Suddenly she was weeping. She hadn’t let herself cry more than a tear or two since she was little. It didn’t do any good, and it drew Shaw’s scorn. But she had a lot of tears stored up. In between sobs, she added, “I was trying to kill myself. It was the only way I could think of to escape. I’d rather die than go back, but I’m glad you rescued me.”
Caught up in her own drama, she didn’t hear the waitress approaching until that raspy voice said, “None of that, honey. You kill the bastard, if you have to, but not yourself.” It took a second for Meaghan to figure out the waitress had overheard just the last sentence or so and assumed she was running away from an abusive partner.
Kyle must have picked up on that too. “Ma’am, I’m doing my best to make sure it doesn’t come to that. Which would be why if anyone asks, you haven’t seen a blind, blonde woman.”
“Ain’t seen no one like that here, and no good-looking, white-knight types either. Let me know if you need anything.” Her tone implied a great deal more than a refill on coffee.
When the waitress left, Meaghan whispered, “You’re a quick thinker.”
“I simply told the truth.” He dropped his voice even lower. “Just a simplified version.” The low, sultry tone made Meaghan shiver in the most delightful way, but not as much as the sense that Kyle had made a commitment to her with what he’d said to the waitress. “But we’d better wait to do any more plotting until we’re back in the van. Too many people might hear.” His voice was even lower and more shiver inducing. Cool and embracing, welcoming and menacing as the ocean, soft as fur.
She let herself savor the unfamiliar sensation as she ate her meat loaf and mashed potatoes. The meal was heavy and greasy and definitely the most delicious thing she could remember eating.
Maybe because it was the first meal she had eaten in freedom.
Chapter Four
Meaghan was sitting in the passenger seat now. Kyle figured it was far enough from where she’d washed up that she didn’t need to hide anymore. She still managed to fall asleep as readily as she had in the back, though, leaving Kyle with his thoughts.
Why on land or sea was he doing this? He couldn’t have left Meaghan on the cold beach, blind, verging on hypothermia, and rattled after a seizure, and he certainly couldn’t have left her in the water—but what had prompted him to dive in so deep? Anyone else would assume she was delusional, a crazy girl who needed to be back in that hospital she was so desperate to escape, or at least get back on her medication. She didn’t smell like a liar, but a mentally ill person would believe her own wild story.
But he believed her. It wasn’t a stretch to believe that the Agency might have secret facilities other than the one Deck’s cousin had uncovered last year. It made sense, in a creepy way, that if the Agency had been “studying” duals, they might also be interested in poking at other kinds of Differents. The old witch lineages—the Donovans and Angelinis and al-Arabis of the world—weren’t going to cooperate, but a normy family who had a witch kid, especially if the kid also had medical problems, might be convinced to give her to people who claimed they could help her.
And Meaghan smelled like a witch. A scared, sad, sickly witch, but a witch.
That still didn’t explain why he was in the van on the way to Donovan’s Cove. Not completely.
Kyle had never been an activist. He just wanted to lay low, blend into the human world as best he could, do his job, finish medical school and become a doctor. Take care of his feckless family, be their interface with a world that scared them far more than they scared it.
Since he’d been canned from his job, though, he’d been letting anger grow, which wasn’t a very otterlike way to be. Meaghan’s story pressed all his angry buttons.
Besides, Declan was in Oregon. If Kyle was going to do something incredibly stupid, he might as well do several stupid things at once. Maybe he could win the man he yearned for by being a hero, stealing a witch from the Agency and protecting a possibly Donovan baby.
Romantic and foolish and add a good dose of potentially lethal to the mix.
Did he think he was a wolf or a big cat or something? This wasn’t otter behavior. Otters weren’t heroes. They were sidekicks, comic relief—or at least that was what his raft had assured him when he joined the ambulance squad and even more so when he started looking into medical school.
