The Selkie Sorceress (Seal Island Trilogy, Book 3) (20 page)

S
orcha,” Sam said, pouring relief into his voice as he glanced at the pretty blond receptionist’s name tag. “Sergeant Fitzgerald said we should ask for you.” He extended a hand over the desk. “I’m John Derringer, and this is my wife Miranda.”

Sorcha stood, flustered. “Sergeant…who?”

“Sergeant Fitzgerald,” Sam repeated. “With the Donnybrook District… He said he would call ahead.” Sam looked bewildered. “You haven’t heard from him?”

Sorcha shook her head slowly.

“He’s been helping us with…our search.” Sam reached for Glenna’s hand, lacing their fingers together. “We’re trying to find our little girl’s grandmother. It’s the only thing that might save her life.”

The man, Glenna thought, had no shame. She glanced around the records department of St. James’s Hospital as Sam spun a story that would pull on every one of Sorcha’s heartstrings. A bank of scanners and copiers whirred in the background where employees fed documents into the massive commercial machines. They didn’t bother to turn; most of them were tuned into their iPods.

Sorcha’s big brown eyes widened in sympathy. “Bone marrow transplant?”

Sam nodded solemnly. “It’s our only hope.” He pulled Glenna down to the chair beside him, tucking her hand in his lap. “We’ve been searching for my birth mother for years, but it was only recently that it became…a matter of life or death.”

In the hallway, Sam had told Glenna to play along. He’d said he wasn’t sure what angle he’d use until he saw who was working at the desk. Now, as Glenna looked around the office, she knew why Sam had chosen it. The receptionist couldn’t be more than twenty-three years old, but there was a picture of a baby girl in a pink frame on the corner of her desk and a small gold band adorned her ring finger.

Sorcha shook her head sadly as she clicked through the files on her computer, pulling up records. “I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine what you’re going through.”

No
, Glenna thought, glancing up at the florescent lights.
You can’t.
But Sam was used to finding people’s vulnerabilities and exploiting them to get the information he needed. And though his declaration in the parking lot had left her rattled, who knew what else he might be lying about? For all she knew, he could be using
her
to find Brigid. He might only be doing this to clear his conscience so he could move on from Seal Island. Hadn’t he told her that he had no intention of putting down roots?

Sam reached for the picture frame on Sorcha’s desk. “How old is she?”

“She’s eight months,” Sorcha answered, her skin flushing with pride. “Brianna. We named her after my husband’s sister.”

“Our little girl’s name is Alice,” Sam said softly, setting the frame back down. “Named after Miranda’s mother. They’re with her now. They feel terrible that they can’t help. But they’re not a match. Neither are we.”

Sam rubbed a hand over his eyes. “I can’t tell you how many nights I’ve lain awake wishing…” He shook his head. “I keep thinking that if we can find my birth mother—even if she doesn’t want anything to do with us—maybe she’d be willing to save her granddaughter.”

“Of course,” Sorcha murmured. “You said the winter of ’88, right?”

Sam nodded.

“There’s a file for a Jane Doe who was five months pregnant, but the last page is missing so I don’t know where she was discharged.” She tapped her fingers on the desk. “But that’s the only one who was pregnant.” She pushed back from her desk. “Let me see if I can dig up the paper file.”

Glenna leveled her gaze at him when Sorcha disappeared into the back. “Alice?”

Sam reached out, tucking a curl behind her ear and the gesture was so unexpectedly tender, she shivered. “I’ve always loved the name Alice,” he murmured, his fingers lingering on her cheek. “And I imagine a child of yours would be nothing short of a trip through wonderland.”

Glenna felt her heart skip a beat. She wouldn’t be having children with anyone. Not while her mother was still alive. She’d made that decision long ago.

“I found something,” Sorcha said. Glenna straightened, pushing Sam’s hand away. The receptionist walked back to the desk, setting a file down in front of her. “We haven’t sorted all the paperwork for that year, but I found the child’s file. On December 27th, a doctor performed an emergency C-section and he was transferred to the NICU. The child was sustained on breathing tubes for about two months before he was discharged to an orphanage.”

It was true, Glenna realized as the whirr of the copiers and scanners grew deafening. She had hired a man to hack into the hospital’s system and erase the discharge page in Brigid’s file years ago. But he hadn’t said anything about a child.

“Is there anything in the chart about the mother?” Sam asked. “Did she survive?”

“Yes,” Sorcha said slowly.

“What does it say?” Sam pressed.

“There’s a note in the file for the social worker,” Sorcha said, her expression softening in sympathy. “It says she was deemed unfit to care for the child.”

“Unfit?”

“By a psychiatrist,” Sorcha explained. “She was admitted to a mental institution.”

