"i decided i needed to have jorge help with the spell work on the vans."

"you decided you needed? and you didn't see any reason to check with me first, even though i'm the one in charge? humberto was depending on jorge to watch his back, and i assigned jorge to him precisely because he could cast a protection spell in case there were booby traps. which there were, so now i've got an injured man. what the hell, john!"

john gave me "the look." it was an expression i'd seen far too much of over the past couple of weeks: superior to the point of condescending. the men had seen it, too. it was undermining my authority with them and with the clients. people had begun to run my orders past john before actually following them, and to obey his orders before mine. that was unacceptable.

he spoke carefully, as though addressing a child ... or at least that was how it felt. "you hired me for my expertise."

really? when did i say that? "no, creede, i hired you because you have good men and good equipment, and i thought you were capable of following orders. apparently i was wrong about the last part." i spoke softly, but my voice was cold enough to frost the windows, despite the mexican midday heat.

his face darkened, anger making his golden eyes, filled with magical flame, flash menacingly. "we both know you needed to hire me, celia. you're not qualified to handle this kind of project. bodyguard, sure. but a full-fledged evacuation with a multiperson crew? i can't believe you agreed to handle the evacuation without a soul to back you up. remember, you called me. hired me to cover your ass so you didn't embarrass yourself in front of the clients."

embarrass myself? embarrass myself? oh, no. oh, so fucking no. "i called you because you had people available. maybe i didn't mention you weren't my first choice. i called because your business has sucked lately. remember that part? that i said on the phone i wanted to do you the favor of a quick paycheck? but screw it. you're fired. get your miller & creede people together and get your butts back to l.a."

"you wouldn't dare," he said in a dangerous, venomous whisper. i could actually feel the power of his magic building in the room, rising like scalding water.

i met his eyes without flinching, without backing down. "i'll have dawna cut you a check for the days you've actually been on the assignment."

in a fit of pique, he'd taken both vans and all the contractors except maria, luis, and lorenzo. it had floored me that he would risk people's lives that way. totally unprofessional.

and very likely unforgivable.

but i'd gotten them all out. by myself. the only person who would be embarrassed by that was john creede. the tricky part was going to be figuring out how to get the word out that i'd succeeded without "taking the credit." that little bomb hit me as i stared at the empty room.

"celia." dawna's voice brought me back to the present. "are you okay? you look ... odd."

i didn't feel odd. i felt hurt, sad, humiliated, and pissed. john and i had been fairly serious. i'd really thought he respected me as a person and as a professional, and that we'd be able to work well together. apparently i'd been wrong. it hurt. a lot.

she passed me over a cup of steaming coffee. "do you want to talk about it?"

"not yet." again, maybe never.

the eyes that met mine were worried. "okay." she sounded doubtful. "if you say so."

"i do."

i was spared further discussion by ron's baritone bellow from downstairs. "dawna!"

"oh hell," she muttered. ron may not be my favorite tenant, but dawna loathes him. of course, since she's the receptionist, she bears the brunt of most of his bad behavior. more than once he's driven her close to quitting or to violence. he thinks his law degree makes him superior to the rest of us mere mortals. he's an autocratic, demanding bully, but he pays his rent on time and ponies up for building maintenance without too much complaint, so i've put up with him.

i laughed. "good to see some things haven't changed. go. i'm all right."

"but we were going to talk." she cast a filthy look at the staircase.

i knew she didn't want to go down there. i couldn't even blame her. but it was her job. like it or (obviously) not. "we will. later. go."

with a huge sigh, she flounced down the stairs and back to work.

later was a lot later. ron kept dawna hopping all morning and i wound up having an unexpected visitor.

"i need you to find my daughter."

the sunlight streaming into my office through the balcony windows wasn't being kind to the woman seated across the desk from me. laka is from the isle of serenity, home of the pacific sirens, and usually she looks lovely, thanks to her polynesian coloring and features and a wide, easy smile that can light up a room. but she wasn't smiling today and there were lines of worry on her face, which i'd never seen before. she was dressed simply and wore no makeup, her hair pulled back in a thick braid that hung down her back. she looked old and tired. then again, she probably was. sirens can live a long time, and if her teenage daughter, okalani, was missing, laka probably wasn't getting much sleep.

i weighed how to respond. i'd met laka's daughter a couple of years earlier when i'd been on serenity on business. okalani had a remarkable talent-she was a strong enough teleporter to be able to transport groups of people. she'd saved my life, and the lives of a lot of other people, using that gift. and while she had an attitude problem-what teenager doesn't?-i'd kind of liked the kid.

i wasn't surprised she'd gone missing. from the first moment i'd met her, she'd made it very clear that she wanted to get off serenity and find her long-lost father and brother.

