”

  She could not read him. She did not know him. How could she be falling in love with him?

  Caleb cleared his throat again. “You’ll need a place to stay.”

  “For how long?” Regina asked.

  “Nine months?” Dylan smiled in wicked echo. “Thirteen years?”

  And then what? He’d leave her like his mother left his father? Like her father left her mother?

  “You can’t just move in with us,” Regina said. “It’s not fair to Nick.”

  “Nick is not the one with the problem,” Dylan shot back.

  “I have to protect him,” she said stubbornly.

  Even if it was too late to protect her own heart.

  Caleb rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t see how we’re going to protect either one of them.”

  Regina glanced at Dylan, startled by the easy way Caleb allied himself with his brother over her defense. Dylan hardly seemed to notice. Men.

  “I’ll have to ward her building,” Dylan said.

  Caleb raised his eyebrows. “You can do that?”

  His jaw set. “I must.”

  “And if she has to leave the apartment? Or the restaurant?”

  A long look passed between the brothers.

  “Then I will be with her,” Dylan said. “Attached to her like a lamprey. Or a lover.”

  “Not in the apartment,” Regina said.

  “You’ll need a place to stay,” Caleb said again at the same time. “Somewhere close.”

  “Is that an invitation, little brother?”

  “If you need one,” Caleb said steadily.

  “I don’t need anything from you,” Dylan said. But the darkness in his eyes made the words a lie.

  “You should go home. To your parents’ house,” Regina said.

  Dylan sneered. “The way you did?”

  He would not let her pity him. Fine. She wouldn’t permit him to goad her.

  “There’s no shame in going home when you need to.”

  She could say that now. She could even believe it. The realization lightened her heart.

  “This was never my home. I’d rather pay to stay at the Inn.”

  “Full up this time of year,” Regina said. “Your father has ro
om.”