“Because I would know. Living in the same house, breathing the same air…I would smell it. Sense it. Caleb…” She put her hand on his arm until he met those great, brown, perceptive eyes. “I would know,” she repeated quietly.

  Some of the tension leached from his muscles. His hands eased their death grip on the wheel. “Right. All right. Thanks.”

  They rounded the rocky point, plowing the deep blue water, leaving white-capped furrows in their wake. The Atlantic sparkled as far as the horizon. The breeze snatched at the dark streamers of Maggie’s hair and molded her clothes to her body. She looked like some exotic figurehead sprung to life, full-breasted, bold, and gorgeous. The embodiment of every sailor’s fantasy, every dream of home.

  Caleb’s chest constricted. Would she stay? Or would she go, taking his dreams and his heart with her?

  He cleared his throat. “That’s Whittaker’s place.”

  She turned her head, studying the expanse of glass and shingle squatting on the headland. Turned back to smile at him, memory glinting in her eyes. “I recognize the cliff.”

  Oh, yeah. That cliff.

  Where Caleb had found her swimming with the dolphins.

  Where he’d backed her against the rocks and put his tongue in her mouth, his hands up her skirt.

  He licked salt from his lips. “I went there today. To his house.”

  He watched, both glad and sorry, as the awareness in her eyes shifted. Sharpened. “Why?”

  “His place overlooks the beach where you were attacked,” Caleb said evenly. “He wasn’t at the school assembly that night. He doesn’t have an alibi for last night either.”

  She scowled at him. “And you went to his house? Alone?”

  “I never got past the front door. He claimed he didn’t feel well enough for company. Or questions either.”

  Her frown turned thoughtful. “If a demon has him…he may not be eating much. Or sleeping. The children of the fire are rarely considerate of their hosts.”

  “That would explain why he looks like shit,” Caleb said grimly. “Unfortunately, it’s not enough to convince a judge that Whittaker could be a murderer.”

  “But it convinced you.”

  Caleb hesitated. “Not…entirely. Not by itself. Look, in this job you’ve got to learn to trust your instincts. I went to his house, no bloodstains on the rug, not a damn thing out of place. Hell, I can smell pine cleaner from the fucking porch.” Caleb shook his head, remembering. “This guy is smiling at me, closing the door in my face, and I see his fish tank. He’s got one of those big ones. Expensive, like you’d see in a dentist’s office, with the lights and the bubbles and the fancy plants. Well.” Caleb swallowed. “It was empty.”

  “So, there was no water.”

  “Plenty of water,” Caleb said grimly. “Filter running. Lights on. But the fish…” He stopped. Hard to explain, out here on the gentle chop of the sunlit sea, what made this one detail so chilling, so compelling. “All the fish were gone. I could see losing one or two. Hell, I can’t keep a goldfish alive. But to lose them all, all at once like that, is…”

  Disturbing.

  Psychotic.

  “Out of character,” Caleb concluded.

  “Not for a demon,” Maggie said.

  A long look passed between them. He felt the cold in the marrow of his bones.

  “Right.” He drew a long breath into tight lungs. “I don’t have to worry about a warrant, then.”

  Her big eyes darkened with confusion. “I don’t understand.”

  He had fought before, when the mission was unclear and the stakes weren’t personal. This was a no-brainer.

  “If Whittaker is what you say he is, this case is never going to trial,” he said quietly. “It can’t. Even if Whittaker could be convicted, I can’t risk turning a demon loose on the prison population.”

  “What will you do?”

  “Eliminate him. If I can.”

  He throttled down. Three miles out, the winking, wrinkled sea spread to the horizon, every swell blending into the next. The boat rocked, lulling his senses. But something about this stretch of water anchored his attention. A whisper of surf, a whiff of pine…

  He watched a gull plummet out of the sky and disappear into…nothing, and knew. He felt the rock pushing up from the ocean bottom, poking through the surface like broken bones, and looked to Maggie for confirmation.

  She nodded. “Here.”

  As if her word had raised a curtain, land began to form out of the flat and featureless sea: a jumble of rock, a curve of shore, a line of dark firs marching down to the water like a series of descending notes.

  Caleb released his breath on a short, wondering laugh. “Shit. It’s Brigadoon.”

  A short dock emerged from the haze, jutting from the stony beach, and a tethered boat with furled sails.

  His heart quickened. “Dylan’s?”

  Maggie shrugged.

  Okay, Caleb would worry about that when he had to.

  He secured the boat. Checked the clip in his gun.

  “You cannot shoot a demon.” Impatience frayed her voice. Or was it worry?

