Keeper of the Moon

chapter 16



Storm clouds were gathering overhead as Reggie met Sailor at the end of a dirt road—little more than a path really—off Kanan Dume. He was visibly upset, his friendly face lined with stress. It sent chills down her spine, imagining what he’d seen to make him look like that.

“We’ll walk,” he said, when she’d climbed out of the Aventador. “The car won’t make it.”

“Really?” she said. “I could drive on that.”

“In your Jeep maybe. Not in this. And it’s starting to rain. If it turns to mud, you’re screwed. What are you doing with Wainwright’s Lamborghini anyway?” He took the keys from her to lock the car with the remote, prompting the reassuring beep.

“Stealing it, I guess,” she said. “Where’s your car?”

“Up on the hill. Let’s hurry.”

The light was rapidly fading, and she could sense Reggie’s urgency matching her own as they made their way toward the scene. The land was thick with springtime foliage, obscuring the view to the highway, and there was a curiously secluded feeling to the lot. There were no houses within screaming distance, she thought. It was a bad image to conjure, Charlotte screaming, and she pushed it away. “How on earth did you find this place?”

“There’s a property up there that I manage,” he said, gesturing to the hillside on their right. “A few weeks ago we were scouting a location for a TV show, and the director asked about this land down here. I didn’t know anything about it, so I looked it up and found out the property’s been on the market for years. And I noticed the shed.” He pointed again. “Then I started to see lights driving up Kanan at night, and I kept thinking, ‘I have to check that out.’”

“What do you mean you ‘were scouting a location’?” Sailor said, feeling a small frisson of warning. “Do you work in the industry?”

“One of my side businesses,” he said. “I have a company that rents out properties for movie shoots. So today, just now, I thought, ‘Time to check it out.’ I couldn’t believe what I found.”

In a voice she hardly recognized as her own, she asked, “What’s it called, your company?”

Reggie glanced back at her, pointing to the words on his baseball cap. In small letters. “Location, Location, Location.”

Sailor grew cold all over.

The strangest thing was the spark of joy she felt at the knowledge that Declan wasn’t the killer, that Declan was the good guy.

And then the terror overtook her.

Facts dropped into place. Reggie had an entrée onto movie sets, any set for which he was providing the location. Including, no doubt, Technical Black, Knock My Socks Off, Six Corvettes.

He turned, sensing her slow down. “You okay?”

She looked away. If she made eye contact, he would see her thoughts. “Yes,” she said, and wondered if she should just make a run for it. Back to the Lamborghini.

Except that Reggie had the car keys.

Keep talking, she told herself. Don’t let him know you suspect anything. “I’m just— Reggie, I think Declan Wainwright is the killer.”

“Wainwright? Are you serious? Why would you say that?”

“Charlotte was found near his beach house, you know.”

“All right, come on,” he said. “Maybe there’s something in here that will connect him to the murder.”

She stared at his back. He was big, six-four or more and rangy. What was she doing here with him? What was he planning to do with her? And how could she let anyone know that this was the man the entire community of Others was seeking?

She felt for her phone as Reggie glanced back. If she could make a call, keeping it in her pocket, even 9-1-1... But it was a touch screen. She couldn’t just hit buttons, she had to see the screen. Stupid smartphone.

“Watch your step here,” he said, as the path dipped just before the entrance to what looked like a construction shed, some kind of one-room prefab structure.

Don’t go inside, she thought.

“Come on,” he said, reaching out to take her hand, but she put it behind her back, unable to control her reflexes.

“No, I— It’s giving me the creeps,” she said. With her arms pinned to her sides like this, she could feel the sheath holding Alessande’s knife. “I—”

“Come on,” he repeated. “If any of this stuff belongs to Wainwright, we have our proof.”

“Let’s call the police,” she said, which was a stupid thing to suggest because it was the last thing he would agree to. And she wanted him to stay agreeable.

“No. We have to deliver this guy to the Elven Circle, right?”

“Yes. True.” She needed to get the knife out. She slipped her hand inside her jacket. “Okay, after you,” she said.

He reached to open the door, a rickety affair, but he didn’t take his eyes off her. Shit. This would get physical the moment he realized she was on to him. Her fight training was in stage combat for the most part, where the point was to avoid hurting your fellow actor.

