Sea Fever

by Virginia Kantra

  But their attachment was too tenuous for him to follow. The memory of her wide brown eyes, her wry smile, haunted him. “Maybe I can’t risk me getting attached either.”

  He felt the bite of frustration and, worse, a lick of guilt. He could have changed her mind. He could have told her, promised her . . . What? She was human. He was selkie.

  She was gone.

  He had to find her.

  “Nonna says you know where my mother is.”

  Startled, Dylan looked down. Nick Barone scowled from beside the yellow tape, his chin cocked at a kiss-my-ass angle and his eyes full of raw misery.

  Dylan’s stomach lurched. “Is that what she told you?” he asked carefully.

  “I heard her talking to Chief Hunter. Do you?” Nick persisted. “Know where my mom is?”

  “No.” Such a flat, bald word. “But I will find her.”

  The promises he had not made to Regina were somehow easier to make to the child. Her son.

  Nick looked skeptical. “How?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Dylan admitted.

  Nick’s face closed into a smooth, polite child’s mask. “Yeah. Okay. Thanks.”

  The boy did not believe him. Why should he? Nick did not need some stranger to tell him everything would be all right. He needed his mother.

  Dylan’s gaze went past him to the quiet street. The yellow tape had drawn as many people as it kept away. As hours passed without a break in the case or the gossip, however, most of the islanders who weren’t assisting in the search had gone on with their grocery shopping or their work or their lives.

  “You shouldn’t be alone,” Dylan said, sounding, even to his own ears, like a well-meaning and clueless adult. He tried again. “Where is your grandmother?”

  Nick hunched a shoulder.

  “Does she know you’re here?”

  The boy’s gaze dropped. “Chief Hunter said he wanted to talk to me,” Nick mumbled.

  Dylan had a sudden image of himself at fourteen, fearful and alone, waiting at Caer Subai for his mother to come home from the sea. Only she never had. Conn had taken Dylan under his wing. Nick needed someone like that, someone he could trust to provide him with assurances and answers.

  Someone like . . . Caleb.

  “I’ll get him for you,” Dylan said and ducked under the crime scene tape.

  The bell jangled overhead as Dylan pushed open the door of the restaurant. A man wearing the navy wind-breaker of the state police was on his knees by one of the booths.

  He looked up in annoyance. “What do you want?”

  “Caleb.”

  “Do you have information pertaining to the case?”

  “No.”

  “Then get the fuck out of the crime scene.”

  Dylan strode past him.

  “Hey!” The man’s shout followed him into the kitchen.

  He found Caleb standing at the stainless steel counter watching another man slide a shiny object into an envelope.

  Every muscle in Dylan’s body went rigid. “Where did you get that?”

  “Do you recognize it?” Caleb asked.

  Dylan stared at the small gold cross glittering from a nest of fine chain. His mouth went dry. His head buzzed. “It’s Regina’s. She must have been wearing it when he grabbed her. That’s why his hand is burned. Where did you find it?”

  “Mop bucket,” Caleb answered shortly. “I missed it on the initial walk-through.”

  The other man’s quick brown gaze shifted from Dylanto Caleb. “Who is this guy and why are you confiding details of the case to him?”

  Caleb stiffened. “My brother, Dylan, Detective Sam Reynolds of the Maine CID.”

  Dylan didn’t care who he was. The noise in his head drowned out everything else. He held out his hand for the chain. “Give it to me.”

  “Why?”

  “Is he crazy?” Reynolds asked.

  “She wore it all the time,” Dylan said to Caleb. The totem of her murdered Christ, bright across the smooth skin of her breast, a ward as personal and more powerful than the triskelion inked into her skin. It should have protected her. Perhaps it even had. But now that protection had been stripped from her, and she was out there somewhere, defenseless.

  Not quite defenseless, he thought, recalling her strong will, her sharp tongue. But still only human and alone.

  He hoped she was alone. Because if she were in demon hands . . .

  “It’s a connection,” he explained, aware of the urgency surging in his veins, pushing into his voice. “I can use it to find her. Give it to me.”

  “I can’t,” Caleb said regretfully. “It’s evidence. We’ll send the necklace to the crime lab for testing, and then—”

  “The necklace won’t tell you a damn thing you don’t already know,” Dylan said.

  Caleb raised his eyebrows. “And it will you?”

  Dylan held his gaze. Held out his hand. “Yes.”

  “No,” Reynolds said. “We’re not using some crazy psychic, even if he is your brother. Get him the hell out of here.”

  Dylan ignored him, his gaze locked on his brother’s, his heart pounding in his ears.

  “Right,” Caleb said.

  He dropped the necklace into his brother’s hand.

  * * *

  Regina huddled in her silent chamber in the rock. The dark wasn’t worse than the cold. The darkness couldn’t kill her. The cold might.

