Children of the Sea 01 - Sea Witch

entirely. Not by itself. Look, in this job you’ve got to learn to trust your instincts. I went to his house, no bloodstains on the rug, not a damn thing out of place. Hell, I can smell pine cleaner from the fucking porch.” Caleb shook his head, remembering. “This guy is smiling at me, closing the door in my face, and I see his fish tank. He’s got one of those big ones. Expensive, like you’d see in a dentist’s office, with the lights and the bubbles and the fancy plants. Well.” Caleb swallowed. “It was empty.”
     
    “So, there was no water.”
     
    “Plenty of water,” Caleb said grimly. “Filter running. Lights on. But the fish . . .” He stopped. Hard to explain, out here on the gentle chop of the sunlit sea, what made this one detail so chilling, so compelling. “All the fish were gone. I could see losing one or two. Hell, I can’t keep a goldfish alive. But to lose them all, all at once like that, is . . .”
     
    Disturbing.
     
    Psychotic.
     
    “Out of character,” Caleb concluded.
     
    “Not for a demon,” Maggie said.
     
    A long look passed between them. He felt the cold in the marrow of his bones.
     
    “Right.” He drew a long breath into tight lungs. “I don’t have to worry about a warrant, then.”
     
    Her big eyes darkened with confusion. “I don’t understand. ”
     
    He had fought before, when the mission was unclear and the stakes weren’t personal. This was a no-brainer.
     
    255
    “If Whittaker is what you say he is, this case is never going to trial,”
    he said quietly. “It can’t. Even if Whittaker could be convicted, I can’t risk turning a demon loose on the prison population.”
     
    “What will you do?”
     
    “Eliminate him. If I can.”
     
    He throttled down. Three miles out, the winking, wrinkled sea spread to the horizon, every swell blending into the next. The boat rocked, lulling his senses. But something about this stretch of water anchored his attention. A whisper of surf, a whiff of pine . . .
     
    He watched a gull plummet out of the sky and disappear into . . .
    nothing, and knew. He felt the rock pushing up from the ocean bottom, poking through the surface like broken bones, and looked to Maggie for confirmation.
     
    She nodded. “Here.”
     
    As if her word had raised a curtain, land began to form out of the flat and featureless sea: a jumble of rock, a curve of shore, a line of dark firs marching down to the water like a series of descending notes.
     
    Caleb released his breath on a short, wondering laugh. “Shit. It’s Brigadoon.”
     
    A short dock emerged from the haze, jutting from the stony beach, and a tethered boat with furled sails.
     
    His heart quickened. “Dylan’s?”
     
    Maggie shrugged.
     
    Okay, Caleb would worry about that when he had to.
     
    He secured the boat. Checked the clip in his gun.
     
    “You cannot shoot a demon.” Impatience frayed her voice. Or was it worry?
     
    “Yeah, you said.” He holstered his weapon, steadied by the familiar weight at his hip. “So, how do I kill it?”
     
    256
    She frowned at him. “Demons are immortal.”
     
    “So are selkies. That didn’t stop Whittaker from taking out your friend.”
     
    “Because water is matter. Fire is not matter. It has no substance of its own. It cannot be destroyed. It can only be contained.”
     
    “Or extinguished.”
     
    Her mouth opened. Shut. “Yes.”
     
    “So, what do I have to do?”
     
    “You should not do anything. I should—I must—bind him.”
     
    “Bind him how? You’re not selkie now.”
     
    Her lips drew back. “The demon stripped me of my pelt. Not my power. I will find a way.”
     
    “Meaning you don’t have a clue,” he guessed.
     
    “At least I have a chance,” Maggie snapped.
     
    “Sure, we have a chance.” A soldier had to believe that, just as he had to believe some things were worth fighting for. “It would up our odds if we could get our hands on that pelt.”
     
    “Why?”
     
    “Exit strategy. Things go south, at least you can get away.”
     
    She frowned. “Using Gwyneth’s pelt?”
     
    “She doesn’t need it anymore. Unless you people have rules against that sort of thing.”
     
    “I suppose . . .” Margred shook her head. “Selkies do not think that way. If the pelt came to me, it would be my gift to accept, the way I accept the rain or the sunrise or the bounty of the tide.”
     
    “There you go, then,” Caleb said with satisfaction.
     
    257
    “My running