Children of the Sea 01 - Sea Witch

Grinned. “I teach six-year-olds. They respond well to simple, direct questioning.”
     
    “I’ll remember that the next time I interview one,” Caleb said.
     
    “They also like to change the subject.”
     
    He smiled, acknowledging her point. She had changed. He admired the competent, good-humored young woman sitting across from him, but a part of him was wistful for the kid he remembered. Or maybe he missed
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    being the brother she could look up to. The guy with all the answers. “Her fingerprints won’t be in the system. Not unless she has a criminal history.”
     
    Which he didn’t believe.
     
    He pushed back from the table. “Thanks for the tea. D’you mind keeping an eye on Maggie tonight?”
     
    “Of course not. Should I sit up with her?”
     
    “You don’t have to do that. Wake her every two or three hours and ask Maggie her name. As long as she can answer and she isn’t vomiting or having seizures, she should be all right. If she develops bruising around her eyes or her headache gets worse, I want you to call me.”
     
    Lucy nodded, her expression solemn again. “Anything else?”
     
    “I’ve got the instruction sheet from the doctor. I’ll leave it with you.”
    He hesitated. He was asking a lot of the little girl he remembered, this sister he barely knew. He couldn’t do his job without first ensuring Maggie was somewhere safe and taken care of. But . . . “You sure you’re okay with this? Getting up every couple of hours?”
     
    “School’s out. I don’t have to wake up early.”
     
    “She’ll still be here in the morning.”
     
    “So, I’ll have company.”
     
    He hadn’t realized how nice it would feel to be able to depend on a member of his family.
     
    “Great. Thanks. Well.” He stood. “I should get going.”
     
    “You should get some sleep, too,” Lucy said.
     
    “I’ve got to get back. I can’t count on a bunch of volunteer firefighters to preserve the scene indefinitely. As soon as it’s daylight, I’ll search the area.”
     
    Lucy carried their mugs to the sink. “You mean, for her clothes?”
     
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    Caleb shrugged. “Clothes, purse, keys.”
     
    A body.
     
    Nobody jumped into a bonfire and simply disappeared. There had to be traces, either of a survivor or a body.
     
    He would find them.
     
    “ You won’t find him ,” Maggie had said, curling her lip in scorn. “ I need what he took from me. ”
     
    “ And what’s that? ”
     
    “ In the fire. ”
     
    “ What did he take, Maggie? ”
     
    She hadn’t answered him. Distress or distrust had kept her from speaking. Her silence cut him like a broken bottle.
     
    “I’m going upstairs,” he said. “To say good night.”
     
    His sister gave him a dubious look, but she didn’t question him.
    Which was good, because he couldn’t explain even to himself this restless need he had to see Maggie, to get things straight between them. By talking, if she’d talk.
     
    Or by any other means.
     
    He climbed the narrow stairs, rubbing absently at the bite on his arm.
    What did Maggie know? What did she remember? How could he protect her unless he knew?
     
    He stopped in the darkness on the stairs. In the shadows of his own mind, he saw again the tall, thin figure waver against the flames before it whirled and leaped into the fire.
     
    And disappeared.
     
    Sweat crawled down his back. He hadn’t had a flashback in weeks.
    His nightmares were getting better. But he had to face the possibility that
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    Maggie’s danger had triggered some kind of stress reaction, a hallucination or something.
     
    No wonder she didn’t trust him.
     
    He couldn’t trust himself.
     

     
    Brothers , Margred thought dazedly.
     
    If the blow to her head hadn’t already made her temples throb, this new revelation would have done it.
     
    Caleb was Dylan’s brother, the son of a human father and a selkie mother. Did that make him half selkie, then?
     
    Dylan’s words echoed in her memory. “ It’s impossible to be half anything. You are selkie, or you are not. You live in the sea, or you die on land .”
     
    You die .
     
    As she was dying. Drying up.
     
    Margred huddled in the tub, her flesh shrinking from the strange shining pipes and cold, slick surfaces. Outside of Sanctuary, away from the magic of Caer Subai, selkies in human form aged at almost the rate that mortals did—one reason the very old, like the king, chose to live “beneath the wave,” rarely assuming human