“What … what was he?”

“His father was a human sailor. His mother was a siren. Which means you are part siren.”

A siren? No way. Not me. I mean, she was talking to the woman who got kicked out of eighth-grade choir, whose dorm mates threatened to call the cops when she sang in the shower. And sirens were beautiful—I mean drop-dead gorgeous creatures who have men panting after them.

“Um, Gran …” I struggled for words, but all I could come up with was, “I can’t sing. I mean, I really can’t sing.”

She laughed, hard, her head flung back, eyes dancing. Part of it was the stress, but part was pure humor. When she finally calmed down enough to catch her breath she said, “No, baby, you really can’t sing.” She wiped tears from the corners of her eyes. “But while some sirens focus their call through music, the call itself is psychic. A female siren calls males to her to fulfill her needs, even to their doom.”

“But—”

She continued as if I hadn’t spoken. It was as if the words and emotions had been building up inside her and, now that they’d been loosed, there was no stopping them. “The vampire that bit you tried to change you instead of killing you because he was male. The werewolf who found you in that alley, out of all the alleys in the city, did it because you called him to you.” She gave a sad smile. “And you don’t get along with other women because you’ve come into your power.”

“That’s not true. I get along with women,” I protested. Actually, it was a lie. I’ve never gotten along with most women. I have a few good friends, Dawna, Vicki… .

Gran didn’t say a word, just raised an eloquent eyebrow.

“Vicki was my best friend.”

“Vicki was a lesbian, Celia.”

“Well, yeah, but she was a woman.”

Gran nodded once, then raised those formidable silver brows again. “Fine. Anyone else?”

“Dawna. I get along really well with Dawna. Really, really well, and she doesn’t like women in … that way.”

Gran smiled, but there was a tinge of pity along with the humor. “Is she, by any chance, postmenopausal?”

“Well, she had some plumbing problems and had a hysterectomy a while back, but what’s that got to do with anything?”

Gran gave me a level look. “Name one close female friend you have who is both heterosexual and fertile. Just one.”

I thought about it. Hard.

Silence stretched between us for probably two minutes. Two of the longest minutes of my life.

“You can’t, can you?” She smiled gently. “In fact, most women you interact with get almost completely neurotic, almost to the point of insanity, around you, particularly if men or other women they love are around.”

I thought about it. There had been incidents in college, at parties. Men always rush forward to open doors for me, or hold out my chair, and tick off their girls. Hell, not two weeks ago there’d been a scene at El Jefe’s between me and Kevin’s live-in girlfriend, Amy, when he brought me a drink before he delivered hers. There were other things, too. I didn’t like to think about them. It’s always just confused me. Yet if I was a siren, it all made sense. But was I? Was I really? “How could I know for sure? Is there a test kit in the pharmacy or something?”

“Whenever you’re in real need, you call men to you, and they do whatever it takes, at whatever cost, to help you.”

Now that I had an answer for.

“Then why didn’t I call someone to help me when Ivy and I were kidnapped? God knows we needed help.”

Tears filled her eyes, her grip on my hand tightening until it was actually painful. “Oh, honey. If only you had come into your power. But you hadn’t hit puberty. If you had—”

If I had, my sister might still be alive. I might not have been tortured. Everything … my entire life … would have been completely and totally different. If only I’d been a few years older?

I sat there, stunned. My mind was racing, but it refused to pull anything into any semblance of coherent thought. It was as if my whole world had turned upside down. Nothing made sense and at the same time everything suddenly did.

“It’s one of the reasons your mother had such a hard time adjusting to your father’s abandonment. Men simply do not leave sirens. She knew about her father’s side of the family. Had met them, integrated somewhat. Losing your father didn’t just hurt her, it damaged her. I think she would’ve killed herself if it hadn’t been for you girls. And then, when Ivy …” She let her voice trail off, her gaze shifting to the door as if she could see through it to where my mother slept on the other side. She sighed.

“I know it’ll take some time to get used to the idea.” Gran’s reassuring voice came to me as if from a distance. “And eventually you’ll need to get in touch with your great-grandmother or one of her sisters. But not now. Right now you need to rest.”

As if I could.

25

I hadn’t expected to be able to sleep. After all, Gran’s news had been quite a shock, and a sleeping bag on a concrete floor isn’t exactly my idea of comfort. But I must have been more tired than I expected, because I was out the minute I zipped myself into the bag.

