She turned to me then and looked me straight in the eyes, her expression determined. “I told him I’d sell the house.”

It took me more than a few seconds to process the words and even then I couldn’t believe it. The meaning caught me in the chest like a baseball thrown by a star pitcher. I struggled not to gasp, but the great, heaving weight of it made my heart tight and painful. I know I clutched her shoulder tighter and she finally reacted . . . staring up at me with pain-filled eyes. “Oh, Gran.” She could wind up homeless. Broke and homeless, with no place to call her own. It was the ultimate sacrifice for a woman of her generation. She had always told me how proud she was that she and Granddad had owned, even during the war. She wasn’t like Dottie, who could work within the government system.

Any more than Mom was.

We spent the next few hours talking out the details. It became clear early on that I wasn’t going to be able to talk her out of this last-ditch effort to save my mom. Gran knows my mom better than anyone alive. She knows what makes her tick, knows that jail would quite literally destroy her. I now learned that Gran had been working with Mom, trying to dry her out ever since the vampire had claimed her mind a few weeks ago. That had really scared Mom, to have no control over her actions. It had caused an epiphany that Gran had been trying to build on.

Crap and double crap.

I tried to salvage what I could of the situation by calling the attorney handling the probate of Vicki’s will to see if I’d missed anything after the reading was finished and what, if anything, I needed to do to work on getting hold of the money Vicki had left for me. Then I got transferred to Roberto’s assistant to make my suggestion about using a psychological or an ADA defense for Mom because of her siren blood.

Finally, I called my banker to see whether I might be able to get a mortgage to buy my grandmother’s house. It’s not easy for someone self-employed to qualify. Not every year’s income resulted in profit. All a small-business owner can do is save when the money’s good so you can spend when the money’s bad. But banks want to be paid every month. Still, with the inheritance I had coming, I thought I might be able to swing it.

She suggested I fill out the online application and they’d let me know.

At about that point I realized that I was enabling my grandmother to enable my mother. The circle of dysfunctional life. I could almost hear Elton John singing in the background.

By the time I left, Gran had at least stopped crying and was looking a little more hopeful. She really hadn’t wanted to give up the house. She’d have done it. But she didn’t want to.

The sun was setting as I pulled out of the driveway. Almost immediately I picked up a fresh tail. A police cruiser that trailed two cars behind, all along the route from Gran’s to my office. Not Clarke this time; not that it mattered. It pissed me off, but that didn’t matter, either. They would do what they were going to do. I couldn’t stop them. Reacting too strongly would imply guilt where there was none and give them an excuse to dig even deeper. So I counted to a hundred and tried to ignore the cop, with minimal success.

I had about an hour before I was supposed to go to PharMart and meet Creede and the others. I wanted my weapons. Now. I know hand-to-hand. It works well on humans. But there’s nothing like advanced weaponry when you go up against the monsters.

And we were going up against someone willing to traffic with the demonic.

The militant ministries have the best record fighting the demonic. True believers do well, too. I’m not either. I’d just have to make up for it with knowledge, planning, and excellent armament.

I felt the surge of magic as the car crossed the magical perimeter that guards the office and parking lot. It wasn’t as painful as it should have been, which meant the wards needed refreshing. I promised myself I’d write Dottie a note to make the arrangements as soon as I got inside.

I caught the cat before she could slip out the door and was rewarded with a deep scratch on the wrist. She hissed. I hissed right back. It startled her, but she didn’t look particularly intimidated. With a flip of her tail, she pranced off in the general direction of Ron’s office. I hoped she’d leave him a particularly stinky present.

There were messages in my slot and the UPS boxes were still stacked in the reception area. Grumbling, I took a look at the label on the top box. Yup, they were for me. The return address was for the ex-wife of Bob Johnson, a friend of mine who’d gotten killed in the same ambush where I’d been bitten. Vanessa was as nasty and bitter a piece of work as I’ve ever run across, screaming at me and blaming me for his death when I’d called to offer condolences. God alone knew what she’d mailed to me. I decided I didn’t want to know. At least not tonight. Time was a-wastin’ and I had things to do.

I grabbed the message slips and started pounding my way up the stairs. I hadn’t gone far when Bubba’s voice called down to me, shouting to be heard over the blaring volume of one of those reality singing competitions. It must have been one of the early rounds, because the singer was really, seriously bad. I could do better . . . and you do not want to hear me sing.

“Hey, Graves, that you?”

