Kitty's Greatest Hits

THE TEMPTATION OF ROBIN GREEN

The talking dog always whined when Robin fed the griffin.

“C’mon, Robin, please? The doc’ll never know. I never get any treats.”

“Sorry, Jones,” Robin said to the dust-colored mutt in the steel and Plexiglas cell.

“Please? Please please please?” Jones’s tail wagged the entire back end of his body.

“No, Jones. Sorry.”

“But it’s not fair. Those guys get fed late.”

“They have bigger stomachs than you.”

“Oh, please, just once, and I’ll never ask again!”

But it was a lie; the whining would never stop, and giving in would make it worse. It turned out that a talking dog was even more endearing than the nontalking kind. It took all of Lieutenant Robin Green’s army training to turn away from the mutt and move on to the rest of her rounds.

She hit a switch to illuminate a bank of lights in the second enclosure. The occupant had the thick, tawny-furred body of a lion, but its neck and head were those of an eagle: feathered, dark brown, with glaring eyes and a huge hooked bill. It opened its beak and called at her when the light came on, a sound somewhere between a screech and a roar.

A small door at the base of the Plexiglas allowed her to slide a tray of steaming meat into the cell. The griffin pounced on it, snarling and tearing at the meat, swallowing in gulps. Robin jumped back. No matter how many times that happened, it always surprised her.

Next, she took a bundle of hay to a side door that allowed access to a third enclosure and went inside. Technically, entering the enclosures was against regulations, but she had asked for special permission in this case.

“Here you go, kid.”

Hoofed footfalls shuffled toward her through the wood shavings that covered the floor. The animal stood about fifteen hands high, had a milk-white coat, cloven hooves, a tuft of hair under its chin, and a silver spiral horn between its eyes.

Robin spread out the hay, feeding some of it to the creature by hand. She and the unicorn got along well, though at twenty-three she didn’t like to admit her virginity. She’d fallen back on excuses to explain why she’d never seemed to make time for dates, for getting to know the men around her, for simply having fun: too much to do, too much studying, too much work, too much at stake. She’d always thought there’d be time, eventually. But those old patterns died hard. Colleagues and friends paired off around her, and she’d started to feel left out.

All that aside, now she was glad about it. Otherwise, she’d never have had the chance to hold a unicorn’s muzzle in her hands and stroke its silken cheek.

She’d graduated top of her class with a degree in biology and made no secret of her interest in some of the wilder branches of cryptozoology, however unfashionable. She’d gone through the university on an army ROTC scholarship and accepted an active-duty commission because she thought it would give her a chance to travel. Instead, she’d been offered a position in a shadowy military research project—covert, classified, and very intriguing. She’d accepted, transferred to the base in California, where she couldn’t talk to anyone about her work because of how classified it was. Not that anyone would believe her if she did talk.

After visiting with the unicorn for half an hour, Robin continued to the next level down: The Residence.

This level of the Center for the Study of Paranatural Biology made Lieutenant Green nervous. It seemed like a prison. Well, it was a prison, though the people incarcerated here weren’t exactly criminals. Colonel Ottoman, PhD, MD, et cetera, liked to say it didn’t matter since they weren’t really human. A lowly research assistant and low-ranking, newly minted officer like Robin, perfectly turned out in her prim uniform with pressed collar and skirt, was not supposed to question such a declaration. Still, she made an effort to treat the inhabitants of the Residence like people.

“Hello? Anyone home?” Colonel Ottoman and Dr. Lerna were supposed to be here, but Robin must have been the first in for the night shift. The day shift had already checked out.

Despite its clandestine military nature, the place was as cluttered as one would expect from any university laboratory. Paper-covered desks and crowded bookshelves lined one wall. Another wall boasted a row of heavy equipment: refrigeration units, incubators, oscillators. Several island worktables held sinks and faucets, microscopes, banks of test tubes and flasks.

One Plexiglas wall revealed a pair of cells. The first cell was completely dark, its inhabitant asleep. Special features of this room included a silver-alloy lining and silver shavings embedded in the walls. The next cell had garlic extract mixed with the paint.

“How are you this evening, Lieutenant?” the occupant of the dimly lit second cell greeted her.

“I’m fine, Rick. Where is everyone?”

“There’s a note on your desk.”

