The Selkie Sorceress (Seal Island Trilogy, Book 3)

by Sophie Moss

  She pulled back, breathing hard. “Clifden.”

  “What?” Sam asked, searching her eyes. “What about it?”

  “Clifden,” Glenna repeated as hope surged inside her. “Brigid’s going to Clifden.”

  I’m sorry I can’t get you closer,” Neil said, pulling the lorry into a parking spot across from Clifden’s only waterfront restaurant. “But there’s a path along the bay.” He pointed to the trail leading away from town. “It’ll take you to the ocean.”

  The rusted door creaked as Brigid opened it. The salty breezes lifted the ends of her long black hair as she stepped out of the truck. Neil opened his own door and climbed out. He left the engine idling, afraid it wouldn’t start up again if he turned it off. Black smoke streamed from his exhaust pipe.

  “Do you want me to walk with you?” Neil asked, rounding the front of the truck.

  She shook her head, those captivating gray eyes drifting over his shoulder to the water. “I will go alone from here.”

  Neil removed his hat as a heart-wrenching sadness gripped him. He didn’t want to let her go. Fumbling in his pocket for his business cards, he handed one to her. “If you ever have any building needs…this is my number.”

  She offered him a small smile and took the card. “Thank you.”

  A strange ache built in Neil’s chest as she walked away. His gaze dropped to her bare feet, his eyes widening when he saw they were healed. A gull cawed, swooping over the bay, and Neil let out a long shaky breath.

  If you ever have any building needs…? He turned away from the water. He really needed to get out more. He walked back to the driver’s side of the truck, but he spotted her wimple lying across the seat. Reaching through the open window, he fished it out. “Wait,” he called, “you forgot your—”

  A gray fog swept through the streets. A cold wind rattled the shutters of the homes and knocked over the chairs on the restaurant’s patio. Neil grasped the warm hood of his lorry as the notes of a song glided over the water and the woman vanished in the mists.

  SISTER EVELYN STARED out the window of the kitchen at the line of cars turning up the driveway. The parishioners were starting to arrive. Behind her, the nuns were pulling dishes out of the refrigerator, making last minute preparations for the feast that would follow the midday mass.

  She wanted to believe Glenna. She wanted to have faith in her friend’s vision, and trust that she and Sam would find Brigid in Clifden. But what if Glenna was wrong? What if Brigid was still out there, wandering the hills, or lost in the wilderness?

  A few of her sisters were still down at the river searching for Brigid, but Father McAllister would arrive any minute. They didn’t have much time.

  Her gaze lifted to the bell tower in the steeple of the white chapel, remembering something Glenna had told her once, about their two religions—that bells were sacred to pagans as well. In Christianity, they were a call to worship, but to pagans, they were used to drive out evil or seal a spell. Brigid had always loved the bells. Maybe if she rang them, Brigid would hear them and come home.

  One of the younger nuns—Sister Catherine—hurried into the kitchen, gathering up the loaves of bread. Sister Evelyn laid a hand on her arm. “Sister, I need you to ring the bells.”

  “It’s not time,” Sister Catherine protested, shaking her head. “We’re not supposed to ring the bells until the start of mass.”

  “I need you to ring them now.”

  Sister Catherine set down the loaves and scurried out of the house. Sister Evelyn watched her run across the lawn and dart inside the chapel. As soon as the bells started to ring, she picked up her phone, dialing the office at St. Brigid’s Cathedral.

  “Sister Margaret,” she said when a nun whose voice she recognized answered. “I need you to ring the bells in the cathedral.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes.”

  “But—”

  “I’ve had a call from the Bishop,” Sister Evelyn said. “It’s an emergency.”

  “The Bishop?” There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “What happened? Why haven’t I heard anything about this?”

  “You will,” Sister Evelyn said grimly. But her hands shook as she hung up the phone and started to dial another number. She would get in trouble for this. How much, she didn’t know. But right now, all she cared about was finding Brigid.

