Audrey

Chapter 9 The Abyss


A/N umm... rated M for a reason. I put it in, then took it out, then put it back in... and then realized even that was far too meta and gave up. Moving on...


"Just apologize."

"Sorry?" Actually, that wasn't an apology, it was a question. She stirred herself out a boredom coma to look at her partner. Fifth day of traffic duty, parked in the same spot for five days in a row and no one was going over the thirty mile an hour limit. The first day had been fairly busy, tourists and locals alike. The second day less so, and whoever got caught a second time was too stupid to drive anyway. Third day, the occasional unwary tourist ended up with a ticket and a fine that only guaranteed they would never make a return visit to town. Today – nada. Zilch. Absolutely fucking zero.

The only thing worse than handing out speeding tickets, was not handing out speeding tickets, and being cooped up in a car for hours – days – and doing absolutely fucking zero. There were, actually, only so many games of Angry Birds you could play.

"Just apologize to the Chief. Please. Whatever it was that got you put on his shit list – I don't deserve it."

Poor Bill. He did not deserve it. Dana laughed and shook her head. She'd shared the traffic duty with the other officers as well, using her supposedly superior position to get them to do the actual work, then mimicking their actions well enough after a couple days to pass herself off as knowing what the fuck she was doing. Of all the weird in Haven, Dana Bellamy handing out speeding tickets was up there on the weird-o-meter.

But Bill was another nice guy, chatting easily about his wife and his two kids, a nice normal guy with a nice normal life – and a habit of keeping his nose out of what didn't concern him. That list of 'not his business' was added to nearly every day and Dana had the feeling that he worked very hard at not seeing what went on around him. A difficult mental dissonance for a cop. So when he came out and said something – even 'just apologize' – it was really bugging him.

He was not asking why or how or what – not his business. But because the Chief was supposedly punishing her with this nonsensical traffic duty, it was affecting him.

"It's complicated." Dana said. Too fucking true.

"Audrey –" and that was just the tip of the iceberg. Not Audrey. "He'll forgive you. He –" Cut himself off, not going to get drawn into their personal relationship even though he was obviously fully informed on the subject. "Just, please. I'm begging you."

"Do you know what that tattoo he has means?"

She watched the calculation in Bill's eyes, a reflex like a horse shying away from a sudden movement, that fast – Trouble. Watched the sudden blankness of his expression as all that he had seen and heard about, things he could not control or explain, people dead – all of it flashed on his face and was immediately wiped clean. Then, unexpectedly, he focused on her.

"He's the Chief. And he's a good man whatever…" Twist, turn, twist – and the Rubik's cube puzzle pieces fell into place for him. "You left right after that," slowly, realizing.

"Bill..."

"No, Detective Parker, I'm sorry if this is out of line, but – you need to hear this. You had no right to do that to him. To leave him like that. People with a Trouble are just people and of all people… " He trailed off, looked away. Rubbed at his bare upper lip.

"Of all people what?" she prompted.

"You were the one who helped them. You've changed."

Dana opened her mouth to object to this condemnation, then closed it. She could hardly deny that she wasn't Saint Audrey. She wasn't. She tried. She'd helped a few people here and there. But there always seemed to be so much more to do, and all her helping was just a Band-Aid on a cancerous tumor, eating away at the town from within.

"You nearly killed him, you know that, don't you?" Bill said, a spiked look at her, really solidly angry. "I take it back. I love my wife. I do. But I would not forgive her and welcome her back with open arms after walking away, especially if she blamed me for something that wasn't my fault. The Chief might be one of them. But he's one of us too. A cop. And he deserves better –"

"Than me."

Bill didn't deny it.

Dana rested her head against the side window. Mission fucking accomplished.

A red Mustang license 3937 something something blew by them at must have been 60 mph. Neither of them twitched to follow it. And – remotely – Dana realized she'd picked up the habit of noting car license plates automatically. She could even give a description of the driver. She'd been doing this job too long.