Her desk was the smallest of the group, and the only one without a computer—she was still using a typewriter, although the colonel had promised to get her a computer on the next requisition cycle. She assumed he’d forget. She found a note in Dr. Ottoman’s jagged writing on her desk calendar:

Lt. Green, sorry to leave you alone, special conference came up, Bob and I will be in DC all week. Hold down the fort. No special instructions regarding the new arrival, just leave it alone.

Col. Ottoman

Just like that. Gone, leaving her alone on the night watch for a whole week. That meant she wouldn’t actually have anything to do but feed everyone and keep an eye on the closed-circuit screens.

“Bad news?” Rick said.

“Just inconvenient. Do you know anything about a new arrival?”

“In the aquatics lab.”

She started for the next door.

“Ah, Lieutenant. Chores first?” Rick—short for Ricardo, surname unknown, date of birth unknown, place of birth unknown—slouched nonchalantly against the plastic window at the front of his cell. He didn’t sound desperate—yet.

“Right.”

From the incubator she removed the three pints of blood, “borrowed” from the base hospital, which had been warming since the last shift. She poured them into clean beakers, the only useful glassware at hand, and reached through the small panel in the window to Rick’s cell to set the glasses of blood on a table inside. It wasn’t really any different than feeding raw meat to the griffin.

Rick waited until the panel was closed before moving to the table. He looked composed, classic, like he should have been wearing a silk cravat and dinner jacket instead of jeans and a cotton shirt.

“Cheers.” He drank down the first glass without pause.

She didn’t watch him, not directly. The strange, hypnotic power of his gaze had been proven experimentally. So she watched his slender hands, the shoulder of his white shirt, the movement of his throat as he swallowed.

He lowered the beaker and sighed. “Ah. Four hours old. Fine vintage.” His mouth puckered. A faint blush began to suffuse his face, which had been deathly pale.

Robin continued the last leg of her rounds. The next room contained aquariums, large dolphin tanks with steel catwalks ringing the edges. Bars reaching from the catwalks to the ceiling enclosed the tanks, forming cages around the water.

Robin retrieved a pail of fish—cut-up tuna, whole mackerel, a few abalone mixed with kelp leaves—from the refrigerator at the end of the work space and climbed the stairs to the top edge of the south tank.

“How are you, Marina?”

A woman lounged on an artificial rock that broke the surface of the water in the middle of the tank. Hugging a convenient outcrop of plaster, she played with her bronze-colored hair. Instead of legs she had a tail: long, covered in shimmering, blue-silver scales, ending in a broad fin that flapped the water lazily.

The mermaid covered her mouth with her pale hand and laughed. It was teasing, vicious laughter. Marina seldom spoke.

“Here you are, when you’re hungry.” Robin nudged the pail to where the mermaid could reach it through the bars.

Marina’s laughter doubled. She arched her back, baring her small breasts, and pushed into the water. Diving under, she spun, her muscular tail pumping her in a fast loop around the rock’s chain anchor. On the surface, the rock swayed, causing ripples to spread. Bubbles streamed from her long hair, a silver trail.

Suddenly, she broke the surface and shook her hair, spraying water. Still laughing, her gaze darted across the catwalk to the north tank. Slyly, she looked back at Robin, writhed so she floated on her back, and splashed her tail.

Robin looked at the north tank, which until that night had been empty. A seal, torpedo-shaped, rubbery, its gray skin mottled with black, lay on the artificial rock and stared at her with black, shining eyes. The new arrival. A tag, sealed in a plastic, waterproof cover, hung from the rail by the cage. It read:

On loan from the British Alternative Biologies Laboratory. HOMO PINNIPEDIA. Common names: selkie (Scottish), silke (Irish)

A selkie. It used its sealskin to travel through the water, but it could shed the skin to walk on land as a human. The creature raised itself on its flippers and looked at her with interest. Real, human interest shone in those round black eyes.

“Wow,” Robin murmured. What were they going to do with a selkie?

She leaned on the railing, watching for a time, but the selkie didn’t move. She kept a notebook, a journal for informal observations and such. She could write: “seal, lounging.”

She had to walk rounds every two hours, since many of the subjects didn’t show up on the video monitors. She was supposed to conduct formal interviews with Rick, since he was obviously most active during the night watch. But Ottoman had collected all the arcane information he could from him—without going so far as staking and dissecting him—months ago, so they usually just chatted. Tonight, though, she found herself leaning in the doorway to the aquatics lab. The lights over the aquariums were dim. The water seemed to glow with its own blue aura.

