Love is Hell Page 14

  But that didn’t change her suspicion that somehow they had just spoken. Primal fear uncoiled in her belly, and for the second time that night, she backed away without looking. Her heel sliced open on the edge of a mussel shell. The sting of salt water made her wince as she walked farther away, unable to ignore the panic, the urge to run. She glanced back and saw that he hadn’t moved, hadn’t stopped watching her with that unwavering gaze. And her fear turned to fury.

  Then she saw the long black leather coat slung carelessly on the sand; it looked like a darker version of the coat Dreadlocks had offered her. She stepped on it and ground her blood-and-sand-caked foot on it. It wasn’t smooth like leather should be. Instead, the material under her foot was silk-soft fur, an animal’s pelt, a seal’s skin. It was a pelt.

  She pulled her gaze away from that dark pelt and stared at him. He still stood in the surf. Waves curled around him like the sea had formed arms of itself, hiding him, holding him. He smiled again and told her, “Take it. It’s yours now.”

  And she knew she had heard his voice that time; she’d felt the words on her skin like the wind that stirred the water. She didn’t want to reach down, didn’t want to lift that pelt into her arms, but she had no choice. Her bleeding foot had broken his glamour, ended his manipulation of her senses, and she knew him for what he truly was: a selchie. He was a fey creature, a seal person, and he wasn’t supposed to exist. Maybe it was fun to believe in them when she was a little girl sharing her storybooks with Nonny, but Alana knew that her grandmother’s insistence that selchies were real was just another type of make-believe. Seals didn’t walk on land among humans; they didn’t slip out of their Other-Skins. They were just beautiful myths. She knew that—

  except she was looking at a selchie who was telling her to take his Other-Skin. Just like the one at the bonfire.

  She stood motionless as she tried to process the enormity of what had happened, what was happening right now.

  Two selchies. I met two freaking selchies . . . who tried to trap me. And in that instant, she understood: the fairy tales were all wrong. It wasn’t the mortals’

  fault. Alana didn’t want to stay there looking at him, but she was no longer acting of her own volition.

  I am trapped.

  The fishermen in the old stories who’d taken the selchies’ pelts hadn’t been entrapping innocent fey creatures: they’d been entrapped by selchie women. Perhaps it was too hard for the fishermen to admit that they were the ones who got trapped, but Alana suddenly knew the truth that none of the stories had shared. A mortal could no more resist the pull of that pelt than the sea could refuse to obey the pull of the moon. Once she took the pelt, lifted it into her mortal arms, she was bound to him. She knew what he was, knew the trap was sprung, but she was no different from the mortals in the stories she’d grown up hearing. She could not resist. She took the pelt and ran, hoping she could foist it off on someone else before he found her, before Murrin followed her home—because he had to be Murrin, the one Dreadlocks was talking about, the one that the creepy selchie had told her was worse.

  Murrin watched her run, felt the irresistible need to follow her. She carried his skin with her: he had no choice but follow. It would have been better if she hadn’t run. With murmured epithets over her flight, he stepped out of the surf and made his way to the tiny caves the water had carved into the sandstone. Inside, he had his shore-clothes: woven sandals, well-worn jeans, a few shirts, and a timepiece. When his brother, Veikko, had gone ashore earlier, he’d borrowed the soft shirt Murrin had liked so. Instead, Murrin had to wear one that required fastening many small buttons. He hated buttons. Most of his family didn’t go shore-walking often enough that they needed many clothes, but Murrin had been on land often enough that the lack of a decent shirt was displeasing. He barely fastened the shirt, slipping a couple of the tiny disks into the equally tiny holes, and went to find her—the girl he’d chosen over the sea.

  He hadn’t meant for her to find his Other-Skin like this, not yet, not now. He’d intended to talk to her, but as he was coming out of the water, he’d seen her—here and not at the party. He watched her, trying to figure how to walk out of the surf without startling her, but then he felt it: the touch of her skin on his pelt. His pelt wasn’t to be there. It wasn’t to happen like this. He’d had a plan.

