Sea Fever (22 page)

the new veterans’ housing program downstate.”

“Whether Jones is in jail or not is irrelevant,” Dylan said.

“Not irrelevant to him,” Regina muttered.

Dylan’s black eyes glinted. “His fate is not my care or responsibility.

Yours is.”

“What about the rest of the island? Other threats? Other demons?”

Caleb asked.

Dylan shrugged. “There has been . . . activity on and around World’s

End before this. But they want Regina now.”

“And are willing to possess anybody else to get at her,” Caleb said

grimly.

“Not anybody. There are limits to their power.”

Caleb’s eyes narrowed. “The cross.”

“And my tattoo,” Regina said.

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Dylan nodded. “They could not kill you. And they did not anticipate

me. They cannot afford to attract Heaven’s attention with a series of

botched attempts. They will choose the next time and their next target

very carefully.”

“Are you trying to make me feel better?”

Dylan’s expression did not change. “I’m trying to scare you.”

“So that I’ll run away with you to Sanctuary.”

Caleb cleared his throat.

Dylan ignored him. “Yes.”

“For how long?” Regina demanded.

“Until we know you and the child are safe.”

“And how long will that take?” She pressed her hand to her stomach.

“Nine months?”

He was silent.

“Thirteen years?”

He glared, his dark eyes stormy. “Sanctuary is the best solution.”

She squeezed her hands together in her lap at the tumult in those

eyes. “The safest, maybe. Not the best. Not for me or my children. In

thirteen years, my mother could be dead. If the heartbreak doesn’t kill her

sooner.”

“Regina . . .”

Her heart shook at his tone. She could not afford to give in to him.

She would not give in. She had crawled and fought and worked damn

hard for the life she had made with her son. She would not give it up.

“No.”

He flung himself from his chair; stalked to the window. “I could

leave you here.”

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“But you won’t,” she said softly.

He glanced over his shoulder. A corner of his mouth rose. “No.”

Her heart beat faster. “Because of the child.”

He inclined his head. “If you like.”

She could not read him. She did not know him. How could she be

falling in love with him?

Caleb cleared his throat again. “You’ll need a place to stay.”

“For how long?” Regina asked.

“Nine months?” Dylan smiled in wicked echo. “Thirteen years?”

And then what? He’d leave her like his mother left his father? Like

her father left her mother?

“You can’t just move in with us,” Regina said. “It’s not fair to

Nick.”

“Nick is not the one with the problem,” Dylan shot back.

“I have to protect him,” she said stubbornly.

Even if it was too late to protect her own heart.

Caleb rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t see how we’re going to

protect either one of them.”

Regina glanced at Dylan, startled by the easy way Caleb allied

himself with his brother over her defense. Dylan hardly seemed to notice.

Men.

“I’ll have to ward her building,” Dylan said.

Caleb raised his eyebrows. “You can do that?”

His jaw set. “I must.”

“And if she has to leave the apartment? Or the restaurant?”

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A long look passed between the brothers.

“Then I will be with her,” Dylan said. “Attached to her like a

lamprey. Or a lover.”

“Not in the apartment,” Regina said.

“You’ll need a place to stay,” Caleb said again at the same time.

“Somewhere close.”

“Is that an invitation, little brother?”

“If you need one,” Caleb said steadily.

“I don’t need anything from you,” Dylan said. But the darkness in

his eyes made the words a lie.

“You should go home. To your parents’ house,” Regina said.

Dylan sneered. “The way you did?”

He would not let her pity him. Fine. She wouldn’t permit him to

goad her.

“There’s no shame in going home when you need to.”

She could say that now. She could even believe it. The realization

lightened her heart.

“This was never my home. I’d rather pay to stay at the Inn.”

“Full up this time of year,” Regina said. “Your father has room.”

“Our old room,” Caleb said. “Nothing’s changed.”

Dylan’s face was blank and hard as the sea cliffs. “That’s what I’m

afraid of.”

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Fourteen

DYLAN KNELT IN THE WEEDS AND GRAVEL BEHIND the

restaurant, running his long-fingered hands over the brick of the building

the way Regina imagined another man might stroke a horse or the hood

of a car. He looked sweaty, preoccupied, and very male.

She dropped the black plastic trash bags at her feet to watch.

At the sound, he turned his head. “Come to see me on my knees?”

She tilted her chin at a challenging angle. “I’ve seen you on your

knees before.”

“Ah. Remember that, do you?” he said in a satisfied tone.

Remember his dark head moving between her legs, the whirling

stars, the whispering sea, and the heat rising in her blood, created by his

mouth and hands and breath?

“Um. Maybe. Vaguely.”

His rare grin cracked like lightning across his face; sizzled along her

nerves. “Perhaps I should refresh your memory.”

She swallowed hard. “I thought you had to go commune with your

prince or whatever.”

“I do. But I must set a ward first. I will not leave you unprotected.”

He went back to his bricks. She picked up the black garbage bags

and pitched them into the Dumpster, ignoring the gulls that squawked and

settled on the roofs around.

Dylan was tapping and pressing on the mortared wall like a

safecracker. She set her hands on her hips to watch.

“Go back inside.”

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She glanced nervously, compulsively, around the alley. “Am I in

danger?”

“No.” He looked at her and sighed. “You are distracting.”

“Oh.” A warm feeling melted her belly. “Okay.”