*.*.*

Dana stretched out her neck and back in Nathan's chair, hands wrapped around her neck and elbows pointed at the ceiling.

"Get out of there," the man himself muttered, coming back into his office. She signaled him with raised eyebrows, and he closed the door, slammed it. "Get out of my chair." Loud enough to be heard through it.

She brushed by him, getting up, an accidental touch that made him gasp. "Sorry," she whispered.

"Don't be."

She wasn't actually sure she'd heard him correctly. He had his nose in a file, not looking at her as he sat. Just don't, Dana, she told herself. Don't go there. That dizzy swinging inside her was not for Nathan. Or at least not her for Nathan. Maybe it was Audrey, adding her voice to all the others, the ones who approved of the dizzy swinging tingling of awareness of a man who loved – not her, truly – but who loved a woman with all his being.

There was something irresistible in that.

Even the other cops had noticed, perhaps during, perhaps when he fell apart afterward, but they had noticed how their Chief had loved Audrey Parker. And how he had taken her back even after two years away.

The real story was more dangerous and less Harlequin romance, of course, but not the part about how Nathan had loved, still loved, Audrey Parker. Dana had never caught him looking at her like that. He didn't actually look at her directly very often at all. Which…

"I'm sorry."

He did look up this time, at her meaningful tone, a different tone; a half second like a blue strobe and then down again. "About what?"

"Audrey."

Close file. Paying attention. Not looking at her, concentrating on his fingers. "What about Audrey?"

A week spent with various members of the Haven PD and none of them would buy into the story they'd prepared about a fight between her and Nathan, about how they'd fallen out of love and that she – Audrey – was interested in Duke Crocker now. Even that she believed the story about how the Grey Gull had burned down, that Nathan had had something to do with it. None of them had taken the bait. A couple of the men had laughed outright, thinking she was making some bizarre kind of joke.

This plan of theirs was a lot more complicated than she'd thought.

She took his hand in hers, didn't miss how he jumped, an all-over muscle contraction like an electric shock. Didn't let him pull away though. She was sorry she couldn't be two people at once. She was sorry that even though she was supposed to help the Troubled, she couldn't do anything but hurt him. Her very existence took Audrey away from him.

"I think the men are all going to hate her when she comes back." And it wasn't going to be that comfortable for herself either.

"What did you do?" A warning rumble in his voice like far off thunder.

"I may have… implied… that Audrey left willingly, because you were, are, Troubled."

To her surprise he did not look offended, just thoughtful. "That could work."

He did not pull his hand away. Dana could feel the urge within her; help him. Like lust, but not. He was Troubled. She could help. It was a straight line instinct that was like a light inside her. Do this, make this right and get the dopamine dump in her brain like a rat in a maze.

She twined her fingers with his. Sensation was as necessary a bodily function as any other, to protect and reach out, to collect data for the brain to process. Children often went through a phase where they had to touch everything in order to even see it. Some never grew out of it.

"Dana, stop."

It was called a curse for a reason.

"I thought you said you didn't feel anything." That kiss, the morning after the fire. He looked this time, understanding her. A different type of feeling, of course.

To her surprise, he was the one who bent down, brushed his lips across hers and she was the one who gasped, a little, at the sensation. Just that, nothing more. But they both started guiltily when the door opened, and Duke let himself in.

"I can come back," he said stonily.

Nathan crossed his arms, and Dana desperately searched for where she was supposed to be. Right, she was Audrey – on the verge of breaking up with Nathan and going off with Duke. They were supposed to be having a screaming obvious fight about something…

"No, you're right on time." Nathan said.

Nathan fucking Wuornos had fucking ice water in his veins, is what. His tone was even, and except for a little jittery finger twiddling, hidden from Duke, was utterly calm. Had he done that – kissed her – on purpose? Knowing Duke would walk in on them?

Duke's look to her was somehow about four feet short of where she actually stood. "Shall we?"