“It won’t change form while you’re staring at it,” Rick said.

“I’m just curious.”

Now, the seal swam, fluidly circling, peering at her through the thick glass, disappearing regularly as it bobbed to the surface for air.

“‘It.’ Don’t you even know what it is?” Bradley Njalson, the werewolf, had woken up. His deep voice echoed from his bed against the far wall of his cell.

“Yes, oh great biologist,” Rick said. “Have you sexed the specimen?”

She’d tried, but the seal deftly managed to keep that part of its anatomy turned away from her. Not that external genitalia would be visible on a marine mammal.

“The tag didn’t say,” she said. She’d looked for the research files and the reports that had arrived with the selkie, but Ottoman had locked them up before rushing off to his conference.

For all she knew, it was just a seal.

The next night, she spent most of her shift sitting on the top step of the steel catwalk stairs, watching it.

Splashing in the south tank, Marina pulled herself to the bars and watched Robin watching the other tank.

“Marina, what do you know about selkies?”

The mermaid, who’d been collected in Dingle Bay in Ireland several years before, had been humming a song, an Irish-sounding jig. “A mermaid died to save a silke once.”

“Can you tell me about it?”

“Ask ’im.”

Robin turned to where the mermaid nodded, to where a man hung on to the bars of the selkie’s cage, holding himself half out of the water, smiling. Surprised, Robin jumped to her feet.

He was lean, muscular. Slick with water, his pale skin shone. Black hair dripped past his shoulders. His face was solid, unblemished. He didn’t grip the bars like a prisoner; he held them loosely, using them to balance as he treaded water. His smile was playful, like she was inside the cage and he was studying her.

Tentatively, she nodded a greeting. “Hello.”

He pushed himself away from the bars, gliding back through the water. He was naked and totally unself-conscious. His body was as sculptured and handsome as his face. He had the broad shoulders and muscular arms of an Olympic swimmer, powerful legs, every muscle in his torso was defined. She could have used his body for an anatomy lecture.

He swam to the artificial rock, climbed out of the water, and sat back, reclining. He spread his arms, exposing to best advantage his broad chest, toned abdomen and … “genitalia” was too clinical a word for what he displayed. He was posing for her.

Next to him lay a bundle of gray, rubbery skin.

Robin stood at the bars of his cage, looking through them for an unobstructed view. She didn’t remember moving there. She took a deep, reflexive breath. Her heartbeat wouldn’t slow down.

Marina laughed uncontrollably, both hands over her mouth, tail flapping. Her voice was musical, piercing.

Robin fled the room.

Back in the main lab, she stood with her back against the wall, eyes closed, gasping.

“Let me guess. The selkie—male?” Rick’s tone was politely inquisitive.

The flush in Robin’s face became one of embarrassment. So much for the biologist and her professional demeanor. “Yes. Yes, he is.”

“They have a knack for that.”

“A knack for what?”

“Flustering young women out of their wits. I’m sure you know the stories.”

Since her posting to the center, Robin had had to question all the myths and ancient tales. They might be just stories; then again.… She went to the bookshelves to look up “selkie” in Brigg’s Encyclopedia of Fairies.

“How do you do it?” Rick asked, moving to the end of his window.

“Do what?”

“Remain so clinical, when confronted with so many contradictions to your assumptions about the world.”

“I expand my assumptions,” she said.

“What about the magic? Your inability to control your reaction to the selkie. You are so careful, Lieutenant, not to look into my eyes.”

The impulse was, of course, to look at him. The voice hinted at rewards she would find when she did. Mystery. Power. She resisted, taking the book to her desk, passing Rick’s cell on the way. She looked at the collar of his shirt. “Why are you all so damn seductive?”

“It’s in the blood.” He grinned. The allure disappeared. He could turn it on and off like a light switch.

Brad laughed, a sound like a growl.

Robin almost wished for the seal back. It had been much less distracting. For the rest of the night, the skin remained folded on the rock, and the man watched her. She turned her back on him to check off her rounds on the charts, and when she looked again he was right there, pressed against the bars. Sometimes, their faces were only inches apart. Sometimes, she didn’t shy away, and she could feel his warm breath. He never said a word.

She was attracted to the selkie. That was a statement, an observation, something empirical with explanations having to do with the fact that she was a young woman and he was a young man. A very handsome young man. Hormones were identifiable. Controllable.

