by Mima
“I don’t have it anymore.”
“That’s very telling. What did it say?”
Adam looked out the window. “Ask him.”
Sighing, tense, Xia glanced at her messages. Sixty-five texts from Markos, thirty-nine from Tony, six from Sanders the Night Watch, and at least a dozen from other friendly morphi. Her voicemail box was maxed out. She cringed, and called Antonia.
The phone rang and rang. When voicemail kicked in, she cleared her throat. “Tony, it’s me, Xia. I’m alive and well. There was a delay in my return, and I’m sorry it took so long to get back to you. I’m back, and I love you.”
Closing the phone, Xia rubbed at her aching chest, feeling sad that she was glad not to have to face her sister’s initial reaction. “Markos said to check email in an hour. We’re going to the Chamber.”
“I should go pack.”
Just like that, with no fuss, he was ready to go. Looking at the line of his shoulders, she said, “You should sleep.”
He looked at her. “Do you want to share?”
Tipping her head, she asked, “You mean have sex?”
“Yes, while we share ourselves.”
She’d never have guessed the curt selkie would have this romantic streak. The thought of sex with Adam right now actually made her a little dizzy. Life was just moving so fast. “Ummm…”
“Then it’s best I go.” He went into the bathroom while Xia stood frozen.
He stepped out of sight, and time stopped. No air was in her lungs. Her blood did not pump.
“Adam?” The house closed in around her, binding her, burying her.
He came back out with his bag. “Aye.”
She swallowed. “Don’t. Don’t punish me like this. I’m sorry, I’ll lie with you.”
He stared at her. “It wasn’t an ultimatum, Xia. It was a question. The practical thing is to ready for the Chamber. The only thing that would keep me from my duty would be sharing you, but you’re not ready.”
She felt her knees buckle and reached out. He lunged, dropping his bag, and was there to catch her.
“You can’t go. I don’t want you to leave me.” The fear was immediate and total. She began to shake. “I’ll sink.”
He gathered her and they staggered to the couch. “Xia, stop. I’m right here.”
“I don’t want to go back.” Her voice was high and tight, not sounding anything like the confident, calm woman of an hour ago.
He gave her a little shake. “You’re here. You’re not going back. You’re out, Xia.”
She clawed at him, clinging. “Adam, don’t go.” She’d had no idea how much of her confidence was tied to his presence. “I need you!”
He grabbed her jaw and wrenched her face up. “Cease.”
Gasping, she stared into the depths of his eyes, and calmed. But she still gripped him tightly. “I’m afraid.”
He softened his hold on her face. “Morphi, you walk the land. Your soul waits on the ether again, in your possession. You are Xia, and I am your rampart. You are safe from Terra.”
“Kiss me.” She begged him with her eyes. He had to stay. She would do anything.
His eyes narrowed. “Why.”
“Kiss me!”
“No. You are still held by your fear.” He stood, leaving her on the couch.
She cried out, folding in on herself.
“Get up. Get your hat, it’s sunny out.”
Stilling, she rolled her eyes up at him, her arms wrapped tight around her torso.
“Come on, Morphi. I need to pack and visit my mistress. It’s no light thing for a selkie to leave the scent of the ocean.”
“Y-you’ll take me with you?”
He held out his hand. “It’s not efficient, but yes.”
Xia looked at his hand. The purple half-moon bruise on his nail was smaller, higher, healing. His palm was tan and calloused, the fingers long. She pried one of her hands free of her body and put her own small, soft, pale hand in his. Her heart calmed.
Chapter Ten
Xia sat on the bench outside the post, wondering where Mr. Branough had gotten to. Her hat was on her head and her hands were in her lap, but she now understood Mr. Branough’s dog Rougher. She quivered with tension, eyes on the grocery, waiting for Adam to appear. It was all she could do to stick her bottom to the silvered wood of the bench, remain seated, and pretend she was not screaming inside.
Anne came to the door of the grocery and waved. An excuse, good. Xia hurried across the road and down to the store.
“So you’re off to Austria!”