"We shall." And Dana felt about four feet short of her actual height right about now. She scooted around in front of Nathan, going to Duke. Smiled up at him. They were clear now; she could stay as Audrey in the public eye, but be with Duke.

This was a stupid plan.

Duke's eyes were nearly black in this light, and a muscle twitched in his jaw as he looked down at her.

Every eye followed them as Duke led her out of the station, hand in hand. "I expect you back at your desk Monday morning, Parker!" Nathan called angrily, from inside his office.

"Wouldn't miss it!" she returned, equally angry.

Stan was the only one who met her eye on the way out, his gaze sliding across from Duke to her as if she'd broken his heart too, and not just Nathan's. Duke's grip tightened to crushing and she didn't stop.

She climbed into the passenger side of the Tramp and Duke slammed the door behind her, probably more forcefully than strictly necessary. He took his position behind the wheel, but didn't start it right away. "Say so now," he said, a voice she didn't recognize, clenched as a fist.

Her get out of jail free card. Her laughing Monkey King was no longer laughing, but he would set her free if that was what she wanted, and he would likely take on the gods and the powers and the dominions all by himself just to distract himself. Her hand reached itself to brush at his hair, but he jerked away.

"Just drive, Duke. Jesus, please."

*.*.*

"I think I remember dying."

She definitely remembered the screaming, the burning, and the helplessness of being trapped in the overturned Humvee, watching as her squad mates bled out. She didn't remember the flight to the hospital in Germany – but that was due to the drugs, or combination of drugs and general unconsciousness, not any supernatural amnesia. The weeks of recovery, growing knowledge of her permanent and extensive scarring… she remembered that.

"Shh," Duke whispered, his lips trailing down her spine, and the conspicuously smooth skin of her back. She did not tell him that she still did not like her back touched, it did nothing for her, all his stroking and petting, despite the fact that she no longer had any excuse to hide. She no longer had the excuse.

She vaguely recalled an infection – her training allowing an intellectual understanding of what was happening to her even as her body succumbed to the fever. MRSA, likely. Maybe some stupid rare bug found only in that stupid remote country. And then the hallucinations that she had also understood intellectually – during the bouts of lucidity in between – and dismissed. People that only she could see and talk to despite the crowded conditions of the hospital. A man without eyes who stared at her hungrily. Questions about her family and friends. No, there was no one. No one would miss her when she was gone, as rootless and windblown as a dandelion seed.

Hallucination… or someone with the power – a Trouble – to disappear from memory, to steal memory. To copy memory, from a dying woman's brain and transfer it.

To save memory, and personality and history… her consciousness, saved and restored.

And then, she remembered, peace.

It bothered her that she didn't know for sure if this peace was her death, or from when she was … copied… and implanted in this body. But living in this body was not peaceful. Voices muttered at her all the time, nearly all the time. Mostly she could ignore them, but it was never truly silent.

The peace she remembered was silent – as the grave – and utterly timeless. It could have been a moment, or a lifetime.

Dana turned on her back, turned to face Duke. He let her, watched her with an expression of patient curiosity, like she was some abstract painting he liked, but did not understand. She traced the whitened scar on his chest that ran from shoulder to breastbone, newest, and overlaid all the others. "What do you remember?"

Instead of answering, he removed her hand, and traced his tongue along the tips of her fingers.

"Duke…"

"Say my name, say my name…"

She grabbed his ear and hauled him up to face her. Forced the grin from her lips. She had this thing for men who would sing to her, turned her into a wobbly mess every time – and she would not let it distract her. "Duke. Talk to me."

It was the one thing they had in common, even over and above the crazy shitstorm that was life in Haven. And the one thing they could probably only share with each other. To die, and to come back. Who else would understand?

Whoever had copied her – they had also saved her, when otherwise she would just be dead. Gone. Maybe at peace, maybe just… gone.

"What do you want me to say?"Duke said. "It was done and over so fast, I don't really remember anything. I don't know if I even really…"

"Died? You really really did. I was there."

