Skin Deep (5 page)

Garland knew that knock. She dropped the dustpan and hurried to the door.

“There you are!” Her friend Kathy enveloped her in a hug. Paper crackled and something heavy bumped against Garland’s shoulder blades.

“Oops!” Kathy laughed and let her go, displaying two gift bags. “Forgot about these, I was so happy to see you.”

Kathy Hayes was a tall, strongly built woman about fifteen years Garland’s senior. When tourists asked her about the “Captain Hayes” her gallery was named after, expecting a romantic story of an East India trader ancestor or maybe a whaling captain, she’d smile and point to a small picture on the wall behind the counter: herself, in her Army uniform. She’d retired after tours of duty in Croatia and Iraq and three decorations and moved back to her family home on Cape Cod. Her gallery had a selection of crafts from the countries she’d been deployed in. “It’s the least I can do to keep on helping those people,” she always said.

Garland took the bags and led her into the kitchen. “You didn’t have to, you know.”

“Of course I did. One’s a housewarming present, and one’s got croissants from the bakery. They were hot when I bought ‘em just now. Sorry I didn’t call you last night—didn’t get in till late.” Kathy took off her brightly embroidered, quilted Afghani coat and tossed it over a chair.

“Date?” Garland piled the croissants on a plate.

Kathy grimaced. “I wish. No, my sister-in-law’s birthday. We went down to the Daniel Webster Inn in Sandwich for dinner. Nice place—” She paused, looking at the used coffee cups on the kitchen table. “What? I’m not your first visitor?”

Garland smiled and brought clean cups and the croissants to the table. “No, you’re the—umm—sixth. It’s been a heck of a morning here.”

“Sounds exciting. So who was it? Come on, spill.” Kathy poured the coffee and looked bright-eyed and expectant.

Garland pretended to count on her fingers. “First there were the two people I found washed up on my beach. Then Rob Mowbray who patched them up—God, Kathy, you should’ve seen it. And finally two of Mattaquason’s finest…” She trailed into silence as Kathy’s face changed. If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought Kathy looked…well, frightened.

“People on the beach? Who? What happened?” Kathy stared at her over the top of her cup.

Garland explained about Alasdair and Conn and their injuries, 911’s strange incompetence and Rob’s gallantry, and Captain Howe and his peculiar behavior. “I really ought to go check on them,” she concluded, glancing toward the stairs. “Do you want to come meet them? Maybe you’d know—”

“No, I don’t. I saw enough semi-dead people in the service. Jesus, Garland!” Kathy set down her mug with a thud. Garland noticed her hands were shaking. “Why didn’t you make the police take them to the hospital? Rob Mowbray was right. You can’t be nursing total strangers back to health in this house all by yourself. You’re the only person on Eldredge Point this time of year, aren’t you? What if something happens? Even if these guys aren’t dangerous, what if whoever left them for dead finds out they aren’t and decides to come back and finish the job?”

She sounded almost angry now, but there was an edge of fear in her voice and words—Kathy, the decorated ex-soldier…Garland put those thoughts aside. “One of them is barely out of diapers, and neither of them are in any shape to hurt a fly. I couldn’t just let them take them away. They need me—”

Kathy snorted. “No. Right now, you need you. Call the police back and tell that fat idiot Howe to get his butt over here and get them to the hospital already. You don’t need to be mixed up in this.”

“Mixed up in what?”

Kathy quickly took a gulp of coffee, but not before Garland saw her face redden. “Mixed up in what, Kathy?” she asked again.

“Mixed up in anything that isn’t getting over your git of an ex-husband and working on your quilting again.” Kathy leaned forward in her seat. “Garland, I’m serious. You could have an amazing career with your quilts. There’s something about them—something…I don’t know. Remember Sonja Feinberg, who’s been bugging me about you? She says she loves inviting over people who’ve never been to her house, because they’re always stopped dead by your sunset quilt that hangs in her foyer. They have to stare at it for several minutes before their legs will work again and their mouths will close. And then it’s hard getting them out the door again at the end of the evening because they get stuck in front of it again. You put something into fabric and thread that turn them into another thing entirely. She says looking into that quilt is like looking into another world.”

