Sea Witch (36 page)

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

mind.

He ignored it. He’d deal with the pelt tomorrow, too.

He unlocked the door and stopped, struck by a smell. Coffee?

Freshly brewed coffee in his empty house. A pair of sandals lay in the

middle of the living room rug. A breeze blew from an open window in

the kitchen.

His heart hammered.

“Maggie?” His voice was hoarse. Hopeful.

She uncurled like a cat from the cushions of the couch, her dark hair

soft and loose on her shoulders, wearing a blue dress that flowed over her

curves like water. Bare feet. Webbed toes.

The sight of her punched him in the gut.

“There you are,” she greeted him. “Are you hungry?”

He was stunned. “You don’t have to cook for me.”

“I didn’t.” She tilted her head to smile into his eyes. “I brought

dinner home from the restaurant.”

Home.

His throat tightened. “That sounds good.”

He ran one finger down her warm cheek, as if to assure himself that

she was real. Then he did what he had wanted to do eight hours ago on

the dock and every second since.

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He kissed her.

Her mouth was soft and welcoming. She tasted of coffee and sugar

and, impossibly, of the sea. Had she been crying? But he had never seen

her cry.

She stood on tiptoe to deepen the kiss, her hand touching the bare

skin at the back of his neck, and Caleb stopped thinking, stopped

questioning, let himself be totally in the present, in this moment, with her

here and eager in his arms. It was enough. It was everything.

When he raised his head, his split lip throbbed softly and Maggie

was trembling along the length of his body.

“Dinner can wait,” he said.

“It could. I cannot.” Her slow smile teased him. “I want to hear

about your day.”

He cleared his throat. “Now?”

She tugged his hand. “While you eat.”

He let her lead him to the kitchen. The scent of the salt wood flowed

through the open window. The evidence of her presence was

everywhere—a bright towel hung haphazardly on the back of a chair, an

empty mug in the sink, a dusting of sugar on the kitchen table. She was

here. She was back. A weight rolled from Caleb’s shoulders.

She’d lit the emergency candles he kept in case of power failure and

laid out a pair of wineglasses left from his first marriage. The trappings of

romance? Or simply the way Regina had taught her to set a table?

But Antonia’s didn’t use candles.

“Sit.” Maggie tugged at him again. “Tell me what happened. That

woman, the square one—”

“Evelyn Hall.”

“She would not let me in to see you.”

He watched her open the wine with graceful, practiced movements.

“In an investigation, you want to keep the witnesses apart.” And the

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suspects, he thought but did not say. “So they can’t make up or change

their stories.”

Maggie bristled. “You were shot. Do they think you made that up?”

Her fierce defense made him smile. “No, they could see that. One of

the techs dug a bullet out of the dock they’ll be able to match to

Whittaker’s gun. But Reynolds knows— suspects—I’m not telling him

everything.”

The white take-out bag rustled. “What did you tell him?”

Caleb leaned back in his chair. “That Whittaker was afraid you had

remembered him. That he came after you to stop you from identifying

him as your attacker. Based on that, I suggested they had probable cause

to search his house in connection with the other woman.”

Maggie tilted her head. “And did they?”

“Yep.”

She set a plate in front of him. With a shock of pleasure, Caleb

recognized the lobster rolls and tortellini salad he’d served her at their

first picnic on the beach. Did she remember?

Of course she did.

She sat opposite him, leaning across the table. “What did they find?”

He set down his fork. “You sure you want to talk about this now?”

“Why not?”

“It’s not very”—Caleb paused as the specter of his ex-wife rose to

scold him—“pleasant for you to have to deal with.”

Maggie’s eyes flashed. “Gwyneth’s murder was not
pleasant
. Seeing

you possessed by a demon chained on the bottom of the ocean was not

pleasant. This is what is. You have been fighting my battles all day. The

least I can do is listen.”

Caleb regarded her with wry appreciation. He would never compare

her to Sherilee again.

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Baldly, briefly, he described what the evidence team had found:

tools they believed matched the marks of torture on Gwyneth’s body;

traces of blood in the floorboards and drains.

“So.” Maggie drew a long breath. “It is done, then? This explanation

satisfies them? You are not a . . . person of interest any longer?”

“It will take days—weeks—for the crime lab to process all the

evidence. But Reynolds told me his lieutenant is already pulling

detectives from the case.”

Maggie reached across the table and touched the back of his wrist.

He turned his hand over, linking his fingers with hers. They sat quietly,

holding hands among the dishes. Caleb’s chest expanded. His throat

ached with a mingled sense of peace and loss. This was what he wanted,

what he’d dreamed of. Someone to share the end of the day. Maggie, in

his house and in his life.

Her grip tightened on his fingers. She smiled her siren’s smile into

his eyes. “You are tired. Come to bed.”

He was exhausted. And sore.

But not, he discovered when she turned to him under the covers, too

tired to love her.

They lay on their sides, facing each other, her leg over his thigh, her

breasts brushing his chest. Her eyes were dark and heavy with desire.

Caleb threaded his fingers through her hair, stroking it back from the

half-healed scar on her forehead. She cupped his battered jaw, her thumb

grazing the puffiness under his eye, and kissed his shoulder above the

bandages.

His body responded, thickening, swelling.

“Maggie, I don’t know—I’ve lost a lot of blood,” he said

awkwardly.

She smiled, feathering a kiss on his broken lip. “It will be all right,”

she promised.

And it was.

