Children of the Sea 01 - Sea Witch

weight, shape of their own.
     
    222
    The other elementals . . . Air at least has a little matter. But fire can only borrow substance. ”
     
    Caleb’s gaze sharpened. “So this thing, this demon—he borrowed a body?”
     
    “A human host, yes.”
     
    “Good. If he’s human, I’ll find him.”
     
    Margred’s stomach twisted. Caleb believed her. But he still did not understand.
     
    And his ignorance could kill him.
     
    “The human is not responsible,” she said. “He is a vehicle. A victim.”
     
    “But if I catch him—”
     
    “Then the demon will simply take possession of another host. It would take time for him to establish mastery over another’s will, but—”
     
    “How long?” Caleb interrupted.
     
    “What?”
     
    “How much time before this . . . thing moves on somebody else?”
     
    “That depends on the strength and complicity of the host.”
     
    “You mean, if the human cooperates in torture. Murder.”
     
    “Yes.”
     
    A muscle worked at the corner of his mouth. “I am so nailing this fucker.”
     
    “Caleb.” She touched his arm. “You cannot stop a demon.
     
    “Maybe not.” His eyes gleamed with a pure warrior’s light. “But I can slow him down some.”
     
    223
    His courage shamed her. Terrified her. “Why are you doing this?”
     
    “Because I can. Because he hurt you.” Caleb shrugged. He met her gaze, and all his soul was in his eyes, steady and unpretentious. “Because there’s no one else.”
     
    His words lanced her heart.
     
    So he would take responsibility on himself, she thought.
     
    The same way he shouldered everything else, without pause or complaint—the raising of his sister and the care of his father, his duty to his country and his service to this island.
     
    Her blood beat in her ears like the rush of the tide. She was not like him. She could barely comprehend him. He was a man bound and defined by his connections to others, while she flowed as the sea flowed, without tie or limits.
     
    Margred hung a moment, suspended like the curl of the wave seconds before the crash. Contained. Perfect. Whole.
     
    And then plunged, a long, glistening slide toward . . . what? She did not know.
     
    There’s no one else .
     
    “There is me,” she said.
     
    Caleb looked at Maggie’s dark, shadowed eyes and full, unsmiling mouth. The half-healed gash that ran under her hairline.
     
    She was offering herself to him as an ally. A partner.
     
    He fisted his hands lightly, resisting the urge to take, and shoved them in his pockets. “No way in hell,” he said. “This thing’s already beaten you once.”
     
    Her chin came up. “Bested me,” she corrected. “I am still alive.”
     
    “Yeah, and I’d like to keep you that way.”
     
    224
    He thought he saw her wince. But she didn’t back down. He respected her courage. “You need my help,” she said.
     
    “I need you to be safe.” His voice was firm. Flat. “You didn’t see what he did to her.”
     
    “The detectives . . . they showed me a photo.”
     
    “Of her face. He did worse.”
     
    He would not describe the condition of her body. Bad enough that he would dream of it tonight, the multiple cuts and burns, the swelling around her wrists and ankles, the pale and purpling flesh of her fingers, breasts, and thighs.
     
    He recognized the marks of torture, the signature of the Iraqi death squads. In the past three years, he’d seen too many bodies dumped in canals and alleys, left like trash by the side of the road or the back of market stalls.
     
    This was worse, because it had happened here, at home.
     
    Because it could have been Maggie.
     
    “Did he burn her pelt?” she asked.
     
    Caleb scowled, pulled from his private nightmare. “What?”
     
    “Her sealskin. Did you find it?”
     
    He had spent a long, frustrating morning standing outside the yellow tape, observing the activity of the crime scene technicians, the wardens, the dive team. Nobody had entrusted him with the evidence log this time.
    But he would have noticed the excitement surrounding any major find. A car. Her clothes. A handbag.
     
    Or even an unexpected, unexplained animal pelt.
     
    He held her gaze. “No.”
     
    “Then he destroyed it,” she whispered.
     
    225
    “There wasn’t any evidence of a fire,” Caleb said. And they had searched for one, seeking another connection between the two crimes.
    “Maybe he took it. Hid it.”
     
    “No.” Maggie’s eyes widened. “But