  Time passed. Minutes? Hours? She hadn’t dried one bit. Water still saturated her hair, T-shirt, and jeans. The chill penetrated her clothes. Her blood. Her bones.

  The oppressive quiet, the unrelenting void, sapped her energy. Weighed on her spirits. Messed with her mind.

  She dozed. Sometimes she dreamed— of her son’s face, her mother’s voice, the baby inside her— and woke to find herself with tears sliding down her cheeks, alone again. Always alone.

  “I’m sorry, Ma. I didn’t mean for you to raise another kid on your own.”

  “It’s all right. It doesn’t matter.”

  But it did. It mattered a lot.

  She raised her head from her knees, roused by the sound of dripping water. At least she wasn’t shaking so hard. She wanted to think that was a good sign. Her body, however, knew differently. Her breath wheezed. Her joints ached. Her head felt like a lead balloon, heavy and hollow. It would be so easy to put her face back down and escape into sleep. She didn’t even have to close her eyes. So dark . . .

  Regina jerked back her head and swore. Time to get up. Get moving.

  She listened to the drip become a gurgle, the gurgle grow to a rush, and felt a faint, warming flicker of hope. The tide must have turned. Time to try the passage again.

  So cold. She forced her body to uncurl, her body trembling in protest. Painfully, she stood, biting her lip against the stabs of returning circulation. She could not see her feet. She couldn’t feel her toes. She shuffled forward, one hand on the wall.

  Splash.

  She froze, bewildered, her sluggish mind struggling with the message her feet were sending. She had already reached the water. She was standing in the current. The tide had turned.

  The water was rising.

  9

  THE TIDE WAS COMING IN. DYLAN STOOD ON the headland where the island fell down in a tumble of rocks and spray. Below him was a line of dark spruce and then the shore, black rock breaking white water, and then the ocean glimmering as far as the horizon, the white caps’ plumes running before the wind like the horses of Llyr.

  The wind drummed in Dylan’s ears. Doubt ate at his heart.

  He was not anyone’s choice to stand against the power of Hell. He should summon a warden, send for instructions, ask for advice.

  Assuming Conn would hear and answer.

  Assuming help would come in time.

  The wind snickered, snatching at Dylan’s clothes and hair. The waves raged like his heart.

  He didn’t need this. He didn’t want her. He had witnessed firsthand the wreck of his parents�
�� marriage, the tangled net of love and obsession and resentment that had dragged his mother from the sea. He would never give a woman that kind of power over him.

  That did not mean he could not use his own power to find Regina. To save her.

  He had always been adept at small magics. He could summon a wave, a woman, a breeze. For convenience, for amusement, for spite. But no significant outcome, no significant other, had ever depended on his skill before.

  “You try being responsible for somebody besides yourself sometime, and we’ll talk.”

  Indeed.

  The cross was in his hand. He spread his arms against the wind, annoyed to notice his hands trembling.

  He gazed down on the sea, polished and pocked as a sheet of hammered silver. The waters of the ocean ran through him, his mother’s blood, his mother’s gift. The magic of the ocean was his birthright.

  He planted his feet on the rock. He stretched his arms, opened his mind, and invited the sea in.

  Power rose like fog from the surface of the water, moist, heavy. He felt it envelope him, stream over him and into him, pour down his throat like wine and pool in his loins like lust. His mind spun as the power surged, seeking an outlet. It filled him to overflowing; spilled from his throat on a cry: “Regina.”

  So he called her, by her name and by his knowledge of her, her flesh and her spirit, and by the power of the totem in his hand.

  Regina.

  The wind in the trees replied. A bird soaring over the waters replied. The quickening of his own heart answered him.

  Clenching his hand on the burning gold of the cross, Dylan plunged from the sunlit hill and into the shadow of the trees. He was already loosening his belt when he reached the shore.

  * * *

  Regina stumbled in the dark, at the limits of her strength, driven by terror and the rising water. The cold current dragged and hissed at her knees, soaked her jeans, weighted her sneakers. If she took off her shoes, she would cut her feet. If she didn’t take them off, she could drown.

  A whimper escaped her. She set her teeth. She couldn’t drown. She had to get home to Nick. Oh, Ma, I’m so sorry. Nick . . .

  She had to keep her head above water. She had to find the chamber’s highest point. If only she could see. She sloshed through icy water, patting and slapping the cave ceiling, her fingers like frozen sausages.

  The ceiling rose away from the wall. She followed its slope, dazed with cold, disoriented in the dark, her fingers fumbling, sliding, touching . . . nothing.

  She bit back a scream. There was a— She groped. A hole overhead. She patted. A passage, a chimney in the rock, wider than her shoulders, wider than her whole body, on a level with her wrists. Her heart pounded. If she could pull herself up there, if she could climb . . .

