He didn‟t have any choices either.
“It‟s fine if you‟re a guy,” the girl added. She nodded toward the snack aisle, where a couple of dudes in flannel shirts
loaded up on corn chips and meat byproducts. “Guys work stern for their fathers until they make enough dough to go out on
their own. But if you‟re a girl, there‟s nothing to do here but raise babies or clean houses.”
“You could still work for your father,” Zack said. His mom was big on equal opportunity shit.
“I do. I‟m Stephanie Wiley.” In response to his blank look, she added, “Wiley‟s Grocery? George Wiley is my dad.”
“Zack Rodriguez.”
“I know. Your mom‟s the new doctor, right? You‟re a . . . senior?”
“Sophomore.”
“I‟m a junior.” She studied him a moment, making him conscious of his big nose and his awkward height and his lack of a
driver‟s license. She smiled. “Close enough.”
He stared back, his heart pounding. Close enough for what?
An elbow jabbed him hard in the back. “Whatever you‟re selling, Stephanie, faggot boy isn‟t buying.”
Shit.
Just . . . Shit.
Zack turned to face the two guys from the snack aisle, crowding behind him.
The girl sighed. “Jesus, Todd. Could you be a bigger prick?”
“Why don‟t you look and find out?” he invited.
His companion snickered.
Stephanie rolled her eyes. “Ignore these morons. They have limited intelligence and even smaller . . . vocabularies.”
They didn‟t need a big vocabulary to get their message across. Zack read it in their hostile looks, their fat, freckled faces,
clear as a posted warning: No Trespassing. Keep Out.
Fine by him. He wasn‟t here to make friends.
He dropped a ten on the counter.
“Summer people,” sneered the shorter of the two guys. “Throwing your money around.”
“Shut up, Doug,” the girl said. “He‟s one of us.”
But he wasn‟t. He couldn‟t ever be one of them. That was his problem.
The familiar bubble of panic swelled in his chest, squeezing his lungs until he couldn‟t breathe.
He pocketed his change and left.
Morgan of the finfolk leaned against a pillar at the back of the small dark church, chafing against his human form and the
need that drove him here. He was still stretched thin from the long sea crossing, his blood cold, his bones fluid, his very
essence draining away through the stones at his feet, dissipating with each exhalation.
He filled his lungs painfully. He belonged on Sanctuary supervising the work of reconstruction. He should not have to
abandon his duty and his people to chase their errant lord across the ocean.
But the sea lord, Conn ap Llyr, had bowed to his consort‟s desire to attend the birth of her niece on the humans‟ island of
World‟s End.
Morgan had been forced to follow.
Which was how he found himself in this human house of God, an unwilling witness to a baptism.
He stirred restively, stifled by the stink of humanity and the atmosphere inside the church.
The air was thick with angels. He could not breathe. The children of air pressed close around him like the brush of wings
against his face, like a weight on his chest, like a blade at his throat.
He drew another painful breath as the priest fumbled with his book. “What name do you give this child?”
“Grace Anne,” her parents answered together.
Morgan‟s eyes narrowed. He knew the infant‟s father, the selkie Dylan Hunter, newly created warden of this island. The
dark-haired woman beside him with the cross around her neck must be the child‟s mother.
“And what do you ask of God‟s church for Grace Anne?”
“Baptism.”
Morgan curled his lip. The children of the sea did not require the sacraments of men. They were one with the First