Sins Against the Sea (9 page)

He released a sigh and licked his lips, tasting lichen and oil. If he allowed her to live, he would be violating the oath he’d taken to join the fiana. He must, therefore, kill her. But not just yet. First, he needed her help to recover his strength. Then, after his tail molted, which should happen any day now, he would make his way to Eriskay to find a mate.

Chapter Five

At the cottage, Corey scouted around for the things she needed. Under the kitchen sink, she found a bottle of green dishwashing detergent. Even though it wasn’t the super-duper grease-fighting kind, it would do well enough. On a shelf beside the cooker was a half-empty bottle of canola oil, which, she’d learned in the training on wildlife clean-up, would help loosen the stuck-on sludge. In a utility closet, she located a galvanized bucket and a big yellow sponge, and, from the bathroom, she commandeered a stack of fluffy white towels.

To remove all traces of oil, she’d need to wash and rinse him multiple times. She’d use water from the tidal pools outside the cave, which looked uncontaminated. While she might not be able to get him to them, she could bring the water to him in the bucket. Though far from ideal, it was the best she could come up with on the fly.

She packed everything inside the pail, grabbed the flashlight, and headed for the back door—a more direct route to the cliffs than the way she’d gone before. As she reached for the knob, she lost her nerve. What was she thinking? This wasn’t some seagull she was dealing with; it was a…well, a sea creature of sorts which, for all she knew, might be unfriendly to humans.

Not that he seemed hostile toward her. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Heaving an addled sigh, she set the pail beside the door and laid the flashlight on the kitchen counter. What she wouldn’t give for Internet access right now…but, wait. There were books in one of the bedrooms. Maybe, just maybe, there was something in one of them about the Blue Men of the Minch. At the very least, she might be able to find out if giving one of them a sponge bath was the worst idea ever.

She hurried upstairs, jogged into the bedroom with the books, and started scanning spines. The top shelf contained an array of fiction—mostly novels she’d describe as “beach reads,” which made sense, given that this was a vacation cottage on a deserted island. On the next shelf, she found something more promising. A collection of island folktales.

She flipped to the back in search of an index, thrilled not only to find one, but to find an entry for the Blue Men as well. She thumbed through the text until she found the referenced pages and started to skim. The passage told of strange, dripping, half-human blue-green men who came aboard ships and sang the verses of complex songs, then asked the captain and crew to match their otherworldly vocalizing. If the humans could not rise to the challenge, they sank the ship and drowned all aboard.

Corey swallowed the lump now embedded in her throat. Definitely not friendly, then. She closed the book, shaking her head with a mixture of wonder and skepticism. Mermen speaking verse and sinking ships? It seemed so preposterous. Then again, up until about an hour ago, so did their very existence. Yet, she’d seen one with her own two eyes. Not that she was quite ready to believe it wholeheartedly. A shift in reality of this magnitude would take more than an hour.

As she headed downstairs, another troubling thought crept in. What was he doing on Ronay all alone? Did he maybe have a hand in what happened to
Ketos
? If so, he could not have done it alone. So, where were his accomplices? Had they cold-heartedly left him behind to die of oil poisoning?

A picture of Kew-in came into my mind. Alone. Afraid. Helpless. Suffering. Shit. Maybe the Blue Men of the Minch were cunning and heartless, but nobody was going to accuse Corey Parker of being the same. She simply couldn’t live with herself if the poor creature died because she was too cowardly to give him aid.

Before she could talk herself out of it, she swept up the bucket and flashlight and slipped ever-so-gingerly out the back door into the cold, damp night. Not until she got halfway up the hill did she realize how incredibly tired she was. Her muscles ached with fatigue, her eyes burned, she couldn’t stop yawning, and her brain felt like it was packed in cotton. The weight of the bucket made walking difficult. It also numbed her arm, requiring her to stop a couple of times to restore the circulation.