For the most part, but not entirely.

“Come on,” he said, and reached over, putting a hand on her waist. It was so intimate a gesture, and so repellent to her, that she had to force herself not to jerk away. How had she found him even mildly attractive? How had four dead women?

He was propelling her into the shed.

Once inside, she stepped away from him. She freed the knife from its sheath, keeping it inside her jacket.

A small window provided light, enough for her to make out a mattress on the floor. The mattress was bare, its patterned fabric marred by dark stains. The floor around it was also stained, and even the wall behind it. She could discern handprints. She gripped the knife, keeping it close against her rib cage, and stared, unable to look away.

The dark stains were blood, and there was so much of it she could hardly comprehend it.

Play your part, she told herself. Stay in character. “What—” She cleared her throat. “What kind of evidence should we be looking for?”

“Well, there’s this,” he said.

She turned to see him pull a vial from his jacket pocket. It was ancient, ornate, scarlet-colored. She stared, paralyzed, but also fascinated by the small glass bottle responsible for so much blood and death.

Reggie stepped forward and grabbed her.

He spun her around, and the knife fell from her jacket and skittered across the floor toward the mattress. Reggie was substantially bigger than she was and strong; he maneuvered her until he was behind her and holding both her arms behind her back. She felt him moving, and she knew he was trying to get a rope around her wrists.

Fat chance.

She lifted her knee and stomped down hard on his running shoe with enough force that Reggie let go of one of her hands. She turned toward him. He was bent over in pain, and she drove her elbow downward, onto his back. He grunted at the blow, then stood up fast, some part of him catching her on the chin.

She wasn’t sure what happened next because the shadows were swirling around her, and then she was falling. Reggie came down, too, going for her hands again, but she squirmed like mad, knowing what he was trying to do, and got them in front of her, holding them against her stomach. He wrestled her onto her back and then sat on her, his weight crushing her, but she kept squirming, moving her arms back and forth to stop him from tying her up. Then he backhanded her across the face, hard, and while she was waiting for the lights in her head to stop flashing he got the rope around her wrists and knotted it.

When he was done, he stood, towering over her. Breathing hard.

“Try teleporting now,” he said, smiling.

A moot point. Under this much stress she couldn’t teleport three feet. What concerned her more was that bound like this, she couldn’t even run, not effectively. “You overestimate my abilities,” she gasped out.

“Really? Your father used to say you were half Elven.”

Thinking of her father made her want to cry. Stop it, she told herself.

Reggie took out his cell and walked toward the doorway to look out. He put the phone up to his ear. “I got her,” he said. “She’s tied up, but she came here in Declan Wainwright’s car.”

Sailor was stunned. Reggie had a partner? How could that be? What could be in it for someone else? The person on the other end apparently began talking, and Sailor rolled onto her stomach and inched her way toward the mattress. Thank God her hands were bound in front.

“It’s a f*cking Lamborghini, he’s gotta have some kind of LoJack system. He apparently tracks everything. I gotta get it away from here, drive it a few miles, maybe send it down a cliff.”

The knife was on the far end of the mattress, out of Reggie’s line of sight. In the scuffle, it was possible he hadn’t seen it or heard it drop, wasn’t even aware she’d had it.

“Not until she’s in the car,” he continued, picking up the conversation. “I’m not dragging another corpse up that hill. It’s brutal. And she’s bigger than Charlotte. Wherever she gets dumped, she’s getting there on her own two feet.”

Sailor reached the knife. She grasped it in her bound hands, sharp edge up, tip pointed toward her. She slashed awkwardly.

The rope held—but it frayed.

“I will if I have to,” Reggie said from the doorway, “but I’d rather not. It’s going to be a loud f*cking noise.... All right.” He was winding up the conversation. And walking toward her.

She slashed again. The rope frayed some more. Halfway there. It would have to do.

She slid the knife under the mattress a second before he reached down to pull her up by her arm, saying, “Let’s go.” She kept her wrists firmly together, not knowing how much force it would take to break the rope, praying his focus would be elsewhere.

“Who was that?” she asked.

“A mutual friend,” he said, making her wonder who else of her acquaintance was a sociopath. He steered her to the door. Outside, the rain was coming down at last.