Glenna stood abruptly, backing away from the desk. How? How had she not known Brigid had a third child?

“Which ward?” Sam asked.

“It wasn’t a good place,” Sorcha said. “The city shut it down a few years after it opened.”

Glenna turned, pushing through the door and walking out into the hallway. She leaned against the wall. She should never have let Sam come here tonight. But she never dreamed he would actually find something. He’d told her about Tara’s reaction to the file on his computer yesterday and she’d agreed to look into it with him, only to put Tara’s fears to rest.

“Why was the place shut down?” Sam asked, his voice drifting out to the hallway through the open door. “What happened there?”

Sorcha lowered her voice. “Cruel treatment of the poorest people in this city, the ones locked up at the taxpayers’ expense.”

“What kind of…cruel treatment?”

Glenna closed her eyes, struggling to breathe. She could still hear the scratch of the doctor’s pen on his clipboard, the feel of the nurse’s papery skin as she wrapped the band around her upper arm, the prick of the needle and rush of serum pouring the wretched drugs into her veins—drugs that made her feel helpless and desperate and afraid.

“From what I’ve heard,” Sorcha answered. “A lot of heavy sedation and shock treatments.”

“Does this place still exist?”

“No,” Sorcha said. “There was a protest in the mid-nineties that shut it down. It’s barred up now, but the empty building is still on the corner of Duke and River Street. They haven’t replaced it with anything new.”

“Where did the patients go?”

“I imagine to other mental institutions throughout the country.”

Glenna heard Sam’s plastic chair squeak as he stood.

“I’m sorry,” Sorcha said helplessly. “I wish I had better news.”

NUALA WOKE TO
a low rumbling. She blinked her eyes open and the dark waters churned around the mountain. Trapped beneath several large rocks, she tested her back fins as the volcano shook, the reverberations echoing through the sea.

Liquid fire spewed from the opening, and she fought the urge to panic. She would not let Moira kill her. She would not let Moira win. Black rocks broke off the narrow ledge as she twisted and thrashed. She cried out as her back fin tore.

Blind with pain, she swerved away from the ledge. The eels screamed as they chased her, and she clawed at them with her fore-fins. She swam through the murky waters to Moira’s cave, ducking into the eerie blackness. She found the crown, swallowing mouthfuls of dead minnows as she grabbed it with her teeth.

Lava poured into the cave and she flipped, losing the eels in a tangle of their own tails as she shot out of the opening. She dodged the rolling bands of fire, skirting the thick forest of polyps and garden of black roses. The eels shrieked as they unraveled themselves and raced after her, but she didn’t look back.

She swam, crossing into the selkie boundaries and passing the kingdom far below. Predator fish picked up her trail of blood, snapping at her with angry teeth. She dove, flipping and switching directions until they were twisted in a circle and couldn’t see past the bubbles.

She had lived outside the boundaries long enough to know how to survive.

She swam until the beach and rocks rose up in the distance and she rode the waves to the salty shores of Seal Island. She let out a low whimper as the white sand rubbed into her wounds, but she pulled her broken body onto the beach. She lifted her head, releasing a long howl of distress before she collapsed, the blackthorn crown slipping from her mouth and rolling onto the sand.

SAM CUT THE
engine, gazing through the chain-linked fence at the abandoned building. Many of the windows were shattered, and the stark gray exterior made it look more like a prison than a medical facility. Glenna opened the door and stepped out of the car. The wind caught her brown hair, swirling it around her shoulders.

Sam unfolded himself from the driver’s seat, locking the vehicle. He followed her to the fence as tacked-up sheets fluttered like ghosts from the windows of the rundown apartment buildings lining the neighboring street.

Glenna slipped through a narrow opening. Weeds snaked through the cracks in the cement, and Sam stepped over a pile of used syringes as he followed her up to the heavy front doors, bound by a thick rusted chain.

“No one should be kept in a place like this,” Sam murmured, his boots crunching over shards of glass that had fallen from the broken windows.

“No.” Glenna shook her head. “They shouldn’t.”

Sam gazed at the mold creeping up the door frame. “If Brigid was mentally ill, don’t you think Dom and Liam would have picked up on something? I know they were young, but still…”

Glenna pressed a palm to the dirty glass. “There was nothing wrong with Brigid before she came to this place.”

Sam turned toward Glenna. A cold knot of fear coiled inside him when he saw the look on her face.

Glenna stared at her muted reflection in the glass, memories floating in her amber eyes. “There was only one person who made it out of here with a shred of her sanity still intact.”

Sam stepped back from the window, fighting to keep his voice steady. “Tell me you didn’t spend time here.”

Glenna lifted her haunted eyes to his. “That’s how I met my aunt.”