"the m. necrose pandemic has now become the fourth deadliest disease outbreak in history, surpassed only by the black plague, the spanish flu, and the bird flu. next up, sports on news center eighteen."

i turned off the tv then and took another long drink of water. it was as though i'd never been gone. the world had gotten along just fine without me. i leaned back into the cushions and listened to the sounds of the ocean through the open screen door. i might have dozed off; i'm not sure. suddenly i heard a bang, started, and looked out the picture window to see my neighbor, inez, at my door. she was wrapped in a towel.

inez used to be the housekeeper for my best friend, vicki cooper, who had owned both my beach house and cooper manor, the mansion at the top of the hill. when vicki died, she left me the beach house and left the mansion to inez and her husband, david, who had been the groundskeeper. i trusted them to keep an eye on my place and to water my plants in my absence.

i opened the door with a smile. i hadn't seen her since well before leaving for mexico. "hey, inez. how have you been?" i opened my arms to give her a hug but she just motioned behind her with a thumb.

"i was pretty good until your puppy dumped seaweed in my pool. i was swimming at the time."

that was when i looked outside. "crap!" one of the abilities of a siren, besides being able to mentally influence some people, is an affinity with the ocean. i'd been away from the water too long in the mexican jungles; my control was fuzzy.

so thinking about the ocean just now had caused the water to move inland. my cousin, adriana, the pacific siren princess, told me this was a common problem when sirens come into their power. the sea follows us. the water was up to the bumper of my car and had indeed dumped seaweed into the lower swimming pool. there's an upper one as well, but inez prefers the lower one because it's on the beach. i doubted that seaweed was all that had been dumped in it; there were probably a few buckets of sand and a variety of small sea creatures playing there now. "oh, man. i'm so sorry, inez. i'll clean it up."

i must have looked pretty stricken at the prospect of cleaning up after my mistake because she shook her head with a note of amusement. "it's okay. go swimming. it'll follow you back." i tried to protest, but she was firm. they would change the water, and i should go swim. "really. david's been meaning to scrub down the bottom. we'll open the drains and let the water go back out to sea."

one of the things i like about david is that he never uses chemicals in the water, so he could let it drain back to the ocean with the blessing of the state of california's environmental offices. vicki had installed a very expensive reverse osmosis filter for the pool, so the water going out would be perfectly safe for whatever creatures it encountered.

i vowed to add a thousand to the amount i'd offered them to watch the house. refilling the pool isn't cheap and despite her protests, i knew david had changed the water right before i'd left.

after writing myself a reminder, i changed into my suit and went for a swim. the tide rolled out with me, following me into the water.

there really isn't any way to explain what it feels like to swim in the ocean. once my body cooled to the temperature of the water, it was as if every wave was an extension of me. i dove through the breakers and swells until the surface was nearly flat. there wasn't much of a breeze and the sun warmed my hair. a porpoise appeared and chuckled at me-probably commenting on the waste of using my arms. feeling playful and relaxed at last, i played with the porpoise, diving right alongside his sleek gray form. we came out of the water nearly simultaneously, then dropped back in again. we must have done this about ten times before he bobbed his head in approval, tittered, and swam away to join a group that was tail-walking in the distance.

i floated on my back for a time while the seagulls overhead swooped and dipped in approval. i'd been away from the ocean long enough to pine for the sea, and yes, to miss my noisy feathered friends. one of them flew down fast, as though dive bombing a ship, and i nearly dropped under the water to avoid being hit. but it slowed at the last second in a fluttering of snowy wings and delicately dropped a tiny pink conch shell onto my bare stomach. then it flew back up to join its fellows overhead. how sweet. a gift from my admirers.

i have weird admirers.

i suppose i should have called some people to let them know i was back. but i really wanted peace and quiet for at least a day or two. so i put my new conch shell on the mantel with the others i'd collected over the years, called out for pizza since my fridge was bare, and opened a bottle of wine.

i thought a lot about the wine before selecting a simple california white, ignoring the magically enhanced red i'd come to relish. i couldn't drink that wine right now, not without conjuring up a whole lot of bad memories. i didn't want to think about the man who'd created that wine. not today. maybe not tomorrow, either.