“What if I don’t want to go?” she asked, resisting. Reggie let her go so abruptly that she lost her balance and fell.

He laughed. “Then I shoot you,” he said, pulling a gun from his jacket pocket.

He was holding it wrong, too low on the grip. Random details penetrated her fog of fear. The gun was a 1911, a .45 caliber, which she knew because she’d had one as a prop in an off-off-Broadway production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream set in 1940s Chicago. A complete turkey of a production, but at least she knew a cocked 1911 from one that was uncocked with the safety on. Reggie, she realized, wasn’t a gun guy.

There had to be a way to use that. She needed to keep thinking, keep her mind on details and away from the panic that was nibbling at the edges of her brain. She got to her feet awkwardly, her legs as wobbly as fettuccine, and she wondered if she would even be able to run if the opportunity arose. Reggie might not want to shoot her until she was in the car because he didn’t want to carry her dead weight up the hill, but once in the car, she was as good as dead, and it wouldn’t take much expertise to put a bullet into her brain at point-blank range. And that meant she couldn’t get into the car.

“I wouldn’t have pegged you as a murderer, Reggie,” she said, and pulled her hands apart, testing the rope to see how much strength it had left. So far it was resisting.

“Me neither. Funny what you discover about yourself. Thought I was just a sex addict with a taste for celebrities. Always going for the bitch who’s out of my league.” He glanced at her. “You’re not much to look at right now, but with your clothes off? You’d qualify. No time for that today, though.”

“But you enjoyed it?”

“Which? The sex or the killing?”

“Either. Both.”

He laughed. “Are you kidding? Both! Charlotte Messenger. Charlotte Messenger. She couldn’t get enough of me. Me! And then she started bleeding like crazy and I watched the life just drain out of her, and let me tell you something, she didn’t even care. As long as I was on top of her, she didn’t care that she was dying. It’s a fan boy’s wet dream. You can’t even imagine.”

“You didn’t know she’d die?”

“I knew she might. It’s in the old history books. Highsmith has a library full of that kind of stuff. But it actually solved some problems, their dying. It meant I could go on to the next one without getting caught.”

Highsmith? What did he have to do with this? Was Highsmith the one Reggie had called? “You’re a Keeper. It didn’t bother you to watch them die?”

“It did, a little. But I was never a very strong Keeper. Can’t teleport for shit. Anyway, you can overcome your instincts, you know—if you want something bad enough. Question of will. And I wanted them bad. Gina Santoro? You have no idea.”

“But Ariel and Kelly? They weren’t celebrities.”

“I’ll be honest, I have a hard time remembering which was which, with those two. But once you get a taste for blood, you just gotta have it....” He shrugged.

“But the car bomb. The one that killed my friend Julio...”

“Charles’s idea. He doesn’t like you. I kinda did, up until five minutes ago.” Oh, my God, she thought. Highsmith was a murderer, too. The thought enraged her. Reggie tightened his grip on her arm and pulled her toward him, and she thought, now. She turned into him and pushed with all her weight, her shoulder hitting him in the chest.

He wasn’t expecting it, and he couldn’t keep his balance, let alone level his gun at her. She kept hitting him with her shoulder, pushing into him, gaining momentum, and when he loosened his grip on her to stop his own backward fall, the rope finally broke, freeing her hands. She elbowed him in the face.

He spiraled forty-five degrees and fell to one knee, dropping his gun.

They both went for it, but she was faster.

She grabbed it and scrambled back out of his reach, then aimed it squarely at him, holding it with both hands and locking her elbows.

Time froze. Reggie crouched, staring at her, and then he turned and ran toward the Aventador.

She tried to find the safety, but her fingers wouldn’t work properly, either from the adrenaline pumping through her or from her hands having been bound too tightly. She finally managed it, but then it took several tries before she could pull back the hammer, and by that time he had reached the car and was lifting that crazy door.

She didn’t know if she had it in her to shoot a man in the back, but she could sure shoot a car.

Reggie was inside and turning the key in the ignition when she fired the first shot. It missed.

So did the second. The next produced a distinctive ping, suggesting her aim was improving, but the car was now reversing away from her. She lost count of how many times she fired before the Lamborghini abruptly stopped.