They were? “Just for a bit.” Xia leaned to look for Adam, but Anne did not move.
“How wonderful. Bring a sweater. ’Tis chillier there, between their cold, stiff ways and their mountains.”
“I’m sure we’ll meet some kind people. Is Adam still shopping?”
“Hmpf. Not like Scotland, tha’s for sure.” Anne ducked into the doorway to peer into the store. Darting back around the doorjamb, she grabbed Xia’s arm and stepped in close to her. “God above, you have to tell me. Say ’tis true he’s the hottest thing this village has ever known, or will.”
“What?” Where was Adam! Xia pressed her hand against her chest to slow her racing heart.
“I know we’re not close enough, I know I’m being too bold, but I have drooled over that man since I was old enough to know what a man was. Is he good? I mean, really good?”
Xia caught on Anne was trying to gossip about Adam’s skills as a lover. Despite her pounding heart, she smiled at the kind woman who’d chatted with her whenever Xia had come to the village. “He’s fucking spectacular. He’s taken me with a kiss alone.” It was an exaggeration, but not much of one.
Anne’s reaction was totally gratifying. “Ohmygod.” Her hand fluttered up to her throat. “Ohmygod. You…are the luckiest woman on the planet.”
“Aye. She is. This morphi has ridden great danger. We all owe her.” Adam’s deep voice came up behind Anne.
Xia’s legs shivered once, but held. The relief flowed through her body, turning her bones to jelly. She listed in the doorjamb.
“Oh yes, our luck was high when they sent Xia to us.” Anne smiled brightly, too bright, her eyes still as big as saucers as they darted everywhere but Adam’s face. “Well, Xia, have a fantastic triss. I mean, kip. Uh… Did you find everything, Adam?”
Adam looked at Xia and his dark eyes grounded her. “I always find what I go searching for.” He gave Xia his tiny smile and sidled past Anne, his arms full of two bags of supplies. His ass as he walked in a long, flowing stride toward the Rover made Xia’s palms itch to grab it.
She drifted down the street after him, like a good collie dog. “Bye, Anne.” Glancing back at the pretty brunette, she grinned to see the woman had taken Xia’s place, holding up the white frame door of the old stone house.
They climbed in the Rover.
“Anne’s a sweet girl. You torment her.” He started the car.
“Anne’s a lonely, horny woman. She needs a little fantasy in her life.” Her equilibrium returned with his presence, her sense of self and strength again solid.
Xia waved to Macgregor, standing on an upturned plastic bucket near the ferry ticket booth. He paused his determined chewing when he saw her and seemed to glare at her. A song popped into her head. I am the god of hellfire! And I bring you…FIRE! Fire, fire, fire, fire! Prodigy. A good angry song to work out to.
She smiled to herself, now understanding why her brain kept throwing fire songs at her. She’d known all along, subconsciously, that Ignis was at the heart of the solution she’d been seeking. She’d been on the right track, but wouldn’t have puzzled it out until too late.
Down the road about six kilometers was a dirt road, and down that winding, pine-crowded road was a tiny white cottage. One room, thatch roof, stone beach, an old shed, and a more modern carport with a small machine shop attached. A large generator sat against it. A small undulation of grassy dunes separated the pines from
the perfect stone crescent. An overturned white dory lay on one of the closest hills. No other sign of life was around.
Adam got out of the car. He ran his hands through his hair as he turned his face up to the sea. “Xia…”
She came around to stand by him. Stared at the heaving swells that cut across the mouth of his small cove. “Lord and Lady, she’s just so overwhelming.”
His hand settled on her nape, her hair caught between her skin and his touch. “She is, but I am her creature. I’ve learned to master the fear and often find joy. And I know you understand the thrill of living to your fullest abilities, of rising to a challenge. It’s a hard life, but a good one.”
Looking at him from under her lashes, she saw the ease come over his face, how his mouth actually formed a slight, but real smile. She looked back at the gray-black ocean, feeling the salt in the wind. Bitch.
“I need to swim. Will you wait in my home?”
Xia looked at the house more closely, the one tiny window, the small door, the fresh lime coating. “This is your true home. You built it.”
