Tides Page 16

  “You seriously did? I guess I should give you more credit.”

  “Well, obviously.” Lo smirked, still squinting at the lock. “And it’s not as though you have bobby pins, I guess.” She sighed with satisfaction as the door swung open. “It’s weird Professor Foster didn’t give you a key, though, since you’re always yammering on about being his protégé.”

  Noah nodded absently. “Only he has the keys to this place. The older interns say he’s kind of neurotic about it. And he has that giant key chain . . .”

  He frowned. He’d seen Professor Foster’s key chain so many times. Besides the keys it held, there hadn’t been much to it: no grocery store discount cards or ID tags or anything decorative—except for one small circle of gray leather. It was a kind of leather he knew well now.

  “Lo,” he said carefully, “do you remember what Professor Foster’s key chain looks like?”

  “What? I guess so.” She quirked her eyebrows at him, then frowned, trying to remember. “Why does it matter? It’s not as if it’s around, and anyway it was just a big tangle of keys and—” Her breath hitched. “And an old bit of leather. Of—of sealskin. Noah, do you think—”

  “Yes.” Noah pushed his hands through his hair, trying to think over his audibly pounding heart. The logical part of his mind pushed in at him, reminding him that just because Professor Foster had sealskin on his key chain didn’t mean he was a kidnapper. But the professor’s secrecy, the strange sounds in his house, that gut feeling of wrong Noah had felt all through dinner . . . It had to be him.

  The first steps of a plan were forming in his exhausted mind, and he didn’t have time to wait for the rest of it. He would do the only thing he had left: He would help. He would try.

  “We have to go to Professor Foster’s house,” he said. “Now.”

  “What? We have to look for the skins. They could be here. We have to check the labs, Professor Foster’s office . . . even the filing room. God knows what’s in those boxes.” She laughed a little.

  He looked down the island to their tiny rowboat’s mooring. “I don’t want to leave you.”

  But he remembered how Professor Foster had treated his dog. If that really was a child, Mara’s sister . . . he had to go, had to stop him, right now. And when he brought the children back, they’d need their skins, or they wouldn’t be free. He knew Lo was right.

  He looked at his sister. “Even if you do find something, how will you get back?”

  Lo pointed toward the pier. “The Center has, like, four boats. The keys are in Professor Foster’s office, and I can definitely get in there.” She waved the bobby pin at him. “I’ll be fine. Noah, please. You said I could help.”

  He shook his head. “I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “I know.” She stepped forward and hugged him. “You either. But we have to help them. Like you said.”

  He looked toward White, where the lighthouse beam flashed and the kitchen window glowed a steady yellow speck. “You have to tell Gemm what’s happened,” he said. “You have to get Maebh and Mara to believe that I—that we didn’t do this. That it’s Professor Foster.”

  “I know.” Lo let go of him and turned to go inside.

  Noah didn’t want to think about what would happen if he was wrong. He’d lose his internship, of course, and his college scholarship—he’d probably end up in jail.

  He took a deep breath and walked to the pier. He jumped into the Gull, raising waves around him that crashed a thin layer of seawater into the boat. It soaked through his shoes, freezing his skin and stinging the long cut on his foot.

  Noah took in the ropes and shoved off, pulling at the oars with what remained of his strength. All he had to do was get to White, he told his shaking muscles. Once he had the motorboat, everything would be fine.

  Over his shoulder, he watched Gemm’s cottage grow larger as he approached. His bruised shoulder was growing stiff, and he groaned to distract himself from the pain.

  A dark figure stood on the crest of the island. His heart pounded and he hoped for Mara, but then the lighthouse illuminated gray hair and Gemm’s worried face.

  He thought he still might get away without her noticing—he didn’t want to put her through anything else tonight. But she turned toward him, squinting through the darkness.

  “Who’s there?” she called, stepping warily toward the shore.

  “Gemm, it’s me.” His voice cracked, and his breaths rattled from his dry throat.

  She ran toward him, into the waves. She grasped the bow of the Gull, and he climbed out so they could bring it ashore together. “Noah! Where have you been?”

