Sea Witch (27 page)

“I meant, there is nothing you could do,” Margred said. “Not

between a selkie and a demon. This is not your fight.”

His jaw set. “It’s my job to protect this island.”

Fear and frustration made her sharp. “Those two people, the ones

who came here, seem to think it is theirs now.”

Caleb smiled grimly. “They can’t catch the killer if they don’t know

what they’re looking for. Evelyn Hall may look tough, but she’s no

Buffy. They have no idea what they’re up against.”

Who was Buffy
? “Neither do you,” Margred said.

“So tell me.”

She was shaken by his belief in her. By her fear for him. “Demons

are elementals. They take their form from the fire. You cannot shoot one

with your gun or . . . or lock it in a cell.”

“The thing has some kind of body. I saw it on the beach that night

you were attacked. And I saw your friend. No fire, no spirit, did that to

her. She wasn’t burned. She was tortured. ”

Margred flinched. “The demon may have taken a human body.

Temporarily.”

“You mean, like you do.”

She shook her head, rejecting the comparison. “No. Earth and

water—the sidhe and the mer—have mass, weight, shape of their own.

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The other elementals . . . Air at least has a little matter. But fire can only

borrow substance. ”

Caleb’s gaze sharpened. “So this thing, this demon—he borrowed a

body?”

“A human host, yes.”

“Good. If he’s human, I’ll find him.”

Margred’s stomach twisted. Caleb believed her. But he still did not

understand.

And his ignorance could kill him.

“The human is not responsible,” she said. “He is a vehicle. A

victim.”

“But if I catch him—”

“Then the demon will simply take possession of another host. It

would take time for him to establish mastery over another’s will, but—”

“How long?” Caleb interrupted.

“What?”

“How much time before this . . . thing moves on somebody else?”

“That depends on the strength and complicity of the host.”

“You mean, if the human cooperates in torture. Murder.”

“Yes.”

A muscle worked at the corner of his mouth. “I am so nailing this

fucker.”

“Caleb.” She touched his arm. “You cannot stop a demon.

“Maybe not.” His eyes gleamed with a pure warrior’s light. “But I

can slow him down some.”

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His courage shamed her. Terrified her. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because I can. Because he hurt you.” Caleb shrugged. He met her

gaze, and all his soul was in his eyes, steady and unpretentious. “Because

there’s no one else.”

His words lanced her heart.

So he would take responsibility on himself, she thought.

The same way he shouldered everything else, without pause or

complaint—the raising of his sister and the care of his father, his duty to

his country and his service to this island.

Her blood beat in her ears like the rush of the tide. She was not like

him. She could barely comprehend him. He was a man bound and defined

by his connections to others, while she flowed as the sea flowed, without

tie or limits.

Margred hung a moment, suspended like the curl of the wave

seconds before the crash. Contained. Perfect. Whole.

And then plunged, a long, glistening slide toward . . . what? She did

not know.

There’s no one else
.

“There is me,” she said.

Caleb looked at Maggie’s dark, shadowed eyes and full, unsmiling

mouth. The half-healed gash that ran under her hairline.

She was offering herself to him as an ally. A partner.

He fisted his hands lightly, resisting the urge to take, and shoved

them in his pockets. “No way in hell,” he said. “This thing’s already

beaten you once.”

Her chin came up. “Bested me,” she corrected. “I am still alive.”

“Yeah, and I’d like to keep you that way.”

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He thought he saw her wince. But she didn’t back down. He

respected her courage. “You need my help,” she said.

“I need you to be safe.” His voice was firm. Flat. “You didn’t see

what he did to her.”

“The detectives . . . they showed me a photo.”

“Of her face. He did worse.”

He would not describe the condition of her body. Bad enough that he

would dream of it tonight, the multiple cuts and burns, the swelling

around her wrists and ankles, the pale and purpling flesh of her fingers,

breasts, and thighs.

He recognized the marks of torture, the signature of the Iraqi death

squads. In the past three years, he’d seen too many bodies dumped in

canals and alleys, left like trash by the side of the road or the back of

market stalls.

This was worse, because it had happened here, at home.

Because it could have been Maggie.

“Did he burn her pelt?” she asked.

Caleb scowled, pulled from his private nightmare. “What?”

“Her sealskin. Did you find it?”

He had spent a long, frustrating morning standing outside the yellow

tape, observing the activity of the crime scene technicians, the wardens,

the dive team. Nobody had entrusted him with the evidence log this time.

But he would have noticed the excitement surrounding any major find. A

car. Her clothes. A handbag.

Or even an unexpected, unexplained animal pelt.

He held her gaze. “No.”

“Then he destroyed it,” she whispered.

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“There wasn’t any evidence of a fire,” Caleb said. And they had

searched for one, seeking another connection between the two crimes.

“Maybe he took it. Hid it.”

“No.” Maggie’s eyes widened. “But Gwyneth might have. She was .

. . adept at self-preservation. She would have safeguarded herself. Better

than I did,” she added with faint bitterness.

Uneasily, Caleb remembered Maggie’s desperate struggle to reach

the fire the night of her attack. “
I need what he took from me
.”

Could she be right about Gwyneth? Or was she projecting, hoping

for . . . what, exactly?

“Before, you said a selkie without her sealskin can’t change form.”

“More than that. The sea is our life. Without it, we die.”

“Everything dies,” Caleb said harshly.

Maggie’s eyes were shadowed and heavy with loss. “But not forever.

Humans have souls. Selkies return to the sea.”

He was a cop. He didn’t know how to respond to her talk of souls.