Otters didn’t fall in love with humans, either, not even witches. A good, healthy friends-with-benefits arrangement, maybe, but not love, especially not the unrequited kind that burned like oil on your fur.
But he’d fallen for Deck, hard. And he was already becoming infatuated with Meaghan.
Might be Kyle wasn’t the smartest otter out there.
He glanced at the witch in the passenger seat, her body limp and relaxed in sleep.
She was so frail and yet so brave, willing to die so she couldn’t be used against others. Maybe she was making him braver.
Or maybe he just missed Declan, wanted to do something that would prove to the witch that an otter could be useful, could be serious, could be courageous—could be a worthy companion for a Donovan witch.
Pathetic, really, especially since Deck was so laid-back he might as well be an otter. While his relatives were off trying to save the world, Deck was surfing.
But if his pathetic unrequited love ended up helping his half-drowned witch while poking the Agency with a stick, Kyle could handle being pathetic.
Declan Donovan, aka Deck, was heading out to use a combination of muscle and earth magic to dig compost into a vegetable bed when his phone rang.
The theme from Superman. His father, the Magical Man of Steel—except Desmond Donovan didn’t even have his own witch kryptonite.
So much for the serene day that started with surfing at dawn and yoga on the beach and no real obligations other than a bit of playing in the dirt. Among his other superpowers, his father could smash Deck’s composure the way a tsunami wrecked a coastal village. He heaved a sigh worthy of one of his teenage-girl cousins and answered. Think sun on waves. Think calm. Dad loves me and I love him. We just don’t like each other all the time. “Hey, Dad. How’s the world-saving business these days? And where are you and Mom at the moment, anyway?”
His father cleared his throat significantly. “We’ll fill you in when we get home.”
“Oh, it’s that kind of trip.” The kind no one without a security clearance was supposed to know about until it was over, because the area they were in was that volatile. Mostly those missions were for the UN these days, but sometimes old friends in the government called in favors. “I’ll look forward to stories when you get back. Even if you have to leave out all the best parts.”
He let an edge of sarcasm slip into his voice. A good cover. Okay, probably a lousy cover; his dad was too smart not to understand what was going on. The adult Deck was worried sick the whole time his parents were off working magic to mitigate some deadly combination of natural and human-created disaster, and tried to cover the worry with snark. And Deck’s inner little boy (who his father would say was never far from the surface) was just as worried, but also resented the long absences and the secrecy.
Maybe his adult side resented it all too, but at least he understood why it was necessary.
He waited for his father to zing him back with a snide remark of his own. Instead, what he got was, “The trip after this one is an agricultural project in Uzbekistan. Irrigation, a little earth magic, your Uncle Dermott’s green magic. We could use another water witch.”
Deck gaped and tried to collect his racing thoughts. “Did you just ask me to do some world saving with you?” he finally managed to say. “I’m honored. And terrified.”
“It’s past time you started using your magic for something other than improving surfing conditions.” Ah, there was the zinger he’d been waiting for. Pretty good one, actually. Powers knew that was mostly how he
used his magic.
“Uzbekistan doesn’t have a coastline anyway.”
“That’s good for your first fieldwork. Even if your magic goes horribly awry, you can’t cause a tidal wave if we’re inland.” His father chuckled but it still didn’t sound like teasing. More like truth couched as a joke.
Just because Deck had thought the same thing didn’t make it sting any less. “Have some faith in me, Dad,” he snapped. “There are always earthquakes and flash floods, not to mention random lightning strikes.”
“I’d been trying to forget the lightning problem. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea. The electrical grid in the area we’re going is unreliable as it is.”
“I’ve never interfered with the electrical grid!” He caught himself before he whined “that’s not fair!” but he couldn’t help thinking it, like he was thirteen instead of twenty-three.
“I heard about the transformer in town last month. Maybe you should hold off on fieldwork another year or two. Keep working on your control.”