  “The Center.” They pulled the boat far up from the tide line.

  Noah stared at his grandmother, wondering how to make her understand what he had to do.

  “I have to take—I mean, I’d like to take the Minke out, Gemm, please.” He knew he sounded like a little boy learning his manners—except for the shaky desperation in his voice.

  Gemm frowned. “Why?”

  Noah exhaled. “I’m trying to help them. Please, I don’t have time to explain. Just let me take the boat. Gemm, please.”

  She nodded. “Of course you can take her if you need to. But, goodness, Noah, I wish someone would let me help too. Maebh—” Her hand darted to her mouth, as if to stifle a sob Noah couldn’t hear. “Maebh still hasn’t come to me.”

  Noah didn’t know what to say to that. He waded toward the Minke, moored at the end of Gemm’s dock. The tide was at its lowest, so he could walk all the way out to the boat and lift himself aboard. His spent limbs protested the effort, but Noah ignored them.

  Gemm made a guttural sound in her throat, a groan or a chuckle. “I suppose it was foolish of me to think you’d stay in your bed when I told you to.” She sighed.

  “I guess so.” Noah tried to smile at her, to reassure her. “Don’t worry, Gemm. I just have to do this.”

  “I know.” Gemm touched her face again, but she no longer looked on the verge of tears. A sad distance swept over her eyes. “I was young and in love once too.”

  He turned the key in the ignition. As the engine sputtered to life, he pushed away the thought that Gemm might know more about his feelings for Mara than he did himself. He would sort that out later. All he knew now was that he had to help her.

  The Minke sped out toward the mainland, water churning a thick white trail in her wake.

  thirty-one

  SKIN

  MARA refused. There was nothing Maebh could say to make her leave the younglings ever, ever again—let alone to make her go back to White. She didn’t want to set foot or flipper anywhere near Noah.

  Maebh sat next to her on Whale Rock, her sealskin half shed, trying to reason with her, but Mara wasn’t interested in any reasoning besides her own. She kept her skin on and glared at the Elder through seal eyes.

  “Listen to me, Mara,” Maebh said. Branna and Tavis were piled over each other on her lap, and she stroked them absentmindedly with her human hands. The others were circling the harbor with Ronan. He was teaching them to hunt minnows, trying to distract them from Lir’s absence.

  Nothing could distract Mara. She’d been stupid, lethally stupid, and Noah had betrayed her. All she wanted was to sit with that knowledge, to feel the guilt entering her body like a knife. She didn’t want Maebh’s comfort. She didn’t deserve it.

  She turned from the Elder, staring into the black, choppy water. She felt a hand touch her flipper, and she jerked it away.

  Her sealskin pulled back, sliding off her forearm. Mara stared at the still-raw splits in her webbed fingers. She felt her skin parting, slipping from her shoulders and onto the rock, until she was human down to her thighs.

  “Goddess!” she swore, yanking off the rest of her skin. She didn’t know why her own body kept disobeying her like this.

  At least now, with human speech in her mouth, she could tell Maebh to leave her alone. But the expression on the Elder’s face, so loving and
worried, made her hesitate. She gathered up her sealskin and hugged it, leaning her chest into its warmth. She felt her ribs shake as she cried.

  When Maebh touched her back, she could not bring herself to flinch away again.

  “You’re wondering why this is happening to you,” Maebh said, “and why you cannot keep your form. I think I know.”

  Mara rubbed her face dry and looked up at Maebh. “You do?”

  The Elder nodded. “I am linked with Dolores,” she said, her voice low and sad. “I sometimes wish it weren’t so, but I cannot change it. As soon as I loved her, we were linked. Even when we’d been apart for years, when I told myself every day how much I hated her . . . I stayed a seal for forty years, unable to look at my own humanskin without aching for hers. I never aged, never grew, because of her. But the link was there. I couldn’t dissolve it, couldn’t burn it away with anger, much as I wanted to. Much as I wanted not to love her. My body wouldn’t let me change, and yours isn’t letting you stay a seal—but it’s all the same. I know. I know how frightening it is.”

