Children of the Sea 01 - Sea Witch

long.”
     
    “Long enough to understand your suspicions are ridiculous. ”
     
    “We don’t suspect anybody yet. We’re just trying to get a picture here.”
     
    The female detective leaned forward. “Chief Hunter just got back from Iraq, didn’t he? How’s he handling that?”
     
    Margred arched her eyebrows. “I imagine he is happy to be home.”
     
    “That doesn’t mean he wasn’t affected by the experience. ”
     
    “Yes.” Margred met her eyes coolly. “He limps.”
     
    The woman pressed her lips together. “Any signs of stress? Mood swings. Nightmares. Depression, maybe.”
     
    Nightmares, Margred thought, with a catch at her heart. He had nightmares.
     
    “No.” She rose. “Now, if that is all—”
     
    “Not quite all.” Detective Reynolds slid a manila envelope from his notebook. “We’d like you to take a look at last night’s victim.”
     
    “Why?”
     
    “You might have seen her before.”
     
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    “If I did, it is unlikely I would remember. But of course I will look if you like,” Margred added politely, and sat back down.
     
    Reynolds slid a photograph from the envelope. Neither of the detectives looked at it, Margred noticed. They watched her instead.
     
    She took a breath, steeling herself against betraying any reaction, and held out her hand.
     
    Ah, no .
     
    Her throat closed. She wanted to vomit. Her nails curled into her palms.
     
    Hastily, the female detective loosened Margred’s grip on the edge of the photograph before it crumpled.
     
    Margred barely noticed. Her mind whirled. Her stomach churned.
     
    “Can I get you anything?” Reynolds asked. “Water, maybe?”
     
    Water . . .
     
    Margred drew a ragged breath. Her heart pounded. “No, I will be fine.”
     
    “Do you recognize her?”
     
    Margred shook her head in mute denial.
     
    “Take your time,” Reynolds said gently. “I know it’s a shock.”
     
    “Yes.”
     
    Margred forced herself to look back at the face in the picture. An attempt had been made to clean it up, but nothing could be done to cover the livid bruising along the jaw or disguise the torn and bloody lips. The one eye swollen nearly shut. The other . . . puckered. Empty.
     
    Margred hissed.
     
    “You sure you haven’t seen her before?”
     
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    “I am sorry,” Margred said.
     
    But she was not speaking to the detectives. She was talking to the woman in the picture.
     
    The murdered selkie.
     
    Gwyneth of Hiort.
     
    218
     

Seventeen
     
    THE DETECTIVES LEFT LUCY’S HOUSE, TAKING the
    photograph and their suspicions with them.
     
    Margred shivered, wrapping her arms around her body. Gwyneth was dead, slaughtered and skinned like a baby harp seal. She could not dismiss the other selkie’s fate. Or ignore her own any longer.
     
    Whatever demon had attacked her out of the dark hunted still. He could, he probably would, return for her.
     
    She hugged her elbows tighter. But it wasn’t only her own danger that haunted her. If another elemental stalked her kind, if fire turned against water, more was at stake here than Gwyneth’s death or Margred’s survival. The very balance of nature would be affected. Which meant . . .
    destruction. For the earth and the sea and everything that inhabited creation.
     
    Her kind. Caleb’s kind. All.
     
    Margred bit her lip until she tasted blood. This was the prince’s responsibility, his fight. She was not prepared for this. Always going with the flow, immersed in the cycle of the seasons, in swimming and sunning and sex, she lacked the knowledge and training, the habit of thought or trick of temperament, to deal with a skirmish between immortals.
     
    She was, as Regina would say, screwed.
     
    Frightened of her own death and what lay beyond.
     
    And for almost the first time in centuries, angry. Beneath her shock and fear, rage smoldered inside her like a lump of coal from a demon’s fire.
     
    Gwyneth had trespassed on Margred’s territory, had coveted Margred’s man. But poaching or not, Gwyneth had not deserved to die.
     
    The front door opened. Margred jumped.
     
    219
    Caleb stood in the light of the hall, tall and grounded as an oak tree, with leaf shadow eyes and sun-tipped hair. Tiny lines of fatigue or frustration dug between his brows and bracketed his mouth.
     
    He looked so good, so right, standing there, she forgot he did not believe her. Forgot she was annoyed with him. A great wave of worry and relief carried her from the couch and