But he understood guilt. Motivation.

Evidence.

“Your selkie friend didn’t hide anything. Not on that beach. The

searchers combed the rocks and the surrounding woods. If her pelt was

there, they’d have found it.”

“The island,” Maggie said.

“What island?”

“Dylan mentioned an island where he keeps a few things. If

Gwyneth followed him here, she might have done the same.”

Caleb couldn’t think about his brother. Not yet.

“There are thousands of islands in Maine. We can’t search every

uninhabited rock in the ocean hoping to get lucky.”

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“This was a private island three miles east of here. You could find

it.” Maggie looked at him confidently, resolve shining in her eyes. “I

could find it.”

“I’m not letting you dangle yourself out there like bait.”

Her lips curved. “Then it seems we are in this together.”

He could not resist her. Not when she was right.

“Fine,” Caleb said wearily. “Tomorrow I’ll get us a boat.”

“Why not tonight?”

“It’ll be too dark to cast off in a couple hours, and way too dark to

search. Besides . . .” He forced himself to meet her gaze. “I can’t leave

the island without Reynolds’s okay.”

“But . . . you are the chief of police.”

“I’m also a person of interest in an ongoing investigation, ” he said

evenly. In light of what had happened, he couldn’t afford sentiment. Or

outrage. Or even pride. “I volunteered to take a polygraph. I’ve offered

them my financial records, my post-deployment health assessment, and

my ex-wife’s phone number. But it will take a while to clear the record.”

Longer to clear his name.

“Then we must use the time we have,” Maggie said.

He nodded. “I’ll be done with the polygraph before lunch. What time

do you get off?”

“Two o’clock. But I was not talking about our work schedules.” She

cradled his hand; placed it on her breast. Surprise held him immobile.

“Take me home with you tonight.”

His mouth dried. His mind blanked as the blood in his head rushed to

his groin.

He worked hard to sound relaxed. In control. “That’s the best offer

I’ve had all day. But I can’t.”

227

So move your hand, dickhead
.

But apparently he couldn’t do that either. Her breast was so soft, the

nipple stiff against his palm, and the sight of his hand spanning all that

fullness, all that roundness, gave him another rush.

“Why not?” she asked.

He jerked his mind back but left his hand where it was. Why not? Er

. . . “It’s the middle of the season,” he explained. “Every room on the

island is booked. So we’ve got half a dozen detectives sleeping in shifts

on jail cots and a sergeant catching naps on my couch. I’m not tiptoeing

you past him to get to the bedroom.”

Margred’s lips curved. “Then we will tiptoe past your sister.”

She was serious. She wanted him. Tonight. Now.

He struggled to laugh. To breathe. “You gonna smuggle me to your

room?”

Her warm mouth skated over his jaw. “It is your room.”

“Was my room.” He cleared his throat. “We’re not in high school

anymore.”

“I was never in high school.” She nipped his earlobe. His bottom lip.

“Teach me.”

His eyes damn near crossed. He was already hard. Her voice, her

hands, her breath slid over him, sluiced over him, warm and irresistible.

She was a goddess risen from the sea, Aphrodite, bewitching him,

seducing him, with the same hungry, skillful intent of their first time.

“I can’t teach you anything,” he said, his voice rusty.

“Ah.” She cupped his face between her soft, warm hands and

touched her lips to his. Drew back to smile into his eyes. “But you have.”

His heart turned over painfully in his chest. This . . . this was

different, he thought. The laughter and self-awareness in her gaze. The

tenderness in her touch.

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"Maggie...”

I love you
.

Did he say it out loud?

“Shh. Upstairs.”

She led him up the steps and down the hall to his room, both of them

breathless, bumping, struggling with buttons, trying hard to be quiet. Her

hands were all over him. His tongue was in her mouth. He backed her

into the wall and—

Bang
. The door to his parents’ room—almost twenty-five years since

his mother walked out on them and he still thought of it as his parents’

room, how pathetic was that? Anyway, the door flew open, and his father

swayed, framed in the doorway.

Caleb twisted, putting Maggie behind him, shielding her with his

body.

Unnecessary. Bart never glanced at her, her untucked blouse, her

kiss-swollen mouth.

Fixing his gaze on Caleb, he growled, “She won’t stay. She’ll leave

you like your bitch of a mother left me.”

He staggered past them to the bathroom. The lock clicked. The toilet

seat banged. And then the unmistakable sound of peeing hissed through

the closed door.

Caleb’s jaw tightened. “Just like high school,” he said bitterly.

Maggie stroked the knotted muscles of his back. She pressed her lips

between his shoulder blades. “Come to bed.”

He wanted to. He wanted to close his eyes and lose himself in her for

a while. Like maybe forever. “I have things to do.”

“Yes.” She tugged him. Turned him. “Me.”

That surprised a laugh from him. How could she want him after

seeing that? After knowing who and what he’d come from?

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But she did.

She rose on tiptoe and kissed him, the corner of his eye, the

underside of his jaw, the hollow of his throat. All the neglected,

unexpected, tender places.

His heart swelled. “Maggie . . .”

“Shh.”

She pulled him into the stark brown room where he’d spent his

childhood. Vaguely, he noticed changes: a bright skirt tumbling off a

chair, extra pillows softening the narrow bed. The room even smelled like

her, like woman, like Maggie, shampoo and lotion and, under that, the

deeper, wilder notes of the sea. He breathed them in like a patient

released from a hospital, like a man returning from the desert.

Her touch flowed over him like rain, warm and healing. He was