  A selchie couldn’t have both a mate and the water, so Murrin had waited until he found a girl intriguing enough to hold his attention. After living with the moods of the sea, it wasn’t an easy task to find a person worth losing the waves for. But I have.

  So he’d intended to ease her fears, to try to woo her instead of trapping her, but when she stepped on his Other-Skin, all of those choices had vanished. This was it: they were bound. Now, he was left doing the same thing his father had once done, trying to convince a mortal to trust him after he’d trapped her. The fact that he hadn’t put his pelt where she’d find it didn’t change anything. He was left trying to wait out her fears, to find a way to convince her to trust him, to hope for a way to persuade her to forgive him: all of the very same things he’d wanted to avoid.

  Mortals weren’t strong enough of will to refuse the enchantment that bound him to her. It wouldn’t make her love him, but selchies grew up knowing that love wasn’t often theirs to have. Tradition mattered more.

  Finding a mate, making a family, those mattered more.

  And Murrin’s plan to buck tradition by getting to know his intended first had gone horribly off course.

  Thanks to Veikko.

  At the dirty bathrooms along the beach parking lot, Alana saw a girl clad only in a thin top and ragged shorts. The girl was shivering, not that it was cold, but from something she’d shot up—or hadn’t been able to shoot. Usually, the junkies and vagrants clustered in small groups, but this one was alone.

  The pelt tingled and resumed looking again like a beautiful leather jacket as soon as Alana saw the girl.

  Perfect. Alana walked up and tried to hand it to the girl.

  “Here. You can use it to warm—”

  But the girl backed away with something like horror on her face. She glanced from the coat to Alana’s face, then out to the mostly empty lot. “I won’t tell or anything. Please? Just—” She made a gagging noise and turned away.

  Alana looked down. The pelt, still looking like a coat, was covered in blood. It was on her hands, her arms.

  Everywhere the seawater had been was now black-red in the glare of the streetlight. For a heartbeat, Alana thought she’d been wrong, that she’d hurt the selchie. She looked over her shoulder: a trail of almost perfectly tear-shaped droplets stretched behind her. Then, as she watched, those droplets shifted to a silvery-white, like someone had spilled mercury on the sand. They didn’t sink. They balanced atop the sand, holding their shape.

  Alana glanced down and saw the blood on the coat shift to silver, too.

  “See? It’s fine. Just take it. It’ll—”

  The shivering girl had already gone.

  “ . . . be fine,” Alana finished. She blinked back tears of frustration. “All I want is someone to hold out their arms so I can let go of it!”

  With the same surety that told her what Murrin was, what Dreadlocks was, she realized that she couldn’t cast the pelt away, but if someone was to reach for it, she could let go. It could fall to the ground, and then no one would be trapped. She just needed to find someone willing to reach out.

  Twice more as she walked home she tried. Each time it was the same: people looked at her with terror or disgust as she held out what looked like a bloody coat. Only when they turned away did the dampness of the coat resume the appearance of thick, salty tears. Whatever enchantment made her unable to resist taking the pelt was making it impossible to get rid of the thing, too. Alana thought about what she knew about selchies; her grandmother had told her stories of the seal people when Alana was a little girl: selchies, seal women, came to the shore. They slipped out of their Other-Skins, and sometimes,
if they weren’t careful, a fisherman or some random unmarried guy would find the skin and steal it. The new husbands hid the selchies’ Other-Skins to keep their wives entrapped. But Nonny hadn’t said anything about male selchies; she also hadn’t said that the seal women had entrapped the men. Nonny’s stories made the selchies seem so sad, with their freedom to change to their seal shape stolen when their Other-Skins were hidden away. In the stories, the selchies were the victims; the humans were the villains—snatching helpless seal wives from the sea, tricking them, having power over them. The stories were all quite clear: the selchies were entrapped . . . but in the real world, Alana was the one feeling trapped.