Deck reached for the serenity he’d found surfing and doing yoga only a couple of hours ago, but it eluded him. “Fine. Not like I really wanted to go play aid worker someplace with no coastline and a feeble grasp on indoor plumbing.” Not to mention that he really didn’t want to risk making some poor farmers’ already challenging lives harder because his magic went haywire. But admitting that was playing right into his father’s hands.
Predictably, the conversation degenerated from there until the bile was knee-deep.
At least they’d managed a civil minute or so before the bickering started. That was good for a conversation with his father, considering their uncanny ability to bring out the asshole in each other.
After they finally hung up—Deck at least wishing for an old-fashioned landline with a receiver he could slam down—Deck leaned on his spading fork, looking at the gray-green Pacific in the distance, and tried to think about something pleasant.
Which these days pretty much defaulted to thinking about Kyle.
Not only was Kyle crazy sexy and one of the finest surfers Deck knew, Kyle had trusted him from the word go. Trusted him so much it had freaked him out, but after a run-in with dear old Dad, Deck could appreciate that trust.
Too bad it was too late to tell Kyle that.
The sexy otter had wanted more than Deck could give. He’d wanted a commitment. Otter duals were supposed to be safe from that kind of awkwardness, weren’t they? They were affectionate and sensual, always up for fun and usually kinky, but devoted to their rafts, not to their lovers. But Kyle was different from most otters. He was serious and thoughtful under that playful exterior. He wanted to be a doctor, for Powers’ sake, and he’d wanted a commitment almost before they’d gotten naked for the first time. Way too Donovan-like for Deck’s taste, even if Kyle was steaming hot.
In some ways, Kyle would make a better Donovan than Deck did. Deck would love to run off and be a surf bum, which was as close as a human could get to the typical otter-dual lifestyle. Kyle would love to go to Backasswardistan and save the lives of people who’d burn him at the stake if they knew what he was.
Kyle even played kink in a Donovan-like way. No simple “Whee! Bondage and spanking are fun,” but “Take me down, master me, make me yours, for real and for always.” Jumping right to the serious, hardcore stuff, playing with emotions as well as bodies.
Yeah…first time in the sack was a little too soon for that shit.
Too soon or not, though, he’d seen Kyle’s fierce crimson need for being mastered, incandescent to his witch-sight, and hadn’t been able to resist the challenge to his libido or his red magic.
It had been the wildest, kinkiest, hottest sex Deck had ever had.
But amazing sex or not, the magic still hadn’t danced on his skin. Even Deck’s sometimes unreliable magic knew Kyle wasn’t Mr. Right.
Despite the fact they obviously weren’t meant for each other, he couldn’t get Kyle off his mind, keep fantasies about Kyle away from his cock.
He was almost lost in thought, enough to be a proper Donovan these days. Too bad he was thinking about hot, politically incorrect sex with Mr. Wrong, not new and better ways to irrigate in an ecologically sound way or mitigate flooding danger in lower Slobovia, or whatever problem the family water witches were supposed to be attacking this month.
Lost in his thoughts—okay, more like sexual fantasies—he didn’t hear someone sneaking up behind him until he was hugged from behind by someone small and warm.
He didn’t jump. It wasn’t all that unusual to be mugged from behind in Donovan’s Cove; his family was an affectionate bunch, for all they were a bit too intense.
He did jump, though, when he turned and saw who the sneak-attack hugger was. “Elissa! When did you get home? For that matter, how did you get home? Wasn’t there a little issue with an outstanding warrant that even the combined clout of our fathers hasn’t been able to resolve?”
The family’s current most-notorious member, finally supplanting his great-aunt Josie more than a decade after her death, laughed and hugged him again. “Got home this morning and the whole crew’s with me. We got some signs it was time. Would have been here sooner, but we stuck around until Midsummer to see some friends get married. But we’re home now and we’re staying. Mom and the aunties are all cooing over the baby and grilling my men, so I took a few minutes to see who else was around. As for how I got home, Rafe has some interesting relatives. When I asked, the explanation was something along the lines of ‘don’t worry about it or your little mortal brain will leak out your ears’.”
