"You want to go back? Back to Aunt Alice?"
She shook her head, movement seen out of the corner of his eye. "Not Aunt Alice — the whole package. You. Your sisters, all three of them. Alice and that house. Even Dan and that cast-iron bastard father of yours. You picked up a stray kitten and gave her milk and a warm place by the fire. Now you're stuck with her. I want a family and a home. I never really had one, and you guys are just twisted enough for me to maybe fit."
"We could go straight, you know. Truly. We don't need the money."
"Jesus Christ, you want to be bored out of your fucking skulls? I don't think even Mouse and Ellie could go straight. Not in the genes."
Gary checked traffic and road far ahead before taking his eyes off the driving. He looked her in the eyes. "Then you're not going to run away and hide again? Promise?"
She met his look, square, eyes serious. "You'll have to shoot me to get rid of me."
"Oh, God. Don't ever say that around Ben."
"Not a chance, Lover Boy. Not a fucking chance. But I think Aunt Alice has his number."
They rode on in silence for a while, comfortable silence as if they'd been together for years. Something Gary had been thinking about . . .
"You know, if you ever want to get rid of that nose stud, we can afford plastic surgery. Bad memories and all that . . ."
She didn't answer for a mile or two at sixty per, until he thought he'd put his foot in it. Then she shook her head. "It's part of who I am. Taking the scars off my bod won't do a damn thing about my head, and if Aunt Alice and the House can straighten out my head, the scars won't matter."
"Okay, just remember that you have the choice." Then an image flashed in his head, something he'd seen in the tower. Probably it had been a cufflink in its former life, but . . .
"Would you like a jade stud, just to play with the image a bit? About the same size, flat, with a Chinese dragon carved on it? If the base is wrong, we can get it changed . . ."
Her eyes lit up. "Ohmigod. Real jade? Green? A dragon? That would like, totally go with that purple skirt and black top." And then she flashed a wicked grin, mocking the fashion-girl language.
Yep, and wearing a Morgan dragon in your nose might like, totally remind Ben of a little history. Help keep him under control.
*~*~*
Ben Morgan slithered out of the surging water and up a granite ledge into darkness. Lights came on, the motion-detector triggers they'd installed in this part of the tunnel complex long ago. If the alarm system was armed, he now had two minutes to Change and grow fingers and punch in the code on a touch-pad ten feet above spring high tide. Move your ass, mother.
Ben thought fire through his bones and felt it spread out into his flippers. Fur sank back into his skin, ten thousand needles piercing him at once, and he felt his body temperature spike as cells drank energy to mold their shape. Pain seared his chest, the left side, the bullet wound still red and angry and healing more with each Change from one body to the other. He gasped and struggled to his knees. The cave went black around him and he dropped back to all fours on the coarse granite ledge.
A minute passed as he knelt there, sweating, gasping. The cave came back into focus and the swirling white dots faded. Dan tossed him a towel.
"Not good enough. Gary nailed it, first time. He's even faster than I am. Healthy young body."
Ben staggered to his feet and dried himself and pulled clothing over bare cold skin. He shivered. This Changing business sucked. He'd hungered for it for over twenty years, ever since he'd first learned about it and then learned he couldn't do it. Now he'd finally forced his way through to it, and he wondered if the game was worth the candle. That much pain, just to catch your own sushi.
He didn't like sushi. Even as a seal.
Dan gloried in it, spoke rhapsodies about the sweet flesh of living lobster crunching in his jaws, the fragrance of herring oil in the water, the thrill of chasing salmon or bluefish or other swift hunters. Gary just shrugged — he could take it or leave it. And Ben hated herring breath. Maybe that was why he found the Change so hard. Dan was a natural selkie, Gary had failed his first test, and Ben had simply failed. Until now.
Maybe the sushi question meant something important. Meant that Dan would be the most likely to stay a seal, to forget to Change back. There might be something to that old warning against eating or drinking in fairyland, if you ever wanted to go home again. Have to watch out for Dan that way.
Ben picked up his Tear and hung it around his neck, the badge of a full Morgan. Four in use now, and one destroyed. And the Dragon had finally caught on to Women's Lib after all those centuries, granting a tear to Caroline. That made Ellie and Mouse unknown quantities. Maybe he needed to find a silversmith to make a couple more dragon pendants, just in case.
That was his job, after all, plans and contingencies and watching out. Chess moves, thinking six or seven layers down. Rewarding friends, destroying enemies.
Destroying enemies . . . he turned to Dan. "Are you sure Gary killed that flint? Now that we know what it does, I can think of some dandy places to sell it. Water isn't that deep out on the old bombing range — one of us could dive down there and retrieve the case." Now that would just about be
