Skin Deep (29 page)

“No. Only this.” Her voice trembled as she held up the purple flannel shirt, and she steadied it. This was no time to go to pieces. Conn and Alasdair needed her. “I need to know—Kathy said she was going to tell you but maybe someone else already did—do you know about Mahtahdou? And what Alasdair and Conn are?”

He nodded. “Yes, they…yes, I know now.”

Good, then she wouldn’t have to explain. “I’m afraid that Mahtahdou has kidnapped Conn, and that he’s the one making Alasdair sick. Is that what you think too? You saw him.”

“Yes.”

She took a deep breath. “So what about you? Are you going to fall at Mahtahdou’s feet the way the rest of this town has?”

His eye twitched again “Why do you ask?”

“Because I won’t.” She glanced back at the door. “Rob, I’m sorry—I tried to love you, I really did. But Alasdair—”

“I understand,” he said quietly.

Relief flooded through her. He was taking this so well. “I love him. And I’m not going to let Mahtahdou destroy him and Conn. He seems to think I have this power—that Mahtahdou can’t touch me—and if that’s true, then I have to try to save Conn and get Alasdair’s skin to stop him from hurting him any further. Will you help me?”

Rob was staring at the floor. She anxiously watched the top of his head and held her breath.

“You want to find Mahtahdou?” he finally said. “Where? How?”

“Alasdair told me—he’s taken the selkies’ island for his own. I’ve got my boat, and it’ll only take me a few minutes to pull it down to the beach and get it rigged. It’s the only thing I can do. I can’t let him hurt Conn again. Will you…” She paused, then said quickly, “Will you stay here with Alasdair while I go? I know that’s a lot to ask—”

He looked up at her. “No. There’s nothing I can do medically for Alasdair, but I can help you. Why don’t I go with you?”

“With me?” She frowned at him. “Rob, I don’t think—I mean, you don’t look very healthy yourself right now.” The last thing she needed was Rob collapsing when she was trying to help Conn.

“I’m fine. Just tired. But Conn may not be.” Some of his weariness seemed to leave him, and he stood straighter. “If he’s injured again, I can help him while you deal with Mahtahdou.”

She hadn’t thought of that. “Are you sure? This is going to be dangerous—”

He stepped toward her and put a finger to her lips. “I know. Do you think I’d let you go alone?”

Oh, Rob. Tears welled up in her eyes before she could stop them. “I don’t know what I did to deserve your friendship.” She took both of his hands in hers and squeezed them. They were icy cold and clammy, but his return grip was strong.

“You’re the most important thing in the world to me,” he said softly, and smiled. “So let’s go.”

* * *

The mid-afternoon light was gray and evening-like and the fog as thick as ever as they rolled her little sailboat on its dolly out of the garage and down the lawn to the beach. She set the mast in its step and raised the triangular sail, clicked the rudder pins into place in their loops, and slid the daggerboard into its slot. A fitful breeze had risen and was blowing the mist about in puffs and tendrils. It seemed to rake cold, wet hands through her hair and she wished she’d thought to grab a hat before she left. But she didn’t want to go back to the house to get one now—the sooner they got going, the less time Mahtahdou would have to hurt Conn…and the less time she’d have to ask herself what the hell she’d do, once she found Mahtahdou. If she found him.

“Rob, I think you need to know…I have no idea what I’m doing. I don’t know where we’re going, apart from south toward Monomoyick.” She swallowed. “You can change your mind and stay here, you know.”

Rob squeezed her shoulder. “No, I can’t. You’ll find him. I know you will.”

They pushed the little boat into knee-deep water and clambered onto it. Garland took the tiller and glanced back at her house, its lines half-obscured by the blowing fog. While Rob had tried on lifejackets in the garage she’d run upstairs to check on Alasdair. His face was almost gray and his breath came in short, shallow pants. She couldn’t leave him like this. But she had to.

