Sea Witch Read online

  “Virginia Kantra is an up-and-coming star.”

  —Karen Robards

  PRAISE FOR

  Sea Witch

  “Sea Witch will definitely make your temperature rise! Virginia Kantra delivers thrills and chills in this sizzling new paranormal series.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Teresa Medeiros

  “A breathtaking new world I intend to visit again. The adventure, romance, and emotion held me captive. A definite must read, and I’m so glad I didn’t miss it!”

  —New York Times bestselling author Lora Leigh

  “A haunting new world of passion and danger, with a truly wonderful hero. I’m already impatient for the next book in what promises to be a fascinating series!”

  —USA Today bestselling author Nalini Singh

  Home Before Midnight

  “Sexy and suspenseful…a really good read.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Karen Robards

  “Virginia Kantra’s books are on my keeper shelf.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Suzanne Brockmann

  “Virginia Kantra is a sensitive writer with a warm sense of humor, a fine sense of sexual tension, and an unerring sense of place.”

  —BookPage

  Close Up

  “Holy moly, action-adventure-romance fans! You are going to LOVE this book! I highly, highly recommend it.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Suzanne Brockmann

  “A story fraught with intense emotions and danger…Kantra clearly demonstrates that she’s a talent to be reckoned with.”

  —Romantic Times

  “Kantra’s first foray into single-title fiction is fast-paced, engrossing, and full of nail-biting suspense.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Sabrina Jeffries

  “Honest, intelligent romance.”

  —Romance B(u)y the Book

  MORE PRAISE FOR VIRGINIA KANTRA

  AND HER BESTSELLING NOVELS

  “Smart, sexy, and sophisticated—another winner.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Lori Foster

  “An involving, three-dimensional story that is scary, intriguing, and sexy.”

  —All About Romance

  “Kantra creates powerfully memorable characters.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “Virginia Kantra is an autobuy…Her books are keepers and her heroes are to die for!”

  —New York Times bestselling author Suzanne Brockmann

  “Spectacularly suspenseful and sexy. Don’t miss it!”

  —Romantic Times

  “Packs a wallop!”

  —USA Today bestselling author Elizabeth Bevarly

  Berkley Sensation Titles by Virginia Kantra

  The Children of the Sea Novels

  SEA WITCH

  SEA FEVER

  SEA LORD

  IMMORTAL SEA

  FORGOTTEN SEA

  HOME BEFORE MIDNIGHT

  CLOSE UP

  Anthologies

  SHIFTER

  (with Angela Knight, Lora Leigh, and Alyssa Day)

  OVER THE MOON

  (with Angela Knight, MaryJanice Davidson, and Sunny)

  BURNING UP

  (with Angela Knight, Nalini Singh, and Meljean Brook)

  Sea Witch

  VIRGINIA KANTRA

  BERKLEY SENSATION, NEW YORK

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

  Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196,

  South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  SEA WITCH

  A Berkley Sensation Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley Sensation mass-market edition / July 2008

  Copyright © 2008 by Virginia Kantra.

  Excerpt from Sea Fever copyright © 2008 by Virginia Kantra.

  Cover art by Tony Mauro.

  Cover design by Rita Frangie.

  Cover logo by axb group.

  Interior text design by Laura K. Corless.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ISBN: 978-1-4406-3490-1

  BERKLEY® SENSATION

  Berkley Sensation Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  BERKLEY SENSATION and the “B” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I made this story up, so any mistakes are all mine. But I still relied on the expertise, input, and/or support of the following people to get some stuff right:

  Sergeant Walter Grzyb, Maine State Police, criminal investigation division, who patiently answered all my questions; Sergeant Charles Libby, Portland, Maine, Police Department, for coming to my rescue under a tight deadline; Lieutenant A. J. Carter (ret.), who treats even the craziest questions seriously; and Wally Lind, senior crime scene analyst (ret.), of the crime scene writers loop.

  Thanks to the incredible Suz Brockmann for sharing her wonderful community of readers with me; to Alyssa Day, Ed Gaffney, Cathy and Rob Mann, and Eric Ruben; and to First Lieutenant Sarah Frantz of the North Carolina Army National Guard.

  I am also grateful to Eileen Dreyer, who knows her fairies and asked all the right questions; Melissa McClone, who made this a better book; and Kristen Dill, for her amazing friendship and for not objecting when I rechristened her dogs Buster and Brownie.

