Immortal Sea (17 page)
“Morgan. I did not expect to find you here.”
“Nor I you.”
“Then what . . .” She looked from Morgan to Liz. Speculation glinted in her eyes. “Ah.”
Liz cleared her throat. There was an odd resemblance in the two faces that were otherwise so different, male and female, dark and fair. Something in the expression or the eyes maybe, something fierce and proud and primal. “You two know each other?”
“Not well,” said Morgan.
“Years ago,” Margred said at the same time.
Which?
Liz wondered.
Not well
or
years ago?
Liz wondered.
Not well
or
years ago?
Margred shrugged and smiled. “I remember so little.”
“I am pained to be so forgettable,” Morgan murmured.
“No doubt you have improved with time.”
He threw back his head and laughed. Liz felt an absurd flutter that might almost have been jealousy. Totally unprofessional, she thought. Inappropriate.
Terrifying.
“Mom.” Emily tugged on her white doctor’s coat. “Are you done yet?”
Liz knelt, grateful for the distraction. She hated making Emily sit through her clinic hours, but there hadn’t been time this morning to make other arrangements. “Not yet, honey. I still have a couple of patients to see.”
“Then can we go to the beach?”
“We’re going to the community center, remember? To enroll you in summer camp.”
Emily’s bottom lip poked out. “I don’t want to go to summer camp. I want to go to the beach.”
“I can take her.”
She looked up. Margred was gone. There was only Morgan, staring down at her with those knowing yellow eyes. Her heart jumped. Her brain blanked. “What?”
“I will take your daughter to the beach,” he repeated, his tone patient and amused.
Emily jigged from foot to foot.
“No,” Liz said. “Thank you, but we can’t impose.”
“It is not an imposition. I came to see you in any case, you and your daughter.”
“Why?”
He hesitated. “Companionship,” he said finally.
“
I need trust and tenderness and companionship and commitment
,” she had said to him last night.
“Can you offer me all those things? Or any of those things?”
I need trust and tenderness and companionship and commitment
,” she had said to him last night.
“Can you offer me all those things? Or any of those things?”
Her breath escaped. “Emily isn’t your child.”
“No, but I will keep her safe.” He met her gaze. For once his eyes weren’t distant and amused but warm and direct. “Let me do this, Elizabeth. For you and the child.”
“Please, Mom,” Emily begged.
“I get off in two hours,” Liz said.
“I will have her back to you before then,” he promised.
She looked from her daughter’s eager face to Morgan’s inscrutable one, feeling herself teeter on the edge of a decision, on the brink of a precipice. “What’s your cell phone number?”
“I do not have a cell phone. Not . . . with me.”
There was simply no way she could let her daughter go off without any way to reach them. “Then . . .”
“You could give him yours,” Emily said. “Pleeease.”
“Trust must go both ways,” Morgan said quietly.
He was right, damn it. Of course he was right. But she hadn’t counted on anyone but herself in a long, long time.
Slowly, she unhooked her cell phone from her belt. “The clinic’s number is already programmed in. Just hit the contacts key.”
He glanced curiously at the phone before slipping it into his pocket.
“Yay!” Emily dragged her backpack from under the chairs. “Thanks, Mommy.”
Liz swallowed the sudden lump in her throat. “You should thank Mr. Bressay.”
His gaze locked with hers. “You can thank me.” Her chest tightened as a corner of his mouth curled in a smile. “Later.”
“Where’s your car?” Emily asked.
“I do not have one.”
“Why not?”
Morgan glanced down at the bobbing dark curls on a level with his waist. “I do not need one.”
He was finfolk. He had no use for human technology and little patience with human questions.
The little girl beside him chattered on, unaware of either predisposition. “Can’t you drive?”
“I could,” he answered shortly.
“Then why don’t you?”
“I like to walk.”
“Me, too.” She sounded out of breath.
It occurred to him her questions might be driven by more than curiosity. Her legs were very short.
He reduced the length of his stride. “Shall I carry you?”
She stuck out her chin. “I’m okay.”
Dauntless,
he thought, amused and admiring.
Like her mother.
“Give me your backpack, then.”
he thought, amused and admiring.
Like her mother.
“Give me your backpack, then.”
She wriggled out of the straps. “Where are we going?”
He kept his tone casual as he hitched the small pink bag over his shoulder. “Not far.” He hoped. Zachary did not have a car either. “Why don’t you take me where you went yesterday with your brother?”
He could not enter the water with the girl watching. But he could mark the place, assess the danger, return later to set wards.
Her gaze slid from his. “It’s kind of a secret.”
“You do not have to tell me,” Morgan said. “You can show me.”
She did not answer. But where the road dipped down to the beach, she turned off the paved way and onto a narrow track through the tall grass. Beach roses and blackberry bushes pressed in on both sides. Thorny vines like trip wires crossed the uneven ground. Her short legs were soon scratched with thin pink lines.
“Careful.” Morgan cleared a trailing cane from her path.
She flashed him a smile before flitting ahead.
He smelled the sea before he saw it, shining like mother of pearl in the sun. The path broke up in a welter of rocks. The rocks tumbled down to a crescent of gray sand littered with pebbles and shells.
Secluded, with soft footing and a deep draft. A smart choice, a safe choice, for a finfolk youth learning to Change. A perilous place for the human child left on shore.
Morgan frowned. “Do you come here alone?”
Emily shook her head. “I’m not allowed.”
