Children of the Sea 03 - Sea Lord

ocean. “Not yet.”
    The castle would not yield to the quake.
    It would fall, if it fell, to the sea.
    “What are you going to do about Lucy?” Regina asked.
    Lucy looked up in mild annoyance. “I’m still here.”
    Forever , she thought, and shivered with loss and grief.
    “No, I meant . . .” Regina’s thin face flushed. “The one upstairs.”
    Caleb rubbed the back of his neck. “Damned if I know.”
    “Don’t look at me,” Dylan said. “I never made a claidheag . I don’t have the power. But I think she’s supposed to wither away when she isn’t needed anymore.”
    “Perhaps she is still needed,” Margred suggested.
    Dylan raised an eyebrow. “Needed?”
    “By your father,” Margred said gently.
    “Oh, Christ,” Caleb said. “This will blow his mind.”
    “Or knock him off the wagon,” Dylan said.
    Lucy bit her lip. She remembered their father’s face as he kneeled on the floor of the hall—“ What the hell did you do to her? ”—as he cradled the corn maiden in his arms. Her heart wept for him. For Conn.
    For herself.
    What the hell had she done?
    Caleb rubbed the back of his neck. “Maybe not. He’s been going to his AA meetings. And last time I checked, Lucy—the other one—was still breathing.”
    “Yeah, but magic can’t keep her alive indefinitely,” Dylan said.
    Margred looked at them both in dark-eyed reproof. “There is another magic that might.”
    “What magic?” Dylan asked.

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    Regina poked him in the ribs.
    Lucy hugged her arms to herself. “Love,” she said quietly. “Love could save her.”
    In the silence, a candlestick fell and shattered on the hearth.
    The windows rattled.
    Regina pressed a hand to her stomach. “What was that?”
    Somewhere down the road, a car alarm blared, muffled by distance and by snow.
    “Felt like a bomb,” Caleb said.
    Lucy’s stomach dipped in dread.
    “Or an earthquake,” Margred offered.
    “An earthquake.” Regina snorted. “In Maine.”
    “Wouldn’t be the first time,” Dylan said.
    Caleb nodded. “Nineteen twenty-six.”
    All the little hairs rose on the back of Lucy’s neck and along her arms. “What are you talking about?”
    “Last recorded tsunami on Mount Desert Island was caused by an earthquake in nineteen twenty-six,”
    Caleb said promptly.
    Regina laughed. “Boys and their fact books.”
    But no one else smiled. Looking at Dylan and Margred, Lucy saw a shadow of the same instinct in their eyes.
    Something in Caleb’s words, something in Dylan’s expression, tickled her memory. Griff, his face grave, hurrying to find Conn in the courtyard, saying . . . What had he said? “ Ronat has discovered a new vent to the northwest. ”
    “An earthquake,” Lucy repeated slowly. “Not a vent? Or a volcano?”
    Caleb narrowed his eyes, responding to some clue in her question or her voice. “What difference does it make?”
    “Maybe none,” Lucy said.
    That’s what she was afraid of. Maybe there was no difference at all.
    The car horn continued to blare an intermittent warning.
    In her mind, she saw the glowing line of fire in the caves beneath Sanctuary.
    Her lips felt numb. Stiff. “What happens if there’s an earthquake?” she asked. “Here on World’s End.”
    Caleb frowned. “Not a lot. Some structural damage. We’re mostly one-or two-story single-family dwellings. We might get some fires from downed lines or chimneys.”
    “Fire?” Margred repeated.
    “The island is warded,” Dylan said.
    “Now, a bigger danger is an earthquake at sea,” Caleb said. “Depending on the magnitude and the distance and the tide, you could be looking at some serious flooding then.”
    Lucy trembled. She had always dreamed of the sea. The sea and drowning. In her dreams, the oceans came for her, a hungry wall of water that swept everything, destroyed everything, killed everyone she loved.
    She raised her head and looked at her family.
    “Then I know where Gau is coming from,” she said steadily. “I know how he’ll strike. The demons caused that earthquake. And unless we stop them, they will flood World’s End.”
    Lucy watched Caleb anxiously as he ended his radio call. Not because she didn’t expect it to confirm everything she said. But because she did.
    “That was the county sheriff.” Her brother’s voice was grim. The last time she’d heard him speak in quite that tone, Maggie was missing. “The