Children of the Sea 03 - Sea Lord

and fading flowers. The children of the sea did not work the earth for their sustenance.
    Frustration welled in him.
    What has she to do with me? he demanded silently. What am I to do with her?
    The magic did not reply.
    Which led him, again, to the obvious answer. But he had ruled too long to trust the obvious.
    He did not expect resistance. He could make her willing, make her want him. It was, he thought bitterly, the remaining power of his kind, when other gifts had been abandoned or forgotten.
    No, she would not resist. She had family, however, who might interfere. Brothers. Conn had no doubt the human, Caleb, would do what he could to shield his sister from either sex or magic.
    Dylan, on the other hand, was selkie, like their mother. He had lived among the children of the sea since he was thirteen years old. Conn had always counted on Dylan’s loyalty. He did not think Dylan would have much interest in or control over his sister’s life. But Dylan was involved with a human woman now.
    Who knew where his loyalties lay?
    Conn frowned. He could not afford a misstep. The survival of his kind depended on him.
    And if, as his visions insisted, their fate involved this human girl as well . . .
    He regarded her head, bent like one of her heavy gold sunflowers over the dirt of the garden, and felt a twinge of pity. Of regret.
    That was unfortunate for both of them.
    Lucy patted the pumpkin affectionately like a dog. Her second graders’ garden plots would be ready for harvest soon. Plants and students were rewarding like that. Put in a little time, a little effort, and you could actually see results.
    Too bad the rest of her life didn’t work that way.
    Not that she was complaining, she told herself firmly. She had a job she enjoyed and people who needed her. If at times she felt so frustrated and restless she could scream, well, that was her own fault for moving back home after college. Back to the cold, cramped house she grew up in, to the empty rooms haunted by her father’s shell and her mother’s ghost. Back to the island, where everyone assumed they knew everything about her.
    Back to the sea she dreaded and could not live without.
    She wiped her hands on her jeans. She had tried to leave once, when she was fourteen and finally figured out her adored brother Cal wasn’t ever coming back to rescue her. She’d run away as fast and as far as she could go.
    Which, it turned out, wasn’t very far at all.
    Lucy looked over the dried stalks and hillocks of the garden, remembering. She had hitchhiked to Richmond, twenty miles from the coast, before collapsing on the stinking tile floor of a gas station restroom. Her stomach lurched at the memory. Caleb had found her, shivering and puking her guts into the toilet, and brought her back to the echoing house and the sound of the sea whispering under her window.
    She had recovered before the ferry left the dock.
    Flu, concluded the island doctor.
    Stress, said the physician’s assistant at Dartmouth when Lucy was taken ill on her tour of the college.
    Panic attack, insisted her ex-boyfriend, when their planned weekend getaway left her wheezing and heaving by the side of the road.
    Whatever the reasons, Lucy had learned her limits. She got her teaching certificate at Machias, within walking distance of the bay. And she never again traveled more than twenty miles from the sea.
    She climbed to her feet. Anyway, she was . . . maybe not happy, but content with her life on World’s Page 8
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    End. Both her brothers lived on the island now, and she had a new sister-in-law. Soon, when Dylan married Regina, she’d have two. Then there would be nieces and nephews coming along.
    And if her brothers’ happiness sometimes made her chafe and fidget . . .
    Lucy took a deep breath, still staring at the garden, and forced herself to think about plants until the feeling went away.
    Garlic, she told herself. Next week her class could plant garlic. The bulbs could winter in the soil, and next season her seven-year-old students could sell their crop to Regina’s restaurant. Her future sister-in-law was always complaining she wanted fresh herbs.
    Steadied by the thought, Lucy turned from the untidy rows.
    Someone was watching from the edge of the field. Her heart thumped. A man, improbably dressed in a dark, tight-fitting suit. A stranger, here on World’s End, where she knew everybody outside of tourist