His hands soothed against her neck, his fingers finding their way through the strands. “How did you know?”
“I’m not sure. It made sense. The house is from about the right time.” The time of his first wife, early 1800s construction. Her grandparents had had one similar to it. They’d built in Maine, to remember their home country of Erin. Several happy summers were spent in that cottage.
“I don’t think… Perhaps you should not come down to the water.”
Her skin shriveled. “No, thanks. I’ll watch you from here.” A shower was one thing, but the ocean was something else.
He handed her a key, normal and modern. He stripped, his body lean and chiseled. Oh, yes, her thought from before was correct—he was hairless except for his head. She’d never seen a man hairless down there before, and she found it worked for her. She licked her lips, and he chuckled.
She shot him a glance. He touched her chin and walked barefoot down to the shore, stepping carefully over the sea’s debris of sticks and tangled piles of seaweed. Her heart quivered. She took a step after him. No. I will stay here. Every step he took away from her made the world dip beneath her. Hungrily.
His shoulders above his naked ass looked so broad, and his thighs were revealed for the powerful force they were, thick with muscle front and back. His hair shone like a golden halo as it blew around his head. He paused where the stones darkened beneath the inward pressing waves. She found the self-control to stand there and let him, although her breaths came in small pants, like a panicked dog.
As usual, the mundane humans had some of the legend right, and some wrong. Selkies did have a sealskin, which transformed them to their seal body. And if a human was extraordinarily lucky to somehow find it, they could capture a selkie and bind her human form to them. They could also kill the selkie’s seal soul by destroying the skin and drive the human shell left mad. But selkies did not leave their skins lying on the beach. Nor did they come to shore on full moons or solstices. No, a selkie’s skin hid itself safely in the sea until it was called.
Xia stood on the rocks and listened to the achingly beautiful tenor of Adam calling his other half.
“Hohhhhhhh.” He poured out the long, masculine cry over the waves. It was full of command, a raider’s cry to push forward through the storm when he went a-viking.
“Hohhhhhhh,” he sang again, his palms lifted out toward the sea. It was the mournful cry of a long-wandering sailor seeing his homeland rise on the horizon.
“Hohhhhhhh!” The roar of triumph winged above the water, a fisherman’s pride at landing the hard-fought marlin that would feed his family for a month.
Adam knelt in the stones and reached down to the sea. The water lifted up to him, and a rise of brown fur nudged his fingertips. He closed his hand and stood, hefting it free. Water streamed off the pelt, which glistened thick, nearly black in the sun. He held it gently, turning it a bit, laying one end on the shore. He stepped on it, graceful, then rolled his shoulders as he drew it up behind him.
The movement reminded Xia of putting on her snowsuit as a child. The fur rose in a wall from his feet to his shoulders, covering him like a full cape. His hands lifted and he drew a hood up over his head, and his sun-gilt hair disappeared. His body shrugged, and she could no longer make out his arms. As he began to fall forward into the water, trapped in his cloak of fur, from one moment to the next, even within the same breath, a massive seal thrust with its flippers and sleeked into the ocean.
She held her breath, staring as the white ripples disappeared. Four body-lengths away a brown ball popped up, only it did not rise with the water as a ball should. Xia stared at Adam’s wild self, his furred seal self, and remembered his sleek danger as he circled her bubble of air, driving Aqua’s torment away from her. Come back. Don’t go. I need you. She got as far as opening her mouth to beg. Then he disappeared between the waves’ rise, and she was staring at the expanse that had tormented her dreamtime work for a month.
Heart in her throat, she rooted her feet in the cobbles and stared in horror at the horizon. She waited for the tidal rage of water to rise up, while she kept her feet from running crazed, desperate down to the water after Adam. It was long, long moments later when she realized water was not going to attack, and she was still managing to breathe without Adam, although a heart attack was possible.
