“He already knows,” Regina said, covering the pan.
Antonia crossed her arms over her tomato-stained apron. “And?”
“And . . .” Regina sighed. “He’s still around.”
For now. She watched as Hercules wound through the dining room, moving with unusual purpose for a feline, and butted his flat, broad head against Dylan’s knee. Hungry for some sign of affection.
You and me both, cat.
“That’s something,” Antonia said.
Regina smiled weakly. It was, indeed, something. Dylan might be out of his element and over his head, but he had not abandoned them. He reached down absently and scratched Hercules under the jaw.
“He wanted us to go with him, you know,” Antonia said abruptly.
Regina stopped watching Dylan with the cat. “Excuse me?”
“Your father. He wanted me to sell out, pack up, and move with him to the mainland, Baltimore or some damn place.”
Regina blinked and drained the pasta. “You never told me that.”
She’d always thought her father hadn’t wanted them. Hadn’t wanted her. Did it make a difference, after all these years, to learn otherwise?
“Maybe I didn’t want to admit it, that this place meant more to me than he did. The security meant more to me than he did.” Antonia spread sauce with the back of a spoon, her eyes on her work. “I don’t regret the choices I’ve made in my life. Be a waste of time anyway. But I’ve wondered sometimes what kind of example I set for you.”
Regina regarded her mother’s floured hands and strong, lined face. Hands that had fed and disciplined her, nursed her and provided her with a home and a living. “You’re a good mom,” she said. “You’re a great example.”
“Ha,” Antonia said, but there was a pleased gleam in her eyes. “Maybe. Doesn’t mean you have to follow it.”
Regina finished her plates and set them on the pass.
Dylan stalked through the crowded tables with the same elegance and purpose as the cat, lean and dark and so good-looking Regina’s heart did a foolish little dance in her chest.
“Take that pie,” Antonia said. “Table six.”
He looked at her blankly.
“Corner booth.”
“I’ve got it.” Lucy balanced the pizza, cutter, and cheese and headed for the family of four in the booth by the door.
Dylan looked at Regina. “Have you seen Nick?”
His voice was low, his eyes serious.
She struggled for breath. “I . . . He’s in his room. Upstairs. I saw him when I got home.”
“No, he’s not.”
Antonia set a floured hand on her hip. “And how would you know? Cat told you?”
Dylan’s gaze clashed with Regina’s. “Go check.”
Without a word, she turned and ran for the stairs.
17
NICK SCUFFED HIS SNEAKERS ON THE ROAD, shooting spurts of dust. He wasn’t going far. He didn’t want to scare his mom. Not too much.
A little scare would serve her right. She’d scared him a lot.
Habit took him to the turn to Danny’s house. Nick ducked his head and kept on walking. He didn’t even want to see Danny since he’d said that thing about Nick’s mom.
Anyway, the Trujillos’ was the first place his mom would call looking for him, and Nick wasn’t ready to be found yet. He wasn’t ready to go back. There was nothing to do at home— when he turned on the TV, it was all cooking shows and grown-ups yakking. Boring. Nick had watched the cooking for a while, because it was his dad, but he wasn’t really any more interested in his dad than his dad was in him. And downstairs was just more cooking and more yakking and his mom with those awful bruises around her neck.
Thinking about his mom’s bruises made Nick’s chest feel hot and tight. He walked faster, not going anywhere, just . . . away.
His mom kept saying that everything was fine, kept pretending that everything was normal. Which was bullshit, Nick thought, because if things were really okay, if she was safe now, why did Chief Hunter keep nosing around? And Dylan.
“I’m keeping an eye on your mother,” Dylan had said, his voice and eyes serious, like a promise.
Hearing him say that had made Nick feel better, at least for a while.
Going out on the boat had made him feel better, too, in a different way. It was quiet on the water, no grown-ups talking, no motor even, just the rush of the wind and the waves white alongside the boat. For one moment, when the boat turned and rocked and the sails filled and leaned, Nick thought they were going to tip right into the water. He got goose bumps— the good kind— just thinking about it. And later, when they were coming in, Dylan let him haul on the ropes and told him he’d done a good job. That was cool.
Nick hunched his shoulders. Only maybe that was bullshit, too, because Danny said . . .
Nick kicked at a rock, watching it bounce two, three times, before skittering into a ditch.
Dylan was only being nice to him because he liked Nick’s mom.
Except that wasn’t true either, Nick thought, tucking his hands in his pockets. Not all the way true. He felt the hard shape of the silver dollar under his fingers. Dylan hadn’t asked for it, and Nick didn’t want to give it back.
Ever since his mom disappeared, everything had been all mixed up. He heard a car coming behind him and shifted to the side of the road.
He’d been so scared. Mad at her, too. Not that it was her fault, really.