I knew I was dreaming, recognized the dream, but couldn’t drag myself out of it.

I was twelve years old again. It was noon on a bright midsummer day, and hot. I wore cutoff jeans that were a little too short and tight to be comfortable, not to show off my legs, but because I’d outgrown them and there wasn’t any money to buy more.

There was never enough money. Mom was working as a bartender, but most of what she made went up in smoke—cigarette smoke, pot smoke, and liquor. She always came home late, seldom sober or alone. Ivy slept through most of it. She never heard the sound of the headboard hitting the wall, or the moans that accompanied it. I did.

There were no more ballet lessons. The only reason Ivy was getting lessons training her “gift” was because Gran insisted, paid for them, and drove her. That’s why I was alone now. Gran had taken Ivy to lessons and Mom was off “working.”

Finding him had been easy. I’d gotten on the computer at the library. It was right there in the telephone listings. The address was less than four blocks from our house.

Four blocks. It might as well have been a thousand miles. But I didn’t know that. Not then.

I rounded the corner on foot, my thongs slapping against the cracked concrete. Sweat slid between my shoulder blades beneath the cheap pink tank top I’d taken from my mother’s closet.

The part of me that knew I was dreaming tried to stop right here, to pull out or change the dream before it went any further. I knew what came next. I’d lived it once, dreamed of it often, and had no desire to see it again. But I was sleeping too deeply, so the images moved inexorably forward, my younger self pausing beneath the corner street lamp, looking for the right house number.

It was the fourth on the right. A tidy little one-story white wood frame building with red trim and a picket fence in front. I saw him. He was playing catch in the front yard with a boy a year or so younger than me. A girl of five or so with blond curls and a pink jumper was playing dolls on the front stoop. She looked enough like Ivy that it was startling. He was laughing until he looked up and saw me.

Daddy.

The joy slid from his face. He turned to the boy and said something. I couldn’t hear it, but I could see the urgency in his eyes. The boy seemed startled but obediently bent to gather up his things. Not fast enough, apparently. My father hurried forward, chivvying him and his baby sister into the house.

I froze, right hand extended, my mouth open to call out.

My father’s eyes met mine for one endless moment.

He closed the door.

“How very tragic.” I recognized the voice that slid into my dream as smooth as silk. Jones was back and he was being sarcastic. “Poor little thing.”

“Get the hell out of my head.”

“No. I don’t think so. We need to talk and I don’t have a lot of time.”

The dream shifted and I could see him. He was in a gymnasium, standing in the center of a pentagram drawn within the circle at center court. Both the circle and pentagram shone red and wet by the light of the black candles placed at each point of the star. He’d had to use his own blood to draw those symbols, and I felt their power, and the pain in his forearms, even through the filtering dream.

“I need you to get a message to Kevin Landingham.”

“What, you can’t use a phone?”

“Not safely. And while I’m not sure how he did it, he’s managed to cut me off from hearing his thoughts.” Jones sounded pissed. “Somebody’s gone off the reservation. It’s got to be one of the telepaths, otherwise I’d have been able to pick up on it—or somebody at the main office would’ve tipped me off to it. Whoever it is, they’ve eliminated the few clairvoyants we had on the payroll.”

“So, what’s the message?”

“We’re in the middle of a high-profile assignment. It’s too important to let it fail over a rogue. So they’re offering Kevin a deal. A one-year limited contract, hunting hard targets, starting with the rogue. He can write his own ticket. And they’ll guarantee your safety. No one associated with the firm will ever use you or harm you in any way. They’ll take whatever binding oaths he wants on it.”

“Why would he care about my safety?” I wouldn’t have said it out loud, but we were operating in a dream, in my thoughts, so he heard it just the same.

“You don’t know?” He chuckled and it was creepy as hell. “Oh, my. Well, if he hasn’t told you, I certainly won’t. But be sure to give him my message. Word for word.”

He stepped forward, very deliberately rubbing out the edge of the circle with his foot. The image in my mind went to black. Apparently our conversation was over.

I opened my eyes, no longer able to sleep. As I did, I became simultaneously aware of several things: I wasn’t in a sleeping bag on the floor of the study of Reverend Al’s church; my head was pounding; and I had a terrible, metallic taste in my mouth. I was in a straitjacket, on the floor of a padded room, and Dr. Greene was watching me from behind the safety window.