  “Yeah, you said.” He holstered his weapon, steadied by the familiar weight at his hip. “So, how do I kill it?”

  She frowned at him. “Demons are immortal.”

  “So are selkies. That didn’t stop Whittaker from taking out your friend.”

  “Because water is matter. Fire is not matter. It has no substance of its own. It cannot be destroyed. It can only be contained.”

  “Or extinguished.”

  Her mouth opened. Shut. “Yes.”

  “So, what do I have to do?”

  “You should not do anything. I should—I must—bind him.”

  “Bind him how? You’re not selkie now.”

  Her lips drew back. “The demon stripped me of my pelt. Not my power. I will find a way.”

  “Meaning you don’t have a clue,” he guessed.

  “At least I have a chance,” Maggie snapped.

  “Sure, we have a chance.” A soldier had to believe that, just as he had to believe some things were worth fighting for. “It would up our odds if we could get our hands on that pelt.”

  “Why?”

  “Exit strategy. Things go south, at least you can get away.”

  She frowned. “Using Gwyneth’s pelt?”

  “She doesn’t need it anymore. Unless you people have rules against that sort of thing.”

  “I suppose…” Margred shook her head. “Selkies do not think that way. If the pelt came to me, it would be my gift to accept, the way I accept the rain or the sunrise or the bounty of the tide.”

  “There you go, then,” Caleb said with satisfaction.

  “My running away does not defeat the demon.”

  “Right. That’s why I’m going back to kill the son of a bitch.”

  * * *

  He had not heard her at all, Margred thought in despair.

  Despite the swaying deck, his feet were firmly planted. The sun lay heavy and golden as a knight’s armor on his shoulders. This strong, honorable man was prepared to kill for her.

  Or die.

  She shivered.

  She had never acknowledged the claims of other partners to her loyalty or affection. Caleb had both.

  She had never understood commitment or admired courage until she saw them in him. His example had challenged her. Changed her.

  Margred narrowed her eyes. And now, she thought, he would just have to accept the consequences.

  He was woefully mismatched in this fight. Somehow, she must convince him this was her battle.

  “You cannot do this,” she said.

  His jaw set. “Yeah, I can. Fire needs an air supply, right? Or it goes out.”

  She blinked. “I—yes, I suppose.”

  “So, I crush his airway. Slit his throat. Cut off his head. He can’t breathe…” Caleb shrugged. “He dies.”

  Margred stared. Easy for humans to contemplate death when their own lives were so short.

  Or did the very brevity of their existence make life even more precious?

  “If the demon dies, his host dies, too,” she pointed out. “The human, Whittaker.”

  Caleb hesitated the barest instant. Long enough for her to read the cost of his decision in his eyes. “Collateral damage. Sometimes the importance of the target outweighs the effect of a strike. Whittaker’s hardly an innocent casualty.”

  “I am not concerned about him. I am concerned for you.”

  “Honey, I can handle one middle-aged lawyer.”

  She raised her chin. “And how will you handle being arrested for his murder? What is your exit strategy?”

  “I’ll be fine,” Caleb said steadily. “I can argue self defense or something.”

  She stared at him, baffled and frustrated. How could he dismiss so easily the life he had built with such deliberation, the job that meant so much to him? Didn’t he understand the risks he ran?

  And that was when she knew.

  He understood too well.

  He was not worried about his future because he did not expect to survive.

  20

  THE KEY WAS UNDER A LOBSTER BUOY ON THE front porch.

  Just like home. Caleb closed his fingers around the tarnished metal key, wondering what other habits his brother still clung to after twenty-five years.

  He raised his other hand to knock. “Anybody home?”

  No answer.

  “The door is unlocked,” Maggie said.

  Caleb tried the knob. Sure enough, it turned easily in his hand. “Selkies don’t steal?”

  She shrugged. “We flow as the sea flows. What one tide brings, another may take away.”

  Caleb grunted. “I’d like to hear you try to explain that one to a judge.”

  “Simple.” Maggie smiled. “Pelts do not have pockets.”

  He narrowed his eyes.

  “It is a joke,” she explained earnestly.

  A reluctant smile tugged his lips. “Yeah, I got it.”

  He’d just never heard her attempt an actual joke before. Like a four-year-old’s knock-knock joke, the effort was clumsy, endearing, and…human.

  His heart stumbled. He pushed open the door.

  Inside, the cabin looked like every other rundown vacation cottage in the state of Maine: the same knotty pine and peeling linoleum, the same rusted hinges and outdated appliances. Mildew grew around the refrigerator door. The shelves held a bottle of ketchup, a moldy half loaf of bread, and most of a case of beer. Caleb wondered where Dylan bought his groceries. Not on World’s End.