  Maebh’s hand drifted up and down Mara’s back to the rhythm of her own slow breath.

  Mara inhaled, her chest shuddering. New air rushed into her lungs.

  “Once you love someone, part of you is bound forever. Perhaps you never see him again—perhaps your life is better without him, and it’s right to be apart. But once you’ve loved him, the link is formed. You can ignore it if you choose, but you cannot sever it.”

  “I can.” Mara shoved her feet into her sealskin and willed her two halves to meld together.

  Nothing happened.

  “Christ!” She pulled her sealskin off and tossed it toward Maebh. “Why is this happening? Why can’t I just be a seal?”

  Maebh’s fingers brushed over Mara’s sealskin. “Why do you think it is, Daughter?”

  “I don’t know!” Mara tugged her hands through her hair, working through the stubborn spikes that always appeared after a quick change.

  “Mm.” Maebh watched the White Island lighthouse sweep its beam across the harbor. “You swore like a human just then—did you notice?”

  “I—” Mara pulled her fingers away from her head. She remembered how Noah ran his hands through his hair, just like that. Had she learned anything else from him, without meaning to? “I guess I did.” She looked at Maebh, waiting for an explanation.

  The Elder nodded, looking in her eyes as if she expected Mara to realize something.

  Mara returned her stare, waiting.

  “I think there is a part of you,” Maebh said, “that wants to be human. That is why you’re rejecting your skin. You don’t truly want it, and I imagine it’s been a while since you have. I think this has happened to you before.” She smiled gently. “Am I wrong?”

  Mara crossed her arms over her breasts, suddenly chilled in the night air. “You’re wrong, Maebh. I hate this body. All it’s done is confuse me, ever since my first change, and now . . . and now it’s cost us Lir.”

  She let that unfurl across the space between her and Maebh, out into the water and up to the sky. She didn’t think there was enough depth in the ocean to contain her guilt, her hatred for her human body and the way it had betrayed her secrets into Noah’s confidence. Betrayed Lir into his keeping.

  “No, Mara.” Maebh stroked her back again. “Lir’s loss is not your fault. You were not at the ceremony. I was there. Ronan was. If anyone is to bear the burden of this guilt, it is we. It is I. I knew it was dangerous, and still I allowed it.”

  Mara shifted and leaned her head on Maebh’s shoulder. She thought they might collapse under the combined weight of their grief, but Maebh was like a pillar, holding her up. Shared, the pain was doubled, but only half so crippling. Mara couldn’t bring herself to wish for the strength to stand alone.

  “We have to go back to White,” said Maebh.

  Mara felt the pillar collapse. She jerked her head off Maebh’s shoulder. “No.” She scrambled away, to the very edge of Whale Rock. “I’m never going back there again.”

  “Mara.” Maebh reached toward her, pleading. “Think of Dolores. We’re linked. She knows I’m afraid, but she doesn’t know why. Even if you’re right about Noah—and I believe you, of course I do,” she added quickly, “I can’t make myself believe that Dolores would hurt the pod like this.”

  She spoke confidently, but Mara thought she felt a shadow of doubt cross over their link. “Please, Mara, come with me. You shouldn’t lose your faith in humans, simply because some have wronged us so.” She smoothed her hands over her sealskin. “Besides,” she said, “Dolores is Noah’s grandmother, after all. Perhaps she’ll be able to help us find Lir.”

  Lir and Aine, Mara’s mind whispered. Her sister’s name rose in her throat, but she couldn’t say it. She pressed her lips together.

  Three dark heads appeared in the harbor and started toward them—Ronan and the younglings.

  “Tavis, Branna,” Maebh said, stroking the fine fur on the younglings’ heads, “I need you to stay with your brother for a little while.”

  They crawled out of Maebh’s lap and into the water. Mara watched them until they reached their siblings.

  Ronan nodded at them, his eyes guarded and sharp. They disappeared under the water.

  “All right,” Maebh said. “It’s time to go.”

  Mara had to try one more time. “Surely you won’t leave the younglings alone again so soon?”

