Children of the Sea 01 - Sea Witch

evidence.”
     
    He wasn’t trying to take the pelt away. He was trying to save it. Save her. His consideration stung her eyes.
     
    “Fine,” Dylan said. “I’ll take it. For now.” He looked at Margred with flat, black, challenging eyes. “You’ll want it when Caleb is through with you.”
     
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    Twenty-three
     
    THE LONG SUMMER EVENING STRETCHED INTO night
    before Caleb pulled into his driveway. Beyond the black spruce, the ocean sparkled, dark waves caught in a silver net. The crescent moon, as white as a sail, rode bright-edged billows of cloud. Beautiful. Peaceful.
     
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    Lonely.
     
    He switched off the engine and sat staring at the reflected light in his windows, too sore to move, too weary to think. Trying to summon the will and a reason to get out of the Jeep.
     
    He should have gone to his sister’s. Maggie was there.
     
    He didn’t want to sit alone in the dark, nursing his wounds and a drink like his father.
     
    But he hurt, and he stank. He needed his pills, a shower, and a clean shirt. He climbed heavily from the Jeep, setting off a chorus of pain as all his injuries, new and old, made themselves heard.
     
    He had refused to be medevaced to the hospital in Rockport. He’d had enough of hospitals. According to Donna Tomah, the bullet had plowed straight through the fleshy part of his upper arm, missing the collar bone, the bundle of nerves above it, and a major artery below. He would recover.
     
    Of course, he looked and felt like shit.
     
    Regina’s eyes had widened when she saw him. She had dropped by the station to deliver pizza to Sam Reynolds and Evelyn Hall, encamped more or less permanently in Caleb’s office. Caleb didn’t know if the state cops had been assigned to him as jailors or nurses, but as the evening and the case progressed, Reynolds at least began to treat him more and more as a colleague.
     
    “Wow.” Regina set the pizza on the counter above Edith’s desk.
    “The weasel lawyer really kicked your ass, huh?”
    “Pretty much,” Caleb admitted.
     
    “Mom said to tell you she thought you were tougher than that.”
    Regina’s teasing tone failed to disguise the concern in her eyes.
     
    Caleb’s smile cracked his split lip. “I am. He had to shoot me before he beat me up.”
     
    Regina laughed, as he intended, and fingered the little gold cross around her neck. “Seriously, Cal, everybody’s glad you’re . . . you
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    know.” She stopped, searching for a sentiment that wouldn’t violate New England standards of reticence. “Here,” she finished.
     
    “Me, too,” Caleb had said.
     
    Here on the island.
     
    Here, alive.
     
    He wouldn’t be if it weren’t for Maggie and his brother.
     
    Dylan had surprised him, Caleb acknowledged as he limped up the walk. He hadn’t expected his brother to be there for him at the end. But Dylan had definitely saved his ass. Caleb even had a vague memory of his brother administering rescue breathing—something he was sure Dylan would prefer Caleb forget.
     
    And Maggie . . . Caleb shook his head. He didn’t know exactly what she’d done on the bottom of the ocean to defeat Tan, but whatever it was had drained her of color and almost of life. When Caleb came to, she’d been lying cold and stiff on the planks of the dock like an ancient warrior on his shield.
     
    He’d thought . . . Oh, God, he’d been so afraid that he had lost her, that she was gone somewhere beyond his reach, even beyond death. A selkie without a soul. But she’d come back to him.
     
    She’d come back.
     
    Even with the scar fresh on her forehead from the demon’s attack, even after seeing what Tan had done to her murdered friend Gwyneth, Maggie had turned to fight. For Caleb’s sake. When the chips were down, she hadn’t folded. She hadn’t run.
    Loyalty and grit, Caleb thought. A man couldn’t ask for anything more.
     
    Except for her to stay.
     
    He stumbled over something in the shadows of the porch. Somebody had left a package by his front door, a bundle, a—
    Sealskin.
     
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    Caleb froze, his hands clenching on the thick, coarse fur. Its musk rose in the darkness. Gwyneth’s pelt. So his brother had already been by.
     
    Something else to deal with, Caleb thought. Tomorrow. Tonight he just wanted to eat, to sleep, to breathe, to be. To be with Maggie.
     
    After he showered, he would drive to his sister’s to find her.
     
    And take the pelt with you ? a voice whispered in the back of his