Immortal Sea (30 page)

He spotted Emily, sitting near the front with a skinny, dark-haired kid her age. The friend from day camp, Zack guessed. At least one of them was making friends. The tall dude who was with them must be the kid’s dad. He couldn’t go sit with them. The generations appeared to mix more on the island than they did back home in Chapel Hill, but he was pretty sure such a move would brand him forever as untouchable. A loser.

The big cop who’d picked him up for questioning was there with a really pregnant woman. Her face looked like something in a magazine, all lips and eyes. Her breasts and stomach stuck out about a mile. Zack didn’t know where to look at her or if he should look at all. He felt his face getting red and glanced away.

There she was. Stephanie.

His heart beat faster.

She sat with a bunch of her friends on a pile of mats under an extra hoop at midcourt. She waggled her fingers when she saw him, but she didn’t get up or wave him over.

Zack stood frozen. Uncertain.

“
The next move is up to you
,” she’d said.

That big asshole, Doug, sprawled beside her, leaning close to whisper in her ear. She laughed and punched him in the arm.

Zack walked over. “Hey, Stephanie.”

She glanced up, her smile lingering in her eyes. “Hi, Zack.”

He nodded to Doug. Todd was there, too, and a couple of girls he hadn’t seen before.

“Everybody, this is Zack. Zack, everybody.”

“Hey.”

“Hi.” One of the girls dimpled. “Cute accent.”

“He’s from Alabama,” Stephanie said.

“North Carolina.”

“Redneck flatlander,” Doug said.

“Yankee asshole,” Zack replied without heat.

Introductions concluded, it was easy enough to fit into the space on Stephanie’s other side while they waited for the movie to begin.

A woman who looked like somebody’s Italian grand-mother, with hard red nails and lips and black athletic shoes, got up in front of the screen to welcome everybody to the summer movie series on World’s End.

“Who’s that?” Zack murmured to Stephanie.

“The mayor. Antonia Barone.”

The mayor announced the movies,
Transformers II
and something else. He was distracted by Stephanie, by how close she was and how good she smelled, like strawberry Jolly Ranchers.

The back of his neck crawled. Warning.

He looked at Doug, but the older boy had his hand draped on a girl’s thigh, Hailey or Bailey or something. He didn’t seem like a threat at the moment.

Zack took a deep breath, willing his muscles to relax.

The tall man sitting with Emily suddenly stood. Zack felt his own pulse accelerate as the man scanned the crowd. His gaze collided with Zack’s, and this time the sizzle of warning shot clear down his spine.

Holy shit.

“What’s the matter?” Stephanie asked.

Zack shook his head. “Nothing.”

He watched as the man crossed the gym to talk with the police chief. Emily and the other kid trailed behind him, their short legs trotting to keep up. Chief Hunter frowned and glanced at Zack, apparently asking a question. Zack’s throat tightened. He hadn’t done anything wrong. But his creeping feeling of unease grew.

The mayor was still talking. “Fifteen-minute intermission,” Zack heard, and “selling cookies in the lobby to support community programs.”

He turned to Stephanie, trying desperately to ignore whatever was going on at the front of the room. “You want a cookie?”

“Give it up, dude,” Todd said. “She doesn’t put out for cookies.”

“I might consider it.” Stephanie smiled up at Zack. “But not for anything less than chocolate chip.”

Zack jerked to his feet. “I’ll see what they’ve got.”

A piping treble pierced the hum of the crowd. “I don’t want to stay here.”

Zack froze.

“I want to go home.” His little sister’s wail rose to the rafters.

“I’ve got to go,” Zack said.

“But you just got here,” Stephanie objected.

“I know. I’m sorry.” He gestured toward the front of the gym, where Emily stood dwarfed by two big men. Two strangers. “It’s my sister.”

“The little black girl?” Hailey asked.

Doug snorted. “You’d rather make out with your sister than Stephanie? Man, that’s sick.”

Zack flushed, frustrated, furious. But he couldn’t ignore the edge of panic in Emily’s voice.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated, and went to his sister’s rescue, a loser after all.

“You need to stay here,” the tall man was saying as Zack approached. “Half the island is here. Along with your wife.”

“Don’t tell me how to do my job,” the police chief said. “You can’t walk into an unknown situation without backup.”

“I have no choice.”

“Where’s Morgan?”

“I wish to God I knew.”

“Zack!” Emily ran and clung to him.

He put a hand on his little sister’s shoulder, speaking over her head to the tall guy. “Morgan’s staying at the inn. Maybe you could find him there.”

The man appraised him. “You’re his son.”

“Yes, sir. What’s going on?”

“I was going to watch the movie with Nick,” Emily said. “But now Nick’s dad is leaving, and he wants me to stay here, and I don’t know the lady who’s watching us.” Her lower lip trembled dangerously. “And I want to go home.”

“I can take her home,” Zack said.

The police chief rubbed his jaw. “It would be better if you both stayed put for now.”

“Why?” A sick ball formed in his gut. “Is it our mom? Is she okay?”

“I’m sure she’s fine,” Chief Hunter said.

“I’m leaving,” the other man announced. “I need to find the breach in the wards.”

The cop nodded. “Maggie will watch the kids.”

Em’s grip tightened on Zack’s leg. “Zack?” Her voice rose.

Zack looked from his sister to the two adults, both alert, calm, grim. In charge. Next to them, he felt young and awkward. He didn’t have a clue what was going on. But he couldn’t stand here and do nothing.

“I can watch them,” he said. “Em and . . .” Her friend. He didn’t know the kid’s name.

Chief Hunter looked at him sharply. Zack wondered if he would object.

Like lifting lobsters disqualified Zack as a baby-sitter.

He thrust out his jaw. “Emily’s my sister. I’m responsible for her.”