She’d tenderly wiped the sheen of sweat from his forehead and bent to kiss him. “I’m going to find Conn and your skin, because…because there’s nothing I can do to help you here,” she whispered, gazing down at his drawn face through a film of tears. “You’ve got to hang on while I’m gone, do you hear? I know that you told me the truth about the selkies, and I don’t care if you’ll leave me some day. At least you’d be alive and well. But if you leave me right now because Mahtahdou’s killed you, I—I’ll—” One of her tears fell on his cheek. He didn’t move as she brushed it away, then kissed him again. “I’ll be back.”

As she straightened, her eyes fell on his quilt, still folded next to her chair where she’d left it while stitching on the binding. She picked it up.

“It’s not quite finished, but I’ll give it to you anyway,” she murmured, draping it over his still form. “You said you felt safer when you had one of my quilts.”

A fleeting tremor—so swift that she was almost sure she’d imagined it, ran over his body. Would he sleep more easily now? Would his pain lessen? She could only hope—

“Garland?” Rob called from downstairs.

With a last touch on his cheek, she’d left the room.

* * *

At first Garland hoped that maybe the selkies would appear to help her find their—Mahtahdou’s—island. She pictured ten or twelve dark seal heads suddenly appearing in the water around her boat, guiding her there then shucking off their sealskins and turning into a group of tall, dark-haired warriors, ready to defend her and Rob as they marched on the captured palace to find Conn.

But no sleek heads poked up around her. Not even a gull was to be seen—only the gray water and fog billowing in the chill wind.

Next to her, Rob shuddered. She glanced at him with concern. “Cold?”

“Hmm? No. I’m quite comfortable.”

How could he be, barefoot and in a pair of light khakis soaked to the knees and a dress shirt? Darn it, she should have grabbed a fleece for him to wear but she’d been so intent on getting going that she hadn’t thought of it. Not that she was terribly comfortable either—wet jeans were not good sailing attire—but she was more used to it.

“Here.” She held onto the mainsheet with her foot, unzipped her lifejacket part way with her free hand, and started to pull out Conn’s purple shirt that she’d tucked inside it for safekeeping. “You can wear this—it’ll break the wind a bit—”

“I’m fine.” Rob snapped, then shuddered again.

“Uh…okay.” She tucked the shirt back inside her lifejacket. That wasn’t very like Rob. But maybe his nerves were starting to get rattled. She knew hers were.

Ordinary fog was white. Sometimes when it drifted past a tall dune or some other large object, a faint shadow would appear in it—a darker shade of white, more or less. Ordinary fog did not swirl and flash in dull green, or yellow brown, or maroon or purple. But for the last twenty minutes she’d been catching hints of color from the corners of her eyes, as if the world wasn’t obscured by fog but by smoke from a burning chemical plant—

A long, scraping sound suddenly issued from underneath the hull of the boat.

“Damn! Hold on.” Garland let out the sail, reached across Rob to yank up the daggerboard, and braced her feet, waiting for the sudden jolt of running aground. Where had a sandbar come from? At this tide there should be ten or fifteen feet of water here—

But the impact never came. The boat slowed and turned slightly into the wind, its sail swinging loose.

“Why are we stopping? Is something wrong?” Rob asked, looking back at her.

“No.” She pulled the mainsheet back in and the sail caught the wind again. “That scraping noise—I thought we were about to run aground.”

“What scraping noise?”

“Didn’t you hear it?”

“I didn’t hear anything.” He turned and gazed ahead into the fog.

She gaped at his turned head. How had he not heard that? It had sounded like giant fingernails rasping beneath them.

Then again, the wind might have drowned out the sound. She glanced up at the sail and tightened her grip on the mainsheet. The wind had been moaning with increasing strength since they’d pushed off her beach. Darn it, the last thing she needed was to capsize in icy water with a non-sailor on board.

But after a few minutes she realized that the boat was not behaving as it usually did when a gust of stronger wind hit it—no heeling, no bursts of speed. For some reason, the wind sounded as if it were rising to gale force—but it was only sound.

She shivered, but not from cold. There was something uncanny going on here, but she couldn’t let it get to her. So far it was all illusion, sound and no substance. She was stronger than that. After Derek she knew all about dealing with illusion.