So why couldn’t she seem to control the way her body flushed every time she entered the aquatics lab? Rick had mentioned magic. But the center was here precisely because magic didn’t exist, only biology that had not yet been explained.

Biology. She needed a cold shower.

Wednesday night.

She turned around after setting down Marina’s supper and tripped on the catwalk. No, she didn’t trip—Marina had reached through the bars, grabbed her ankle, and tipped her over. The mermaid was stronger than she looked. Robin sprawled across the catwalk between the tanks, too surprised to move, lying with the meat of her palms digging into the steel treads.

The selkie was by the bars, right beside her, reaching through. He touched her hand. Even though his hand was damp and cool, Robin thought her skin would catch fire. He took her hand, brought it through the bars, and kissed it, touching each knuckle with his lips.

When she didn’t pull away, he grew bold, turning her hand, kissing the inside of her wrist, tracing her thumb with his tongue, sucking on the tip of a finger. She hadn’t imagined she could feel like this, all her nerves focused on what he was doing to her. She closed her eyes. Nothing existed in the world but her hand and his mouth.

She was on duty. This was not allowed. She should stand up and leave. Write a report about the cooperative behavior of the selkie and the mermaid. Marina was laughing, quietly now, from behind her rock.

Gradually, Robin slid forward so that her face was at the bars. She shouldn’t be doing this. The security cameras recorded everything. The selkie kissed her. His lips moved slowly, carefully tasting every part of her mouth, letting her taste him. His hands cupped her face. If it hadn’t been for the bars, she would have let him pull her into the water.

He drew away first. The bars kept her from reaching after him. He swam a few feet away, holding her gaze until he reached the door of the cage, where he lingered, waiting. The message: If she wanted to continue, she’d have to open the door.

Well then, that was it. She lay on the catwalk, her hand still thrust through the bars, dangling in the cool water.

She used the bars to pull herself to her feet. She trembled a little, her heart racing. Nerves, that was all. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. She could still feel his lips.

She planned to go straight to the next room. The control box to deactivate the electronic locks on the cages was at the top of the stairs. A single move. That’s all it would take. Marina made a sound, part sympathetic, part mocking.

She walked past the control box, into the next room. Her lips pursed, her blood rushed.

“Lieutenant?” Rick said.

Ignoring him, she continued to the side room that held the bank of a dozen TV monitors, showing the view from cameras focused on every enclosure in the center. Jones the dog was gnawing on a rawhide bone. The griffin was scratching the steel wall of its cell. The unicorn stood with a foot cocked, nose to the floor, sleeping. In the aquatics lab, Marina was basking on her rock, brushing her hair with her fingers, probably singing as well. The selkie, still in human form, swam back and forth in front of the door, like he was pacing. Like he was waiting.

She shut off the cameras, rewound the tapes, and erased the evening’s footage. All the monitors went to static. She left a note for the day shift complaining that the security system was on the fritz, that she’d tried to fix it and failed.

On her way back to the aquatics lab, Rick called, his voice harsh. “Lieutenant Green, this isn’t you. This is the magic. Selkie magic. Stop and think what you’re doing.”

She paused at the door. She was sure she knew what she was doing. But she’d read the stories, and Rick was right. Male selkies had a predilection for seducing women. This wasn’t her, it was the magic.

And she wanted it.

The hand that pressed the button for the lock to the north tank was not hers. Not really.

The door to the selkie’s cage opened with a small noise. She kept her back to it, her breath short, her eyes closed with the realization of what she was doing. She’d worked so hard, stayed in control her whole life, and now she did nothing but wait. She gripped the railing by the stairs.

She heard dripping, water rushing off a body climbing onto the catwalk. Still, the touch on her shoulders came as a shock and made her flinch. He must have sensed her anxiety, because he brushed her arm gently, stroking lightly with fingertips until she relaxed. Letting her grow accustomed to him, as if he were taming a wild animal. Then both his hands touched her, moved along her arms to her shoulders. Her shirt grew damp with his touch.

He kissed the back of her neck at her hairline, below the twist she kept her hair up in. His breath was hot on her skin. Her body melted, slumping into his touch. He pulled her back, away from the stairs, slipped his body in front of hers, and pressed her against the cage. She was limp, unseeing. She let him guide her.

He nuzzled her neck. Her nerves tingled with every touch. Overwhelmed, she moaned softly. His hands moved to the buttons of her dress shirt. He had them open before she realized it, and his hands were inside, cupping her breasts, fingers slipping under her bra.