She took a step toward the door and stopped, observing his careful

hands and frowning, slightly frustrated expression. The warm feeling

spread. He was an immortal creature of the sea whose natural home was a

magic island. Yet here he was on his knees in the dirt of the alley because

she would not go away with him. He was putting his own life on hold for

her sake. Her sake and her son’s. Under the brooding and the bluster,

Dylan Hunter was a good man. Not only hot and exciting, but principled

and even . . . tender.

A tender, principled guy who was also hot. Which made him about

as rare in her life as a selkie.

She walked back. His dark brows twitched together in annoyance.

Smiling, she brushed a kiss on the top of his head. Dylan went as still as

the broken concrete underfoot, his hair warm against her lips.

She straightened. “Thanks,” she said and went back to her kitchen.

* * *

Regina’s kiss— her warm lips, her sweet smell, her simple words of

gratitude— fell like rain on Dylan’s parched heart and churned up a storm

in his soul.

Or where his soul would be if he had one.

Alone in the alley, he closed his eyes, pressing his forehead to the

rough brick. Her affection would not endure, he reminded himself.

Nothing human endured. Families were torn apart. Children grew up.

Parents died.

Better to live in the moment as the sea folk did than pin your heart

and hopes on . . .

Love.

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And yet the moment when she kissed him, not from lust or need, had

been almost unbearably sweet, ripe with trust, pregnant with affection.

Pregnant. The sharp stones of the alley pricked his knees. The birds

on the roof watched with bright, merciless eyes. Regina was pregnant

with his child, and she would not go with him to Sanctuary.

He was responsible for her. And if he failed to protect her, he would

be responsible for the deaths of the only two women who had ever

mattered in his life.

He splayed his fingers on the wall.

He was not a warden. The foundation between his hands was man-made bricks and mortar, not stone and sand. He did not know if what he

attempted could even be done.

The selkie flowed as the sea flowed. Their gift was like water,

powerful, changeable, and fluid. Like the wind or a woman’s lust, it was

fickle. Ephemeral. But to protect Regina, this ward must stand against

time and the power of Hell.

He was on his knees with his hands raised. As if he prayed. Perhaps

he did. Perhaps he should.

He opened his mind, sent it spiraling down and down, feeling his gift

like water trapped in a sponge, saturating each cell and fiber, lubricating

each joint and sinew. Conn said the magic of the merfolk had declined as

their numbers declined. But Dylan could feel the power in his blood like a

silent sea waiting for the pull of the moon.

He tried a cautious internal pressure, making a space— between

heart and lungs, between liver and spleen— for the power to fill as water

fills a footprint in the sand. Slowly it seeped in, a trace, a glimmer, a pool,

growing in the gaps of his ribs, in the hollow of his gut. The power rose,

and hope rose, too, swirling, eddying inside him, but not enough, not

quite enough, like water blocked by a twig, a trickle when he needed a

torrent.

Sweat slicked his palms; beaded his forehead. He tried to force

power, to wring it from his bones, to squeeze it from his heart, but like

water, the magic eluded his grasp, reabsorbed into his tissues.

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“You need someone else,” he had told her.

And her voice replied, firm in its faith. “I don’t think so.”

He groaned. He wanted, needed . . .

More.

MORE.

Power burst through him like a wave through a flume, sluiced his

senses, roared down his veins, erupted from his mouth, shot from his

eyes, exploded from his fingertips. Everything, heart and brain and loins,

was swept up and carried away like burning branches borne by a flood.

He let the power take him where and how it would; until he was left,

tumbled and empty, on the stones of the alley.

The magic retreated, leaving him beached and gasping. He sprawled

on his stomach, with rough green weeds poking between his fingers and

broken glass glittering before his dazed eyes like stars.

He heard a scrape, an indrawn breath, and turned his head.

His sister, Lucy, stood in the shadow of the door well, her usually

soft, overcast eyes blazing like the sea at noon.

The ground tilted beneath his cheek.

She blinked, and it was as if a shutter dropped over her face,

transforming her brightness, making her once again a tall, rather ordinary

young woman in a green Clippers T-shirt and a white kitchen apron.

“Are you all right?” she asked anxiously.

His hands were scraped raw. His lip was split. A headache drove

spikes through his skull. But buoyed by the power that had surged

through him—the wonder of it, the rightness of it— he barely noticed.

“Did you see . . . Did you feel that?” he demanded.

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She took a step back as he lunged to his feet, retreating farther into

the shadows, into herself. Her lashes swept down like a curtain closing

behind shutters.

“I’m glad you’re all right,” she said.

Like the world hadn’t tilted on its axis. Like nothing had happened at

all.

Like nothing happened. Fear raked him, more painful than the gravel

embedded in his hands.

He turned his head sharply and inspected the building.

There. Relief shook him. The warden’s mark, etched deep in brick

and mortar. The sign of power was scoured into the eastern corner of the

foundation, where it would draw strength from the sea, the earth, and the

rising sun.

Even though he had placed it there himself, carved the connecting

spirals with his need and his gift, the sight robbed him of breath.

He looked back at his sister.

She smiled uncertainly and turned to go.

Driven by an urgency he did not understand, he called after her.

“Lucy.”

She wavered in the doorway, looking quiet and inoffensive and as if

she would rather be anywhere but here.

Regina’s words beat in his brain.

“Do you . . .” He hesitated.

Need me? What a lame-ass question. He had robbed her of their

mother. What possible use could he be to her now?

“Could I come stay with you awhile?”

She blinked again, slowly. “Stay?”

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“In the house,” he said, feeling like a fool.

“It’s not my house. Or my decision.”

“If you want me to ask . . . him, I’ll ask him. But would you mind?”