  “Ring the bells in the church,” she breathed into the phone when Sister Helen in Tullamore answered. “All of them.”

  SAM STEPPED ON the gas, passing a car full of tourists. “What color was the truck?”

  “Blue,” Glenna answered, snagging his laptop case from the back seat. “Will your internet work in the car?”

  Sam nodded as she booted it up, searching for information on Clifden Construction. She handed him his phone back and he frowned at the screen. “Seven missed calls from Tara. Do you know what this is about?”

  She shook her head. “The company’s owned by a man named Neil Leary. They’re working on a big housing project on the south side of the bay. I think I know where it is, and it shouldn’t be that hard to find.”

  “Good.” Sam dialed the pub, and Tara answered on the first ring.

  “Tara, it’s Sam.”

  “Sam!” Relief flooded into her voice. “I’ve been trying to reach you all morning.”

  “Why?” Sam asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “Haven’t you gotten my messages?”

  “I just saw that you called,” he said. “I haven’t listened to them yet.”

  Tara took a deep breath. “This is going to sound crazy, but I think I know where Brigid is. I had a dream last night about a community of nuns in Kildare…”

  Sam shook his head as she related both the details of her dream and Kelsey’s connection to Brigid as the princess living in a convent in The Little Mermaid. “You’re not crazy,” Sam said when she’d finished. “We’re leaving Kildare now.”

  There was a long moment of silence on the other end. “Is Brigid with you?”

  “No.”

  “Where is she?”

  Sam gazed through the windshield at the sheep farms and rolling green hills of central Ireland. “We think she’s headed to Clifden. Things have gotten,” he paused, glancing at Glenna, “complicated. But we’re going to find her and catch the last ferry back to Seal Island tonight.”

  “That’s going to be a bit of a problem.”

  “Why?” Sam asked, putting Tara on speakerphone so Glenna could hear, too.

  “We don’t have a ferry anymore.”

  Sam exchanged a look with Glenna. “What happened to it?”

  “It caught fire.”

  Glenna shook her head, dismayed. “My mother did this.”

  “We think so, too” Tara said. “But that’s not the worst of it. She set the fire to get Caitlin and Liam out of their home so she could steal Owen’s pelt.”

  Glenna closed the laptop slowly. “Did she find it?”

  “Yes.”

  Sam gripped the wheel. He accelerated as the lanes widened, passing several cars at once. “How’s Owen doing now?”

  Through the phone, Sam heard the kitchen door squeak as Tara ducked into the back to hide their conversation from whoever was in the dining room. “He hasn’t said a word since last night,” Tara murmured.

  “I don’t blame him,” Sam said.

  “It gets worse,” Tara said softly.

  “How could it possibly get worse?” Sam asked.

  “He’s been sneaking off to see Nuala all winter.”

  Glenna lifted her eyes to Sam’s. “What?”

  “We found Nuala injured on the beach last night,” Tara explained. “She’d gotten into some kind of fight with Moira. I tried to get her to stay, but she went back into the water. Owen says he doesn’t know where she went, but that she’s on our side and is trying to help us.”

  “Can we trust her?” Sam asked.

  “I don’t know,” Tara admitted. “But she still loves Owe
n and wants to protect him. As long as he’s one of us, then I think she’s on our side.”

  Sam downshifted as the tractor trailer in front of him lumbered up the hill. “Has Liam come up with anything connecting the mermaids to the white selkie legend?”

  “Yes,” Tara said slowly, “but it’s only a theory.”

  “Give us whatever you’ve got,” Sam said.

  “Brennan told Owen a story a few days ago,” Tara began, “about a powerful siren who almost started a war between the mermaids and selkies.”

  Glenna tensed, and Sam glanced over at her. He didn’t like the look on her face. He didn’t like it at all. “Go on,” he said slowly.

  “The siren was the child of a selkie and a merman,” Tara explained. “Because she had both selkie and mermaid blood in her, she was very rare and unusually powerful. Men fell helplessly in love with her the moment they saw her.”