  Maggie wrinkled her nose at the smell. “I do not think Gwyneth hid her sealskin in the refrigerator.”

  “Right.” Caleb closed the door. His brother didn’t matter. Maggie mattered.

  “I think I should look outside while you search inside,” she said.

  Caleb regarded the four square walls and narrow hall that led to the—bedroom? Bath? “Not much to search.”

  Maggie’s lips curved. “You will be quick, then.”

  He didn’t like splitting up. But on an island where his brother hadn’t bothered to lock the door…

  “Stay close to the house,” he warned. “Where I can see you.”

  She gave him a limpid look through her eyelashes. “Of course.”

  That big-eyed routine set off alarm bells in his head.

  But she had waited for him at the restaurant. “Then it seems we are in this together,” she’d said.

  He wanted to trust her.

  He had to trust her.

  He strode down the hall.

  * * *

  Watching Caleb’s tall, strong figure disappear through a doorway, Margred longed to call him back for a word, a look, a kiss…

  Foolish, feminine, human need.

  Impatiently, she let herself out the front door and crossed through the sunlit patch of yard, bright with daisies and sow thistle. When she reached the shadow of tall spruce, she cast one last look over her shoulder at the house.

  And ran.

  * * *

  Caleb surveyed the room like a crime scene, hands in his pockets, gaze assessing, emotions firmly in check.

  If this was Dylan’s room, his brother’s tastes hadn’t evolved in twenty-five years. The navy spread was the same tough, ribbed material that covered the beds at home. The furniture was Vintage Motel. Only the king-sized mattress and an elaborately carved sea chest at the foot of the bed suggested Dylan had grown.

  Changed.

  A small frame on the battered dresser caught Caleb’s eye. He stepped closer, bending to take a look.

  Surprise tightened his throat. He recognized that picture. Hell, he was in it, ten years old, with Lucy on his lap. And beside them, scowling at the camera, was thirteen-year-old Dylan.

  A memory pressed on Caleb’s heart like an old bruise: their mother, laughing and excited as she framed the shot, ordering Dylan to smile. Had she known then that she was leaving? Had she kept the photograph to remind her of the children she’d left behind? Did his brother keep it for the same reasons?

  Or was the picture simply like the bedspread and the mold in the kitchen, something Dylan had lived with so long he didn’t see it anymore?

  Not that Caleb gave a good goddamn about his brother’s motivations.

  He pushed back the curtain on the closet, revealing a surprisingly up-to-date men’s wardrobe, and rifled efficiently through the bureau drawers before turning his attention to the sea chest at the foot of the bed.

  His gaze kept skipping over it. Sliding away. Caleb frowned. This wasn’t like the glamour spell placed on the island. He could see the damn thing clearly. But he was oddly reluctant to approach it. Touch it.

  Ignoring the recalcitrance in his mind, the tingling of his fingertips, he sank heavily to his knees and raised the lid.

  His breath escaped in a silent whistle. Jackpot.

  Like finding pirate treasure on the beach, a crusader’s ransom, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. He stared at the pile of gleaming coins stamped with the images of goddesses and kings, Indians and eagles. Pieces of gold shining through rich, mottled strands of…

  Fur.

  A sealskin.

  His heart hammered. Gwyneth’s pelt? Or Dylan’s?

  Maggie would know.

  He had to tell her.

  He’d seen what the demon had done to her dead friend. Maggie complained Caleb didn’t know what they were up against, but he understood evil. He was a cop. A soldier. He’d dealt with dead babies and abused wives, executed shopkeepers, blown-up school children. He knew what men could do to one another out of hate or greed, for high-minded, hollow political phrases or in the name of religion.

  He had fought with insufficient weapons against enemies who could not be defeated, against poverty and crime and hopelessness, against zealots and insurgents.

  He’d fight now because he had to. Because there was no one else, and Maggie could not face this thing alone.

  But if they lost, if the situation went literally to hell, he wanted her to be safe. At least the skin would give her a chance to escape, to return to the sea she loved.

  And if they won…

  Caleb lowered the lid of the chest, annoyed to note his hands were trembling. He wouldn’t let himself think about what Maggie would do if they won.

  * * *

  Maggie crashed through the wood on the slippery, overgrown path as if the hounds of Hell hunted at her heels.

  Or a demon.

  Hurry, hurry. Her feet pounded and slid on the carpet of pine needles. Her breathing rasped. In. Out. Her heart hammered in her ears.

  She burst from shadow into sunlight. Blinded, she stumbled forward and thumped into something—someone—warm. Solid. Male.

  She almost shrieked.

  Hard hands gripped her 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.

  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.