smaller than his old high school.
He cleared his throat. “Hi.”
She cocked her hip, tilted her head. “So, where were you out walking to?”
“Nowhere.” He was going nowhere. In more ways than one.
The porch light flicked on, and the front door opened, revealing a woman‟s backlit shape. “Steph, honey? Everything
okay?”
“Fine, Ma,” she yelled without turning around.
“What are you doing out there?”
“Just talking to a friend.”
“Well, don‟t be long.” The door closed.
“Parents.” Stephanie rolled her eyes. “They worry, you know?”
Guilt needled him as he thought of his unanswered phone, his mother‟s strained face as she sat at the foot of his bed.
He swallowed the lump in his throat. “Yeah, I know.”
Brilliant. Girls everywhere threw themselves at his feet because of his deep insights and sparkling conversation.
“It was even worse last summer,” she confided. “Some lunatic was running around the island killing people.”
“Yeah?” he asked, distracted. She was so interesting to look at, her mobile mouth with that silver lip ring, her small, firm
breasts.
“Well, one person. A woman from Away was murdered on the beach. Then Regina Barone at the restaurant got attacked by
some homeless guy. And after that, somebody broke into the clinic and beat the shit out of her and the doctor.”
“Probably looking for drugs,” Zack said. There. Practically a complete sentence.
“Probably. Anyway, my parents were really freaked.” She stuck her hands into the hip pockets of her jeans, studying him in
the dim light. “So . . . You want to sit for a while?”
His tongue felt too big for his mouth. “Sit?” he repeated stupidly.
“Out back.” Her smile flashed like a fish underwater, bright and quick. “We have a swing.”
“That would . . .” He cleared his throat. “That would be good. Great.”
Morgan glided down the stairs and melted into the long twilight of northern summer.
Sex or the sea?
The boy would seek one or the other. He was young, male, finfolk. At dinner he had quivered with too much tension, too
much energy, all of it unsatisfied.
He needed relief. That moment of entry into a body of water or a woman, the plunge and rock to completion, the ebbing
peace that followed release.
Morgan‟s lips curled back from his teeth. It was not only the boy who was frustrated tonight. But his own needs must wait.
Elizabeth‟s wry voice came back to him. “ First lesson in parenting. What you want doesn’t come first anymore. ”
He had to find the boy. Zachary.
At the fork in the road, Morgan raised his head, scenting the air. He could smell the fog rolling in from the water, heavy
with brine, and the breeze rising through the trees, carrying the scent of spruce and decaying leaves.
Right into town? Or left to the beach?
He pulled the pillowcase from his pocket. The beach, he decided. The boy was young for sex and new to the island. He
probably lacked an outlet beyond his own hand. So it would be the sea he aimed for.
More reason to find him and find him fast.
The finfolk charged with rebuilding Sanctuary sometimes had to be forcibly restrained to keep them on task and on land.
Even an experienced elemental could slip permanently beneath the wave, could lose forever the will and finally the ability to
take human form.
Zachary was not experienced. With an adolescent‟s raging hormones and lack of control, with no training or understanding
of his nature or his powers, he was doubly at risk.
Morgan gripped the pillowcase, casting for scent or sign of the boy‟s presence. He had not found his only son to lose him
again.