He rolled away from her, started getting dressed. "I don't remember." He buttoned his jeans. "I remember when I couldn't find you –" He stopped. Like this frightened him more.

Dana pulled a sheet over herself and pulled her knees up to her chest. "When was that?"

"You said you went out for a ride." The day she'd tried to leave. The day she'd been firmly put back in her place. "I remember that felt like I'd died. I remember…" He trailed off.

Dana felt her stomach knot. He was building into something, like a gale into a storm. She'd wanted to share with him, get close to him – but now she realized that all she'd really wanted was to unload her troubles onto him. She was back in his bed, they were almost two hundred miles offshore and heading further out, she was working on integrating the reality of Audrey into her life – that her life was not just Dana Bellamy's, but a double-sided, double-headed coin. Or, as multifaceted as a cut diamond, a new reflection from every angle. Depended on how you looked at it.

"I remember I wanted to hurt you."

The one thing all her selves had in common, though, was this instinct to help the Troubled. And Duke was so, so troubled. And not just from walking in on her and Nathan… and what the fuck was Wuornos thinking with that?

Dana didn't think about it, she didn't analyze it, she just did it.

She put her hands up over her head, surrender, slid her legs around his standing ones. "Hurt me like that again."

Duke leaned over her, grabbed her jaw, too tight. One of his hands entrapped both of hers. "I'm not kidding around here, Dana. I just watched you kiss Nathan. You, not Audrey, and not in front of witnesses so don't give me any story about – " He let her jaw go long enough to unbutton his fly again, shove his pants down. He was rock hard against her and pressed into her like it was a threat. "Tell me to stop."

That voice again, strangled and choking.

"I liked it. I wanted to kiss him," she teased, razored with truth. Duke whined pain in her ear, pulled her hair that knotted in his fist. "I want to know him, what he's like," she whispered.

He flipped her onto her front, lay with almost all his weight on her. "Shut up."

"He says –" and she gasped, as his cock pressed against her rear. "Duke, wait -" She wasn't ready. She wasn't prepared. She wasn't even sure she wanted this. She'd had anal sex before, but it really wasn't her thing, and… "He says you aren't supposed to be friends."

Not friends, like kissing her in front of Duke. Wuornos – you fucking bastard.

She cried out as he took her, too big, and too dry. He pushed her head into the pillow until she quieted. She gasped harshly, fighting the blackness for oxygen when he let her up. Said his name. She was naked, he was almost fully dressed. It hurt, and it was almost worse when he spat in his hand and spread that into her ass as lubricant, because then he sped up, thrusting faster and harder. She whimpered, and heard him grunting with exertion, forcing himself to climax.

She freed one of her hands, searched wildly for grip. Finally just pushed her hand against the wall above her head, locked her elbow, the better to push back against him.

"Dana…" hard, almost a whimper himself, biting at her ear when he saw she was not trying to escape. He let her go, but only to hold himself up off her with one hand, the other snaking down to find her clit. Both hands against the wall now, knickknacks pushed crashing to the floor, stretched out full length, she felt his fingers fill her and she came when he did, losing all restraint and coordination.

How do you like them apples, Audrey Parker? some wicked part of her – still conscious and observant – thought. This was her body too, now, and it was her choice how to use it. Her right.

He breathed her name, after, continuously, over and over again. Breathing hard and, she realized, trying to cry. Still trying to let out at least some of the agony inside him. She stopped him when it changed to 'I'm sorry' over and over again instead of her name. "I'm so sorry, Duke," she told him, brushing his eyes, kissed them closed. That stopped him, her apologizing to him. It was never going to be white picket fences and missionary positions with them, was it? They'd done missionary, of course, among others. Enjoyed it, though maybe not as much as this. "I'm so sorry if you weren't ready for that. I should have asked first."

Suspicion clouded his expression, shoving aside the grief at least. Then realization, and finally, yes, laughter. "You -. Yes, you should have." His head fell, relief, and his lips ended up on her collarbone. Mission accomplished, as she felt his violence and anger drain away. "I love you," she felt, more than heard, as his lips formed the words against her skin.