He shuffled along. The car behind him was poking along like the driver was afraid to pass. Which was stupid, because there were no cars and nobody coming the other way. Nick stepped onto the grass and gravel anyway because if he actually got hit by a car, he would really be in trouble.
The engine rumbled loud and close. Too close. Maybe the driver was lost. Maybe he wanted to ask for directions. Maybe he was a jerk who liked to scare kids with his car.
Nick started to turn— to offer help? to flip him the finger?— and the world exploded in a blast of red light.
And then nothing.
* * *
Regina was terrified. “You have to find him,” she said fiercely. Her boy. Her baby. “You find him now.”
Her voice rose on the last word, practically a shriek, and the customers still in the dining room strained their necks, eavesdropping on the action in the kitchen, looking at her like she was crazy. She didn’t care about any of them. She didn’t care about anything but Nick, gone. Nick, kidnapped. Nick, lost and needing his mommy.
“We’re going to do everything we can,” Caleb said, competent and calm, and despair stabbed her, a sharp, deep pain in her belly.
Dylan wasn’t calm. His black eyes were hot and dangerous. He looked ready to murder somebody.
Thank God for Dylan.
She grasped his arm. “You have to find him. You have to get him. Before the tide comes in.”
Caleb rubbed his jaw. “Regina, we don’t know he’s in those caves.”
“Where else would they take him?”
“Who would take him?” Antonia demanded. “Boy took off, that’s all.”
“Possibly.” Caleb looked at Dylan. “Did you get anything upstairs?”
Dylan shook his head. “No sign.”
“When did you last see him?” Caleb asked Regina.
“An hour ago. An hour and a half?” She twisted her hands together in her apron. Why didn’t he do something? Why didn’t they go find him? “Before dinner anyway.”
“After the ferry left, then,” Caleb said.
“I guess. Does it matter?”
“It increases the chance he’s still on the island.”
“Of course he’s on the island,” Antonia said.
“Did he say anything to you about going out?” Caleb asked Regina. “To a friend’s house maybe.”
“He’s not at the Trujillos’. I called first thing. He’s not anywhere.”
“He’s sulking,” Antonia said. “He’ll come back when he feels like it.”
> “Why ‘sulking’?” Caleb asked.
Guilt swamped Regina. Nick was upset because of her. Because she’d left him. First she’d gotten herself kidnapped and then she’d gone off on the boat to have sex, leaving her traumatized eight-year-old behind. She was a terrible, terrible mother.
“He . . . I . . .”
“His mood doesn’t matter,” Dylan said.
“Unless he ran away,” Caleb pointed out. “Without proof of an abduction—”
“He does not need to have been abducted to be in danger,” Dylan said flatly. “Once outside the ward’s protection, he is vulnerable.”
Oh, God, Regina thought. She curled her hands protectively over her stomach.
“Vulnerable to what?” Antonia demanded. “This is World’s End, not New York City.”
Fear clawed Regina’s throat. Her son hadn’t been taken by sexual predators. He’d been kidnapped by demons.
She swallowed hard. “Why? You said he wasn’t in danger.”
Dylan’s face was bleak. “He should not have been. He has no value to them.”
That made it worse. If he had no value, they could kill him.
“Can’t you put out a . . . What do they call it? An Amber Alert?” Regina asked Caleb.
“As soon as we have any indication he was abducted, I’ll call the Knox County sheriff,” he promised. “Get him in the database. But we need to search the apartment first, talk to the neighbors. Sometimes kids hide. Can you describe what he was wearing?”
“Jeans. A T-shirt. Blue? Oh, we’re wasting time,” she said in an agony of worry. “The tide . . . He’s so little.”
“I’ll go now,” Dylan said.
Regina’s stomach was burning. Raw. She reached for her apron strings. “I’ll come with you.”
“Not a good idea,” Caleb said. “I’ll do a quick patrol, visit the encampment. Somebody may have seen him. You need to stay here in case Nick shows up. Or calls.”
“He can’t call if he’s been kidnapped,” she snapped. If he was drowning. “I’m going.”
Dylan shook his head. “I will be faster without you.”
She had never felt so helpless, so scared. Her heart was heavy, her arms ached with the weight of her missing child. “But—”
“Trust me,” Dylan said.
She met his intense, black gaze. Did she? Could she? She’d never wanted to rely on anyone, on any man. Then again, she’d never known another man like Dylan.
She had trusted him with her life. And her heart. But could she trust him with her child?
She stretched out her hands. “Please. Bring him back to me.”
* * *
Dylan stood on the cliffs, clutching a ragged stuffed bear with a draggled red bow. Nick’s. Before he left, Regina had given him the toy, fear in her voice and her heart in her eyes. “Bring him back to me.”