Instead of putting her hands on his shoulders to push him away, like she should have done, Robin clutched at him, her fingers slipping on his slick skin. She dug her nails in for a better grip.

“Hmm,” he murmured and pinned her against the bars. It was the first sound she’d ever heard him make.

He pulled her arms away just long enough to take her shirt off. His hand slid easily over her skin, and her bra fell away. His kisses moved from her neck, down to her breasts. She wrapped her arms around his head, holding him close.

She bent, unconsciously trying to pull away from so much sensation, so much of him, but the bars kept her close to him. She couldn’t get away. She didn’t want to. Skillfully, more deftly than she could have thought from someone who lived in water and didn’t wear clothes, he opened the zipper of her skirt, slipped his hands into her panties. One hand caressed her backside, the other—played. Oh—she struggled to kick her shoes off, to get her skirt and pantyhose off, to give him better access. He helped.

Her clothes gone, they were naked together. Skin pressed against skin. His erection was hard against her thigh, insistent. He paid attention to nothing but her, and she was overwhelmed. Locking her against him, he eased her down to the catwalk.

They were going to do it, right here on the catwalk, her clothes awkwardly spread out to protect her from the steel. Marina softly sang something in Irish that was no doubt very bawdy.

Robin felt like she had saved herself just for this moment.

The next evening, she brought hay to the unicorn’s cell.

“Here you go. Come on.”

The unicorn stayed at the far end of the room, its head down, its ears laid back, its nostrils flaring angrily.

Robin stood, arms limp at her sides. Of course. She left the hay, closed the door, and continued her rounds.

She found a note in the lab from the day shift explaining that the problem with the security system had been fixed by simply changing out the fuses, and if it happened again she should try it. The officer in charge sounded testy that they’d lost a whole evening’s worth of surveillance. Not that anything around here ever changed.

Except that it had, everything had changed, and Robin didn’t want anyone to know it. She shut down the cameras again, and removed fuses from half the monitors as well, blinding them.

“Lieutenant,” Rick said to her as she removed his pints from the incubator and prepared his supper. “Look at yourself. This isn’t like you. He has enchanted you.”

“I don’t want to hear it,” she murmured, sliding his beakers of blood through the slot in the window.

Rick didn’t look at them; instead, he pressed himself to the window, palms flat against the plastic, imploring. “He’s using you. He doesn’t care about you, he’s only manipulating you.”

She looked at him. Not his eyes, but his cheekbones, his ear, the dark fringe of hair. Anything but his eyes. “Just like you would do, if I opened your door and let you seduce me?”

Which wasn’t fair, because Rick had never tried to seduce her, never tried to take advantage of her. Not that she’d ever given him the opportunity. But he’d always spoken so kindly to her. He’d spoken to her. Until now, she had never thought of Rick as anything but the elegant man who was supposed to be a vampire, locked in a prison cell.

“I’d never hurt you, Robin.”

Now when he looked at her, she flushed. Quickly, she turned toward the aquatics lab.

“Robin, stop,” he implored. “Don’t go in there. Don’t let him use you like this.”

She gripped the doorway so hard her fingers trembled. “I’ve never felt like this before,” she murmured.

She hadn’t meant for him to hear, but he was a vampire, with a vampire’s hearing. He replied, “It’s not real. Let it go.”

“It feels … I can’t,” she said. Because she had never felt like this before, she had never felt so good, so much before, it was like a drug that filled her up and pushed every other worry aside. A part of her knew Rick was right, that if this feeling was a drug, then she’d become an addict in a day and she should stop this.

The rest of her didn’t care.

When she reached the aquatics lab, the selkie hung on to the door of the cage, his dark eyes shining in anticipation. As soon as she’d given Marina her supper, Robin pressed the button for the lock.

Friday night.

Colonel Ottoman left a message on the answering machine saying he’d be back Saturday. So this was it, for her and the selkie.

She lay in his arms, on the rock in the aquarium. He played with her loose, damp hair, running his fingers through it. She held his other arm around her middle. He was strong, silent. He wrapped her up with himself when they were together.

She couldn’t let it end.

“We’ll go away, you and I.”

He looked away and laughed silently. He kissed her hand and shook his head.

It was a game to him. She couldn’t be sure what he thought; he never spoke. She didn’t know if he couldn’t or wouldn’t.