Oh.

Tears prickled. Because she knew that there were no picket fences or two point five kids and a dog or anything like that in her future with Duke Crocker – not with anyone, but less than never with Duke Crocker – but she loved him more than her own life.

He'd told her about that desperate conversation between him and Nathan, and the conclusions to be drawn from it, at the same time he'd told her about Audrey. They had, both Duke and Nathan together, sitting in Nathan's Bronco with the rain coming down outside. Conclusions they had drawn, that is, but that Dana herself resisted. She was a copy of the real Dana Bellamy, she was supposed to help the Troubled and she was made for Duke.

She was made for him.

Kneeling behind him when he couldn't, wouldn't, face her, she laid her head between his shoulder blades.

She was made for him. But that little equation went both ways. He was meant for her, too.

"I died, Duke," she said. "I died without ever meeting you. That –" That was unthinkable to her, now. It was never going to be picket fences and growing old together with them. But she was grateful for her life, and for this moment. For every stolen, borrowed moment of her life since she'd come to Haven, even if she had to share it with some other woman. "Whatever they want from me, or us, we'll figure it out. But it can't be that bad. It can't. Because they gave you to me."

*.*.*

The open ocean in the middle of the night was an odd and disconcerting place. Dirk watched the blinking dot of the Cape Rouge's progress against the screen, the auto-pilot actually steering the boat while he was supposedly on watch. So he watched. But beyond the lights on the bow and the back end… whatever that was called – the stern – there was only blackness. A freighter of some sort had passed by an hour ago, lit up like a football stadium and nearly as big, but since then, nothing.

And he watched as Duke rolled up on the bridge, one slow step at a time. Dirk smiled to himself. Apparently the cop was a good fuck, after all. Who knew?

Duke flicked off the interior lights of the bridge – over Dirk's protest. But then slowly Dirk noticed how the stars filled the sky from horizon to horizon. A moonless night, and the sea was nearly flat, it was hard to tell where the sky stopped and the ocean began.

Dirk laughed at his brother, who hadn't said a word since coming above. "Figures a cop would like it rough, eh?"

Between one eye-blink and the next, Dirk found himself with his arm twisted behind his back and Duke's elbow under his chin. One twitch and Duke could permanently separate his skull from his spine and Dirk would never feel a thing. "Hear this, Brother. I'm only going to say it once. Are you listening?"

Dirk nodded. Tried to nod. He was listening. It amounted to little more than jogging pressure in the soft flesh under his jaw. There was no restriction to his breathing, but he could not escape. Just where and how Duke had learned that move, Dirk would have given a great deal to know. Duke, in that instant, reminded him vividly of the last time he saw their father; a distracted and only partially lucid Simon dropping in on his eldest bastard son before vanishing for good.

"She is off-limits. You don't talk about her, you don't talk to her. Not while I'm not present. Do you understand?" Dirk did the almost nod again. "Good."

Duke turned him loose. Dirk shook out his arm, and massaged his throat. As a way of marking a woman as his it was a little extreme. "All you had to do was say –"

"You were supposed to stay on watch," Duke said.

"I had to use the head." Dirk was actually proud of himself for using the terminology. Descending the gangway he'd heard them going at it – and while he could care less if they banged each other's brains out – for a minute or so it had sounded like a murder in progress. Not that he'd stopped and listened at the door (hatch?) for any longer than that.

But Duke had already forgotten what he'd said, been mad about. His expression was a thousand miles away, a little dazed.

That cop must have been a blazingly good fuck.

She'd kept Duke waiting for long enough, anyway.

He did not understand. He'd watched Audrey with Duke that night, drinking and laughing – and he'd seen only … friendship. Now, it was like there was a live wire between them, humming with high voltage, and he did not know what had changed.