A few feet from the cave, she heard singing. The voice was soft, low, hypnotic, and so achingly beautiful it instantly brought tears to her eyes. As she bit them back, she thought about what she’d read. The Blue Men sang their verses to the sailors they encountered, and then drowned any who failed to match their vocalizing. The thought of it filled her with umbrage. No human voice stood a chance against something so ethereal.

At the entrance of the cave, fear’s icy fingers clawed at her insides. She hesitated, suddenly afraid for her safety. What if he hurt her? What if he killed her? She thought about the crew of
Ketos
—all drowned except for the captain, and even he’d been badly injured. Left for dead, probably. All at once, the possibility of Kew-in harming her seemed very real.

Run. Now. As fast as you can. He has no legs to give chase.

Her feet refused to obey her mind. She set the bucket down with a clunk. The singing stopped. Except for the lapping of the waves, everything was deathly still. And then, he whispered her name. The sound was as soft as a breeze. In fact, she couldn’t be certain it wasn’t the wind working a spell on her exhausted mind.

Cordelia? Och-eech!

She gasped. There it was again. Faint as an echo. It wasn’t the wind playing tricks, though it might be her imagination…because, strange as it seemed, she could swear she’d heard him speak inside her head. Her arms prickled as goosebumps erupted all over her flesh. If she wasn’t mistaken, the merman was communicating with her telepathically.

Kew-in?

She thought it rather than saying it aloud, just to see. He returned something she couldn’t understand, but neither the words nor the tone of voice sounded the least bit threatening. With a rattling sigh, she collected the bucket. Holding her breath, she let the flashlight guide the way as she stepped through the curtain of vines.

The cave, dank and darker than dark, reeked of tar, vomit, and fish. It was all she could do to keep from retching. Breathing only through her mouth, she approached him cautiously, speaking in the soothing tones she might use on a frightened animal. She shone the flashlight up and down his length. Oil coated every inch of him. She sighed with a mixture of weariness and exasperation. Holy shit. Where to begin? Setting the bucket down, she knelt at his side and pulled out the cooking oil.

She worked in silence, starting with his tail, massaging downward in the direction of his scales, which were thickly coated with oil. It took more effort than she could have imagined because the oil was frustratingly stubborn. After scourings and rinsing a number of times, she started to see silver shimmering through the muck.

Resistant as the oil was, she tried not to scrub too vigorously. The oil had badly irritated his skin. The book indicated that his complexion was a deep blue-green, but in the faint glow of the flashlight, it looked dusky gray, making it challenging to tell when he was clean. While she washed his torso, which was as firm and muscular as an Olympic swimmer’s, he flinched now and again as if her touch tickled him.

Moving to his face, she tried to think of him as an animal—a
specimen
—rather than a sentient being. Tried being the operative word. There was something in his expression, a soulful intelligence that pricked her every time their gazes met. She could feel a bond forming, which freaked her out a little. This whole experience felt so bizarre, so incredible, and so surreal. She kept thinking she would awaken any moment back on the couch in her studio apartment to find that all of this, even the oil spill, had been no more than a bad dream.

Hours passed as she washed and patted him dry, making anatomical observations as she worked. The spot on his belly that looked like a navel was actually his anal sphincter, and, where his genitals ought to have been, there was only an aperture. Clearly, he was built like a dolphin with a retractable penis and internal gonads, which made sense, hydro-dynamically speaking.

Returning from the tide pools with yet another bucket of water, she asked, “Are you hungry?”

He looked at her blankly, so she set down the pail and knelt beside him, mimicking the motion of eating with her hand.

His eyes glistened with recognition just before he rubbed his belly. “
Ah, bē-uh
.
Hah. Ha sun āchkras awrm
.”

Remembering the salmon in the freezer, she chided herself for being too shortsighted to bring it along. At the same time, she couldn’t face another trek back up here tonight. Aching with fatigue, barely able to keep her eyes open, she felt on the verge of collapse.