  She scrabbled at the edges of the hole, clawing frantically at the rock. Stones dislodged, sliding and striking her head and shoulders. The water lapped and sucked at her legs. She jumped, grabbed, and slid. Jumped and slid. Jumped, grabbed, and caught a handhold in the passage above.

  Her arms screamed. Her shoulders protested. She hung there for long moments, a dead weight with battered, bleeding hands. Her feet dangled in the water. She felt it churning around her ankles, cold, cold, coming for her. Her breath sobbed. Come on, come on. Think of Ma; think of Nick. She kicked with her feet, twisting like a kid in gym class under the pull-up bar. Please oh please oh please oh . . .

  Up. She scraped her elbow, wedged her ribs on the edge of the hole. Her blood drummed in her ears. She did it. She made it. She was gasping, huffing, sweating, although she couldn’t move her fingers or feel her toes. She pulled in her stomach, struggled to bring her knee up—

  And fell.

  A cry ripped from her broken throat, a squawk of rage and despair. No.

  Cold water, cold, closing over her head.

  She thrashed, flailing at the water, bumping her hip, her knees, her elbow against the rocks.

  The rocks. She located bottom; pushed off, dragging her feet under her; and stood in water up to her waist.

  Water streamed from her hair, streamed in her eyes. She drew great, gasping, shuddering breaths, wrapping her arms around her waist as if she could hold in her heat, hold herself together.

  She shivered violently, her teeth clacking together. It wasn’t fair, goddammit. Nick was growing up without a father. He needed his mother.

  She could not control her shaking. She stretched her arms over her head and groped again for the edge of the chimney. Had Jericho brought her down this way? Loweredher down? How much time had she wasted feeling her way in the dark?

  She was disoriented, dizzy from her fall. The water was deeper. She set her teeth and waded, feeling the rock ceiling overhead.

  Something brushed against her leg. A rock. She ignored it. Again. Something large and long and low, moving fast through the water. The surface churned.

  She screamed and stumbled backward, windmilling her arms for balance. Oh, God, oh, no, oh—

  “Regina.” Dylan’s voice, warm in the dark.

  She was hearing things, imagining things. Nick’s face. Her mother’s voice . . .

  She turned her head wildly, frightened, freaked out, straining her eyes against the blackness. Her teeth chattered.

  “Regina?” Closer now, questioning.

  She was losing her mind. She was losing it.

  Something touched her shoulder. She jerked and struck out.

  Whatever, whoever it was, simply pulled her close, trapping her sluggish, useless arms between them, wrapping her in a strong, warm embrace, murmuring, “It’s all right now. It’s all right.”

  Dylan’s voice. Dylan’s scent.

  She was hallucinating. Had to be. But he felt solid and warm and real against her, and she was cold, so cold, and alone. She buried her face against his chest, wet and slippery smooth, burrowing against him. He was strong and warm, close and . . . naked?

  She jolted as he held her, as he stroked her hair. “Where—” Her voice was a croak. She coughed and tried again. “Clothes?”

  He was silent.

  Maybe she’d offended him.

  Maybe he wasn’t there. Like her mother. Like Nick.

  “Sorry. Dumb question. My fantasy,” she babbled, holding on to him. Don’t leave me alone. “Why wouldn’t you . . . be naked?”

  “Regina.” His voice was shaken with laughter or something else. “Are you all right?”

  “Lost . . . my mind.” The words ripped her throat. “Unless . . . you’re here?”

  “I’m here.” His voice flowed over her, deep and reassuring. “You’re fine. We’re going to get you out.”

  Her head wobbled. She let it drop against his chest. The relief of having someone here, someone warm to lean on, was unspeakable. “How?”

  “We’re going to swim through the tunnel.”

  His words roused her to doubt. If he were really here, if he were really real, wouldn’t he be wearing . . . Her confused mind stumbled among options. Diving equipment?

  “How did . . . you find me?”

  Another moment of silence. “It doesn’t matter.”

  He sounded like her mother. Her dreams of her mother. But maybe that didn’t matter either.

  “Regina.” His tone was sharper now.

  Her arms were tight around his waist, absorbing his warmth. “Mm?”

  “We need to go. You need to hold on to me.”

  He was so warm. If he were a figment of her imagination, would he feel so warm?

  “Am holding you,” she slurred.

  “Not like that.” He broke the circle of her arms, makingher murmur in protest, her body bereft at the loss of his heat.

  She heard splashing and then he thrust something into her hand. Wet, soft, flowing . . .

  Seaweed? She pulled her hand away.

  He caught her wrist; forced it back to the thing between them.

  Her fingers splayed. Flexed. “What . . . ?”

  “A sealskin. I need
it to take you through the tunnel.” She stroked the wet fur. She could not feel an end to it in the dark.