  Sam thought of Glenna, of how he had felt the first time he’d laid eyes on her—the powerful force of attraction that had whipped through him and had left him dizzy with need.

  “The siren enjoyed exploiting her powers over men,” Tara continued. “She spent her days off the shores of the busy dockyards along the coast, luring men into the sea and watching them drown. After a while, other men realized what was happening and they fought back. They couldn’t capture her because she would put a spell on them, so they rounded up dozens of innocent seals and slaughtered them instead. They captured entire families of mermaids in their trolling nets and murdered them.”

  Sam gazed out at the rolling hills and trees blurring into a patchwork of green. “I read every one of Brennan’s books after what happened to you last summer. I don’t remember this story.”

  “Not all myths and legends are written down,” Tara said. “When the mermaids finally got word of what was happening, they demanded the siren be handed over to them. The selkies refused, and almost started a war between the two species. As punishment, the mermaids corralled the selkies into the waters around Seal Island and set up boundaries. They took away their freedom to roam the seas, and they said if a child was ever born of a selkie/merman union again, they would destroy it.”

  Sam looked slowly back at Glenna. He felt a tightening in his chest as he remembered the conversation they’d had while hiking to the stone circle in Connemara.

  “…what you feel for me isn’t anything other than lust. You can’t resist me because of what I am.”

  “I know you have selkie blood in you. Maybe that’s what first drew me to you when I saw you on the island. But it’s so much more than that now, Glenna. Besides, Tara has selkie blood in her. You don’t question Dominic’s feelings for her.”

  “It’s not the same.”

  “How?”

  “I’m different from Tara.”

  “This siren…” Sam said slowly, looking back at the road. “She was half mermaid and half selkie?”

  “Yes,” Tara’s voice crackled through the phone. “That’s why they separated the selkies from the mermaids. They couldn’t risk another union between their two kinds because the child would be too powerful.”

  Sam swallowed. His throat felt dry, like he’d been running for days. “How does this all connect to the white selkie legend?”

  “Liam thinks it’s possible that the first white selkie could have been born at the same time the mermaids forced the selkies into these waters,” Tara explained. “That her very existence is a way for the mermaids to maintain control so that no ruling family stays in power for too long.”

  Sam glanced back at Glenna. He thought of the man Moira murdered—the man from the vision inside the stone circle, the man who’d been in love with Brigid. Glenna had said her father had been planning to run away with a selkie that night, but he’d been expecting someone else.

  Sam had assumed, when Glenna had said her father wasn’t a selkie, that he was a human man. But a human man wouldn’t have had to run away with a selkie. He could have simply claimed her pelt and she would have belonged to him. A merman, on the other hand, would have had to run away from his people to be with a selkie.

  “Tara.” Sam picked up the phone and took her off the speaker. “I want you to put Kelsey on the phone.”

  “Why?” Tara asked, surprised.

  “I want to ask her a few questions.”

  A few moments later, Kelsey’s small voice came on the line. “Sam?”

  “Kelsey, your mother mentioned that you made a connection between Brigid and the princess living in a convent in The Little Mermaid.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Have you made any other connections?”

  “Well,” Kelsey said slowly, “we know where the princess was hiding. But where is her prince?”

  Sam stared out the windshield, at the white lines blurring in the road. “Go on…”

  “In the story,” Kelsey said, “there was one prince and two princesses. We know Brigid is the first princess, but who is the other one? And what did she have to trade with the sea witch for a chance to be with her prince?”

  Moira paced the rocky shores of Clifden Bay. Her sister should be here by now. She’d felt her twin’s presence the moment Brigid had left the sacred grounds of Kildare that morning. She’d seen a vision of her climbing into a blue truck with a Clifden Construction logo on the side. It was only a matter of time before Brigid arrived and came down to the ocean.

  Her sister would not be able to resist its call.