“And where do you wait when your brother goes in the water?”
Those big eyes widened before she hung her head.
At a loss, Morgan regarded her soft, dark curls. The child had not yet developed her mother’s defenses or the human facility with lying, but she was clearly keeping silent. To protect her brother?
He could understand that. He could even applaud her loyalty. He had his own secrets, his own loyalties. But he had promised Elizabeth to keep her daughter safe.
“You must not go into the water.”
“I don’t.” She scrunched her small face. “It’s too cold for swimming anyway. Not like the beach at home.”
“Home?”
“North Carolina. Where we lived before.”
“It is the same.”
“No, it’s not.” She skipped down the rocks.
He felt an unfamiliar qualm at the possibility she might slip and break her little neck. He took her arm to prevent it. Under his palm, her skin was as smooth as the inside of a shell, her bones delicate and fragile as a bird’s.
“The sea,” he explained. “It is always changing and always the same. You are always at home with the sea.”
She tipped up her face. “But I don’t know anybody here.”
He stared at her, baffled. “You know your mother. And your brother Zachary.”
“They’re family. I don’t have any friends.” Her childish mouth trembled.
Morgan felt a flicker of panic. He had little experience with children. None at all with crying ones. “You know me,” he offered desperately.
The alarming moisture retreated as she assessed him with her mother’s clinical, critical eye. “You’re old.”
“Very old,” he agreed. “Hundreds of years old.”
She gave a watery chuckle.
The sound woke a memory in the cavern of his heart that had been still and cold and silent for centuries—the echo of another child’s laughter. His sister, his twin, Morwenna. He had not let himself think of her in years.
“You’re not that old,” Emily said. “You could be my friend, I guess. If you want.”
The tentative hope in her eyes struck like a barb in his heart. He was one of the First Creation, elemental, immortal, solitary. He did not make friends.
“Mr. Bressay?”
He stared down at her.
“I’m hungry.”
He was, too. In his heart. In his soul, if he had one.
“I can take you back.” Now that he had marked the place, he had no need of the child’s company. None at all.
“I have a sandwich. Peanut butter. In my backpack.”
Wordlessly, he slid the pink bag from his shoulder and handed it to her.
Taking it from him, she settled herself on the rocks and patted the flat place beside her.
He froze.
She did not appear to notice. Her small, grubby hands pawed through the pack, pulled out a squishy plastic bag. Peeling it open, she extracted the mangled sandwich. She regarded it a moment and then carefully tore the bread in two. Smiling, she offered him half.
The hook in his heart dug deep. An unfamiliar emotion welled in his chest. He did not need her food. But he was touched by her determination to share what she had with him.
The way Elizabeth had last night.
Folding his long legs, he eased down on the rocks beside Elizabeth’s daughter. Solemnly, he accepted the sandwich. “Morgan,” he said. “If we are to be friends, you must call me Morgan.”
10
“I DON’T CARE ABOUT THE HAIR.”GEORGE WILEY glanced at Zack’s new dye job and away. “As long as it’s clean and out of your face. And I don’t care about your clothes as long as you don’t smell and I’m not staring at your underwear all day. I don’t care about your lifestyle either.”
Zack swallowed. His
lifestyle
? Shit.
lifestyle
? Shit.
“I’m not gay, Mr. Wiley,”
he wanted to say.
“Actually, I’m very interested in having sex with your daughter.”
he wanted to say.
“Actually, I’m very interested in having sex with your daughter.”
But that wouldn’t get him the job or Stephanie, so he kept his mouth shut.
Wiley shifted his weight, making his desk chair creak. The small office was at the back of the store, crammed between the meat counter and the stockroom. The cold air smelled of bananas and spoiled milk. “Islanders, once they get used to you, tend to live and let live,” he said.
Zack nodded to show he was listening, but inside he was wondering how long it would take for the Nazi twins, Todd and Doug, to get used to him. And how he could avoid them if he was working at the grocery store.
Wiley cleared his throat. “This time of year, though, we get a lot of summer people. They think they want local color, but they don’t want to see anything that makes them uncomfortable.”
Again, his gaze flickered to Zack’s aggressively black hair. Zack’s stomach sank as he waited for Wiley to tell him he didn’t get the job after all.
His hands clenched between his knees. Screw it. It’s not like he
wanted
to sweep floors and carry boxes for minimum wage.
wanted
to sweep floors and carry boxes for minimum wage.
Only . . . He wanted an excuse to hang around her. Stephanie. And a job would prove to his mom he wasn’t a kid anymore. It was something to do, something to hold on to.
“So I’ll tell you what I told my daughter,” Wiley continued. “If customers are distracted by your makeup, you’re wearing too much. This is a store, not a circus. I’m not hiring you as a clown.”
Zack’s heart thudded. “You’re hiring me?”
Wiley ran a hand over his receding hairline. “Looks like it. I can use you thirty hours a week. Friday and Saturday are our biggest days, Wednesday and Sunday you’re off. Monday and Thursday we stock shelves, do the weekend store displays. Out by eleven.”
“Eleven at night,” Zack repeated to be sure he understood.
Wiley’s eyes—blue, like his daughter’s—narrowed. “That a problem for you?”
It wasn’t like he had school the next morning, Zack reasoned.
His chest expanded with the power of making a decision, taking an action, without checking first with his mother. He met Wiley’s gaze. “No, sir.”
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