Forgotten Sea

He had the mother of al headaches, his magic choker burned like a son of a bitch, and if he didn’t lie down soon, he was going to fal down.

“I’m good,” he said, trying to sound confident and cheerful instead of insane. “You?”

Her eyes were bruised with exhaustion, her pretty lips blue with cold. She squared her slim shoulders. “I’m fine.”

“You’re amazing,” he said honestly.

She smiled and ducked her head.

The Jeep bumped onto the road, picking up speed as they hit the asphalt. He fiddled with the controls, swearing as a blast of cold air shot from the dashboard.

“Heater’s broken,” Lara observed.

Figured.

The long dark road was going nowhere. At the next 1 18

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intersection, he turned right, relieved when a gas station appeared and then a route sign. The Jeep leaned around a ramp and rattled onto a highway. Rol ing hil s and country estates were broken up and swal owed by train tracks and subdivisions, strip mal s, and overpasses sprayed with graffiti.

The white mile markers flashed by. Lara huddled in her seat, hugging her arms. At this speed, the Jeep’s rag top and open sides didn’t offer much protection.

“Pul that tarp over you,” he ordered. “It’l cut the wind some.”

She twisted around in her seat to drag the tarp from the back. The heavy canvas released the sharp scent of bark, which mingled with the lingering smel s of smoke and river mud. Lara wrinkled her nose as she adjusted the tarp around her. Mulch trickled from her shoulders to the floor.

She plucked a fold from her knee. “There’s enough here for us both.”

He shook his head. “I don’t get cold.”

She looked at him sideways. “Is that a guy thing?”

“A selkie thing. Warm blood,” he explained.

Webbed feet. No pelt.

His smile faded.

“At least it stopped raining,” she offered.

“We didn’t need it anymore,” he answered absently. “Al it takes is one good downdraft to cut off the moisture flow.”

Lara left off fussing with the tarp. “Weather control? Is that a selkie thing, too?”

His skul pounded. His head split like a tearing curtain, revealing . . .

Mist. Gray stone walls with the damp running down, and a fountain playing in the center.

“Weather working is the simplest gift and the most F o r g o t t e n s e a 1 19

common,” the castle warden lectured in his deep, burred voice. “The first to come and often the easiest to master.”

The boys sprawled on the bench and on the courtyard grass, watching the clouds, bored with a lesson they’d heard too many times before.

“It is the water you cannot see that creates the rain and clouds,” Griff droned on, “that cools and warms the earth and sustains all life. This is the water you must know and control if you want to work the weather.”

The fog swirled. White lights pierced the gloom.

Yel ow lights, coming toward them.

A blare of sound. A horn.

The wheel jerked in his hands as Lara grabbed it and the Jeep shuddered and straightened. The oncoming truck roared by in the opposite lane.

Shit. His hands shook. He eased his foot from the accelerator, sweat breaking out on his forehead.

“Pul over,” Lara ordered.

“What happened?”

“You blacked out.”

“No, I . . .” He inhaled, wil ing his hands and his stomach to settle. “Maybe.”

“What else could it be?”

The Jeep’s tires rumbled onto the shoulder and coasted to a stop. He clicked on the blinking hazard lights: warning, warning, warning.

“Flashback. I thought I remembered . . .” But the vision was gone, lost in the mists of his brain. “It’s nothing. One too many knocks on the head.”