  Moira smiled as she watched the ripples form in the water, the long graceful arc of a merman’s tail pushing back and forth under the quiet sea toward the shore. The warrior’s bare chest gleamed as he surfaced. Seawater rushed down the rippling muscles of his chest, and his powerful tail flicked effortlessly, suspending him in the deeper waters.

  His face was stony, not betraying a hint of emotion as he gazed at Moira with piercing green eyes. “Where is Brigid?”

  “We will be at Seal Island by nightfall.”

  The tip of his sharp silver spear glinted in the sunlight. “Our people are ready.”

  “The king is prepared to hold up his end of the bargain?”

  “He is.”

  Moira smiled. “The selkies will be pleased.”

  A shadow crossed the warrior’s face. “We have waited a long time to avenge the murder of the king’s son.”

  Moira stepped into the shallow water. A school of minnows darted away, disappearing into the deeper water. “And we have waited a long time to be out from under your rule.”

  “As soon as we have Brigid in our charge, the boundaries will be dropped and the selkies will be free to roam the ocean.”

  Moira lifted her eyes to the ocean beyond the wide mouth of the bay. When the selkies found out what she’d done for them, how she’d freed them from the mermaids’ rule, they would beg her to lead them. And the moment they crowned her as queen, she would be free of this curse.

  “The white selkie?” Moira asked, her voice rising as she related the last deal in their bargain. “Nuala will be the last?”

  The merman nodded. “She will be the last.”

  Moira watched him dive, his long glittering tail propelling him back into the depths of the ocean to deliver her message to the king.

  One day, a long time from now, she might find it in her heart to forgive her daughter. Once the mermaids lifted the boundaries, they would not watch the selkies so closely, and she would be able to re-introduce Glenna to the sea. But the mermaids and selkies would never know the truth—the real truth—that Glenna was the merprince’s daughter and Moira was the one who took his life, not Brigid.

  Tonight, when the Imbolc fires burned across the islands, the mermaids would come for Brigid. They would take her away and Moira would claim her rightful place on the throne. Nuala would be the last white selkie, and there would never be another white selkie born to usurp the throne. Moira’s line would never be broken.

  Moira gazed out at the sea, at the beautiful sea glistening i
n the sun. A dark shape swimming beneath the surface caught her eye. She narrowed her eyes as a sleek black head bobbed out of the water. “Well, well, well,” she said quietly, “looks like I’m not the only one who came to welcome Brigid back.”

  Nuala floated in the bay, gazing back at her.

  “Perhaps I underestimated you,” Moira said, taking another step into the water. “I won’t make that mistake again.” She lifted her arms toward the sky. Sunlight streamed from her palms and she aimed the blinding beams at Nuala. But the selkie didn’t move. She stayed where she was, floating in the water.

  A cool wind rolled over the hills, submerging them in a thick blanket of fog.

  Bells rang out all over the countryside, and Moira’s skin began to burn. Blisters broke out on her arms and neck. She gasped, staggering back to the sand. Nuala watched as Moira disappeared in a puff of smoke.

  BRIGID BREATHED IN the mists, letting the cool ocean air fill her lungs. Her toes pressed into the parched earth, the thin webbing between them tightening with every step. Snatches of memories came back to her—memories of the sea, of her childhood, of falling in love.

  With every step closer to the ocean, she remembered more. She scanned the surface of the water for a tail, for the flash of green fins. Was her lover still out there? Would he still be waiting for her? Would he still recognize her after all this time?

  “Brigid!”

  Her long hair swung like ropes around her shoulders as she turned. But it was only the man from the truck, the man who had brought her here.

  He held out a folded black cloth. “You forgot this…in my car.”

  Fog crept up, wrapping around her wrists. The wet air brushed against her cheeks. Church bells rang over the hills, but she shook her head, backing away from him. “I don’t need it.”

  He lowered his hand to his side. “Are you sure you don’t want me to walk with you?”

  “I’m sure.” She turned away from him. She needed to go the rest of the way alone. Lifting the hem of her skirt, she picked up her pace. But she could hear him following her, his footsteps getting closer.