For maybe the 'count'em-on-one-hand' times in his life, Dirk wondered what it felt like to feel… that… and whether he wasn't actually missing out on something after all. Most of the time feelings seemed to be far more trouble than they were worth. Feeling made you – other people – do such stupid things, self-destructive, anti-self-preservation things. Everything from visiting relatives you didn't like to taking the blame for crimes you didn't commit. To taking in a half-brother you didn't know and treating him decently when the rest of the town seemed bent on blaming him for a crime he didn't commit.

It seemed to Dirk, though, that Duke had something, possessed something, that Dirk couldn't see or touch. Something he couldn't label, did not recognize. Something that – Dirk was beginning to realize – he would never have.

"What are we doing out here, anyway?" Because thinking about himself and his – possible – faults was not something Dirk was ever comfortable with.

"That," Duke said, with a nod at the horizon.

There was nothing on the horizon.

At first Dirk was afraid that it was something else he couldn't see or touch, until he realized it was actually a whole lot of black nothing, blocking out the starlight, utterly motionless. Duke pulled back the throttles even as Dirk saw waves crash against it, still half a mile out, and light up with phosphorescence.

An iceberg.

A floating mountain of ice, and they were headed right for it.

*.*.*

She loved him.

Duke maneuvered the thrusters carefully, slowing the large boat until the Cape Rouge crept up on the iceberg at something less than dead slow. These sleeping behemoths were well known for the ninety percent that they kept hidden beneath the surface, and the way they often had wide shelves and points sticking out well beyond the supposed outlines visible above. Less well known was how they tended to unevenly melt, erode and split apart, irregular fault lines and cracks that could, and did, suddenly break apart and roll over with the frightening and unpredictable speed of a bathtub toy, and the mass of a landslide.

She loved him.

He put Dirk's hands over the thrusters, trusting him with brief instructions on how to keep the Rouge parked up against the ice while he went down to the deck and picked up the rocket propelled grapplers, purchased – well, acquired – some years ago against future considerations and only now finding the use they'd been obviously needed for. He shot blindly and pulled the line in until the bow was secure, as secure as possible in this impossibly insecure place – then did the same in the stern. They were now moored to the iceberg.

It was something he could not seem to hang on to, as frictionless as ice on a skillet. Dana loved him.

As she was made for him, he was hers.

She was on the bridge when he went back up there, watching the procedures on deck, watching him, with one hand over her mouth in worry, arms clenched together. He kissed her forehead. She did not question him. Dirk did, loudly, demanding and confused questions about what the fuck they were doing that Duke ignored entirely. Down to the hold to bring up the auger mechanism.

Setting up the auger into the ice was the hardest part. There was a small flat plane of ice near the gunwale that was about as good as he was going to get, and he anchored the contraption – of his own design – there with a couple pounded stakes. Dirk and Dana managed the wide hose into the stripped down bare holds, and with a flick of a switch, the power auger started digging chunks of ice out of the berg. Solid blue, tens of thousands of years old ice, lately attached to a Greenland glacier, and two weeks floating south to come into his life. To be sold to big city drinkers by the five dollar ounce.

He only charged the iceman five dollars a pound. But considering that the Rouge had four holds with eight thousand cubic feet each – that would give him a real start on rebuilding his restaurant.

Dana grinned at him, hands on hips, as the ice rattled deafening into the steel holds. Was this pride? He'd impressed her, and that meant something more than the money. Even Dirk's look followed the ice into the hold and then, as if surprised, up to Duke. It worked. Duke couldn't name what he felt. Success in the eyes of people who mattered to him, when for his whole life he'd never considered – had deliberately shut out – what other people thought. It mattered.

Dana wrapped her arms around his neck as he went to her. Blonde hair tucked into a practical if ridiculous John Deere cap out here at sea, and Dana's brown curious eyes examined him back. Kissed her, both his hands on her jaw, stinging cold from the ice still, but she flowed up into him.

There was life after death.