Reggie hauled ass out of the car, then dropped into a crouch, staring at something behind her. She turned and saw, to her shock, an Elven woman coming out of the shed.

It was Alessande. She was moving slowly, almost tentatively, and Sailor turned to see Reggie take off running, not to the road, but straight down the hill, into the brush.

Alessande must have teleported. She would need recovery time before she could give chase, and even longer before she could teleport again.

And Reggie was heading for the ocean. In less than a minute he would be crossing Pacific Coast Highway. No Elven would follow him there. It was up to her, Sailor realized.

She took off after him.

* * *

Declan returned to the beach house to find both Sailor and his car gone, and Harriet as frantic as he’d ever seen her. What the hell had happened? If Sailor hadn’t been taken against her will, then she’d taken his car and driven...where?

He was in no shape to shift again so soon, and with no clear intention of where to go, it would have been pointless anyway.

And then he felt her. As abruptly as it had closed, the window opened, restoring the connection. He felt Sailor’s energy, her unique vibrational energy reaching out to him. Hope. Terror. He could almost hear her thoughts.

Find me.

* * *

Sailor was running well, as well as she’d ever run. It must be the relief of survival. Adrenaline. Or sheer, stupid will. But for the moment she was in her element, even in the rain.

The clouds parted at the horizon, just enough to show the sun sliding slowly toward the ocean. Another hour, she figured. She watched Reggie cross the highway during a break in traffic. She braced herself to do the same, and less than a minute later she was on the oceanside.

Being close to the sea again made her feel sick, but she told herself that after Geoffrey’s and the beach house she was building up a resistance to the salt smell, the rotting seaweed, the crabs, flies... Besides, if Reggie could do it, so could she.

I’m not running to the ocean, she told herself. I’m running to Declan.

Reggie was leading her along residential roads and back to Point Dume, and her legs pumped hard as she tried to keep him in sight. It helped that she was a runner. They weren’t even into the second mile, so if they kept on course she would run out of land long before she ran out of breath.

And exactly what, she wondered, would she do when she caught him?

Get the vial.

The vial and the Scarlet Pathogen inside would stop the war. Handing that over to the Elven Circle would be proof enough. Even if she couldn’t bring in Reggie—and it was hard to see how she could—the vial itself, plus Alessande’s eyewitness account of Reggie running away, would be compelling proof of his guilt. But what about Highsmith? Who would believe he had played a part in this? The only way to catch him, she was willing to bet, was to catch Reggie and convince him to turn on Highsmith.

She might run out of time, though. Moonrise was twenty minutes after sunset, and sunset was coming fast. But she had to try. The gun was safely tucked into her waistband, and she would use it to make Reggie relinquish the vial.

He was leading her along a small street crowded with houses. He turned once to look back, and she was certain he saw her.

Running always brought her mental clarity, and even now, things started to fall into place. The knife must be enchanted, and the nature of the enchantment, she guessed, was that it could summon Alessande and had made it possible for her to teleport to a place she’d never seen before and couldn’t picture, something that would otherwise be impossible.

And by now Alessande would have called someone, sounded the alarm, summoned help. Declan. He would find her. But meanwhile she had to keep running.

Reggie darted between two bungalows and over a fence, and she followed him, finding herself in someone’s backyard. From there he led her through a gate to a path leading downward. Of course. Reggie was a Realtor and the coast was his turf; he knew where he was going.

He assumed she wouldn’t follow him to the ocean.

Another wave of nausea overcame her as the path swerved and she saw, spread out below her, the ocean. It’s just fear, she told herself, and remembered her mother telling her that when she was little. “It’s only fear. It’s not the water itself, it’s our fear that keeps us away.” But did it matter what it was? The effect was the same. She wanted to stop. She wanted to vomit.

How could he keep going?

Because he wasn’t a strong Keeper. He was a strong man, but the Elven in him was weak, so he had few of their abilities and only a mild aversion to water.

The path turned into a series of wooden steps leading to the beach thirty feet below. She caught just a glimpse of Reggie as he descended. They were both forced to slow down because the way was steep and the steps slippery from the rain. The roar of the surf and the calls of the seagulls were deafening, and she was as frightened now, in a different way, as she’d been in the shack, fighting for her life. The smell of the salt air sickened her, and the crash of the waves stopped her breath, as if each one presaged a tsunami.

