He winced inwardly, doing the mental calculations. Beside him Lara had the fine-boned, fragile appearance of an angel in a stained glass window, her skin pale and transparent, every shadow showing. After al he’d put her through, she deserved the best the inn could offer. The best he had to offer.
He stil had most of his rol from his last job. He could swing at least a couple of nights.
“One fifty cash in advance,” Lara said.
They both regarded her with varying degrees of surprise and respect.
F o r g o t t e n s e a 231
“We came in on the four o’clock ferry,” Lara said, suddenly looking a lot less unworldly. “It’s highly unlikely you’re going to see any more late drop-ins tonight. You can either leave the room empty or take our money.”
“Two hundred,” Kate Begley said. “That includes breakfast in the bar in the morning. Our dining room’s closed during renovations. But I can set you up with coffee, bagels, fruit, stuff like that.”
Lara looked at Iestyn.
“That’d be great,” he said. “What about dinner?”
“Antonia’s on Main Street is very good. A lot of the locals eat there.”
Iestyn peeled a couple big bil s off his rol . “You’re not a local?”
Kate’s face set. “I am for now.”
It was an opening. He dived right through. “It must be hard moving into a place like this where everybody knows everybody else.”
“I don’t plan on staying.” She wiped her hands, fished a key from a cubby. “My parents bought this place ten years ago.
I’m just trying to turn enough of a profit to sel .”
Iestyn ran his tongue over his teeth. “So, I guess you don’t know Lucy Hunter.”
“Hunter . . . I know Caleb Hunter. The chief of police,”
Kate explained in response to Iestyn’s lifted brow. “And the chef at Antonia’s is a Hunter, too. His sister-in-law, I think.
Regina.”
Memories scuttled like crabs on the sea bottom, stirring him up.
Which meant . . . The connections pinched at Iestyn with razor-sharp claws. Which meant . . .
2 3 2
V i r g i n i a K a n t r a
“Dylan’s wife.” He forced the words from his thick tongue.
Kate Begley shrugged, pushing two keys across the counter. “Maybe. I haven’t met her husband.”
Iestyn’s head pounded. He couldn’t breathe.
Lara slipped her hand into his arm. He looked down at her, abruptly recal ed to the present.
“Thanks.” He pocketed the keys. “Antonia’s, you said?”
Kate’s glasses glinted as she nodded. “Order the swordfish. Or the lobster fra diavolo.”
The stair carpet was covered in plaster dust. An empty utility bucket sat out on the second floor landing. But their room was large and clean, with a thick white comforter on the bed and thin white sheers at the windows framing a spectacular view of the harbor.
As soon as the door closed behind them, Lara asked,
“What was that about?”
Iestyn crossed the window and stood looking out at the sea.
“It appears we have a lead.”
“The police chief. Caleb Hunter?”
“Yes.”
“He’s selkie?”
“No.” Iestyn jammed his hands in his pockets. “But his brother Dylan is.”
“How does that work?”
“Their father was human. Their mother was the sea witch Atargatis. Halfbloods are more often human than not. It is one of the reasons the merfolk are dying out.”
The sun was slipping in the sky, staining the water rose and gold.
“I thought the children of the sea were immortal,” she said.
F o r g o t t e n s e a 23 3
He turned to face her. “As long as we stay in the sea. Or live protected by the magic of Sanctuary. But we pay for that immortality with a low birth rate.”
A pause while she digested that. “So Dylan Hunter is selkie.”
“A selkie warden, one of the sea lord’s elite.”
“You know him?”
“I did.”
He remembered the day Dylan’s mother brought him to the prince’s court on Sanctuary, a sneering, black-eyed boy with a chip on his shoulder and a shield around him even Griff’s patient teaching could not dent. Dylan had been younger than Iestyn then. Dylan’s determination to grow up, the time he spent away from the magic of Sanctuary, had quickly aged him beyond the others.
Stil , it had been a shock, Iestyn recal ed, when he learned the sul en youth had been made a warden on the human island of World’s End.
He could practical y hear the
“Lucy Hunter.”
Her smile broke like dawn. “But that’s wonderful!
You’re almost there. We’re almost done.”
“We’re not done.”
She nodded seriously. “Of course not. We stil have to find him. Her. But . . .”
“We’re not done,” he repeated. His heart pumped, panicked for the first time by the end of a journey. “I’m not finished with you yet.”
When she stared at him, wide-eyed, he crossed the room to her and pul ed her into his arms.
18
H e wa s d e s pe r at e f o r h e r .
Her taste. Her smel . The wide, soft curve of her lower lip.
The fine, shining core of her, like tempered steel.