  Huge and heartfelt thanks to my brilliant, hardworking editor, Cindy Hwang, for never once saying, “You want to write a book about what?” and for thinking up kick-ass titles.

  To Damaris Rowland, w
ho believes in me and the magic of the sea.

  To my children, who (mostly) schedule their crises and celebrations around my deadlines.

  And always and forever to Michael, who took me to Maine.

  My father was the keeper of the Eddystone light

  And he slept with a mermaid one fine night

  Of this union there came three…

  —TRADITIONAL SHANTY

  I am a man upon the land;

  I am a selchie on the sea.

  —ORKNEY BALLAD

  “So I shall die,” said the little mermaid, “and as the foam of the sea I shall be driven about never again to hear the music of the waves, or to see the pretty flowers nor the red sun. Is there anything I can do to win an immortal soul?”

  —HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN

  Sea Witch

  Table of Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  Sea Fever

  1

  IF SHE DIDN’T HAVE SEX WITH SOMETHING SOON, she would burst out of her skin.

  She plunged through the blue-shot water, driven by a whisper on the wind, a pulse in her blood that carried her along like a warm current. The lavender sky was brindled pink and daubed with indigo clouds. On the beach, fire leaped from the rocks, glowing with the heat of the dying sun.

  Her mate was dead. Dead so long ago that the tearing pain, the fresh, bright welling of fury and grief, had ebbed and healed, leaving only a scar on her heart. She barely missed him anymore. She did not allow herself to miss him.

  But she missed sex.

  Her craving flayed her, hollowed her from the inside out. Lately she’d felt as if she were being slowly scraped to a pelt, a shell, lifeless and empty. She wanted to be touched. She yearned to be filled again, to feel someone move inside her, deep inside her, hard and urgent inside her.

  The memory quickened her blood.

  She rode the waves to shore, drawn by the warmth of the flames and the heat of the young bodies clustered there. Healthy human bodies, male and female.

  Mostly male.

  * * *

  Some damn fool had built a fire on the point. Police Chief Caleb Hunter spotted the glow from the road.

  Mainers welcomed most visitors to their shore. But Bruce Whittaker had made it clear when he called that the islanders’ tolerance didn’t extend to bonfires on the beach.

  Caleb had no particular objection to beach fires, as long as whoever set the fire used the designated picnic areas or obtained a permit. At the point, the wind was likely to carry sparks to the trees. The volunteers at the fire department, fishermen mostly, didn’t like to be pulled out of bed to deal with somebody else’s carelessness.

  Caleb pulled his marked Jeep behind the litter of vehicles parked on the shoulder of the road: a tricked-out Wrangler, a ticket-me-red Firebird, and a late-model Lexus with New York plates. Two weeks shy of Memorial Day, and already the island population was swelling with folks from Away. Caleb didn’t mind. The annual influx of summer people paid his salary. Besides, compared to Mosul or Sadr City or even Portland down the coast, World’s End was a walk on the beach. Even at the height of the season.

  Caleb could have gone back to the Portland PD. Hell, after his medical discharge from the National Guard, he could have gone anywhere. Since 9/11, with the call-up of the reserves and the demands of homeland security, most big-city police departments were understaffed and overwhelmed. A decorated combat veteran—even one with his left leg cobbled together with enough screws, plates, and assorted hardware to set off the metal detector every time he walked through the police station doors—was a sure hire.

  The minute Caleb heard old Roy Miller was retiring, he had put in for the chief’s job on World’s End, struggling upright in his hospital bed to update his résumé. He didn’t want to make busts or headlines anymore. He just wanted to keep the peace, to find some peace, to walk patrol without getting shot at. To feel the wind on his face again and smell the salt in the air.

  To drive along a road without the world blowing up around him.

  He eased from the vehicle, maneuvering his stiff knee around the steering wheel. He left his lights on. Going without backup into an isolated area after dark, he felt a familiar prickle between his shoulder blades. Sweat slid down his spine.

  Get over it. You’re on World’s End. Nothing ever happens here.

  Which was about all he could handle now.

  Nothing.

  He crossed the strip of trees, thankful this particular stretch of beach wasn’t all slippery rock, and stepped silently onto sand.

  * * *

  She came ashore downwind behind an outcrop of rock that reared from the surrounding beach like the standing stones of Orkney.