But she’d come this far, and her rational mind knew she wouldn’t die from this, she wasn’t going into the water, she was just going to follow him until—

The steps stopped.

She was six or seven feet above the beach, on a tiny outcrop of rock, and Reggie was nowhere in sight. If she jumped she would land in seafoam, at least a foot of it, maybe two, the waves and rain and tide bringing the ocean all the way to the foot of the cliff. It was a desolate place, cold and increasingly dark.

She crouched, wondering what to do, wondering where Reggie was, when a hand snaked itself around her foot and pulled her off her ledge.

She screamed. Her fall was broken by Reggie himself, and as she landed on top of him she was already fighting and kicking, desperate to scramble to her feet, more terrified of the water than she was of him. Once upright, she got the gun out and aimed it at him with both hands, shaking badly. Water was pooling around her calves, knees, soaking her legs, freaking her out.

“Gonna shoot me, Sailor?” he yelled over the roar of the surf, and he was grinning at her, an awful grin. “Because I don’t think you’ve got any bullets left.”

She backed up, as much to get to higher ground as to get away from him. But he advanced, and she had no idea how many shots she’d fired at the car and whether he was right, or even whether the gun had gotten wet and if wet guns fired.

“Let’s find out,” she said and pulled the trigger.

Reggie was knocked back by the force of the shot, barely louder in her ear than the ocean. An incoming wave had thrown off her balance and ruined her aim, but his shoulder spouted blood.

He kept coming.

She pulled the trigger again. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

She was out of ammo.

She backed up. But she was against the cliff already, so she moved to the right, away from Reggie, who was still coming for her. He was moving slowly, maybe because of his injury, the surf churning around him, and she moved faster, hugging the cliff wall. Then she glanced to the right and her heart sank. In fifty feet the cliff jutted out into the water. Deeper water. She couldn’t believe her own arrogance, escaping death once and now facing it once more because she couldn’t leave well enough alone, she had to try to save the world.

There was nowhere to go but up. She looked at the cliff face, treacherous and rocky and not at all climbable. Except...

Ten yards away there was an opening in the rocks, just above eye level. It was small, maybe too small for her to fit into, but maybe not.

She glanced back at Reggie, just visible in the rain, the very definition of madness, all bleeding shoulder and wild hair, trudging through the water, swaying with the surf.

She made her way toward the opening, climbing onto boulders, trying to get higher, closer. It was too much of a stretch. She looked around. To her left something stuck out of the cliff at a crazy angle, a piece of wood or rock, maybe a root. Whatever it was, she grabbed on to it. It held, allowing her to pull herself up and slip her foot through the opening, then her other leg and, with difficulty, her torso. At last she squeezed her shoulders in. A cave. A refuge. Above the sea. Above Reggie.

And now he was there, just below her. His face was ugly-scary as he reached toward the opening, crazy enough to think he could pull her out. She bit his hand. He screamed.

“You bitch!” he yelled, but he drew back. He stared at her, then out to sea. “All right,” he said, turning back to her. “You think you’re safe? Spring tide. Know what that is? It’s coming in fast. Coming right for you.” He was smiling.

She looked out at the water, raging and white-tipped, and realized she had no understanding of it, no knowledge of tides or waves, the habits of the sea.

“I’ll be waiting right up there,” he said, nodding back toward the steps. “I’m staying until you come out, and then I’ll grab you and hold you under. I’ll drown you like a cat.”

Then he was gone. And she was alone.

Panic engulfed her. She should have died when she had the chance, any other way, explosion, gun, anything but this, holding her breath, the ice-cold water on her skin, in her mouth, the salt consuming her, weighing her down, the heaviness of her clothes and shoes, the terror, and then the sea filling her lungs, burning them, bursting them apart, the lack of air, asphyxiation. The kind of death her nightmares were made of.

