When they had finished their dinner, Ryan drove Dema back to the lot where her car was parked. 

"Why don't you follow me home?" he said. "Then you'll know where to come in the morning. Be there about nine. The tide will be nearly low by then. It's a little harder to launch the kayaks at low tide, but there's more to see along the shoreline."

So they did that. Ryan's place was in North Beach, on the next island up from Anacortes. When he parked in front of his house, Dema pulled up beside him and smiled and waved to him, then he rolled down his window so she did the same.

"Wear a windbreaker," he said. "And bring a change of clothes in case you get too wet."

"Got it," she said.

"Good. See you at nine."

She drove off. But she didn't go back to Seattle. She drove around a bit until she found a secluded spot to park, and she waited. 

Ryan's habit, she knew, was to go kayaking in the evening. She hoped tonight would be no exception.

Dema reclined the seat a bit and opened the window a crack to make herself more comfortable, then she went into her shaman dream and found Ryan. 

Even home alone he was still unreadable, but now that she knew him better she could at least tell it was him, and get a sense of where he was and what he was doing. He had changed his clothes, and now he went out the back door and shouldered a kayak he kept there. 

His little house was not on the shore, but it was not far away, and in a few minutes he had clambered over the rocks and lowered his kayak into the water. Then he slipped into it and paddled off. 

She sensed the light chop of the waves against the hull, the gentle bobbing of the little craft as it moved through the swells. She felt the rhythmic movement of his arms and shoulders as the double-bladed paddle dipped from side to side. 

He headed out toward some smaller islands nearby, and when he reached them he circled one of them until he was under an overhanging bluff. He was more open to her now, as if he was anticipating something he could no longer fully contain, and she knew he was headed for a small sea cave. 

This must be the one Jeff had told her about, where he would leave the kayak. Sure enough, he slipped out of the boat and pushed it deeper into the cave. He tied a rope from it to a jutting rock. 

His sense of anticipation was growing, but she still could not tell what he had in mind. He stripped off his clothes and stowed them in the boat, then turned and plunged beneath the waves.

As he broke through the surface and the cold water rushed over his body, the barriers he had erected that made her have to strain to stay in touch with him vanished. The sudden burst of pure emotion overwhelmed her for a moment. When she recovered, her shaman dream-sense was pure and clear. 

But puzzling, because she no longer sensed the presence of Ryan at all. Instead, it was more like earlier, when she was following the seal-dreams from the deck of the ferry. 

But this was more intense. This was one particular seal she was sensing. And what she sensed from it was joy, joy in the freedom of the open water. There was none of the sense of the need to hunt. This seal clearly remembered dining on fish and chips, with a pint of Guinness to wash it down.

Dema came out of her shaman-dream, laughing so hard her sides ached. What were the chances? Ryan was a shape-shifter! Being Irish, he probably thought of himself as a selkie. This was the secret he was protecting so strenuously. No wonder. 

And, she knew, it was her way to fully gain his trust. She drove back to her motel in Seattle, looking forward to the kayak trip. On the way she phoned Jeff Strauss and filled him in.

"Kayaking? You're going kayaking with him tomorrow?"

"Yes, it's perfect," she said. "We're going to become kayaking buddies. There's no way he won't tell me all about what he does out there."

"Well, okay. Keep your cell phone with you, and let me know if you need any help." 

That night, Dema pondered this development. What were the chances, indeed? This was not like her meeting with Juan, the Yaqui Indian shaman, in Arizona. Then she had sensed his nature well in advance. It was almost as if he had summoned her. 

But Ryan, he was guarding his secret fiercely. There was no prior connection that had drawn her here. Was there? But then, as she drifted off to sleep, her shaman-awareness shifted into a higher state, the one her grandmother Sedna referred to as the second level, and she felt the timelessness, the interconnectedness of everything. At this level, her finding Ryan was no longer a mystery.