  By the time she reached her apartment, she was wishing—yet again—that Nonny was still around to ask. She felt like a little kid missing her grandmother so badly, but Nonny was the Grown-up, the one who’d made everything better, while Mom was as clueless as Alana felt most days.

  Outside her building, she paused. Their car was parked in the street alongside the building. Alana popped the trunk. Carefully, she folded the coat-pelt. After a furtive look around, she rubbed her face on the soft dark fur. Then, with a level of care she couldn’t control, she tucked it under the spare blanket her mother kept in the trunk—part of the emergency kit for when they broke down. It felt as if there wasn’t any other choice: she had to keep it safe, keep it out of his reach—and keep him out of others’ reach. Protect my mate. The words came unbidden— and very unwelcome—to her mind. She slammed the trunk and went to the front of the car. And as she did so often when she needed to be outside at night, she stretched out on the hood. It was still warm from the drive home from whatever party her mother’d been out to tonight. Alana stared up at the moon and whispered, “Oh, Nonny, I’m so screwed.”

  Then, Alana waited. He’d come. She knew he would.

  And having to face him with her mom lurking around, gleeful that Alana’d brought home a guy . . . it would only make a bad scene worse.

  Better to do this outside.

  Murrin saw her reclined on a car reminiscent of the ones he’d seen parked by the beach for days on end. It was unsightly—covered in rust spots, one door handle missing. She, however, was lovely, long limbs and curved body. Short pelt-brown hair framed her sharp-angled face. When he’d seen her on the beach several good tides ago, he’d known she was the one: a girl who loved the reef and the moon was a treasure. The waiting had been awful, but he’d watched her habits and planned how to approach her. Things weren’t going according to his plans, of course, but he’d find a way to make it work.

  “Wife?” His heart sped at saying it, naming her, finally saying the word to her. He stepped closer to the car, not close enough to touch her, but closer still. After so many years dreaming of finding a wife, it was a heady thing to be so near her. It might not be how he’d imagined it, but it still was.

  She sat up, her feet scraping against the car’s hood.

  “What did you call me?”

  “Wife.” He approached her slowly, hands held out to the sides. No matter how many mortals he’d watched, or how many he’d met, he was unsure still. Obviously, calling her

  “wife” was not the right tactic. He tried again. “I don’t know your other name yet.”

  “Alana. My only name is Alana.” She moved so she was sitting with her legs folded to the side, in a posture typical of a selchie girl.

  It was endearing. Her words weren’t, though.

  “I’m not your wife,” she said.

  “I am Murrin. Would you—”

  “I’m not your wife,” she repeated, slightly louder.

  “Would you walk with me, Alana?” He loved the feel of her name—Alana, my rock, my harbor, my Alana—on his tongue.

  But when he stepped closer, she tensed and stared at him with the same cautious expression she’d had on the beach. He liked that, her hesitation. Some of the mortals he’d met on the beach when he’d been in this form had been willing to lie down with him after only the briefest of words exchanged. It had been fun, but that wasn’t what he wanted in a wife. The lack of meaning saddened him: he wanted every touch, each caress and sigh, to matter.

  “Would you walk with me, Alana?” He ducked his head, causing his hair to fall forward, offering her as meek a posture as he could, trying to show that he wasn’t a threat to her.

  “I would talk to you about us, so we can understand each other.”

  “Lanie?” An older version of his mate, obviously Alana’s mother, stood with the light behind her. “Who’s your friend?” She smiled at him. “I’m Susanne.”

  Murrin stepped toward Alana’s mother. “I’m Murrin.

  I—”

  “We were on our way out,” Alana said. She grabbed his hand and pulled. “For tea.”

  “Tea? At this hour?” Alana’s mother smiled, laughter playing under her expression.

  “Sure, baby. Just come home after the sun rises. We’ll all sleep late tomorrow.”

  As they walked, Alana tried to think of what to say, but she found no words to start the conversation. She didn’t want to ask him why she felt so drawn to him—or if it would get worse. She suspected that it was a result of whatever enchantment made her unable to give away his pelt. They were tied together. She got that part. She didn’t want to know if he felt the same compulsion to reach out a hand and touch. But she knew resisting it took supreme effort.

