A - Immortal Sea

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.”

17

MORGAN AND DYLAN WERE STILL OUTSIDE, PACING the yard, circling the house. Making magic, Liz thought,

suppressing a flutter of unease.

She watched them through her kitchen window. They made quite a picture, Dylan with his dark, lean elegance and

brooding black eyes, Morgan with his brutal Viking face and hair the color of sea foam, day and night, night and day, every

woman‟s fantasy brought to life.

Except she didn‟t want the fantasy. She wanted more than fairy tales.

She poured the bucket of dirty water into the sink. She had her own rituals to perform. Domestic ones, scrub the wall and

clean the stove and mop the floor, mundane, dirty chores intended to return things to the way they were before, to restore a bit

of order, a layer of protection, a measure of control to her life.