Children of the Sea 01 - Sea Witch

shoulders. “Margred?”
     
    She blinked at Dylan, fresh from the water, his skin like honey in the golden afternoon light, his pelt hitched like a towel around his lean waist.
    “What are you doing here?” he demanded.
     
    She struggled for air. For explanations. Hurry . “I— Leaving.”
     
    “What?”
     
    Margred inhaled. “The demon killed . . . Gwyneth of Hiort. Your brother—your brother found out.”
     
    “My brother doesn’t believe in demons.”
     
    She didn’t have the breath or time to waste in argument. “Does now.
    Trying to . . . stop it.”
     
    Dylan scowled. “That’s absurd. A human can’t defeat a demon.”
     
    Finally, someone agreed with her. But his words brought no relief.
    “So I told your brother. He will not hear me. But if I leave, I can draw the demon after me. He is not hunting humans. Caleb will be safe.”
     
    Bitter, angry, hurt, betrayed . . . but alive.
     
    264
    Dylan’s face was stiff and pale. “You would set yourself as demon bait to save my brother?”
     
    She refused to let him see her wince. “I have a higher opinion of myself than that. I thought to fight.”
     
    “You don’t have the training. Or the power.”
     
    “I don’t have a choice.”
     
    His black eyes flickered. “You could have come to me.
     
    Or the prince. The birds carried the report of Gwyneth’s death. Let Conn send a warden. They have the experience to—”
     
    “Bugger Conn. And his wardens. By the time they show up, the demon may have switched hosts. Your brother could be dead.”
     
    The lines bracketing Dylan’s mouth deepened. “Where is he?”
     
    “Caleb? At the cottage.” She thought of his probable reaction when he found her gone, and a fresh rush of pain and panic swept through her.
    Hurry, hurry, hurry . “I have to go.”
     
    Dylan let her pass, but she felt him hard on her heels as she jumped and slid over the rocks. “How did you plan on getting off the island?”
     
    “I can still swim. It is only three miles to World’s End.”
     
    “Faster by sail,” Dylan said. “I’ll take you.”
     
    “Yes.” She did not question his motive in offering. Her mind was fixed on Caleb. She jumped on the dock. “Hurry. I need to disable the other boat.”
     
    Dylan stopped. “The powerboat? Why?”
     
    Margred eyed him impatiently. He might comprehend the demon’s power, but he had no concept of the warrior spirit that drove his brother.
     
    “Because unless I strand him here, Caleb will go after the demon alone.”
     
    265

     
    Caleb emerged from the cover of trees sweating and seriously pissed off. He had wasted precious minutes back at the house searching for Maggie, calling for Maggie, unable to accept she’d simply left him.
     
    Again.
     
    Maybe it made sense for her to comb the beach, but she should have told him her plans, damn it.
     
    He scanned the flat seascape of black rock and bright water. Nothing moved on the beach but the wind and the blowing yellow tops of goldenrod.
     
    But on the dock, he spotted a flutter of movement. A flash of skirt.
    Maggie . His lungs inflated with relief and sweet sea air. For a moment everything was okay.
     
    Only for a moment.
     
    She was stepping onto the deck of a boat. A sailboat. Dylan’s boat.
    And Dylan was with her, working the lines.
     
    Caleb’s whole body went rigid. He didn’t cry out. Didn’t protest.
    This was, after all, what he had expected, what he’d known and feared all along.
     
    He didn’t ask what she thought she was doing either. Her plans were suddenly, painfully clear.
     
    The sail rattled up the main mast. The boat jerked and quivered like a pony at the end of its tether. Maggie shook her long hair free in the wind, glancing back at the beach. Caleb knew the second she saw him.
    Her deep brown eyes widened. Her lips parted in distress.
     
    He stomped toward the dock, cursing his limp and the wary look in those eyes, and spoke to her, only to her, not even acknowledging the one at her side. “Get off the boat.”
     
    She bit her lip. “I am sorry.”
     
    266
    First a joke, and now an apology. She was making all kinds of progress. Fuck .
     
    He gauged the twelve feet of water separating the boat from the dock. Even with a whole leg and a running start, he couldn’t jump that far.
     
    Urgency tightened his throat. He clenched his hands into fists.
    “Don’t do this.”
     
    The sail fluttered and snapped, preparing to take her away from him.
     
    “I