"have you talked to her father?"

laka gave a frustrated snort. granted, contacting okalani's dad was an obvious thing to do. but you'd be surprised how often people don't actually do the obvious.

"he won't take my calls. i went to the address in the telephone directory. his ex-wife says he's gone, and good riddance. i thought she might be lying, but there are initial divorce papers filed at the courthouse."

"what about your son?"

her expression saddened, growing haunted. "my son is dead. he was killed in a vampire attack after one of his high-school football games."

"i'm so sorry." i was, too. few football games are held at night because of the risks, but with the days so short in the fall and winter, sometimes games end after dark. the police do the best they can, but accidents happen. tragic.

"thank you. losing him to ricky was hard. but his death ... perhaps you can understand now why i tried so hard to keep okalani from coming to the mainland."

i did, actually. the siren isle of serenity has never had a vampire, never known a werewolf attack. the mental control the queen has over the island residents would force them to leave. i could understand laka's desperation, knowing her daughter was on her own in circumstances unlike anything she'd ever experienced. that didn't mean i could help her. "laka, i'm a bodyguard, not a private investigator. but i know of a couple of reputable-"

"no," she interrupted me. "please ... okalani likes you, she trusts you." i started to explain that i wasn't trained to find people, but she interrupted me again. "but you're very good at uncovering the truth, princess." okay, now she was interrupting thoughts i hadn't spoken. was she was rummaging around in my head?

i intentionally let my thoughts about her daughter go blank, focusing instead on the room. the curtains at the balcony doors were open, letting in lots of bright sunlight that gleamed off the wide, white trim of the baseboards and made the pale peach walls look even paler than usual. i loved my big desk, which had two visitor chairs facing it; there was a second seating area in one corner, with a couch, a side chair, and a low table. behind me was a large gun safe. painted a dark forest green, the safe was a new addition to the office decor, and one i wasn't entirely pleased about.

i saw laka's face register confusion for a moment before she looked directly at the gun safe. got her. sirens are telepathic. the "siren call" people talk about is a psychic compulsion, not some sort of music in the air. while it's considered extremely bad manners to intrude into other people's heads willy-nilly, many of the sirens i've met do it a lot.

most of them can carry on conversations both audibly and mentally with equal ease. i've had to work hard to get good at that, but i don't really like doing it unless it's an emergency. it creeps people out. hell, it creeps me out. i still haven't mastered keeping others out of my thoughts. then again, i'm only one-fourth siren and my abilities were brought out by the bite of a master vampire who was trying to turn me. i may technically be a siren-and the multi-grandniece of queen lopaka-but i hadn't had a clue about that part of my heritage until the bat bite.

laka eavesdropping on my thoughts without permission ticked me off. a lot.

stop it! i growled the words in my head. i was sorely tempted to show her the door, enough so that i started to rise from my seat.

laka flushed, but kept talking, desperation forcing her words out in a rush. "hear me out, please, princess. ricky, okalani's father, has always been clever and charismatic. charming enough to win people over, to convince them of whatever he wants them to believe. he talks his way into good jobs, and people who meet him would swear he isn't capable of stealing or conning people out of their money. but he is."

something swam through her dark eyes, some memory that she wasn't yet ready to reveal-and i wouldn't dive into her head to pry it out. i sat back down, inhaling the thick scent of flowers that surrounded her. "when he was with me, on serenity, i used my powers to keep him in check. too many of my fellow sirens would have been easy pickings for ricky, since at that time money didn't have much value on serenity. i didn't allow him to take advantage of people. he hated that. he said i was manipulating him, making him into someone he wasn't. in a way, he was correct. i could make him do what was right. but i couldn't make him want to do it. perhaps i was wrong to try to make him become a more ethical person. he grew to hate me, and to hate all sirens, because of what i did."