“I will bring you something to eat in the morning,” she told him, gathering her things.

As she started to stand, he cried: “
Oot, oot! Fan!
”

He clearly wanted something from her, but she had no idea what. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” She offered him a tight smile, wishing he could understand. “I promise.”

As she followed the flashlight beam out of the cave, she made a mental note to ask Mrs. MacLeod what language the Blue Men spoke. Perhaps she could pick up a few phrases to help them communicate.

Upon returning to the cottage, Corey took the salmon out of the freezer and set it in the sink to defrost. Too exhausted to do anything else, even undress, she went upstairs and collapsed on one of the king-sized beds, rolling herself up in the heavy floral quilt like a cocoon.

When she came back to herself, sunlight was streaming through the lace curtains on the bedroom windows. Though plagued by a gnawing dread, she could not immediately recall the reason. She was, in fact, so groggy, she could scarcely remember who or where she was, let alone anything else. She only knew that it was warm inside the quilt and freezing cold in the room beyond. As she tried to nestle back into her toasty shell, the sound of someone singing downstairs reached her ears. The voice was female. Mrs. MacLeod, probably.

The reality of her situation snapped Corey back to her senses. So, there really had been an oil spill, she was on a remote island in the Hebrides, and she had met a merman the night before. No, not just met one—gave one a sponge bath.

The memory filled her with guilt. She had promised to take him some food, but could not see how she was going to pull it off with the landlady here. The clock on the table beside the bed informed her it was just after seven.

Corey groaned as she did the math. She didn’t get to bed until well after four, which meant she’d have to muddle through what promised to be another hellish day on a scant three hours of sleep. While jet lagged. Wrapping the quilt around her shoulders, she sat up and threw her legs over the side of the bed.

The peppery-citrus smell of bergamot wafted on the air. Mrs. MacLeod must be brewing tea. Wanting some rather desperately, Corey dropped the quilt and made her way downstairs.

Mrs. MacLeod, a plump woman with short curly gray hair, was at the sink when Corey entered the kitchen. She wore a cardigan over a purple floral housedress.

“Good morning. Is that Earl Grey I smell?”

Turning to face her, Mrs. MacLeod offered an apple-cheeked smile. “You have a good nose, lass. ’Tis indeed Earl Grey. Would you fancy a cup?”

“I would. Very much. If it’s not too much trouble.”

“It’s no trouble at all, lass.”

She filled a mug from a teapot before handing it to Corey. The smell of the tea filled her senses as she wrapped her cold fingers around the hot cup. The floating bits inside told her it was made from loose-leaf tea.

“Thanks.” She took a cautious sip. “Earl Grey’s one of my favorites.”

“I prefer oolong, myself.” Mrs. McLeod’s blue eyes twinkled as she regarded Corey. “Earl Grey dissipates so quickly, it’s hard to make out anything of much use.”

It took Corey a moment to realize what she meant. “You read tea leaves?”

“Of course I do,” she said, beaming. “My
seanmhair
taught me, just as her
seanmhair
taught her.”

“Shen-o-var?” Corey repeated the word the way she’d heard it.

“Grandmother,” the older woman replied with a wink. “In Gaelic.”

“Oh.” Corey took a sip of tea. “You come from a long line of tea readers, then?”

“Long enough,” she said, turning toward the door. “Give me your cup when you’re finished, and, if you like, I’ll have a look.”

A friend in college had tried to interest her in tarot cards and runes, insisting there was something to these ancient forms of divination, but Corey wrote it off as superstitious nonsense.

Now, for some inexplicable reason, she was genuinely intrigued. She wanted to know what the tealeaves might have to say about her future. She felt as if she was standing at a crossroads and could use some guidance as to which fork to take. She also knew something now she hadn’t then. There were things in this world science could not explain.

The existence of mermen, for example.

Corey went back upstairs and, when dressed and ready, came back down and handed Mrs. MacLeod her empty mug.