“You’re making that up.”

“No I’m not. C’mon, Garland. A few years of me selling your quilts in the gallery and we could both retire to a place that’s a lot warmer than Mattaquason in the winter. Seriously. You’ve got a talent that’s been hidden long enough because of one dumb guy. I don’t want another dumb guy making you hide it any longer.”

“Alasdair’s not a dumb guy. And I doubt he and Conn’ll be here more than a few days. Don’t you think the police will find out who they are pretty quickly? They’ll probably be gone by tomorrow. And besides, Rob’s coming back tonight for dinner—”

“He is?” Kathy’s tension seemed to lessen a little. “Well, that’s better. Dinner, huh? Holy cow, she’s here for less than twenty-four hours and already has a date with the best-looking guy in town?”

No he’s not. Alasdair is.
The thought flitted across Garland’s mind before she knew it.

Kathy went on to list in delightfully scathing detail the women in town who’d been trying to angle dinner invitations from Rob Mowbray. Garland half-listened, but most of her mind was occupied with Kathy’s strange reaction.

Kathy had always seemed utterly without fear. Garland had seen her almost single-handedly stop a riot at Mattaquason’s annual Fourth of July parade four years ago after a cannon panicked a quartet of carriage horses. When she switched on her parade ground manner, people listened and did what she said. Nothing bothered Kathy.

But something bothered her now. Why else would she be trying to distract her with all this fluff about her quilts and gossip about people she’d never met?

“—plan to work on next?”

“Hmm?” Garland blinked.

“I said, so what do you plan to work on next? You know, quilts? Those fabric things your idiot ex-husband wouldn’t let you make?” Kathy rolled her eyes.

“Cut me some slack, won’t you? I just got here.” Garland shook her head. “But I was looking at my fabric stash last night. There were a few pieces that were starting to talk to me.”

“I’ll take that as a good sign, though I’d love to know what bolts of fabric sound like when they talk.”

Garland couldn’t resist. “I’m not sure either. I keep losing the thread of the conversation.”

Kathy groaned and pushed back her chair. “On that note, I’ll let you get back to unpacking. Want to do lunch in a couple days, once you’re moved in? The Captain’s Bilge—sorry, Captain’s Bridge Pub is open year-round this year, if you don’t mind a touch of salmonella.”

“Yummy. I hope they don’t know you call it that.”

“Everyone calls it that, including the wait staff. Fortunately a beer or two usually has an anti-bacterial effect, so no one’s died yet.”

Garland chuckled as she walked Kathy to the front door. “Lucky you’re the president of the Chamber of Commerce, or they’d run you out of town on a rail.”

“They’re all too afraid of me to do that.” Kathy paused at the door and looked hard at her. “I wasn’t kidding before. You’ve got to get those two out of here.” She shook her head. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

“You sound like someone in
Star Wars
,” Garland teased. “What should I do, Obi-wan? The Force is—”

“It isn’t funny, Garland!” Kathy slapped the doorframe with one hand. She looked so upset—and fearful—that Garland stared.

“Okay, okay,” she soothed. “I’m sorry.”

“Promise me they’ll be out of your house by tomorrow.”

Kathy wanted her to promise that she’d boot them out? Heck, no. “Kath, what’s wrong? Why is this bothering you so much? Is there something you’re not telling me? Do you know who these people are?”

“Of course I don’t,” Kathy said—too quickly. “It’s just that you’re here all alone in this house with a total stranger and no neighbors within half a mile. Isn’t that enough for me to be concerned about? Look, I’ve gotta run. I’ll call Monday and we’ll see about that lunch.”

Kathy gave her a quick hug and darted out the door. Garland waved as she backed her Prius down the driveway. If Kathy was hiding something, she wasn’t going to talk about it. Not yet.

* * *

Alasdair lay on the soft platform Garland and the healer had brought him to and stared at his son who lay on the other platform a few feet away, unmoving except for the faint rise and fall of his chest.

