The Selkie Sorceress (Seal Island Trilogy, Book 3) (21 page)

G
lenna let Sam into the small one-bedroom flat she kept in the city. He hadn’t said a word as they drove away from the barred-up mental institution, and she welcomed the silence. It gave her time to think. “Go ahead,” she said quietly, setting her keys on the table. “I’ll answer your questions.”

He strode to the tall windows overlooking the River Liffey. A steady flow of people were leaving the large stone office buildings and heading home from work. “You would have only been a child in the mid-nineties. Barely a teenager.”

Glenna closed the door and strolled through the room, switching on the lamps. “They took teenagers.”

“But how did you get there?” Sam gazed down at the arched bridges crisscrossing the murky ribbon of mud and silt. “Who put you there?”

“My first memory of waking up on land was in a hospital—the same one we went to today.” Glenna walked to the window where he stood and pulled the brown velvet curtains aside, draping them over an ornate iron hook. “A fisherman found me washed up on a beach and brought me in. I tried to escape. But they kept grabbing me, hauling me back. I told them I needed to go back to the sea. To go home. They thought I was trying to drown myself.”

Horns honked and brake lights blinked through the darkness as the crush of commuter traffic streamed by on the road below. Glenna turned away from the window. She rented this place because it was easier than staying in a hotel every time she came into the city for an art show. But it had never felt like home.

Not like her cottage on Seal Island. “I fought them for days, but they strapped me to the bed and shot drugs into me so I could hardly think or speak. The police came and tried to identify me. But no one had filed a missing child report for a girl who looked like me, and I refused to tell them my name.”

She picked up her red pillows, fluffing them and setting them back on the plush mocha-colored sofa. “The next thing I knew, I was locked in a windowless room in the building you just saw.”

Sam laid his hands lightly on the window ledge, but she could see the bands of tension straining across the back of his shirt. “Do you remember your childhood?”

“I do.”

“Did you grow up…underwater?”

Glenna selected two crystal wine glasses from the cherry rack over the sink. “I did. Brigid was the only person in the entire facility who made any sense.” She filled the glasses with a rich red Cabernet. “We only saw each other once a week, and even then our time was limited. But they let her come into the common room when she was sedated, and she told stories from the bits of memories she could still piece together—stories about seals and an enchanted kingdom deep under the sea.”

Sam turned, his thick blond hair gleaming burnished bronze in the warm lamplight. “What happened to Brigid after the place shut down?”

“I don’t know.” Glenna set the bottle down. “We were separated.”

“What happened to you?”

“I was transferred to another facility.” She picked up his glass, walking across the room to hand it to him. “But I’d learned how to act by then. How the doctors
wanted
me to act. I convinced the new staff I was able to take care of myself and wasn’t a threat to society.” He took the glass from her, but didn’t drink. “About a year later, they let me out.”

“Could the same thing have happened to Brigid?”

“I doubt it.” Glenna shook her head, walking back over to retrieve her own glass. “The drugs and the treatments erased most of her memory. She had trouble remembering who she was most of the time. And the other times, when she wasn’t sedated…” Glenna picked up her glass and sipped, letting the wine calm her.

“What?” Sam pressed.

Glenna carried her glass to the sofa, settling onto the arm. “She screamed for her children, for her two boys—Dominic and Liam.” Glenna lifted her eyes to Sam’s. “She’d wake up screaming in the middle of the night for someone to save them. But she didn’t know where they were. And when the nurses came to give her another shot, she wept.”

“But she never said anything about a third child?”

Glenna shook her head.

“Is that why you went to Seal Island? To find Dominic and Liam?”

She nodded.

“But you didn’t tell them.”

“I couldn’t,” Glenna said. “I looked for Brigid. I searched for her for years. I knew she wasn’t crazy. Or, at least she wasn’t before she went into that place. But she wasn’t in any of the other mental institutions. I figured she must have escaped, and I hoped that maybe somehow she found her pelt and was able to return to her home.”

“Is that why you didn’t want me to search for her? Because you didn’t want them to find out about this?”

Glenna looked down at her wine. Swirling the rich red liquid, she watched the streaks form in the glass. “They’ve had so much pain in their lives already.”

“Don’t you think they deserve to know the truth?”

“Maybe,” Glenna said softly, as the surface of her drink shimmered and an image formed. In a small house behind a white chapel, a woman stood by the door. She held a bouquet of purple irises and her gray eyes watched the road for the headlights of a black Mercedes.

Glenna’s fingers curled around the stem of the glass. How long would Brigid wait for her tonight? How long would she stand by the door?

She closed her eyes. There were too many people watching her now. Too many people following her every move.

Forgive me, my queen.

“OWEN, DON’T YOU
like your dinner?” Tara asked across the small kitchen table. “You’ve hardly eaten a thing.”

Owen pushed at the boiled potatoes on his plate. “I’m not hungry.”

Kelsey plucked a piece of fish off his plate. “I’ll eat it,” she said, but she set her fork down when a seal’s song drifted up from the beach. “What was that?”