The sun bled over the bruised sea, staining the clouds like dirty bandages. In half an hour, they would lose the light. While Dylan could see well enough in the dark, the human searchers Caleb had mustered could not.
Somewhere, Nick would be in the dark, alone.
At least, Dylan hoped the boy was alone.
In his mind, he saw the selkie Gwyneth. Not as he’d known her in life, a small, voracious blonde with slumberouseyes and a sharp white smile. But as he’d last seen her in death after the demon Tan was done with her, her flesh torn and purpled. The image chilled Dylan’s blood. The thought of Nick— a human child, Regina’s son— in demon hands, in similar circumstances, made him break into a cold sweat.
His hand closed hard on the bear as if he could squeeze Nick’s whereabouts from plush and stuffing. Memories clung to the matted fur like the scent of laundry soap and baby shampoo. Traces of Regina, her laughter, her love, a quick and careless hug. Traces of Nick, sick and sleepy, snuggled and secure. But none of those warm and hazy impressions yielded a clue to the boy’s location. The bear had a connection to Nick; Dylan did not. He could not use the toy as he had used Regina’s cross, to fix on its owner.
Spreading his arms, he shut his eyes and tried to call up Nick’s thin face against the dark.
He emptied himself, pouring out his power like water on the ground, straining for a hint, a trace, a sign. He could feel Nick’s absence throbbing in his head like a missing tooth or the pain of an amputated limb. His senses sharpened and expanded. He could hear the wind in the trees and the water on the rocks, the yammer of a gull, the putt of an engine. He could smell the scents of juniper and bayberry, the tang of rockweed and saltwater.
But he could not sense Regina’s son. Nothing shouted “Nick” at him, nothing smelled like “boy.” Only the rush of the waves, the scent of the water . . .
Dylan’s breath hissed. The rush of the waves.
The tide was rising.
Cold settled in his bones. He had to find Nick. Now.
* * *
Regina scoured pots and prayed as if she could save her son through sheer application. Scrubbing kept her hands busy and her mind occupied, distracted her from the pain in her back and the ache at her heart.
Hail, Mary, full of grace . . .
Regina took a deep breath and attacked a crud-encrusted pan, struggling to ignore the silent phone, the crawling clock, the anger and panic simmering in her chest.
It wasn’t fair. This wasn’t supposed to happen.
From the moment the delivery nurse had laid Nick’s downy dark head on Regina’s breast, she’d negotiated a bargain with God. She would take the five miserable months of morning sickness, the twenty-six long and lonely hours of labor, nights of no sleep, years with no sex, in exchange for this miracle. Her boy.
Regina would do anything, endure anything, sacrifice anything, in return for her son. Anything to keep him. Anything to keep him safe.
Regina plunged another pot into the sink. Except she’d screwed up. Literally. She’d had sex. More than once. She’d left her child to go off with Dylan, and now Nick was gone.
She hadn’t protected him. She couldn’t even join the search. All she could do was wait by the phone and trust Dylan to find him.
And try to make another deal with God.
She scrubbed until her fingers were pale and pruny, until the ache in her back was paired by a low, persistent pain in her gut. Sweat filmed her face and stung her eyes. Or maybe those were tears.
She blinked and bit her lip as another spasm stabbed her. Not good. She hadn’t . . . With Nick, she’d never . . .
Oh. She doubled over in pain, clutching the rim of the sink.
Breathe. In through her nose, out through her . . . Ow. Oh.
“Regina?” Her mother’s voice, dim and concerned.
Regina inhaled. Straightened, still gripping the edge of the sink. “I’m all right.” She had to be all right.
Antonia was not convinced. Her dark, hard eyes examined her daughter’s face. “Your cheeks are all red. Go to the bathroom, wash your face.”
Regina nodded. Her head felt wobbly. “You have to . . . listen for the phone.”
“Hell, girl, I know that. Take your break.”
Yes. Okay. Regina took little steps to the restroom, cautious as an old woman with a walker.
It’s just nerves, she told herself. Stress. As soon as she rinsed her face, sat down a minute, she’d be fine.
She pushed open the door to the women’s room; splashed cold water on her face and hands before she entered a stall.
Legs shaking, she sank down on the toilet.
They were still shaking minutes later as she teetered back into the kitchen, one hand on the wall for support.
Antonia took one look at her face and scowled. “Regina? Baby? What is it?”
“Mama . . .” Her voice broke. “I’m bleeding.”
* * *
Nick was not in the caves.
Driven by desperation and the rising tide, Dylan had searched the hole where the demon had dumped Regina and then the tunnels beyond. Nick wasn’t there. Or had wigg
led out of range of his voice.
Or . . . Dylan stared out at the darkening sea and purple sky, forcing himself to consider the possibilities. Maybe Nick couldn’t answer. Maybe the boy was bound, gagged, dead.
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