“Ma’am?” The paramedic was right there at her elbow. “Do you know him?”
That moment of concern allowed her to get close enough to touch the stranger, the flesh of one arm outside the blanket, wet from seawater and rain, cold but not dead-cold, just wet-cold.
“No.” Her breath came back in a rush, and her heart started beating again. No, it wasn’t Tal. It wasn’t her cousin, dead and buried and not haunting her because he would never have been cruel enough to do that. Just some guy with hair the same color and texture his had been, like hers, that was all. Coincidence.
And the look of this guy said he was closer to her age, maybe in his early thirties at most, than Tal’s fifteen when he died. Beth swallowed and forced herself to look again. The features were different, too, now that she could see him more clearly. Tal had been blessed with the family nose, a sort of turned-up snub, and his skin had been darker, his coloring inherited from his Italian father, not the pale-as-flounder Havelock line. This stranger was pale like that, like she was, and his nose was longer, narrower, his mouth wider, the chin more stubborn, and without the five-o’clock shadow that Tal got, even as a teenager.
She touched the stranger’s arm again, driven by an urge that she didn’t understand, and something sparked under her fingers, making her shiver again from something other than the cold.
Something clicked. Something changed, here and now. Chemicals collided in her bloodstream, stars aligned, a wave crested and fell, and she was never going to be the same again.
Beth shook her head, refusing the sense of portent overwhelming her. She didn’t believe in that sort of thing—she was tired, that was all. Tired enough to swear that the guy was shimmering in the rain, that his skin was overlaid with something, some kind of.
A second layer, almost. The kind that she used when she was retouching photographs, to blank out details she didn’t want to use in the final product or distract the eye from things that couldn’t be repaired.
Beth blinked, then wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. Humans couldn’t be retouched. She was probably running a fever to go with her cold; that would explain it. She needed to get the hell out of the rain, get her overtired imagination under control.
“No,” she said again, backing away before she could touch the body again. “I don’t know him.”
They bundled the stretcher into the ambulance and pulled away slowly over the sand, lights flashing but the siren off. The crowd started to drift away, and Beth drifted with it, back to the house. She shed her raincoat and sneakers just inside the door, then peeled off her sodden jeans and sweater as well, and walked through the house in damp panties and socks. The main bathroom upstairs was old-fashioned enough to still have the original claw-foot tub, and she started the water running hot while she stripped off her socks and underwear and added scented bath salts to the water. Hair piled on top of her head, she sank gratefully into the steaming, sweet-smelling water up to her shoulders and felt her body finally let go of the rain’s chill. She reached up with her toes and managed to shut the tap off before the water reached a dangerously overfull level. Her muscles softened, her eyes closed, and only some remnant of awareness kept her from falling asleep in the tub. When the water cooled enough to rouse her, she hauled her body out of the tub, dried off and put on warm flannel pajamas and slid into bed. The moment her damp head hit the pillow, she was asleep, dreaming of deep green waves, briny air and the slide of warm, warm hands along the inside of her legs and up across her stomach, lingering in places that made her smile in her sleep, as she turned to embrace her pillow as though it were a lover.
Chapter 2
He woke slowly, surfacing with a sense of panic blunted by something soft and sticky.
There was dark and a sudden shock of pain, and … nothing. He opened his eyes, his lashes gummy and stuck together, and discovered that he was in a bed. He knew it was a bed, although he hadn’t slept in one since he was a child, preferring a hammock that mimicked the motion of the waves.
A bed. In a place he didn’t recognize, filled with smells he didn’t recognize.
There were no windows wherever he was, only a single narrow doorway. White surrounded him, white sheets and walls, and shiny metals and plastics and that overwhelming smell of something that made his nostrils flare in distrust and disgust.
Cleansers, part of his brain reminded him. To clean up the shit and the blood. You’re in a hospital.
He had been in one of those, long ago. His sister had torn open her leg on a rusty nail half-submerged off a dock, and she’d had to go to the mainland and have it stitched up. As her favorite sibling, her only brother, closest in age, he had gone with her and their mother, to keep her calm while the doctors did their thing. There had been the same smells, and shots, and the adults had all been annoyed but not really worried.
That was good. Annoyed but not worried meant this was an inconvenience, not a threat. Hospitals were where they helped you. What was this hospital helping him for? What had he done to himself? Nothing hurt, nothing felt wrong … It annoyed him that he couldn’t remember.
“Good morning.”
He turned his head and looked up at a man who was pushing back the curtains and moving to stand beside the bed. An older man, maybe even Elder. Gray hair and beard; the latter was cut into a sharp point on his chin, like a shark’s fin. But the eyes were pale blue and kind.
“Morning,” he responded, his voice raspy, like he’d been yelling. Maybe he had. He couldn’t remember even that much.
“I don’t suppose you could tell me your name?”
He could. He could remember that. But it wouldn’t mean much to this man, his name and colony-connection, identifying him as seal-kin. Nothing this human male could understand. An instant of panic flooded his brain, and then another name came to him from memories of long ago, names and connections to the land …
“Dylan.” He coughed, spoke again more firmly, confidence coming back to him with the memories. “My name’s Dylan. Dylan … Meridith.”
“Excellent.” The man took a thin instrument out of his white coat’s pocket and flicked it on, a narrow beam of light coming from one end. Dylan obediently let him flick the light into one eye and then the other, relieved when the man—a doctor?—grunted in satisfaction and turned the light off. “Look this way, please? And that way. Excellent. No headache? Very good. Lie back now, and relax. You gave us all quite a scare, Mr. Meridith, washing up like that. Usually by the time the Atlantic gets done with bodies, they go to the morgue, not the emergency room.”
He had been swimming, that was right. Heading for shore. Looking …
Looking for his mate. Yes.
Dylan lay back on the pillow, the memories returning now. Bypassing the other colonies to come here, to where humans lived, this arm of land jutting out from the mainland. Swimming, endlessly swimming: so focused that he ignored the warning signs of the storm, when he should have known better. The storm came. Waves knocking him over, being bumped by something, losing consciousness.
And waking up here.
“I. You found me on the sand.” It wasn’t a question; he remembered that, vaguely. Voices and lights, things being done to his body, bringing his temperature back up. He owed those people his life. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Although I had the easy part, just waiting for you to wake up.” He smiled, and the kind blue eyes sparkled with life and humor. “I’m Dr. Alden, by the way, and I’m the one who says when you get to go home. But first, we need to know where home is, exactly.”
Dylan froze. The name he’d given the doctor had been placed in his memory years ago, just in case, but he hadn’t thought of what to say about his home. He hadn’t even thought to think about it.
He trusted this Dr. Alden, instinctively. Despite