Chapter 3 #2
"Keep your doors locked," he says finally. "Don't go wandering at night. And if anything strange happens, anything at all, you call me. Day or night. Understood?"
"Understood." Another lie, but this one comes easier. "Thank you for checking on me."
He leaves, and relief mixes with guilt while watching him go. Declan's a good man. A good alpha. He takes his responsibilities seriously.
But I'm not entirely human, and the problem stalking Stormhaven isn't one wolves can solve.
The dinner rush is manageable. Fish and chips, shepherd's pie, vegetable stew. Smiles and chat and careful, careful magic tasting the emotional currents.
Fear. That's the dominant note. Fear mixed with anger and helpless frustration. The fishermen are scared. Their wives are scared. Even the young ones, who usually act invincible, are looking over their shoulders.
No one lingers tonight. They eat quickly, pay, and leave. By eight thirty, the inn is empty.
Closing at nine, an hour earlier than usual. No one protests. Everyone's eager to get home, to lock their doors, to pretend that being inside will keep them safe.
The door gets bolted behind the last customer.
Leaning against it, my control slips just slightly.
My magic rises like tide, filling the empty space, tasting every corner of the inn.
The protection wards are still strong. Gran built them to last, woven into wood and stone with the kind of power that takes decades to fade.
But wards only keep out what they're designed to stop. Blood magic and corrupted sea-power might not fall within those parameters.
Halfway up the stairs to the apartment, awareness prickles along my skin. A change in the air that has nothing to do with wind or weather.
Magic. Not mine. But similar enough to make my skin crawl.
I follow the sensation back down to the main floor. Through the kitchen. Out the back door that opens onto the alley behind the inn.
And there, arranged in a perfect spiral on the cobblestones, are shells. Dozens of them. Scallops and whelks and delicate moon snails, each one placed with precision. Each one humming with residual power.
The pattern is unmistakable. A summoning circle. A challenge. A sea witch symbol so old it predates the fishing villages, predates the Christian monks, predates everything except the ocean itself.
Someone knows.
Someone wants me to know they know.
Kneeling beside the spiral, my hands shake. The shells gleam in the dim light from the kitchen window, wet like they've just been pulled from the surf. But the nearest water is fifty feet away, and these are arranged too perfectly to have washed up naturally.
I should destroy it. Scatter the shells, break the pattern, deny the invitation.
But my magic has other ideas. It reaches out before I can stop it, touching the shells, tasting the power that arranged them.
The vision slams into me.
Dark water closes over my head. Not surface water but the deep places, where pressure turns everything cold and black. Bodies drift in the current, weighted down with stones, arms spread like the victim found in the caves. But they're not just dead.
They're changing.
Skin grey-blue like drowned flesh. Eyes filmed over white. Moving with jerky, wrong motions like puppets on invisible strings. The missing dock workers. Jamie Fraser. Others I don't recognize, pulled from graves the ocean claimed years ago.
The drowned are rising.
And then I see her.
Small. Child-sized. Dark hair floating in the current like kelp. She turns, and even through the corrupted vision, I recognize the face.
Elspeth.
My sister. Eight years old when she drowned. Still eight years old now, preserved by whatever magic binds her to these waters. Her eyes—my eyes—stare through me with terrible awareness.
"Moira." Her voice carries through water and vision both, childlike and horrible. "I've been waiting so long."
Pulling back does nothing. The vision holds me, drags me deeper. More images flash. The docks, but wrong. Symbols carved into pilings below the waterline, blood magic mixed with necromancy. Each death feeding power into those symbols. Each sacrifice pulling the drowned closer to the surface.
Pulling Elspeth closer. Everything shifts, reforms.
A woman with salt-white hair—her power glimmering like fever heat.
"Your grandmother tried so hard." She circles me, moving in a slow spiral.
"All those years protecting these waters.
But she couldn't protect everyone, could she? Some things slip through. Some things wait. And the drowned remember.”
The drowned. Ice floods my veins.
Her smile widens. "You still hear it, don't you?" Her voice softens, which somehow makes it worse. "That day. The waves. Her voice calling for you. And you didn't come."
"Stop." The word tears out of me.
"But I can bring her home." Something like kindness crosses her face. "Not as she is now. As she was. Eight years old, laughing, alive. Would you like that, Moira? Would you like your sister back?"
"She's dead. You can't bring back the dead."
"Can't I?" The woman gestures.
One more image sears itself into my mind. Elspeth rising from the water, walking onto the beach, looking exactly as she did the day she drowned. Whole. Alive. Smiling.
It's a lie. Has to be. But my chest aches with the wanting anyway. All the years, and some part of me would give anything to have her back.
"And if I refuse?"
The woman's expression goes cold. "Then I raise her anyway. But she won't be yours. She'll be mine. And the first thing I'll make her do is tear through everyone you've ever loved."
The vision shifts one final time. Elspeth with those dead, filmed-over eyes, moving through the inn. Through Stormhaven. Bodies in her wake. All wearing faces I know. Old Tom. Danny Morrison. Eliza. Declan.
"Choose wisely, sea witch. You don't have much time."
The vision breaks.
Back in the alley, gasping, my hands pressed against cold cobblestones. The shells are still there, but their power is fading. Used up. Whatever message they carried has been received.
My magic recoils, snapping back so fast the world spins. That wasn't just corrupted power. That was necromancy. Someone powerful enough to raise the drowned. Someone who knows about Elspeth, knows about that day, knows exactly where to twist the knife.
Gathering the shells with shaking hands. Carrying them inside. Dumping them into a bucket of salt water. Purification. Cleansing. But what was seen can't be washed away.
Elspeth. Someone wants to raise my dead sister. Either to give her back to me or turn her into a weapon. Either way, they're using her. Using my guilt. Using years of grief I've never let myself properly feel.
Stand at the window overlooking the harbor. The water is restless tonight. Choppy. Angry. The kind of sea that warns sailors to stay ashore.
The phone sits on the table. One call to Declan. Tell him about the blood, the shells, the vision. About Elspeth. Let the wolves handle it.
But this isn't wolf business. This is sea witch business. And it's about my sister. My failure. My guilt.
Tomorrow, the docks. Find Rafe Vega in his warehouse full of secrets. Demand answers about what he knows, what he's done, who's performing necromancy in his territory.
The panther won't want to talk. Men like him never do. But he'll understand that this is bigger than his criminal empire, bigger than pack politics, bigger than anything he's prepared to face.
Because if that woman succeeds in raising Elspeth, if my sister comes back wrong, there won't be anything left to save.
The ocean surges against the harbor wall, spray reaching higher than it should. And in the distance, a sound that isn't waves. Isn't wind.
A child's laughter, carried on the salt breeze.
My palm presses against the window glass. My magic flows toward the water. Just a whisper. Just enough to tell the ocean I'm listening.
The water responds. Not with words, but with feeling.
It's afraid.
And so am I.