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They came together in small, incremental movements, with soft,

open-mouthed kisses and quiet, indrawn breaths. He slipped inside her—soft, hot, wet—holding still as she pulsed around him. Tenderness welled.

Spilled.
If this was the last time . . .
But he wouldn’t let himself think that.

To be in this moment, to be with Maggie . . . It was enough. He would

make it be enough.

They rocked together, wrapped in each other, lapped in pleasure,

until the gathering storm within them broke in ripples and murmurs, soft

and welcome as rain. He felt her crest, the sweet contractions milking

him, drawing out his own release.

She sighed against his throat.

He exhaled into her hair. “Maggie.”

“Love.” She rested her palm against his chest. “My love.”

He twined his fingers with hers; raised their clasped hands to his lips

and then to his heart.

Joined, at peace, they drifted into sleep.

Margred awoke to a great sense of well-being and the sun tickling

her eyelids. Something warm and heavy lay on top of the bed covers. She

smiled and stretched out her foot.

Not Caleb.

She opened her eyes.

He sat fully dressed on the edge of the mattress. And bundled in

front of him was the brindled bulk of Gwyneth’s pelt.

Margred felt a chill that had nothing to do with the open window.

“What is this?”

“It’s yours.”

Margred sat up. “No, it’s not.”

“Gwyneth is dead,” Caleb said quietly. “You said you could take her

pelt if it came to you. As a gift.”

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“Yes, but—”

“So I’m giving it to you.” Caleb’s eyes remained steady on hers.

Only his hands clenched in the fur to hide their trembling. “Take it.”

Margred regarded him in disbelief. Lovely, noble, exasperating man.

“I don’t want it. Caleb, when I saw you under the water . . .”
Drifting in

his chains, his strength gone, his air gone, his skin like wax . . .
“I thought

you had died.” Her voice broke, and tears pricked her eyes, hard, real,

human tears. She blinked them back impatiently. “I knew then I did not

want to live without you.”

The grim line of his mouth relaxed. “You don’t have to. I’ll always

be here. I’ll love you as long as I live. As long as you’ll let me.”

She searched his gaze. “And that would be enough for you?”

He inhaled audibly. “It has to be. I’m not my father, Maggie. I don’t

want to change you. I love you for who and what you are.”

Her hands reached over the fur to clasp his.

“Then we have a problem,” she said. “I am not . . . what I was.”

“Beautiful? Gutsy? Caring? Smart?”

She was pleased he saw her as all those things. But she was not

casting for compliments. She needed to make him understand.

“I am not selkie. I do not have my powers any longer.” Caleb’s eyes

narrowed. “But you bound Tan.”

She blinked. “I . . . Yes.”

“And you called the dolphins.”

She smiled, remembering. “I did, didn’t I?”

“Being selkie—it isn’t about your skin. It’s something deeper.

Something inside you. You’re different, Maggie. Amazing. Magic.” His

gaze, his hands, were warm and steady on hers. “You’re . . . you.”

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Margred stared at her hands, linked with his. Her human hands that

had learned to wash dishes and set a table and soothe her lover’s hurts.

Her selkie hands that had summoned the rain and bound a demon.

Was Caleb right?

She was not what she once was.

Maybe she was more.

“Maybe I am not changed,” she acknowledged. “But I have grown.”

Like a child learning to stand on its own two sturdy legs, like a bride

leaving her mother’s house, she was ready to leave the cradle and bosom

of the sea and walk on solid ground.

“I don’t want to visit you to take my pleasure,” she continued. “I

want a real life with you, to sleep with you and talk with you. To grow

old with you. To have children with you.”

And she would never leave them, she vowed. She would never leave

him
. She could live on land and still be of the sea.

“How about dying with me?” Caleb challenged her.

She nodded. “I told you. I would not want to live without you.”

“Maggie . . .” His eyes were gray and troubled as the northern sea.

“I’m not a religious guy. But . . . only humans have souls, you said. Is one

life with me enough for you? Is it worth giving up eternity?”

Only humans asked so many questions.

Only humans had such doubts.

And such faith.

Margred smiled. “I love you,” she said. “I believe you love me. I do

not believe the God of love would let such a thing happen if our love was

meant to die with these bodies. ”

“God help us both, then,” Caleb said. “Because I’d go to Hell to get

you back.”

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* * * *

They stood on a hilltop overlooking the sea, the sweep of horizon

sharp and curved as a line drawn by pencil. Below, the boundary between

land and sea blurred with every wave that rushed and retreated over the

rocks.

Margred shook out her hair, the taste of brine on her lips, her bare

feet planted on the sun-warmed soil among the buttercups and blowing

grass. In the distance, strings of lobster pots crossed the water like lines

of bright embroidery stitches, but no boats, no swimmers, no kayakers

broke the far, wide, wrinkled surface of the ocean.

“Maggie.” She loved the way he spoke her name. Caleb stood

behind her, upright and strong as a lighthouse on the headland. “Are you

sure?”

She had never been more certain of anything. “I lived in the ocean

for seven hundred years. The sea is in my blood, always. But you are my

heart.”

She held the sealskin in her arms, the coarse, rippling fur, the warm,

sleek weight of it. And when the surf rushed in again, she dropped it into

the sea.

A harbor seal popped its bullet-shaped head from the water to watch

as the waves plucked and dragged at the bundled pelt, carrying it, rolling

and unfolding, out to sea.

Margred sighed. Smiled.

And turned to find Caleb waiting for her, a look in his eyes that