  Maebh shook her head. “You underestimate your brother, Mara,” she said. “He is strong, and he bears the weight of his own guilt tonight. He will not let them be harmed.” A subtle look crossed her face, as if she’d just thought of some clever secret. “Besides,” she added, “an Elder must know how to divide responsibility. It’s a lesson you will do well to learn.”

  Mara frowned. It sounded as if Maebh were giving advice to an heir, a future Elder. Mara thought she’d never be ready, after Aine was lost, and now Lir . . . Mara had buried her hope of becoming the Elder, of restoring the pod, in the deepest part of her soul, far away from where she kept her dreams.

  But now Maebh was pulling that hope to the surface again. Mara wanted to be the Elder much more than she wanted to stay away from Noah; Maebh knew that.

  So when the Elder plunged into the water and started swimming toward White, Mara followed. She knew she didn’t have a choice.

  thirty-two

  FOUND

  NOAH held his breath. He knew he had to be absolutely quiet.

  Quiet hadn’t been easy, not in this house. Noah was thankful that at least the den window had been cracked open, or he didn’t know how he would have gotten in without making noise. But Professor Foster’s staircase creaked even worse than Gemm’s, and the pain that still throbbed in his foot made it hard to tread softly.

  He’d made it to the top of the stairs, at least. There were three doors in the upstairs hall, and Noah stopped, unsure which to try. It was dark, and the strongest impression he got was the smell, something that made him think of expired cleaning solutions—at once too clean and not clean enough. Something chemical.

  He heard Professor Foster behind the farthest door.

  “It’s okay,” the professor murmured. He sounded genuinely concerned. “You’re okay.”

  Noah walked slowly down the hall. Was it possible, even now, that Professor Foster was innocent? That he had a dog, after all?

  The door was slightly open. He kept still. He hoped, he wished, that he’d been wrong.

  “See? It’s over now.” Professor Foster spoke quietly, gently. “I told you it wouldn’t hurt much.”

  He looked down and saw two sliding bolt locks on the outside of the door. They were both undone.

  “All right. Stay. I’ll be back soon.”

  It took Noah a moment to understand—Professor Foster was coming out. If he found him like this, hiding in the hallway . . . Noah couldn’t let that happen. He glanced around for a place to hide. He didn’t know if he could get to one of the oth
er doors before the professor emerged, and anyway, they might be locked.

  It was still possible that he was innocent. That Noah had misjudged him, this man he admired so much.

  He wrapped his hand around the edge of the door and pushed it open.

  “I’m sorry—” he started to say.

  Another hand gripped his and wrenched him inside.

  He felt an arm wrap hard around his neck, and before he had time to register anything else, a sharp slip of pain under his shoulder blade, something invading, something cold. And something else, hot and wet, sliding down his back.

  He shuddered. His knees unlocked under him and he fell.

  “You . . .” He tried to speak again, but oh, his shoulder didn’t like that. He hissed his breath back in.

  Professor Foster knelt beside him, a knife slicked bloody in his hand. “Noah?” he asked. “You—why in God’s name did you come here?”

  Noah pushed himself up. His vision fogged and then cleared.

  Two children huddled together in the far corner of the room, two pale children with black hair and wide black eyes, wearing old, worn white T-shirts too big for them. They looked almost identical. One, though, was scarred—scarred everywhere, in an angled grid over her face and neck and arms. Old scars.

  Aine.

  Noah pulled away from Professor Foster. Slowly, every muscle crying out with the effort, he stood. His legs trembled, and he felt the blood pulse faster from the wound in his back. He knew he wouldn’t be able to stand for long.

  But Professor Foster didn’t have to know that. “You can’t do this,” he said. “I came to—” His ribs convulsed under a fresh wave of pain. He leaned back against the wall behind him, trying to stand as if he didn’t need the support. “You have to give them back to their family. They’re just—they’re just kids.” He looked over at Aine’s grid of scars, at the way the children clung to each other and stared. “I know you hurt them.”

  Professor Foster closed his eyes. He nodded, slowly, heavily. He stayed silent for a long time, and Noah waited, just praying he could stay standing.