Children of the Sea 01 - Sea Witch

don’t know, I—”
     
    A flutter of blue on the beach below caught his attention. A woman’s dress. Caleb’s gaze narrowed. A dark-haired woman in a blue dress,
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    strolling across the wet sand. He clenched the phone. Something about the way she moved . . .
     
    “It’s all right,” he cut across his sister’s babbled explanations. “I found her. I’ll call you later.”
     
    He strode toward the door. “I’ll be in touch,” he tossed to Whittaker.
     
    “I hardly see the need—”
     
    Caleb shot him a look that shut him up fast. Public relations be damned. He had to get to the beach. He had to get to Maggie before she .
    . .
     
    What the hell did she think she was doing?
     
    He lost sight of her as he plunged down the porch steps, ignoring his pain in his need to get a better look. Glimpsed her again from the top of the narrow track that plummeted down the cliff face to the shore.
    Definitely Maggie, he thought, studying her pale, bare arms, her wavy dark hair.
     
    He yelled her name.
     
    The wind snatched his voice. It buffeted his face, kicking up whitecaps out at sea and stirring the slippery clumps of grass dotting the slope. Caleb scowled. He could drive a quarter mile down the road to the nearest beach access. Or he could risk his footing, his dignity, and his neck on the path.
     
    He started the climb down.
     
    Patches of loose shale and roots like trip wires booby-trapped the trail. Every step, every jolt, jarred the screws and plates of his reconstructed leg until he felt like the freaking Tin Man slowly shaking apart. Halfway down, his boot slid out from under him. His leg twisted.
    His knee gave. He slid, half on his ass, as his hands scraped gravel. He grabbed at a scrub spruce to save himself and hung on a moment, getting his breath and his bearings.
     
    Maggie never looked up.
     
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    As he watched, she pulled the blue dress over her head and shed it on the sand.
     
    His jaw dropped.
     
    Underneath the gown, she was naked. Totally, completely, gloriously exposed. He stared, a seething stew of worry and fury and lust boiling inside him as bare-assed— bare everything—she sauntered to the sea.
     
    He worked enough spit into his mouth to swallow. Didn’t she realize anybody could be watching? Not to mention that after this morning’s rain, the water must be freezing. She could get hypothermia, damn it. She could get dizzy and drown.
     
    He slid a few steps toward her.
     
    She didn’t seem to care. She waded into the churning surf, as naked and relaxed as she’d been in the bathtub last night.
     
    Caleb was ready to strangle her. He wanted her safe. He wanted her home. Was it too much to expect her to wait a couple of hours while he did his best to catch the bastard who’d attacked her?
     
    Apparently it was.
     
    The white caps curled and foamed around her calves. Around her thighs, waist, breasts. Caleb caught his breath as a bigger wave rushed in.
    Maggie staggered, spread her arms, and disappeared under the surface of the water.
     
    Cursing, he flung himself down the path. He stumbled around bushes and over rocks and onto sand.
     
    And froze, transfixed by the sight that met him at the bottom of the cliff.
     
    Maggie stood breast deep and bare shouldered in the sea. The sun broke through the clouds, sparkling on the crests of the waves, the slow, green roll of the water. Waves danced all around. She laughed and held out her arms, her dark hair sleek against her head, her face shining with water and sunlight.
     
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    The ground shifted under him. His knees gave out like they had on the path, even though the sand here was soft and level. Because leaping, playing, arcing through the waves, their gray bodies smooth and powerful, dolphins circled her, two or six or ten of them, close, so close his heart stopped in fear for her, and wonder.
     

     
    What the fuck ... ?
     
    Margred stroked the dolphins’ broad, flat sides, soothed by their strength. And by their chatter. The muc mara had responded swiftly and joyfully to her call, readily accepting her charge to carry her plea to the prince.
     
    Of course, she could not be sure how much of her message, exactly, would reach Conn. Dolphins were intelligent and kind, less deliberate than whales, less bloodthirsty than sharks, less easily distracted than birds or fish. But they did not live in time as humans did, or even as the selkie.
    They flowed as the sea flowed, and what they understood no one, perhaps