Declan! she screamed. Declan! She was calling his name as if he could hear, as if he could save her, like the deus ex machina of the Greek plays. She began to cry at the idea that she had thought he was the killer. Tears, so difficult for her to produce, spilled out of her now, her mind filled with regret that she could have thought so badly of this man she loved. It was a kind of betrayal to believe him capable of such evil, and that, too, was why she was here, why she had followed Reggie, as if capturing him and stopping the war could make up, in Declan’s eyes, for her lack of faith.

Would he find her body? Or would she wash out to sea?

Would he forgive her?

* * *

Declan felt Sailor strongly now, the sense of her overwhelming, but there was no joy at all, none of the liveliness of her. There was only stark, primal terror. The terror of madness.

* * *

Time passed. The water came closer, the waves growing bigger, the spray hitting her face when she looked out. She was stuffed into a space about four feet by four feet, maybe six feet deep, she estimated, with the cave mouth only a bit wider than her own shoulders. She couldn’t see or hear anything but the sea. But she knew Reggie was as good as his word, that he’d climbed the steps to higher ground and was waiting for her to come out.

Her body was cramped, weakened and desperately cold, but so far she was still safe. She wrapped her arms around her legs, clutching them, holding on tight to herself. Would the safety last? Even now the ocean had climbed higher, closer. When had that happened? How long had she been here?

She had no idea.

But she was never coming out.

* * *

Declan phoned everyone he could think of: Rhiannon and Barrie, Reggie Maxx, Darius, Brodie, Alessande. Tony Brandt. All over town, he left curt voice mail messages. His instinct was to shift into a bird and fly, but he knew his own physical limitations. Unless he had some idea of where Sailor was, and unless she was out in the open, as opposed to in a car or a house, it would be a waste of time and a debilitating waste of energy. Even if he found her, he might be too weakened to save her from whatever was terrifying her.

The last call he made was to Kimberly Krabill. It was a long shot, but he figured if Sailor was sick or injured and could reach a doctor, Kimberly was the one she’d go to.

Amazingly, Kimberly actually answered the phone. “I have no idea where she is, Declan. But it’s funny you should call. Tony Brandt sent me the lab results, not just Sailor’s but everything from this case, and I saw something shocking.”

“What’s that?”

“I happened to look at the killer’s DNA just after studying Sailor’s, and I found some startling similarities. I’m sure no one else has seen it because there’d be no reason to compare the two, and of course I’ll need to do much more work on it before—”

“Just tell me,” Declan said. “What does it mean?”

“Declan, I think our killer is an Elven Keeper. Just like Sailor.”

Time slowed, then stopped. Reggie Maxx. It had to be him. He’d been with Sailor all afternoon. Not protecting her; planning her death.

Declan more than knew it; he could feel it. They were together, Sailor and Reggie. And she was terrified. But she was still alive.

“Call Brandt, call Brodie McKay at Robbery/Homicide. Tell them it’s Reggie Maxx,” he said and hung up.

Declan moved onto the deck, closed his eyes and breathed in the salty air. It took all the discipline he had to make himself go still, so great was his need to act. He moved his energy into his astral body. He forced himself to breathe. And wait. After a moment there was a gentle shattering of the boundaries that held him in place as a mortal.

And then he was floating.

He addressed the spirit of Charlotte. “You know where they are. You can see them.”

Silence. Darkness. Mist.

“I couldn’t save you, Charlotte, but I can save her. Help me.”

A tornado of currents circled him. The wind picked up. The mist cleared.

* * *

A sound penetrated her fear, a sound other than the storm-ridden sea. It was the caw of some huge bird, like nothing she’d ever heard before, and it was followed by a huge whoosh. Sailor stretched to peer out of the cave opening and gasped.

A terrifying creature, vast and prehistoric, hovered in the sky near her, and the clouds parted, granting it the last light of a setting sun. She glimpsed a wingspan like a small plane, talons the size of her hands. A long flap of the wings, and then it was gone, ascending out of sight.

Above the roar of the surf she heard a man shriek. Reggie. The shriek went on, sending chills up and down her spine, but grew increasingly faint, as if he had been plucked from the cliff wall by this creature from another era and carried off.

Her whole body quivered, unable to understand what she’d just seen, or to reconcile it with the natural world she knew. She was disoriented. She wondered if she was hallucinating.

If Reggie was truly gone, this was her chance to escape.