He did not care what Nathan and Audrey got up to when Dana was not present. Surprisingly, he found he did not care what Nathan and Dana did or did not feel – or do – for each other when he was not present. All he cared about was how he felt about her, and how she felt about him. And she…

She loved him.

*.*.*

Just as Duke put the hatch back on, the holds full, men began flying out of the sea onto the deck. Men, wearing wetsuits but nothing else, barefoot and without gear. They attacked without a word.

Duke grabbed a long metal hook, and started swinging. It took mere seconds before he was overwhelmed by sheer numbers.

Dana came scrambling down the stairs, her moment of frozen shock gone. So men flew out of the sea to land on Duke's boat, attacked him. So she'd seen stranger… no, fuck it. This took the prize for the fucking strangest thing ever.

Two of the men grabbed her from behind as she screamed. "Duke!" Another pair held Dirk to the deck.

That made the man confronting Duke turn and look at her. And look at her again. "You're not her."

Mid fifties, compact power, patrician features. Obviously the leader of this mutant group - "No, I'm not, you fucking bastard. Leave him alone." He laughed. He bloody laughed, sending her into a useless fit of seething rage. "Let him go!"

"Most people would be arguing for their own lives right about now."

"I'm not most people."

He actually took a step back. He looked over his shoulder at Duke, and then at her. Confused. "He's a Crocker, you know that, don't you? You – protecting him? Do you know what he can do? Do you know what he is?"

"And who the hell are you?"

"Dana, Cole Glendower. And family. Cole, meet Dana Bellamy." Duke said bitterly. Three held him, all of them armed.

"Who is this?" Glendower demanded, when Dirk stirred. Two men stood on him, a foot on his head and one on his shoulder.

"No one," Dana muttered. "Crew for the day. He's innocent."

Shock was fading. Anger was fading. She wanted to be angry. Dana wanted to fight, wanted to lash out and scream and fling herself at the freaks who threatened Duke…, but something, someone else, had risen from inside her. Her voices, her past lives. Her true self, and it knew better than to add Dana's rage.

"We heard you were gone." Glendower said, closing on her.

"You heard right. Now I'm back."

That actually seemed to mean something to him. Calculation in his eyes. "Do you know about the Crockers?"

"I know about this one. He's mine. Let him go."

"He hunts the Troubled."

"So do I, if necessary. And you're in one whole heap of trouble if you don't let him go in –"

Glendower waved at his sons, his nephews. They loosened their grip on her arms, and did the same with Duke. But not before landing a wooden-handled blow that sent him to the deck. Then they backed off as well. Out of reach anyway.

She went to him, wiped the blood from his split lip. She forbid his rage, stroking his cheek until he focused on her. Not them. "Don't, Duke. The last thing you want is their blood on your hands." Literally. She stood between him and the Glendowers.

"What is this about?"

"Duke Crocker's curse is active, that's what this is about. Simon Crocker hunted us like fish. He killed twenty or more Troubled people before he hunted your predecessor down, and we are going to stop Simon's son from following in his father's footsteps."

"You condemn him before he's acted, then. Based on what his father did. A father and a legacy he has rejected at every turn."

"Why do you defend him? You, of all people? He killed Audrey Parker. Simon killed Lucy Ripley. It's what they do."

"No, he didn't. Audrey is still in me." They were all with her.

"What?"

"It's true." Duke spoke up, standing behind her. Backing her up. "And my father never did anything to the Glendowers, or you wouldn't be where you are now."

"Don't try to justify his crimes, boy. It wasn't for lack of trying."

"Get off my boat."

Cole Glendower looked at him, at her. "I hope you know what you're doing," he said, to her. She felt Duke flinch behind her, though she knew it wouldn't have shown to anyone on the outside.

The others were starting to look a bit strangled, this argument lasting longer than they expected, longer than they could comfortably breathe air. Glendower waved the others into the sea, which they gratefully did, diving in with bare minimum splashes. "Don't come back out here," Cole said. "You won't get another chance." He dove in himself.

Dana clung to Duke, not sure who was supporting whom.