Owen shot out of his seat. He knew that voice. He’d know it anywhere. His utensils clattered to the floor as he pushed back from the table, racing for the door.

“Owen?” Kelsey said, jumping up after him.

He flung open the door, running out into the night. He heard the chairs scraping back, his parents calling for him to stop. But he couldn’t stop. He had to find Nuala. She was here on the island. Maybe she was still alive!

He made for the cliff path, his hands grasping the mossy wall to keep his balance as he started down the trail. Rocks slipped out from under his sneakers. Dark waves churned over the surface of the sea. They crested and crashed, sea spray exploding over the rocks.

He scanned the beach. Seashells glowed ghostly white in the moonlight. Sand crabs skittered over the sand, chasing the bubbles as the waves retreated. He stumbled to the sand, tripping over the knotted kelp when he spotted the dark shape curled up by the rocks.

“Is that her?” Kelsey asked, running after him. “Is it Nuala?”

Owen nodded, dropping to his knees and pulling the limp seal into his arms. He could feel her heart beating through her pelt. It was faint, but she was still alive. “We have to save her.”

Kelsey knelt beside him, cradling Nuala’s head in her lap. Caitlin and Liam caught up with them and Liam called back to Tara. “It’s a seal. She’s badly injured.”

Tara nodded, limping over the sand with Dominic’s help. Owen took in the burn marks on Tara’s skin—so similar to Nuala’s. “It’s okay,” he whispered, gently stroking Nuala’s sleek black neck. “It’s okay. Tara’s going to fix you.”

Waves slid over the sand, blowing froth at them as Tara knelt and ran her hands over Nuala’s burned pelt.

“Dom,” she called over her shoulder, “bring me my med kit.”

He nodded, unzipping the bag he’d grabbed from the cottage at the last minute and set it down beside her.

“I have a salve that might work,” she murmured. “It won’t heal the burns instantly, but it will at least numb the pain for a while.” She pulled out a cloth, and handed it to Kelsey. “Could you dip this in the ocean? I want to wash some of the sand off first.”

Kelsey took it and dashed to the water.

Nuala’s heartbeat grew stronger as Tara cleaned and dressed her wounds. When she shifted slightly in Owen’s arms, he whispered, “It’s working. She’s waking up!”

Nuala opened her eyes slowly—pale as the light of the moon—and Tara jerked back.

Caitlin let out a strangled cry. “What is
she
doing here?”

Nuala tested her flippers, tapping them against the sand. Owen wrapped his arms around her neck. “I thought you were dead,” he whispered. “I thought I would never see you again.”

Caitlin staggered back, reaching for Liam’s hand.

Tara watched Owen closely. “This isn’t the first time you’ve seen Nuala since we brought Liam back, is it?”

Owen shook his head, still clinging to her. “I thought Moira killed her. She tried to kill both of you today.”

Tara’s gaze dropped to the burn marks seared into Nuala’s pelt. “Moira did this?”

Nuala nodded.

“Why?”

Owen laid his hand on Nuala’s whiskered cheek and her gaze slid to the sand by the rocks, then back up. He followed her eyes to where a small object was half-buried and hidden in the shadows. He could just make out the circle of black thorns with small white flowers.

Nuala held his gaze, swimming with a secret message only for him. She didn’t want anyone else to know, he realized. She didn’t trust anyone but him.

“Does Nuala know what Moira wants?” Tara asked Owen.

“I think so,” Owen said. He shifted slightly, kicking sand over the object to cover it from sight, and Nuala relaxed in his arms. “But I don’t know what it is.”

Tara looked up at Dominic. “Nuala should stay here tonight. One of us will watch over her until the morning and make sure she’s okay.”

Dominic nodded, but Nuala shook her head, edging away from Owen. Owen reluctantly released his grip on her and she turned in the sand so she was facing the ocean.

“Owen,” Tara said. “Help me convince her to stay.”

“I can’t,” he said softly, rising to his feet. He walked beside Nuala as she shuffled to the water’s edge. Tara stood, following them. They waded into the warm waves together, until the sea pulsed up to their waists.

Nuala leaned into Owen, rubbing her nose against his shoulder. Owen laid his hand on her sleek head and Nuala let out a soft song before diving and darted away into the depths.

“Where is she going?” Tara asked.

Owen shook his head as the sea swallowed her shape. “I don’t know.”

SISTER EVELYN WALKED
through the house, switching off the lights. When she came to the living room and spotted her friend still standing by the door, her heart sank. Brigid had been standing in the same spot since noon, looking out at the driveway. She held a bouquet of purple irises—flowers she’d grown in the greenhouse.

The gardening books were all perfectly ordered now, displayed in a fan shape on the coffee table. No one dared move them from their proper place. She went to her friend, laying a hand on Brigid’s shoulder. “I don’t think she’s coming.”

“She always comes,” Brigid whispered, refusing to take her eyes off the driveway. “At noon, on the last day of the month.”

“It’s almost nine,” Sister Evelyn said gently.