“What’s that?” Rob pointed to something off the bow of the boat. She followed his pointing finger to a calm place a few feet across that had appeared in the choppy water ahead. As she squinted at it, it began to seethe and bubble as if a scuba diver were below, about to surface. The bubbles grew larger—from ping-pong ball- to baseball-sized. Then as they drew abreast she saw that each had a faint vertical line, almost like a pupil on an eye…and that they were looking at her, swiveling as they sailed past—

“Garland?”

The bubbles popped all at once. She stifled a gasp.

“What was it?” Rob was looking at her curiously.

“Nothing. Just…it was nothing. Don’t worry.” But she glanced back at the water where the bubbles had been, now as choppy and restless as everywhere else. What had that been? She could have sworn those were eyes…but it was no use dwelling on it lest she frighten Rob…or herself.

The fog deepened, with an occasional ugly yellow-brown or greenish tinge to its billows, and the wind-that-wasn’t wailed eerily around them. More patches of bizarre eye-like bubbles that seemed to stare at her knowingly appeared, and she watched them with growing apprehension. Did all these strange phenomena mean that Mahtahdou knew she was coming? Or was Mattaquason so tight in his grasp that this was just the way things were now? She shivered again.

“What will you do when we find Mahtahdou?” Rob asked suddenly. His blue eyes were dark in the gloomy light.

That was precisely what she wanted to know, too. How could she challenge a being that could summon storms and inhabit the bodies of innocent humans in order to kill? At least she knew he wouldn’t try to kill her on the spot. But what was it about her that had sparked his interest enough that he wanted to see her?

The scraping sound along the bottom of her hull was getting on her nerves. She leaned back and peered into the dark water, trying to see if something had caught on her daggerboard.

A long, thin, greenish limb erupted out of the water a foot from her face. She gasped and nearly fell backwards off the boat. Four equally long, thin, greenish fingers waggled madly at her in a parody of greeting—fingers that ended in three-inch-long claws. The wind howled again, and this time it sounded distinctly like a dirty, crazed laugh. Then the hand plunged back below the surface.

Her heart beat wildly. Kathy’s tale of the things she’d seen in the water near Mahtahdou’s island hadn’t been an exaggeration, had it? Evidently they had claws to match their teeth. What weapons did she have against creatures like that?

But it had just been that, something briefly seen and then gone. Mahtahdou was trying to scare them. “Thank you,” she called, hoping her voice didn’t tremble. “I wondered what was making that noise.”

The wind-sound paused as if uncertain, then broke into sniggering laughter that sent fresh shivers down her back. Or was it getting colder out here? She glanced at the low mass of Monomoyick Island, trying to gauge how far south they’d come. But the fog rendered the scrubby dunes even more featureless than they already were.

She sighed, then straightened as something caught her eye. Off to her right, away from Monomoyick…was that a shadow in the fog?

“Rob—over there—do you see? Is that an island?” She gestured with her chin.

He peered dutifully into the fog. “It could be.”

She stared at the shadow. The fog thinned for a few seconds, revealing a low, sandy beach. It looked like an island…but could she be sure? If she sailed off in that direction, she would lose sight of the only physical reference point she had. But if it were Mahtahdou’s island…she bit her lip, then eased the sail out and pulled the tiller toward her, aiming the little boat toward where the shadow lay—

And knew, with an uncanny certainty, that it wasn’t her destination. She shoved the tiller back and pulled in the sail, and after a moment the shore of Monomoyick came reassuringly back into view.

For a while she was content to hold her course while her heartbeat returned to normal. It had looked like an island…she’d seen it. But something had felt wrong as soon as she turned toward it. Was Mahtahdou trying to trick her into losing herself in the fog? For now, while Monomoyick was in view, she was safe. But when she came to its end there would be nothing to tell her whether or not she was sailing toward his island or off into the open Atlantic.

Twice more Garland thought she saw islands…and twice more she knew that something was wrong. It was starting to get to her after all—the swirling, malevolently teasing fog, the howling wind that wasn’t really there, the intermittent scratching and tapping on the hull of her boat, the things that looked like eyes watching them. What weapons did she have to counteract Mahtahdou’s illusions?