  Water lapped on sand and shale. An evening breeze caressed her damp skin, teasing every nerve to quivering life. Her senses strained for the whiff of smoke, the rumble of male laughter drifting on the wind. Her nipples hardened.

  She shivered.

  Not with cold. With anticipation.

  She combed her wet hair with her fingers and arranged it over her bare shoulders. First things first. She needed clothes.

  Even in this body, her blood kept her warm. But she knew from past encounters that her nakedness would be…unexpected. She did not want to raise questions or waste time and energy in explanations.

  She had not come ashore to talk.

  Desire swelled inside her like a child, weighting her breasts and her loins.

  She picked her way around the base of the rock on tender, unprotected feet. There, clumped like seaweed above the tide line, was that a…blanket? She shook it from the sand—a towel—and tucked it around her waist, delighting in the bright orange color. A few feet farther on, in the shadows outside the bonfire, she discovered a gray fleece garment with long sleeves and some kind of hood. Drab. Very drab. But it would serve to disguise her. She pulled the garment over her head, fumbling her arms through the sleeves, and smiled ruefully when the cuffs flopped over her hands.

  The unfamiliar friction of the clothing chafed and excited her. She slid through twilight, her pulse quick and hot. Still in the shadows, she paused, her widened gaze sweeping the group of six—seven, eight—figures sprawled or standing in the circle of the firelight. Two females. Six males. She eyed them avidly.

  They were very young.

  Sexually mature, perhaps, but their faces were soft and unformed and their eyes shallow. The girls were shrill. The boys were loud. Raw and unconfident, they jostled and nudged, laying claim to the air around them with large, uncoordinated gestures.

  Disappointment seeped through her.

  “Hey! Watch it!”

  Something spilled on the sand. Her sensitive nostrils caught the reek of alcohol.

  Not only young, but drunk. Perhaps that explained the clumsiness.

  She sighed. She did not prey on drunks. Or children.

  Light stabbed at her pupils, twin white beams and flashing blue lights from the ridge above the beach. She blinked, momentarily disoriented.

  A girl yelped.

  A boy groaned.

  “Run,” someone shouted.

  Sand spurted as the humans darted and shifted like fish in the path of a shark. They were caught between the rock and the strand, with the light in their eyes and the sea at their backs. She followed their panicked glances, squinting toward the tree line.

  Silhouetted against the high white beams and dark, narrow tree trunks stood a tall, broad figure.

  Her blood rushed like the ocean in her ears. Her heart pounded. Even allowing for the distortion of the light, he loo
ked big. Strong. Male. His silly, constraining clothes only emphasized the breadth and power of his chest and shoulders, the thick muscles of his legs and arms.

  He moved stiffly down the beach, his face in shadow. As he neared the fire, red light slid greedily over his wide, clear forehead and narrow nose. His mouth was firm and unsmiling.

  Her gaze expanded to take him in. Her pulse kicked up again. She felt the vibration to the soles of her feet and the tips of her fingers.

  This was a man.

  * * *

  Kids.

  Caleb shook his head and pulled out his ticket book.

  Back when he was in high school, you got busted drinking on the beach, you poured your cans on the sand and maybe endured a lecture from your parents. Not that his old man had cared what Caleb did. After Caleb’s mom decamped with his older brother, Bart Hunter hadn’t cared about much of anything except his boat, his bottle, and the tides.

  But times—and statutes—had changed.

  Caleb confiscated the cooler full of beer.

  “You can’t take that,” one punk objected. “I’m twenty-one. It’s mine.”

  Caleb arched an eyebrow. “You found it?”

  “I bought it.”

  Which meant he could be charged with furnishing liquor to minors.

  Caleb nodded. “And you are…?”

  The kid’s jaw stuck out. “Robert Stowe.”

  “Can I see your license, Mr. Stowe?”

  He made them put out the fire while he wrote them up: seven citations for possession and—in the case of twenty-one-year-old Robert Stowe—a summons to district court.

  He handed back their drivers’ licenses along with the citations. “You boys walk the girls home now. Your cars will still be here in the morning.”

  “It’s too far to walk,” a pretty, sulky brunette complained. “And it’s dark.”

  Caleb glanced from the last tinge of pink in the sky to the girl. Jessica Dalton, her driver’s license read. Eighteen years old. Her daddy was a colorectal surgeon from Boston with a house right on the water, about a mile down the road.

  “I’d be happy to call your parents to pick you up,” he offered, straight-faced.