“You’l go out again,” Moon said. “After them.”
“I must.”
Simon wanted the girl. And Jude wanted Simon in his debt.
Moon’s round face creased. “This boy. ”
“Is irrelevant. He’s an elemental. A hostile elemental,”
Jude added for emphasis.
“You see enemies everywhere.”
He climbed painful y to his feet, leaning on a table for support. His head swam. “Because we have no al ies.”
“Heaven has no al ies. We’re on earth now. Maybe we should put more faith in those who have been here the longest, the fair folk and merfolk. God’s creatures, Jude.”
It was an old argument between them. One he’d given up on winning.
He glanced at her over his shoulder. “Simon thinks the boy is possessed.”
Moon’s blue eyes clouded. “And if he is?”
“It makes no difference. Unless he kil s the girl. In which case, I wil avenge her murder, and Simon can thank me for that.”
Moon sniffed. “Sometimes I real y don’t like you very much.”
“So you’ve said.”
Their eyes met, dark with memories and — at least on his part — regret.
A faint flush rose in her cheeks. “You replaced me quickly enough.”
“A lesson I learned from Simon.”
She shot him a questioning look.
“Keep your friends close,” Jude explained. “And your enemies closer.”
“And you, of course, see enemies everywhere,” Moon said again dryly.
He did not smile. “I don’t fuck al of them.”
“Such self-restraint.”
He did not defend himself. In truth, he used sex the same way he used everything else.
The nephilim did have enemies. Everywhere. He did what he must to ensure their survival. He played a long game with high stakes against incredible odds. Lara Rho was just another card to turn to his advantage.
Assuming he could find her.
“I’m going to Maine,” he said.
Iestyn had never sailed into Port Clyde before, but he recognized the sights and smel s of a working harbor. Beyond the kayaks, tourist cars, and ice cream shops, the waterfront moved with the rhythm of the seasons and the tides.
By three o’clock, sturdy fishing boats ruffled the blue water, chugging in to offload their catch behind the general store.
The air was rich with salt and fish, sharp with diesel oil.
He joined Lara, waiting in line to board the ferry between a couple of hikers and a little girl with a pink backpack.
Something about Lara — the way she looked or the way she stood, the turn of her head or the pucker of her brows as she squinted into the sun behind him — lodged like a fishbone in his throat. His chest swel ed. He couldn’t speak.
He could barely breathe.
“We’re here now,” she’d told him. “Together. For the first time in my life, maybe that’s enough.”
But what if it wasn’t enough? he wondered with a sliver of panic. For her. For him.
She smiled at him, relaxed, expectant. “Did you find parking?”
He cleared his throat, rubbed at the burn itching beneath his col arbone. “A couple blocks over.”
He’d left the Jeep behind a hardware store with the key in the ignition. In Newark, in Norfolk, in Montevideo, the vehicle would vanish within the hour. Even in Maine, he figured it would disappear eventual y.
She raised her brows. “You know the ferry lot only charges five dol ars a day.”
“We don’t know when we’l be back.” If I’ll come back.
He pushed the thought away. Concentrate on the moment.
Live in the moment. They crossed the metal ramp behind a woman dragging a shopping cart. “We can’t leave the Jeep in the parking lot, pointing at the ferry like a bloody arrow,”
he said.
She nodded in comprehension. “Because of the crows.”
“The crows and the cops.” He lowered his voice.
“They’l run the plates on an abandoned vehicle.”
Lara’s eyes widened. “I didn’t think of that.”
Of course not. His conscience winced. She was a rule fol ower, not a law breaker.
“I hope you got rid of the license plates,” she said.
He grinned, his conscience relieved. What a miracle she was. “Tossed them in a Dumpster.”
“Good.” The approval in her tone, the trust in her eyes, caused that funny swel ing in his chest again.
They found a place on the upper deck with the hikers and a cable repairman toting a plastic utility bucket.
The deck shuddered. Machinery groaned. Iestyn’s pulse leaped as the ferry pushed into the waters of the harbor under the gleaming eye of the squat lighthouse, past boats tethered to round white mooring buoys. A curving line of jagged rocks like a broken jawbone slid away to starboard.
He inhaled, tasting salt, baring his teeth to the wind.
Christ, it felt good to be on the water again. Too damn bad he was on this floating parking garage instead of under sail.
But even the stink of fuel and the engine’s vibration couldn’t diminish his pleasure. The sea was what he knew, where he belonged.
He glanced at Lara, standing beside him, her cheeks flushed, her eyes shining. A wandering sea breeze played with her hair.
With everything she’d been through these past two days, she stil took his breath away. She had entrusted herself to him. Her body. Her safety. Her future.
Confusion caught him under the ribs, sharp as a cramp.
How could he ever leave her?
How could he ask her to stay?
17
Th e wo r l d s h i f t e d u n d e r f o o t a s t h e y m ov e d farther and farther from shore.
No turning back, Lara thought. Every step toward their destination severed her further from her old life and brought Iestyn nearer to his. And when he was gone.
But she couldn’t let herself think about that. Those worries belonged to the future, and she was determined to stay in the here-and-now for as long as she could.
She watched him brace beside her at the rail, his strong legs set against the chop of the waves, the wind molding his shirt to the hard planes and muscled curves of his body.
The stitches along his hairline were barely visible. In the slanting afternoon light, he burned like a seraph, his hair fired to sunlight, his skin like liquid gold.
A great wave of lust and longing seized her by the throat.
She took a deep breath and held it until everything settled and was stil again.
She would not regret this, she told herself fiercely.
Whatever happened.
She could admire and enjoy him without possessing him.
Like admiring a sunset or an eagle or anything wild and beautiful and beyond her grasp.
Iestyn turned his head, smiling down at her, the light in his eyes and on his hair, and her heart — her foolish, female, human heart — quite simply tumbled at his feet. He tucked her against him, her back to his chest, his jaw by her ear, and held her while time and the world slipped away.
Water churned under the prow. Lumps of land rose and fel from view. His heart thudded against her shoulder blades, her breathing slowed to match his breath, until it seemed they shared one heart, one breath, one flesh. She covered his hands where they linked around her waist, trying to hold on to him. Hold on to the moment.
Until the arms around her stiffened and his heart changed beat.
“Iestyn? Iestyn.”
He didn’t respond.