“Used to what?”
“Never mind.” He opened the tote again. “I think I saw some boots in here. Do you think it’ll be all right if I borrow them?”
“Trust me, you can help yourself to whatever’s here. It’s all hand-me-downs and castoffs. We keep the place stocked in case we forget something at home, but it’s also for anyone who might need it, a fisherman or a hiker lost in a storm, that kind of thing.”
“That’s really kind of you.”
“It’s just what everyone does here.” She laid out tableware with a brisk series of clicks. “Okay, soup’s on.”
They tucked into stew and sandwiches washed down with slightly gritty coffee, giving the leftover stew to the dog. Luke was quiet, polite, and ate like he was half starved. Inga tried not to fill the meal with conversation, letting him eat, but she found the quiet surprisingly companionable. There was something very comfortable about being around Luke. She could feel herself relaxing in his company.
When they were done, she gathered the plates. “Do you want any help with the cleanup?” Luke asked. He looked exhausted, his eyelids drooping.
“No, not at all. I can handle it. We usually wash them in the spring.” She pointed in the vague direction of the wall. “If you need a bathroom, I’m afraid it’s an outhouse. Path to the right and down. There’s a flashlight on a hook by the door if you’re worried about finding your way.” Shifter night vision was highly acute compared to a human’s, but it wasn’t infallible; they always had some flashlights around.
“I think I’m just going to hit the hay. Will you be all right, going out there with a bear around?”
Inga grinned. “We’re bears too, aren’t we?”
Luke looked a little startled. “Uh, yeah.” He interrupted himself with a yawn. “Which bunk do you want?”
“Either one, I don’t mind.”
She wrestled the bar from across the door and cracked it open. The dog sprang up and followed her. Inga found that she didn’t mind at all. She wasn’t too worried about bears, but having a huge dog with her couldn’t hurt.
A sliver of moon had risen, and by its light, the hillside was stark silver and black. She saw no sign of any bears this time, and the dog seemed unconcerned. While Rogue did his business off the path, Inga made her way to the spring and knelt beside its silvery flow to scrub the dishes with handfuls of sand.
The dog lapped from the spring and followed her back. Leaving the dishes outside the door for now, she went down to the outhouse near the water’s edge to do her own nighttime business. They had built it below the level of the cabin and spring, tucked behind some rocks where it was relatively secluded. Afterward, she went to the shoreline to wash her hands in lapping waves.
The tide rolled rhythmically against the shore, wavetops like liquid silver in the moonlight. Inga turned to look up, where only the tiny spark of warm lantern light in the cabin’s window glowed against the great dark sweep of the hillside.
A movement caught her attention out of the corner of her eye. She turned swiftly, half expecting a bear.
There was an old wooden dock, little used now, as it had been partly destroyed years ago in winter storms. For a moment, very clearly, Inga saw a man standing on the end of the dock. She couldn’t get a good look at him. He was just standing there for a moment, and then he wasn’t.
“Hello?”
No answer but the shirring of the waves.
“Rogue?” she said, looking around to see if the dog had noticed anything. But she couldn’t see him anywhere. A black dog at night was basically invisible. He must have gone up to the cabin while she was in the outhouse.
Inga walked over to the dock just to check whether she might have mistaken one of the old mooring pilings for a person. It was hard to say in the dim light. All she saw was what she had always seen, the timbers of the dock half caved in, water rolling around what remained of its support pillars.
She shook her head at herself. Ghosts and bears—it was ridiculous. She had never had the slightest hint that there was anything like a ghost at the cabin. She wasn’t even sure if she believed in ghosts. Tor and Bernie sometimes claimed that their lighthouse was haunted. (“It’s a nice ghost, really!”) Inga had always had her doubts as to whether this some kind of extended joke they were pulling on the rest of the family, or if their “ghost” was nothing but a shadow in the old lighthouse. She’d heard enough stories from the old salts down by the harbor to know that ghost stories were a long and respected tradition on the island where she had lived all her life, but actually seeing a ghost with her own eyes was a whole different matter.
Whatever it had been, it was gone now. Inga climbed back to the cabin, called Rogue quietly, and when he didn’t answer, she gathered the dishes and went inside.
Rogue met her at the door with a swishing tail. Luke must have let him in. “Some guard dog,” she scoffed, but she ruffled his ears. The dog was fully relaxed, so if the cabin and environs were haunted, it must be a friendly spirit.
Luke was nothing but a lump of blankets now, dead to the world. Inga barred the door again, put the dishes away, and extinguished the lantern before taking the other bunk. He had fixed the beds on the bottom bunks, but she had always preferred the top, so she moved her blankets up, and climbed up after them.
What a day. She lay awake, listening to the pinging of the stove and the occasional rattling of the wind, which rarely stopped blowing this close to the sea, knocking around a loose shingle. The dog snored softly. Luke also snored now and then. Fortunately a childhood growing up in a mostly male household had completely inured her to sleeping through any volume of snoring.
No, it wasn’t that keeping her awake. She rolled on her back and folded her hands over her chest, gazing up at the dark ceiling close above her. Who was Luke,whatwas Luke, why did he seem to know so little about being a shifter, and how did he come to wash up on a remote shore with a dog beside him?
When she finally slept, she dreamed of ghost bears and mysterious castaways on rocky shores. She kept feeling as if she was groping after some truth that her conscious mind had not yet put together, an important conclusion that kept slipping out of her grasp every time she reached for it.
LUKE
