“The one down by the cemetery. We passed it first.”

“Right. The only museum in town. The book was written by Freya Goodnight, who is none other than the same Freya who sells maps and books of local interest out of the museum’s gift shop, guides the haunted twilight tours and owns the jeeps that give driving tours of Gothic and the vicinity.”

“This is a happening place.”

He glanced at Elle, thinking she had to be sarcastic, but no.

She looked pleased and satisfied. “Adam, what do you do out here in the middle of nowhere?”

“Do?” Not a question he wanted to answer.

“For a living. Unless you’re independently wealthy, you must do something to earn a living, and even in the case of riches, most people do something to keep themselves busy.”

“I work with metals. For the most part, I create chain-mail armor and weapons for medieval reenactments and the active warrior-fantasy market.”

“Wow. That’s impressive.” She sounded awed. “I can’t imagine doing that kind of precision work. Does it keep you busy?”

“I have more work than I have time for. I also—” Wait. No. Shut up.

“You also?”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t look at her.

“No, no, no.” She sounded exasperated. “You can’t stop now. What activity would make you, a stoic guy, so uncomfortable you don’t want to admit it?”

He still didn’t answer. Surely she’d get the message.

“You also knit baby booties? You also translate French pornography? You also create art out of tin cans?”

Startled, he glanced sideways at her. How had she come so close?

“Really? This determinedly unfeeling guy is an artist?” She gestured at him, up and down. “You create art out of—”

He had to stop her. “Not tin cans. Out of scrap metal. Occasionally.”

She rolled her hand to keep him going.

“Scrap metal that I find on the beach, a piece of iron from some old internal combustion engine someone dumped there. Or steel from an old shipwreck that the ocean deposits on the sand.”

“The ocean burps up pieces of ships?” She sounded interested.

Okay, she was interested. In one short morning, he’d figured out she had a keen interest in, well, everything. Made her claim of being a scientist seem solid.

“The area off this coast has powerful crosscurrents, variances in ocean depth—for all I know, the kraken might lurk in those depths. But the ocean floor is littered with shipwrecks, old and new, and those powerful currents, helped sometimes by an earth tremor, can carry heavy objects to shore.”

“Not just wood from the shipwrecks? Metal, too?”

“Most of the time there’s nothing big. A manacle from a prison ship, or the frame of a porthole. Evocative pieces on their own. But more than once, I’ve retrieved parts of a hull, and I...” He should stop talking.

“Make art?” She was so interested.