Kit chased after her. “Livy, I am not insane. You know I’m not. Give me a chance. Stay and listen.”
At the door, she held up her hand to silence him. Her eyes closed a moment, then opened to regard him with something between compassion and hurt. “I really don’t have time. Right now. For this.” She said the last two words softly, but they fell upon him like hammers.
As she stuffed her feet into her boots, he stood watching, shirtless, barefoot, trembling. “You think I’m crazy. I don’t blame you. But I am begging you…”
Livy slid into her coat and rounded on him. “Goblins? You’re begging me to listen to how there are goblins in the forest? I’m a scientist, Kit. What do you think I’m going to say?”
“I think you should look for proof. Not run off.”
She zipped up her coat, lips set tight. “Yeah, well, maybe there’s more wrong here than just the goblin story. I’ll see you later.” She slipped out and trudged down the beach to her kayak.
Kit stood with the door open, letting the cold wind slice against his skin, watching her shrink in his line of sight without a single glance back at him.
He slammed the door shut, kicked it with his bare toes, then closed his eyes and leaned his forehead on it. If the curse was going to kill him young the way it had for his ancestors, he fervently wished it would get on with it.
Livy slashed at the water with her paddle. The cold air stabbed her lungs, and her shoulders burned with exertion, but she kept at it. She paddled farther than necessary, past the tip of the island and out into the middle of the inlet. The afternoon wind picked up, rocking her kayak and frothing the little waves into whitecaps. Belatedly, she recognized the danger of being out here alone in hypothermia-inducing waters.
Though probably it was no more dangerous than having sex with a delusional freak.
She bowed her head and let her paddle rest across the top of the kayak. Damn it. He had seemed so fabulous. Of course he’d have to turn out to be deranged.
She plunged the paddle blade into the water to swing back toward shore.
A gray wave slapped back. Stiffened with cold, her hands fumbled. The paddle escaped her grip and knifed into the water. She grabbed at it, but it washed out of reach, floating away from her with the next wave.
She looked around in despair for something else to use as a paddle— her water bottle? Driftwood? Where the hell were the stray flip-flops sailing through the water when you actually needed them? All the while she kept an eye on her paddle, which hadn’t gotten too far away yet. But if it did, maybe someone on shore was watching, and would figure out she needed help, or at least she could phone someone to bring out another boat and tow her in before it got dark…
A madrone log bobbed up alongside her kayak, five feet long with an end full of twigs. She seized it. Drenched in chilly salt water, it numbed her hands at once, but she plunged it in and managed to use it to turn the kayak toward her drifting paddle. She stretched the branch toward it, aiming to catch the blade in the twigs. Her first three swipes fell short by several inches.
Tears stung her eyes. “Come on,” she wailed. “Please.”
Something poked up from the water and batted her paddle back toward her. Something like…a hand. Except green, and webbed. It dunked back under before she got a good look. Her paddle, meanwhile, skated a foot closer. Livy smacked the branch down on top of it, raked it in, and pulled it back aboard.
“Oh my God,” she mumbled in relief.
She tossed the branch back in the water, then sat motionless, watching the choppy surface where the hand-thing had disappeared. What had she just seen?
Seal flipper, maybe. Fish happening to jump at a lucky moment. Sodden log or trash getting pushed to the surface for a second.
Definitely not a mermaid or a water-goblin or anything of that sort. God damn Kit Sylvain. He was making her see things now.
The sun was setting by the time she hauled the kayak onto the public dock in Bellwater. Her arms shook with exhaustion and her hands stung with cold.
She sat in her car a while after loading up the boat, staring alternately at her phone and out the window. Kit hadn’t tried to contact her in the hour since she’d left. She wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or hurt.
When the streetlights came on at the dock, she switched on the car and drove home.
Skye had just returned from her shift when Livy walked in. The smell of espresso wafted off her even from five feet away. She was hunched over the kitchen counter, texting someone. Not Livy, it would seem. Probably Grady. Skye and Grady seemed thick as thieves lately. Ugh, Sylvain men. Fucking womanizers.
Livy threw her keys onto the counter and kicked out of her boots. Skye gave her a double-take, concern entering her otherwise impassive face.
Livy shook her head, and shuffled forward to get a glass of water. “I know how to pick ’em, Skye.”
Skye lifted her eyebrows.
Livy swallowed half the glass of water. “Yeah. Kit. He’s…ugh. How do I not see they’re crazy until after I’ve slept with them? How do they hide it so well?”
Skye stood up straight, elbows leaving the counter. “Crazy?”
“I know. Judgment-laden word, not cool. Sorry. Either he honestly believes some weird shit, or he’s trying to mess with me in this lame and bizarre way. Or he’s actually dangerous. I mean, maybe I should be thankful I’m here and not wrapped in duct tape in his crawlspace, right?”
“Duct tape,” Skye said, skeptically.
Livy finished the glass of water, set it down, and pushed her tangled hair out of her face. “Oh, I know, I should listen to him. Just—God, I’m embarrassed even to tell you what he said. It’s so…I’m sorry, the only word is ‘crazy.’”
“What he said?”
Livy shuffled to a chair and flopped into it. “I would never tell this to anyone but you, Skye. He says, get this, that I should be careful in the woods, because goblins live there.” Livy covered her face in mortification. “He seemed genuinely concerned. What the hell?”
Skye’s hissing intake of breath made Livy drop her hands and frown at her.
Skye had gone white. She stared wide-eyed at Livy, lips parted but without saying a word.
Alarm flashed through Livy. “What? What’s wrong?”
Skye turned and ran out of the kitchen. Her footsteps thumped down the hall to her room, then thumped back, and she smacked her sketchbook down in front of Livy on the table, open to a page where she’d drawn a creepy gremlin creature.
Livy frowned at it. “Okay? You showed me this before. What? You’re saying…this is a goblin?”
Skye just stared into her eyes, breathing hard. She seemed unable even to nod or shake her head. That always did happen when Livy tried to ask important questions about what had happened to her, though…