“Yeah. It’s me.”

“Dr. Scott called after Dottie left for the day. Said you needed to get back to him right away.”

“Thanks. I’ll give him a buzz,” I called out, and kept climbing, going two stairs at a time without feeling breathless.

Bubba’s office is just down the hall from mine on the third floor. As I walked past, the competition’s judges were eviscerating the poor kid verbally. Why anyone considered that entertainment I’d never know, but Bubba seemed to love it. I hurried to unlock my office door. If I was lucky the heavy wooden door would cut down on the sound. Situations like this made me truly hate having vampire-enhanced hearing.

I stepped over the threshold, feeling the familiar buzz of the wards reacting to me. If I’d looked, I might have caught a glimpse of the silver sigils Bruno had used to create the protections. Thinking about him, his smile, his voice, the touch of his lips . . . hurt enough to incapacitate me if I let it. But I wasn’t going to let it. I’d had my own epiphany in the restaurant.

One of the things Gran told me was that part of what went wrong with my mother was that my father left her. That men simply aren’t supposed to be able to leave sirens. His going broke something inside her. I hadn’t really thought about things from a biological perspective before. Bruno shouldn’t have been able to leave me. Maybe he could because I wasn’t fully siren, or because we met before my powers were activated by the vampire bite, or because he’s such a strong mage. Whatever the reason, he had left, and it was hitting me much harder than it should, given that we’d only just gotten back together.

I’m not my mother. I was not going to crawl into a bottle. No matter how much it hurt right now, I would get past this. What had worked best for me last time was keeping busy, working hard. Fate was certainly giving me the opportunity to do just that. Life was apparently going to be interesting, in that ancient curse sort of way.

Which brought me back to curses. Setting my purse on the desk, I dropped into my office chair. Dialing the phone with one hand, I stared at the mark on my palm. It was faint but still clear. I didn’t know a lot about palmistry, but now that I knew what to look for I could see that it did, indeed, mingle with both my life and career lines. Crap.

Apparently Dr. Scott had given me his direct number, because he answered on the first ring.

“Hello, Celia.” His voice was flat, without inflection, and it unnerved me.

“Hey, Jeff, what’s up?” I made my voice as cheerful as possible. I intended to say I’d been going to call him anyway, but he spoke before I had the chance.

“Your aunt’s personal assistant was here.”

“My aunt? I don’t have any aunts.”

“A very regal woman. She bedazzled the guards without any effort at all and just walked right through all of our security.”

Oh, crap. A siren.

Judging from Jeff’s tone of voice, whoever the siren was, she’d gotten to him I heard his anger, but underneath it there was a hint of hysteria.

“Look—” I started to speak, but he kept talking. With every word he seemed to grow more confident and more pissed. Which was probably good for him. Not so much for me.

“She was quite upset to find you gone. Apparently, your aunt, the sovereign of the sirens, Queen Lopaka, has been trying to reach you. She’s quite insulted and offended that you haven’t returned her messages.”

“I can imagine she was upset.” Because queens don’t like to be insulted. Except that nobody had tried to contact me that I know of, other than Ren’s visit. “But since I had no idea she’s been trying to reach me, I’m not sure what to do about it. Has she been trying to reach me, Jeff? Has your staff withheld messages from me?”

“Nobody has contacted our facility until today, I promise you. It’s not the sort of thing we’d keep from you. We would discuss it in therapy at the very least. I’ve sent you an e-mail with the details of her visit, along with the results of your most recent blood work and . . .” He paused for a long moment and I could hear him breathing as though summoning his courage. “I’ve also sent you an agreement to sign, terminating your stay here and releasing us of all responsibility. Once you fax it back to us, we’ll refund all your money.”

“B-but—,” I stammered, trying to wrap my head around what he was saying. He was kicking me out? Could he do that?

“I’m sorry, Celia, but the fact is that you’re simply too much of a security risk. I can’t have people wandering in and out of our facility at will, manipulating the patients and staff. It’s dangerous. I know you’re not responsible for it, but the fact of the matter is that they are coming here because of you.”

I wanted to argue, but I couldn’t. He was right. I might not want to be a patient at Birchwoods and might not think I deserved to be there, but I sure as hell didn’t want it to get out that I’d been evicted. If word got out, I’d never get another facility to take me if things went south. Of course, the state would still be more than happy to let me in and then throw away the key. I wasn’t going there. I’d rather die.