“Why not?”

He traced his finger along her jaw, down her neck. Then he nestled against the rock and closed his eyes.

She couldn’t hope to understand him. Colonel Ottoman was right, they weren’t even human.

His sealskin lay nearby, on the rock where he had discarded it. She grabbed it, jumped into the water, and swam to the door. He splashed, diving after her, but she climbed onto the catwalk and slammed the door shut before he reached her.

She clutched the skin to her breast. Glaring at her, he gripped the bars of the locked door.

“Tell me why I shouldn’t do this.”

He pressed his lips into a line and rattled the door.

She put the skin out of reach of the cage and pulled on the skirt and shirt of her uniform. All expression of playfulness, of seduction, had left the selkie. His jaw was tight, his brow furrowed.

Skin in hand, she ran to the main lab where she found a knapsack stashed under her desk. She needed clothes for him, maybe an extra lab coat …

“You know how all the selkie stories end, don’t you?” Rick leaned on his window.

“They’re just stories.”

“I’m just a story.”

She smirked. “You’re no Dracula.”

“You’ve never seen me outside this cage, my dear.”

She stopped and looked at him. His eyes were blue.

“Robin, think carefully about what you’re planning. He has enchanted you.” The vampire’s worried expression seemed almost fatherly.

“I—I can’t give him up.”

“Outside this room, you won’t have a choice. You will throw away your career, your life, for that?”

The official acronym for it was AWOL, not to mention stealing from a government installation. Her career, as far as Robin could tell, amounted to studying people in cages. People who defied study, no matter how many cameras and electrodes were trained on them. The selkie had shown her something that couldn’t be put in a cage, a range of emotions that escaped examination. He’d shown her passion, something she’d been missing without even knowing it. She wanted to take him away from the sterility of a filtered aquarium and a steel cage. She wanted to make love with him on a beach, with the sound of ocean waves behind them.

“I have this.” She held up the knapsack in which she had stuffed the sealskin and left the lab to stash it in her car and find some clothes.

For all its wonder and secrecy, the center was poorly funded—it didn’t produce the results and military applications that the nearby bionic and psychic research branches did—and inadequately supervised.

She knew the building and video surveillance patterns well enough to be able to smuggle the selkie to her car without leaving evidence. Not that it mattered when Rick would no doubt give Colonel Ottoman a full report. She waited until close to the end of the shift to retrieve the selkie. He came with her docilely, dressed in the spare sweats she gave him.

Marina sat on her rock and sang, her light voice echoing in the lab.

The selkie lingered for a moment until Marina waved good-bye. Robin pulled him to the next room.

“Sir,” Rick, hands pressed to the plastic of his cell, called. The selkie met Rick’s gaze unflinching. “I know your kind. Treat her gently.”

The selkie didn’t react. He seemed to study the vampire, expressionless, and only looked away when Robin squeezed his hand.

Robin lingered a moment. “Good-bye,” she said.

“Take care, Robin.”

Impulse guided her again, and she went to the control box for the lock to Rick’s cell. She pushed the button; the lock clicked open with the sound of a buzzer. The door opened a crack. Rick stared at the path to freedom for a long moment.

Not lingering to see what the vampire would do next, she gripped the selkie’s hand and ran.

She smuggled him in the backseat of her car, making him crouch on the floorboard. Routine did her service now; the shift had ended, and the guard at the gate waved her through.

They’d be looking for her in a matter of hours. She had to get rid of the car, find a place to hide out, wait for the bank to open so she could empty her account. She could leave tracks now, then disappear.

Desperation made her a criminal. She ditched her car, swapping it for a sedan she hotwired. She kept the sealskin under her feet, where the selkie couldn’t get to it.

Two more stolen cars, a thousand miles of highway, and some fast-talking at the border, flashing her military ID and spouting some official nonsense, found her in Mexico, cruising down the coast of Baja.

She knew the stories. She should have driven inland.

They stayed in a fishing village. Robin’s savings would hold out for a couple of months at least, so she rented a shack and they lived as hermits, making love, watching the sea.

Convinced that she was different, that she was smarter than those women in the stories, she hid the sealskin not in the house, but buried it in the sand by a cliff. She wrestled a rock over the spot while the selkie slept.

He was no less passionate than before. He spent hours, though, staring out at the ocean. Sometimes, he wore the same sweats she’d smuggled him out in. Usually, he wore nothing at all.

