Children of the Sea 01 - Sea Witch

foam, without body or conscious thought. Without pain. Without memory. Was this death? It was very peaceful. “ There are worse things than death .”
     
    Oh, Caleb . . .
     
    A shaft of pain pierced her, light in the darkness. She winced from it, struggling to stay, to drift in the cool, quiet dark.
     
    “Maggie.”
     
    The voice disturbed her, hard and urgent, like a stone flung into a pond. It rippled through her, drawing her toward the light. She floundered, gasping. She did not want to go there. She did not want to remember . . .
     
    Caleb was dead .
     
    “Maggie, honey, come on.”
     
    He did not sound dead. He sounded . . . hoarse. Upset. She opened her eyes and saw his haggard face above her, haloed by the sky. She blinked. Coughed. “Where are we?”
     
    Selkies did not go to Heaven . . .
     
    Caleb made a sound between a laugh and a groan. “On the dock.
    Dylan pulled you out of the water. He rescued us both.”
     
    Dylan wavered into view, a shadow behind Caleb’s shoulder. “A waste of effort. You’re going to bleed to death anyway. Unless you do something about that gunshot wound. Ah, that brought her around,” he said, satisfaction in his voice.
    “Shut up,” said Caleb.
     
    He was going to bleed to death . . .
     
    Margred struggled to sit. Her hands burned. Her legs bled, scraped raw by the rocks. She hurt everywhere, her joints, her lungs, her throat, her womb, as if the magic filling her had stretched things, moved them around, pushed all her internal organs out of the way.
     
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    Caleb looked even worse—drowned, battered, shot—his lips blue, his face stark, his eyes exhausted. Vulnerable.
     
    Worry wrenched her heart.
     
    “You need a doctor.” She turned to Dylan. “You must take us in your boat.”
     
    “I am at your service, always,” Dylan said dryly. “Anything else?”
     
    Caleb shook his head. His face was drawn with pain. “We need to stay here. Radio the marine patrol.”
     
    Dylan raised his eyebrows. “Why? I could have you to World’s End before their boat gets here.”
     
    “A man is dead,” Caleb said. “There will be an investigation. I need to stay with the body until the scene is secured.”
     
    “Oh, please. Do you really want to involve your human police in what happened here? What are you going to tell them?”
     
    “The truth,” Caleb said evenly. “As much as I can. Whittaker followed us here, he shot me, and I killed him in self-defense. ”
     
    “And how do you plan to explain your long-lost selkie brother?”
     
    “I’m not. I’m not going to mention you at all. I want you and your boat out of here before the police arrive.”
     
    “I don’t want them here. This is my island.”
     
    “Yours.”
     
    The brothers faced off like two bull seals on the beach. “Yes.”
    Dylan’s smile flashed like a knife. “A bequest from our mother.”
     
    “I searched for you,” Caleb said abruptly.
     
    Margred, watching, understood him well enough now to recognize the gift he was offering. Caleb wanted his brother to know he had not forgotten him. The children of the sea flowed as the sea flowed, uncaring and unconnected. But Caleb’s roots struck as deep as an oak tree. His
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    shelter extended to everyone around him. In seven hundred years, she had never known anyone as committed, as concerned, as compassionate as Caleb.
     
    “I searched for you both,” he continued. “Driver’s license, county property tax, graduation records. I never found you.”
     
    “I never intended you to,” Dylan said coolly. “I don’t like visitors.”
     
    Caleb nodded, accepting the rebuff. “Then get the hell out. Take your gold and the pelt with you.”
     
    Margred’s reaction was instinctive, selfish and sharp as a child’s who sees her toy taken away. No. Mine . Caleb gave the sealskin to her.
    Every intuition honed in seven hundred years of survival told her to snatch it and return to the sea.
     
    “ Take it, and be free ,” Caleb had said when he thought he was dying.
     
    When they both thought he was dying.
     
    But Caleb lived.
     
    Margred’s breath snagged. And she could not imagine her life without him.
     
    Dylan scowled. “The pelt is not mine to dispose of. Or yours either.”
     
    Caleb rubbed his face with a blood-encrusted hand. “You leave it here while they search the island, somebody from CID could decide it’s in violation of the Marine Mammal Protection Act and turn it over to the feds as