  It’s not real. She glanced at him and her pulse sped.

  It’s not forever, either. I can get rid of him. I can. And I want to. She shoved her hands into her pockets and continued to walk silently beside him. Usually, the night felt too close when people—well, just guys, actually—were in her space. She didn’t want to turn into her mom: believing in the next dreamer, chasing after the illusion that lust or neediness could evolve into something real. It didn’t. Ever. Instead, the giddiness of the initial rush evolved into drama and tears every single time. It made more sense to end it before that inevitable and messy second stage. Short-term dating was cool, but Alana always abided by the Six-Week Rule: no one she couldn’t ditch within or at six weeks. That meant she needed to find a way to extricate herself from Murrin within six weeks, and the only one who could help her figure out how was him.

  At the old building that housed the coffee shop, he stopped. Murrin glanced at her. “Is here good?”

  “It’s fine.” Without meaning to, she pulled her hands out of her pockets and started to reach out. She scowled and crossed her arms over her chest. “It’s not a date. I just didn’t want you near my mother.”

  Silently, he reached out to open the door.

  “What?” She knew she was surly, heard herself being mean. And why shouldn’t I? I didn’t ask for this.

  He sighed. “I would sooner injure myself than harm your mother, Alana.” He motioned for her to go inside.

  “Your happiness, your life, your family . . . these are what matter to me now.”

  “You don’t know me.”

  He shrugged. “It is simply how things are.”

  “But . . .” She stared at him, trying to find words to argue, to make him . . . what? Argue against trying to make me happy? “This doesn’t make sense.”

  “Come sit down. We’ll talk.” He walked to the far side of the shop, away from the welllit central space. “There’s a table open here.”

  There were other empty tables, but she didn’t point them out. She wanted privacy for their conversation.

  Asking him how to break some fairy-tale bond was weird enough; doing it with people listening was a bit too much.

  Murrin stopped and pulled out her chair.

  She sat down, trying not to be touched by his gentlemanly posture or seeming disregard for the girls—and a few guys—who were staring at him with blatant interest. He hadn’t seemed to notice them, even when they stopped talking midsentence to smile up at him as he walked by their tables.

  And who could blame them for looking? Alana might be unhappy being caught in
this weird situation, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t just a little dazzled by how very luscious he was—not so much that she would want to stay with him, of course, but her heart sped every time she looked at him. Pretty packages don’t mean a thing. None of this matters. He trapped me.

  Murrin sat down in the chair across from her, watching her with an intensity that made her shiver.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  He reached out and took her hand. “Do you not want to be here?”

  “No. I don’t want to be here with you.”

  His voice was soothing as he asked, “So how can I please you? How do I make you want to be around me?”

  “You can’t. I want you to go away.”

  A series of unreadable expressions played over his face, too fleeting to identify, but he didn’t reply. Instead, he gestured at the giant chalkboard that served as a menu and read off choices. “Mocha? Americano? Macchiato?

  Tea? Milk?”

  She thought about pressing him for the answers she needed, but didn’t. Hostility wasn’t going to work. Not yet. Fighting wasn’t going to get her answers, so she decided to try a different approach: reason. She took a steadying breath.

  “Sure. Mocha. Double shot.” She stood to reach into her jeans pocket for money. He jumped up, managing to look far more graceful than anyone she’d ever met.

  “Anything with it?”

  “No.” She unfolded a five from the bills in her pocket and held it out. Instead of taking it, he scowled and stepped away from the table.

  “Hold on.” She shook the bill and held her hand farther out. “Take this.”

  He gave her another small scowl and shook his head.

  “I cannot.”

  “Fine. I’ll get my own.” She stepped around him.

  With a speed that shouldn’t have been possible, he blocked her path; she stumbled briefly into him, steadying herself with a hand on his chest.

  Sighing softly, he put a hand atop hers. “May I buy you a cup of coffee, Alana? Please? It doesn’t indebt you to me or anything.”