Stiff, nearly blind, she picked her way down the crushed-oyster-shell path to the small cottage. She had to use both hands to get the key in the lock. When she opened the heavy plank door, it was like stepping back to her childhood. She almost expected to see her grandfather at the table mending nets and her grandmother at the fire stirring raisins into the oatmeal. For a minute, she even smelled the cinnamon. They’d died before her parents, and she missed them all.
Her gaze swept the dim room. The corner bed, the long heavy table, the counters and shelves. The log ladder up to the rafters with a plank floor. An assortment of old tools and bits and objects hung from the ceiling.
She sank into the big chair by the empty hearth. It smelled of the sea and the wild, peat and love. Her cell phone buzzed and she shrieked. Slapping a hand over her hip, she recovered her breath and pulled it open, her heart heavy when she saw Tony’s picture in the outer window.
“Hey, sis.”
“I don’t know what to say.” Tony’s voice was oddly flat.
“What do you mean?” She couldn’t deal with this. She needed Adam by her side.
“I mean I’m so mixed up right now, I couldn’t even return your call for an hour.”
“Yeah.”
“I thought you were dead. And then I was so happy and proud to hear you were well.” With every sentence Tony’s voice went higher. “Then I wanted to punch you in the nose and rip out your hair and was so hurt that you didn’t call sooner. I’m afraid, of what it will take from me the next time you do this. I’m really pissed that you did this at all.”
Tony had never wanted Xia to be a morphi. She’d only grown more dismayed as Xia’s power grew and her trips became longer and more challenging. More dangerous.
“I didn’t want to do it either, Antonia.” Xia’s voice grew hard at rehashing the same old argument. “But I’m a soldier and glad to be one. I like helping. If I didn’t use my gift to try to help balance the evil in the world, I’d go insane. Mom and Dad didn’t die in vain.”
“Is that a dis? Are you judging me?” Tony’s voice went into the supersonic range.
“Don’t, Tony.”
“Not all of us are superheroes. Not all of us want to dabble in the sacred, literally. Not all of us—”
“Tony! Don’t.”
Her sister’s voice shouted through the phone. “Don’t you dare dismiss me. I just lived two nights thinking you were dead.”
“I’m sorry! Forgive me for not managing the correct timetable for being psychically subsumed!”
“You’re a butthead.”
/> Heavy breathing came from both phones.
“No, you are,” Xia muttered sullenly.
“You are more,” Tony whispered.
Silence.
“Markos called me,” Tony said tiredly. “We talked. It helped. He called again just a little while ago. He’s going to consult for the Foundation. Maybe he’ll even come do some field research with me.”
Xia wasn’t surprised Markos had been able to help her sister. She was convinced that if her sister’s powers had manifested, she’d be a fire elemental as well. “Good. That’s good. He works too much and is too often alone.” Eighty-six years of working with Markos had led to her sister and her boss having a tangential relationship. It calmed Xia to think of them as friends, like her world was aligning.
“I love you, Xia.”
“I remembered you, Tony. When I was Terra. It helped.”
“Yeah, I’m glad I can contribute to the war effort in small ways.” Her sister’s voice wavered. “Did you get it? The precious answer worth your soul?”
“I did.”
The bitterness in Tony’s voice only increased. “I don’t care, Xia. Do you hear me? I don’t care about the damned answer.”
Xia breathed, hurt, but understanding.
“I should go now.” Tony’s voice was back to being flat.
Xia closed her eyes, overwhelmed by her need for Adam. “Sure. I’ll be in Austria for a few days and probably out of contact.”
“All right. Email me if you can.”
“Bye.”
“Bye.”
Xia shut her phone and stared around the cottage. What was this overwhelming need for Adam? She’d never felt anything like it. Her feet were frozen, being pulled into the earth. Her psyche felt naked, stripped of all ability and skill without him. She knew that was illogical. Knew that she had psychic skills he did not have.
Beijing. She tried to remember her success there, and in Peru. Thailand, that had been a hard job, and Greenland. It didn’t matter. Her breathing grew short. Intellectually, she knew her success was based on her abilities, but now, here, she needed Adam. The space around her was strange and she ached for his surrounding strength. She couldn’t get enough air. She couldn’t move her feet.