Father had been killed twenty years ago. Mother, warrior that she was, fierce as a shark and wise as one of the great whales, had gone on a magnificently brave but foolhardy mission of vengeance and died in an ambush. His brothers had been picked off one by one over years of battles. Last of all was Finna, his sweet Finna who’d trusted him to protect her…all of them were gone now. He’d failed them all. Conn was all he had left, and he’d nearly lost him as well.

And even Conn had been saved by somebody else…by a human, no less. A bitter taste rose in his throat, and he swallowed it back. He should be grateful that his son was alive—and that he was alive. After all, selkies had been saved by humans before, if the old tales of their homeland were true. But it only seemed to be one more fish in his school of failures.

Conn stirred. Alasdair watched him carefully, but he did not waken. Thank Lir for that. Asleep he would not remember what had happened to them last night, attacked under cover of storm. Perhaps the gods had not forsaken them entirely if they could grant the mercy of dreamless sleep to an innocent child.

He shifted, feeling the deep ache of the long cuts in his sides. The healer had been skillful and gentle and bound his wounds with care despite the mistrust he could sense radiating from him like heat from a fire. He would heal, thanks to the human called Garland who’d found him and Conn. Mahtahdou had underestimated their selkie toughness when he dumped them into the sea to slowly bleed to death, cold and alone, after their torture. But he’d known exactly what it meant to a selkie to have his sealskin taken from him. Seeing his skin—the other half of his being—clutched in Mahtahdou’s claws had been far worse than feeling his knife slicing slowly and painfully through his flesh. And to know Conn was going through the same—his only son, who’d already lost so much—

A dull thud and footsteps, along with two new voices, joined the more familiar ones of Garland and the healer drifting up from down below. He lifted his head off the soft cushion and listened anxiously. No, they were not voices he knew. More importantly, neither of them was Mahtahdou’s voice. At least no voice he’d ever heard Mahtahdou use. Mahtahdou could make his voice sound like whatever he wanted—but always underneath it had that otherworldly flat coldness, as if the words were edged with ice. Mahtahdou was not there. For now, they were still safe.

Safe. When had he and his people been safe, once Mahtahdou had broken his bonds?

Hundreds of years ago, when the selkies came to these shores hidden among the bearded Northmen and decided to stay in the New World, they had joined with the dark-eyed land-dwellers to vanquish the sea-demon they called Mahtahdou who had long troubled their lives on this sea-girt land. Together they had destroyed the body of the great shaman Mahtahdou had taken over so that he was once again a formless spirit, and then bound that spirit. Peace prevailed until the dark-eyed men were displaced from their lands by men from across the sea who had never known Mahtahdou, and memory of him went from the land.

But the selkies—his family—remembered. They continued to keep watch over Mahtahdou, maintaining the chains that bound him. All had been well through the long years; if the leader of the selkies did not possess the power to keep Mahtahdou chained, he or she would espouse one who did. Alasdair still remembered his grandmother’s power, so tangible that she’d worn it like a second sealskin. Mahtahdou had been well fettered under her.

But when Grandmother had left this world and gone into the next, the bonds of her power that kept Mahtahdou restrained had weakened. Father had not been her equal, though he’d tried—

The voices below sounded closer now. He could hear Garland and the healer talking quietly just below. Would they come back up here? It would be good if she did, so he could try to figure out what she was. He stroked the smooth blue skin woven of thread that she’d given him and felt the magic running through it, strong magic speaking of love and caring and tenderness. It belonged to her mate, she had said. Lucky man, to be loved like this. Would he mind that she was allowing someone else to wear it?

He closed his eyes and saw again the picture on the beach this morning as he lay in the sand, fighting groggily to rouse himself from pain and weakness and despair: the sun gleaming on the hair of the human cradling Conn against her, her eyes—blue eyes! He’d heard some humans had them, but hadn’t believed it—her blue eyes anxious but her voice soft and comforting. Then he’d panicked, dragging himself to his wounded feet to save his child—and had nearly been knocked over again when he touched the soft covering she’d wrapped around Conn and felt the power in it.