“I can help,” somebody said behind him.

Zack turned. “Stephanie.”

She cocked a hip, hooking her fingers into her back pockets. “I’ve baby-sat for Nick plenty of times. They can watch the movie with us.” She smiled, making her silver lip ring gleam. “If that’s all right with you.”

“That would be . . .” Emotion clogged Zack’s throat.

“Fine,” the police chief said.

“Great.” Zack cleared his throat. “That would be great.”

Liz thrust the wet, wadded-up napkins into the garbage and grabbed the cleaning bucket from under the sink. Her hands shook. It was getting harder and harder to pretend even to herself that everything was going to be all right.

Dumping the bucket under the faucet, she twisted the tap. As long as she was mopping up puddles, she might as well scrub her floor. Keep busy. Keep the fear at bay.

What if Zack had been home when the fire struck? Or Em?

Panic glazed her mind. She struggled to focus, drawing up a mental list of Things She Could Control, clean the floor, check on the cat, buy a new fire extinguisher.

Not that the old one had done her any good.

She drew a ragged breath, standing next to the sink, waiting for the bucket to fill, waiting for her life and her heartbeat to return to normal, and saw Morgan pull the scorched remnants of the dish towel out of the trash.

She shuddered. She never wanted to see that thing again. “What are you doing?”

“Gau must have had a way in,” Morgan said, spreading the wet and blackened towel on her kitchen table. “I am trying to find it.”

He
was doing something. Maybe she could help.

“Try the stove,” she suggested.

A long shadow fell across the doorway. Her heart raced as she braced to face this new threat.

But it was only Dylan Hunter, Regina’s husband, standing on her back stoop. She sagged against the sink.

Morgan glanced up. “About time you showed up.”

Liz’s gaze searched beyond him, looking for Em.

Nothing.

A different anxiety squeezed her chest. “Where’s Emily?”

“At the community center with your son Zack. And my son Nick and my brother and Margred.” Dylan smiled reassuringly. “She is in good hands.”

He stepped over her threshold, surveying the wet floor, the shrinking foam, the black V on the wall above the stove. “What happened here?”

“Gau,” Morgan said.

Dylan’s black eyes widened in shock. “That cannot be. We buried him under half the ocean, Lucy and Margred and I.”

“Buried, not extinguished. I told you he was back.”

“But the island is protected.”

Protected how? Protected from what? Demons? Whatever they’d done, it hadn’t been enough.

“Not sufficiently,” Morgan said, echoing her thought.

Dylan scowled. “I know my job. He could not have breached the wards without an invitation.”

Liz shut off the water in the sink, struggling to find a footing in the conversation. “I thought that was vampires.”

Both men looked at her.

“Buffy?” she offered. “The Lost Boys?”

Morgan turned back to Dylan. “She did not invite this. She would not.”

“What about the kid?”

“Zachary is my son,” Morgan said, cold as ice.

“That’s what worries me.”

Their eyes clashed, black and gold. There were undercurrents here Liz did not understand, but she could feel the tension swirling in the air. “
Not everyone shares your confidence in my loyalties,
” Morgan had said.

She stiffened in his defense, in Zack’s defense. “It couldn’t be Zack. He isn’t even here.”

“He wouldn’t have to be,” Dylan said without taking his eyes off Morgan.

“Perhaps a former occupant,” Morgan suggested. “A dabbler in the black arts.”

“Witches in Maine?” Dylan sounded skeptical.

Morgan shrugged. “We are not so far from Massachusetts.”

“I can ask Caleb to check with the real estate office,” Dylan said. “Though I doubt their records go back that far.”

“Paula Schutte at Island Realty,” Liz said. “She sold me the house. The previous owner was a physician at the clinic, too.”

Morgan looked at Dylan.

“Neal Emery,” he said. “Here six months. Hated the winter, took off as soon as Grace was born.”

“Not that one,” Liz said. “The doctor before him. Donna something.”

Silence thickened the air.

“Ah,” Morgan said very softly.

Dylan nodded. “That would explain it.”

Liz was tired of conversations going over her head. “Not to me.”

“Donna Tomah, the previous inhabitant of this house, was possessed by a demon,” Dylan said.

Liz swallowed. “Paula told me the owner couldn’t come to the closing because she was in a rehabilitation facility.”

“She is. In Portland,” Dylan confirmed. He looked at Morgan. “Caleb’s been keeping track of her since the attack last summer.”

“Another attack?” Nerves lent an edge to Liz’s voice.

“What is this, open season on island doctors?”

Dylan would not meet her eyes. “The demon did not leave her willingly or gently.”

Liz’s stomach cramped. “So what happened?”

Dylan hesitated.

“When a demon will not exit its host,” Morgan explained, “the only recourse is to render its victim’s body uninhabitable.”

“Meaning . . .”

His teeth flashed. “Regina bashed her head in with a table leg.”

Liz winced. “Oh.”

“The doctor is expected to make almost a full recovery,” Dylan said. “Eventually.”

“Am I supposed to find that reassuring?”

“Yes.” Morgan’s eyes met hers, not promising anything, but at least he didn’t lie, she could trust him. “Because now you know Gau can be defeated if you have the will and the stomach. And now that I know how he gained access to your house, I can protect you.”

“The island is warded,” Dylan said again.

“The house must be cleansed,” Morgan said. “And sealed.”

“With what?” Liz demanded. “Holy water? Garlic?”

Morgan smiled and despite the general weirdness of her life and the awfulness of the situation, she felt better. He made her believe things could be . . . not normal, but okay.

“Nothing so exotic,” he said.

“What, then?”

He gestured toward the bucket in the sink. “What do you use to clean up?”

“Water?” she guessed.

This time his smile warmed her clear to her toes. “Precisely. We are not so different, you and I.”