it took two more days of swimming, sitting on my favorite rock overlooking the water, and just padding around the house before i felt ready to be part of the real world again. finally i dressed and headed for the office one morning instead of the beach. i was looking forward to a nice, normal day dealing with a backlog of telephone calls and paperwork-and chatting with dawna, my smart, savvy receptionist, who is also one of my best friends in the world.

i run a private security business out of an office on the third floor of one of the last historic buildings in downtown santa maria de luna. it's an old, red-brick victorian with gingerbread trim, a wide front porch, and a balcony on my floor that lets me get fresh air while offering partial protection from the california sunshine. once upon a time it had been a stretch to afford the rent. prices in santa maria aren't as bad as in hollywood or l.a., but they're not cheap, either. after i inherited the building (and the headaches that go along with owning commercial property) that wasn't an issue. i hadn't even known vicki had owned my office building until after her death.

pulling into my reserved spot in the parking lot, i found myself smiling. god, it was good to be back. i couldn't wait to get back to normal, or as close to it as i could manage. dawna's car was in its usual spot. i wasn't surprised. as receptionist, dawna wasn't scheduled to start for another hour, but she gets into work early more often than not. maybe we'd get a chance to talk before the day's craziness started.

ron's car was not in his spot, for which i was grateful. one of my tenants, ron is an attorney and an ass, but not in that order. i really wasn't in the mood to deal with the level of bullshit his attitude creates.

gulls swooped and dived overhead as i climbed out of the car. they cawed and performed aerial acrobatics, trying to get my attention. i smiled and made a shooing gesture. "go play. i'm going to be inside all day."

anyone watching would be amused to hear me talking to them. they would be shocked to see the gulls obey, swooping one more time before flying off toward the shore.

dawna must have heard them, or me, because the minute i opened the door, she raced toward me and pulled me into a hug.

"thank god, you're back!" i grunted a little as she squeezed me tighter. dawna is petite, but apparently she'd continued the workout schedule she'd started before i left because she was much stronger than she had been.

she held me at arm's length, long enough for her dark eyes to take in every inch of me from head to toe. "you look like hell, girlfriend. what happened?"

i tried for humor. "i look a lot better than i did two days ago. i even trimmed the singe off my hair and scrubbed off the blood." her eyes widened but i didn't elaborate. i wasn't ready to talk about it, so i made a show of looking her over in turn. i might look like hell, but she looked great. part of it was just good looks. she's part vietnamese and has the kind of exotic features that attract a lot of attention. she also knows exactly how to make the most of her assets. today she wore a black pinstripe skirt suit with a snow white blouse, accessorized with a delicate diamond necklace and matching earrings. and of course there was that big honking rock on her finger.

after a whirlwind romance i sort of instigated by realizing, while on a date with a certain guy, that dawna would make a much better girlfriend for him, she was going to become mrs. christopher gaetano. being engaged definitely agreed with her. she was practically glowing with joy.

i was happy for her, but thinking about it made me all too aware of the absence of john creede from my life. "there's too much to talk about without coffee. besides, if you have a minute, there are a couple of things i'd like to discuss with you."

"uh-oh. that sounds ominous." releasing me, she gave me a wary look and turned away to shut the door.

"it's not bad." i gave her a smile. "i promise."

"good. you head on upstairs. i'll forward the phones to the service and pour coffee." she gave me a gentle push toward the stairs, followed by a shooing motion that was almost identical to the one i'd given the gulls.

"thanks, dawna."

"no problema."

the familiar words brought back my smile-a smile i held on to clear up until the moment i was standing outside the open door of the empty office on the third floor where john creede had created the magical wine currently sitting undrunk in my beach house. though he'd had other offices, he'd rented this one to be close to me while we were dating. the room was empty now; the floor was damaged where someone had pulled up the temporary flooring that had been where he'd performed his magic.

he was really gone.

shit.

i blinked back tears. i was not going to cry, damn it. absolutely not. i'd done what i had to do. i really did believe that. i'd do it again. but it didn't make it hurt any less seeing that empty office, remembering when mexico had started to really go wrong.

"what do you mean you reassigned him?" i kept my voice down. the office door was closed, but the walls of the building were none too thick and i didn't want anyone overhearing this argument.