“Are you going to ask me to leave town, sir?” Luke asked. He felt Inga’s hand squeeze his. “I don’t want to bring danger here.”
“No,” Mace said. “If they come here,theyare the ones who will have problems.”
Leaving that ominous statement hanging in the air, he shifted back, flowing into his human form from his stone one.
“And now I suppose we have kept Thea waiting long enough. Thank you for indulging my curiosity.”
He led the way back into the hall. Inga showed no inclination to let go of Luke’s hand. “If you can’t help Luke with his bear, do you think you can help us with the men who are after him?” she asked Mace as he closed the hidden door. “They don’t seem like they’re going to give up, and they’re a threat to all the shifters in town.”
“I’ll look into my options,” Mace said, leading them back out to the patio. “If they’re breaking the law, we can get the Coast Guard after them. For now, I expect you’d both prefer a lower profile.”
“Ideally,” Luke said. “But anything that gets them off my back is good with me, honestly.”
Thea looked up from her book when they returned. “Done already? Oh, Mace, Jess called. She said that she and Reive expect to stay with Max’s family for another week or so.”
“Ah, well, we will enjoy the solitude, then.” Mace slid into a chair beside Thea’s, and she leaned over to give him a brief kiss with the comfortable familiarity of a married couple. “Do stay and enjoy the pastries; we have far too many to eat before they go stale.”
They accepted, but Luke felt antsy to be gone, and he could tell Inga felt the same. Thea seemed to have sunk back into whatever she was working on, and Mace was distant, clearly thinking over what they had told him. So they each ate a pastry to be polite, and then made their farewells.
As they left, looking back, Luke noticed what he had not seen before, a row of gargoyle statues crouched along the roofline of Mace’s stone house. He found himself wondering if he was just now paying attention to them, after his and Inga’s conversation with Mace—or if they hadn’t been there before.
INGA
Inga wasquiet on the walk down from Mace and Thea’s, seeing Mace’s transformation over and over again in her mind. She had grown up with the rumors that she half believed, about the town and the gargoyles. Now the rumors had become reality in front of her. Suddenly, a whole world of other possibilities seemed to open up before her.
Rogue nudged against her leg. She reached down and buried her fingers in his thick fur.
“Not that way,” she said to Luke, who had turned toward the road down to the harbor when they reached the parking lot. “I want to go see Tor and Bernie first.”
“Your brother and his wife?” Luke came willingly. He seemed in a more cheerful mood since they had met with Mace and Thea. Perhaps he, too, was seeing more possibilities in the world than he had before. “Not that I mind meeting them, but why?”
“Well, for one thing I just want to let them know I’m back, if they haven’t heard already. But I’m quite serious about asking Tor to take a look at the ship if he can.”
Luke shook his head. “I really don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“They’re not just going to give up and go away if we ignore them.” She still had one hand resting lightly on Rogue’s ruff.With her other one, she reached out and took his hand. “I think it’s time to stop running and take the fight to them.”
The walk to the lighthouse by the road was long and circuitous, as the main road curved away from the coast, and then a side road went out to the lighthouse on the point. There were various walking paths crisscrossing the hill above the town, and Inga took one of those, a steep scramble in places that took them to the lighthouse in a fraction of the time that following the road would have. Inga could see why Bernie didn’t want to do this when she was eight months pregnant.
The sunny weather held for their walk, though rain clouds were now heavily threatening, rolling in from the sea. The dark backdrop of ominous weather with the sunlight brightening the lighthouse struck her as almost impossibly beautiful. There was even a hint of a rainbow.
Inga had always liked the lighthouse, even before Bernie, and later Tor, had moved into it. Although long outdated and no longer in service, it was painted the classic white and red, with a smart little white lightkeeper’s house next to it.
Rogue bounded ahead of them as they approached. Inga whistled to him, remembering that Tor and Bernie had a cat that might be around somewhere. Considering what Tor and Bernie’s cat was like, she was more worried about the dog than the cat. However, there was no hissing or yowling, no streak of infuriated dignity zipping across the lawn. Rogue paused to sniff at the tires of Tor’s car in the gravel parking area.
“Hello there!” Inga called. “Who’s up for company?”
“Hey, sis!” Tor burst out the front door of the lightkeeper’s house. There was paint smeared on his face and jeans. “Heard you and Dad had a guest! You must be Luke.”
“I forgot that it’s impossible to have secrets in this town,” Inga groaned. “Whoa!” She waved him off. “You look like you lost a fight with a paint roller.”
“Uh, right.” He looked down at himself as if he had just noticed. “We’re working on the baby’s room. Actually,I’mworking on the baby’s room because Bernie’s supposed to stay away from the paint fumes.”
“Hi!” Bernie called from the doorway, waving with a hand holding a roll of masking tape. “We were just about to break for lunch. Are you hungry?”
Inga actually wasn’t that hungry after being plied with Mace and Thea’s pastries, but if there was one thing shifters could always do, it was eat. “Sure. Luke, this is my brother Tor.”
Tor shook Luke’s hand, then slapped Inga on the back. “Heard you lost the Dingboat.”