He snorted. “We’re getting used to that around here. Paul and Tag’s lady friend thought I looked down one day, so she popped over to Japan, picked up a noodle bowl for me at her favorite dive restaurant, and got back while it was still steaming. I got the same answer when I asked her how she did it.”
“She’d be the adorable girl with the ears and tails who was with Paul and Tag?” Elissa shook her head and chuckled. “Those crazy ancient nature spirits. If you notice any earthquakes, blame her and my grandmother-in-law talking shop.”
Declan shuddered melodramatically. “Don’t even say it. Earthquakes can cause tsunamis and I really don’t feel like working today.”
“Do you ever?”
He punched her gently, playfully. “Good to see you too, Elissa.” He smiled as he snarked, though. There was a time when Elissa, only a few years his senior, had been his ally, the goof-off and the girl whose science was better than her magic, watching each other’s backs against the oh-so earnest and concerned rest of the family. Now Elissa could make most of the rest of the family look like normies. And with her two handsome dual husbands, Jude and Rafe, she was raising even more eyebrows than he was for a change.
Maybe there was hope for him yet.
Elissa smiled. She may have changed in ways he couldn’t begin to fathom, but she still had a smile that could light up the entire Pacific Northwest. “If we got a tsunami, you’d try to surf on it. Probably succeed too. But it should be okay. They set up a pocket reality so they wouldn’t disarrange ours if they got, as Grand-mère rather disturbingly put it, ‘playful’.”
“That’s reassuring.” It was, in a funny way. Nature spirits had scary powers over space and time, but they used their powers for the greater good of the world. Or in Akane’s case, for comic relief, but the kitsune was careful not to break anything too important.
“It’s going to take a bit to explain what I’ve been up to in the past year,” Elissa said. “So you go first.”
“Finally surfed the Pipeline, which is more awesome than I can explain to someone who doesn’t surf. Haven’t caused any major lightning incidents.” He took a deep breath. Elissa was, among other things, a powerful red witch. Maybe she’d be able to make sense of his aborted relationship. “And I met someone…but it’s complicated.”
&n
bsp; “You? Complicated? Does that mean you slept with him or her more than three times before one of you got restless?”
Before he could explain just how complicated this was, how they had only been together a few times and he’d bolted because they both wanted more and he was terrified, they were interrupted. Ten-year-old Erin, one of his older sister Maeve’s numerous offspring, scampered over into the garden. “Uncle Deck? You’ve got people here to see you.”
He looked up and saw the last person on earth he’d ever expected to see again, holding the arm of a ghost-pale, blonde girl.
Deck sifted frantically through his brain, trying to find the right words or, failing that, any words at all. “What are you doing here after I sent you away?” popped into his head but it wasn’t right because he meant something more along the lines of “How did you know I didn’t mean it, that I just needed more time?”
Elissa solved the problem of what to say by shouting in something very unlike her usual would-be-sultry-if-she-wasn’t-his-cousin voice, “You!” pointing her finger at the interlopers like a character in a silent-movie melodrama.
“I see you’ve met Kyle,” Deck said drily. “He has that effect on people.”
Chapter Five
As the accusatory voice vibrated through Meaghan’s bones, she felt a seizure coming on. “Lay me down,” she whispered urgently, but Kyle was already easing her onto the grass. To her dismay, someone else—someone who was probably the woman who yelled at her, because those hands were small, though strong and calloused—was helping.
The vision surged over her, and for the first time she knew what it felt like: like being sucked under by a great wave, with no hope of rescue. The ocean frightened her less, though. The ocean might have killed her, but it loved her at the same time. This just hurt.
Her body arched. Her hair stood on end. The stench of blood and a child’s panicked cries filled her brain. But for some reason, it wasn’t as bad as it normally was, not as painful, not as all-encompassing. She was still herself inside the vision, retaining some control.
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