Claimed by the Mer-Shifter Prince I Made Cry novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Walt's Boat

"They'll come tonight," Gus said.

We were in the bait shop with the door bolted and the lights off, and the whole slip was still quiet outside.

"Orlan said eight days," I said.

"Orlan says whatever makes a man easy to find."

"Three of his people have been at the Anchor Inn since Tuesday."

"They won't wait for a tide when you're alone in a house on a bluff."

"I'll go to the deputy."

"And say what?" Gus said. "That a man with a tail wants your pocket?"

I had no answer.

Soren stood by the cold bait tanks with his arms crossed over Walt's flannel.

"He is right," he said. "I know my uncle. He asks politely so that later he can say he did."

Gus went to the back of the shop and moved a crate of floats.

Under it was a tin box, the kind a man keeps nails in.

He took out a white shell on a leather cord, about the size of my thumb, and put it in my hand.

It was smooth and a little warm, and there was a mark scratched into the inside, a curl.

"What's this?"

"What she left on the dock," Gus said. "The woman in your daddy's net. He kept it in this box for twenty-nine years and told me never to give it to you unless the sea came for you."

My throat tightened.

"The sea's come for me."

"That's what I thought." He closed my fingers over it. "Walt's skiff is in the shed behind the shop. I keep her running every spring. There's a cave under the Point, below the Gate. Your father hid in it from a gale once. I'll take you."

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