Sarita turned at once and moved around the corner to the front of the house. Domitian was hard on her heels. When she got to it, the front door wasn't just unlocked, it was half-open. They both slowed cautiously as they entered. Sarita half expected someone to leap out and attack them, but nothing happened and she paused a couple of steps inside to glance around. They were in a tiny entry. A door on her left led into a small kitchen cast in shadows from a light that had been turned on in the room behind it. A set of stairs were directly in front of them, leading to the second floor, a narrow hall led past the stairs to a door at the back of the house, and a door on their right led into a small sitting room.
"Come in," Mrs. Dressler said again, sounding a bit impatient now. "And close the door, dear. Ramsey has a man stationed on the beach, and if he sees the door open he might decide to investigate."
Sarita turned back, but Domitian was already closing the door.
"The guard on the beach is also the reason we can't turn on any lights yet. So we'll just have to sit in the dark and talk until the sun rises," Mrs. Dressler added now as Domitian took Sarita's arm and led her into the room. While she couldn't see a thing in the unlighted space, he seemed to have no trouble navigating the dark. But then Dressler had mentioned night vision as one of the improvements the nanos gave their hosts, she recalled.
"Your eyes are glowing, young man," Mrs. Dressler said quietly. "Are you one of the hybrids my husband created and enjoys torturing?"
"No," Domitian murmured and Sarita glanced around to see that his eyes were indeed glowing. Rather like a cat's did at night, she thought. But that didn't disturb her as much as the fact that the woman's question suggested she knew what Dressler had been up to all these years. Sarita had rather hoped that wasn't the case. She'd been hoping Mrs. Dressler and her grandmother had been both ignorant and innocent all these years, and that was why they'd never turned him in or done anything to stop him. It seemed that wasn't the case, though, and it worried her that their lack of action might make them accessories. They might even approve of his actions, she thought now and turned back toward the chair where Mrs. Dressler sat. Using her best constable's voice, Sarita asked, "So you know what your husband has been doing, ma'am?"
"Oh, yes, child. I know better than anyone what that bastard is up to."
Sarita relaxed a little. There was no way to mistake the tone in Mrs. Dressler's voice as anything but loathing. The woman hated her husband and didn't approve of what he was doing. It didn't get her, or Sarita's grandmother, off the hook for not trying to stop it. But at least they weren't accomplices.
"This way," Domitian said quietly, taking her hand now and leading her the rest of the way to what turned out to be a couch. When he sat and tugged at her hand, Sarita settled next to him and squinted toward the woman in the chair across from them, but couldn't make out much more than a silhouette.
"You said my grandmother was coming?" she asked politely.
"Yes. My son went to wake her after he got me up and about," Mrs. Dressler said softly. "That was just before you started chattering outside the window. She won't be too long. But not too quick either, I should imagine," she said wryly, and pointed out, "We're not as spry as we used to be."
"Of course," Sarita murmured and then just sat there like a bump on a log, completely at a loss as to what to say. The situation seemed somewhat surreal to her in that moment. Fortunately, Elizabeth Dressler didn't appear to have the same problem.
"My son thinks the pair of you swam here," she announced abruptly. "Is he right?"
"Yes," Sarita answered.
"Where from?" Mrs. Dressler asked at once.
"From the little island you first lived on when you moved here from England," Sarita admitted.
"All that way?" she asked with amazement.
"Yes," Sarita assured her and then admitted, "Well, really Domitian swam all that way, I spent a good deal of the night lounging around on an air mattress, watching him do all the work."
"And tackling men with gills who planned to stab me from behind," Domitian put in at once, apparently not appreciating the picture she'd just painted of herself as a useless female.
"Ah. One of Ramsey's hybrids," Elizabeth said and sounded weary now. "Most of them are victims who want nothing more than to be left alone. But some suffer a sort of syndrome-What do they call it when kidnap victims start to side with their kidnappers?" she asked, a frown evident in her voice.
"Stockholm syndrome, I think," Sarita murmured.
"Yes. That's it," Mrs. Dressler said at once. "Well, some of his hybrids suffer from a version of that and simply live to serve him. They are extremely dangerous," she warned. "Like Charles Manson's followers, they would do anything for him, even kill. Bear that in mind."