She joined him one evening, sitting beside him on still-warm sand, curling her legs under her loose peasant skirt. Her shirt was too big, hanging off one shoulder, and she didn’t wear a bra—it seemed useless, just one more piece of clothing they’d have to remove before making love. Nothing of the poised, put-together young army lieutenant remained. That person wouldn’t have recognized her now.

He didn’t turn his eyes from the waves, but moved a hand to her thigh and squeezed. The touch filled her with heat and lust, making her want to straddle him here and now. He never seemed to tire of her, nor she of him. Wasn’t that close enough to love?

She kissed his shoulder and leaned against him. “I don’t even know what your name is,” she said. The selkie smiled, chuckled to himself, and didn’t seem to care that she didn’t have a name for him.

He never spoke. Never said that he loved her, though his passion for her seemed endless. She touched his chin, turned his gaze from the ocean and made him look at her. She only saw ocean there. She thought about the skin, buried in sand a mile inland, and wondered—was he still a prisoner? Did he still see bars locking him in?

Holding his face in her hands, she kissed him, and he wrapped his arms around her, kissing her in return. He tipped her back on the sand, trapped her with his arms, turned all his attention to her and her body, and she forgot her doubts.

One night, she felt the touch of a kiss by her ear. A soft voice whispered in a brogue, “Ye did well, lass. No hard feelings at all.”

She thought it was a dream, so she didn’t open her eyes. But she reached across the bed and found she was alone. Starting awake, she sat up. The selkie was gone. She ran out of the shack, out to the beach.

Sealskin in hand, he ran for the water, a pale body in the light of a full moon.

“No!” she screamed. How had he found it? How could he leave her? All of it was for nothing. Why had he waited until now to speak, when it didn’t matter anymore?

He never looked back, but dove into the waves, swam past the breakers, and disappeared. She never saw him again. The next shape that appeared was the supple body of a gray seal breaking the surface, diving again, appearing farther out, swimming far, far away.

She sat on the beach and cried, unable to think of anything but the square of sand where she sat, and the patch of shining water where she saw him last. He’d taken her, drained her, she was empty now.

She stayed in Mexico, learning Spanish and working in the village cleaning fish. She treasured mundane moments these days. Nights, she let the sound of water lull her to sleep.

The army never found her, but someone else did, a few months later.

That night, she sat on the beach, watching moon-silvered waves crash onto the white sand, like her selkie used to. Sitting back, she grunted at the weight of her belly. The selkie hadn’t left her so empty, after all. She stroked the roundness, felt the baby kick.

She didn’t hear footsteps approach and gasped, startled, when a man sat down beside her.

Dark hair, an aristocratic face, permanently wry expression. He was even graceful sitting in the sand. He wore tailored black slacks and a silk shirt in a flattering shade of dark blue, with the cuffs unbuttoned and rolled up—the kind of clothes she always imagined him in. He flashed a smile and looked out at the water.

“Rick! What are you doing here?”

“Besides watching the waves?”

“So you did it. You left.” She was smiling. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d smiled.

“Of course. I didn’t want to stay to explain to Colonel Ottoman what you’d done. I brought Mr. Njalson along with me.”

“Brad’s here?”

“He’s hunting back on the mesa. Enjoying stretching all four legs.”

Robin sighed, still smiling. Of course, Rick could have gotten himself out of there—just as soon as he convinced one of the doctors to look in his eyes in an unguarded moment. Now she wished she’d let them all out a long time before she did.

“I was worried about you,” he said, in a tone that made it a prompt, a question rather than a statement.

“I’d have thought you’d have much more interesting and important things to do than look after me.”

“I had the time.”

“How did you find me?”

He shrugged. “I know the stories. I followed the coast. Asked questions. I’m very patient.”

She imagined he would be. He could have left that lab any time he wanted. Maybe he stayed to see what the researchers were up to. To experience something new for a while.

“When are you due?” Rick asked softly.

He startled her back to the moment, and she swallowed the tightness in her throat. “In a month. It’ll have webbed feet and hands. Like in the stories.”

“And how are you?”

She took a breath, held it. She still cried every night. Not just from missing the selkie anymore. She had another burden now, one she’d never considered, never even contemplated. The supernatural world, which she’d tried to treat so clinically, would be with her forever. She didn’t know the first thing about raising a child. She didn’t know how she was going to teach this one to swim.