She pulled herself to the edge of the cave, only to see a wave hurtle toward her and crash against the surrounding rocks. She moved back, terrified. Water pooled on the floor of the cave, some of it sloshing back out to sea, but more of it staying in. The safety she’d felt had been no more than a magic trick. If the water kept rising, this would be her grave.

But it was better than being swept out to sea.

She thought of the cliff she’d climbed down, the steps that were the only way up. How far away were they? Fifty feet? It didn’t matter. The water was too deep for her to walk through anymore.

“Sailor.”

Was that the wind? Or a hallucination, or...

“Sailor!”

She moved her cramped limbs through shallow water to the mouth of her tiny cave.

In the sea, being tossed about, was a figure. A man.

Declan.

“Declan!” she cried. “Declan, I’m here!” She was shouting his name, screaming into the wind.

He saw her. He swam toward her, strong arms arcing through the much stronger surf. When he got close enough, he called, “Hello, love. Ready to go?”

“I don’t—I—” She was so cold, she realized, that she could barely speak.

“I can’t come in, so you’ll have to come out. That’s a very tight squeeze. Can you stretch your hand toward me?”

Fear gripped her. She tried to make her arm cooperate, but her reach was pitiful. It was as though she was paralyzed, with no idea how to pull herself out of the cave. Every animal instinct told her to stay. She saw herself as a sailing ship inside a bottle, unable to come through the neck.

“I—I can’t,” she said.

“You what?”

“I can’t. I can’t come out. I can’t swim.”

Declan was moving in and out with the surge, and she realized how hard this had to be for him, how dangerous it was, even for a strong swimmer, to be among these rocks at high tide. If he didn’t shift soon, he could well die.

As she realized that, the water swept him against the cliff and he found something to hang on to, maybe the same root that had helped her earlier. She had to lean further out now to see him, but there he was, bobbing like a cork, his chest rising out of the water and sinking back in as he held himself close to the cliff.

A huge wave came rushing toward them, and she moved back into the dark, terrified. Water sloshed around her. She was sitting in it now, inches of it, no matter where she positioned herself.

“Sailor!”

She moved back to the mouth of the cave and peered out to see Declan eight feet from her. She looked down. The water was so high that she could reach out and touch it.

“Look at me,” Declan commanded.

The moon had risen. By its light, nearly full, she could see the lightness of his eyes. She kept her focus on them, not the sea. “You don’t need to swim,” he continued. “Just get yourself out of that hole and into the water. I’ll do the rest.”

“No.” She shook her head. “I c-can’t.”

“You’re Sailor Ann Gryffald!” Declan yelled. “You can do anything you put your stubborn mind to.”

“Declan, I’m so sorry. I was wrong about so many things. I—”

“Tell me later. Come on. Time to go.”

She began to hyperventilate. Another wave would come and she would lose sight of him again. She couldn’t bear it. “Declan,” she called, “can you really turn yourself into a bird?”

“You didn’t see the show I put on? That was for you.”

“Can you be a sparrow?” she called. “Something little? And fly to me. Just come in here with me, be with me.”

A wave came, drowning out her words, and when she looked at him he was yelling, angry. “No, I bloody well can’t! I’m not watching you die. In sixty or seventy years, maybe. Tonight you’re coming with me.” He looked at the sea. “This next wave’s the one—it’ll break, then go back out. When you hear it crash, you push yourself out of there, head first, feet last, just like a baby. Take a deep breath and let go. Fall into the water. I’ll be there to catch you.”

She was shaking her head, and crying and shivering, not because she didn’t believe he would catch her, impossible as that seemed, but because she knew her body wouldn’t cooperate, would refuse to let go, would cling to the cave, paralyzed with cold and fear. But the wave was rolling toward them. I’ll stay in the opening, she thought. I’ll do just that much, not go back into the darkness. I’ll just do that.

She held her ground with her eyes shut, letting the spray hit her and knock the breath out of her. And she heard the last words Declan said, before the ocean stole them away.

“Trust yourself.”

The crash of the wave against the cliff was like the world coming to an end.

Sailor willed strength into her arms, pulled herself out of the cave mouth, scraping her belly, her thighs, her knees. She got one foot under her, braced it against the rock, and then, quite certain she would die, took one last breath and fell into the sea.