Siren Song

the guest chairs. Raising the bottle in salute, he said, “Screw the bastards,” before taking a long pull of beer.

“Screw the bastards,” I agreed.

“So, what can I be doing to help you?” Bubba asked. “ ’Cause I know you’re needing help.” He looked me up and down and my eyes followed his gaze, trying to see if I had shit on my clothes.

“I don’t look that bad.”

“Nope. Worse.” He smiled to soften the words.

Ouch. Well, that was not particularly flattering but probably honest. We sat in silence for a moment, and in that moment of peace and quiet something occurred to me for the first time. One of the biggest problems I’d been having was that too many things were happening to me, so many that I didn’t have time to do more than react to them. I got bit, I reacted. I got charged, I reacted. I was put in Birchwoods, I reacted. We were kidnapped, I reacted. Over and over again until I was exhausted and looking for escape.

If that went on, the pressure would break me, and soon.

It was time to break the cycle, to start forcing people to react to me. I raised my eyes to Bubba’s. I smiled, showing my fangs. Screw the bastards, indeed. “You still have that GPS navigation unit?”

“Yeah. It’s down in my truck.”

“Any chance I could borrow it for a couple days?”

“Sure. Why?”

“I have to find an island.” Specifically, I needed to find the Isle of Serenity. If the queen was annoyed I hadn’t dropped by . . . it was time to go find out who didn’t want me to meet her.

He didn’t seem bothered by my request. Then again, Bubba liked to deep-sea fish. Every time he could manage to wrangle a couple of days off he was out on the water in his boat, Mona’s Rival, so named because she was the only thing that came close to his wife in his affections. She was a good-sized vessel, too, big enough to hold five in reasonable comfort. That was convenient, since that’s exactly how many I needed to bring along. I didn’t know what Bubba would charge me, but it had to be less than one of the commercial rentals. Despite what I’d told Gran, I wasn’t broke yet, but I was going through capital at a truly alarming rate. That refund from Birchwoods couldn’t come too soon.

“I’ll go get it.” Bubba rose with a lazy grace and meandered downstairs.

I closed my office door and locked it. I stripped down to my undies, changing out of the comfy-but-not- practical-for-business workout clothes and into the things I’d picked up from my old bedroom at my gran’s. I hadn’t had a lot to choose from and most of it had been black—from back in my “I’m cool, I’m goth” teenage period. I pulled on black low-rise jeans and was pleased to discover that they still fit perfectly. Yay. Let’s hear it for the all- liquid diet . . . at least until the next time I craved a pizza.

The cropped black tee with the motto Don’t get even . . . get odd was a little tight across the bust but not enough to be uncomfortable. The blazer I’d bought from Isaac was black, so it would match well enough and cover enough that I wouldn’t look slutty in the tight top. Which left me with a choice of shoes. I could go with the white sneakers: practical but not terribly stylish; the lace-up, heavy-duty, steel-toed Frankenstein’s work boots, which would certainly make a fashion statement but were a little extreme; or the dress pumps I’d worn to court. Not the pumps. There may be people who can run and fight in heels, but I’m not one of them. The Frankenboots were fun but heavy. So I went with the sneakers.

Once I was decent, I opened the door. Bubba would be back in a minute. Then, taking the jacket off the hanger, I spread it out flat on the desktop and opened my safe. First, before I forgot, my passport. We were going to a foreign country, after all. Then I began arming up again. I was strapping on the shoulder rig for my Colt when I heard Bubba’s tread on the stairs. I checked the gun, going with silver-jacketed loads. Not cheap and not necessary for dealing with ordinary baddies, but damned near essential if you want to do more than annoy the monsters. In my case, better safe than sorry.

I put a pair of One Shot water pistols, filled with holy water, in the snap loops Isaac had sewn into the jacket lining to hold them, then strapped on an ankle holster with my backup Derringer. When Bubba reached my doorway I was staring at the safe, wondering what else I should take. I have quite a few preset spells, little ceramic disks like the one Bruno had used at the courthouse. You don’t have to be a mage to use them. You just break the disk to release the magic. It would be very cool if Creede really could put a full binding spell in a disk. Not knowing what I’d be up against, I couldn’t know what spells I might need.

“Damn, woman, you’re arming for bear.” Bubba set the GPS unit on the desk and picked up the beer bottle he’d set there earlier.

“I’m in the middle of a situation.”

“This is about what Dottie saw in those bugs, isn’t it?” Bubba opened the beer and took a seat, leaning forward, elbows on his knees.

I sighed and glanced at the Wadjeti, visible on the shelf of my open safe. “I think so.” I decided to grab a handful of boomers—tiny things, the size of a quarter, that were spelled to emit a flash of light and a deafening sound when broken. They’re useful in any number of situations. I popped a few in each of the front jacket pockets.

“You’re going to need backup.” Bubba’s voice was flat. When I turned to look at him, his expression had hardened, his pale blue eyes narrowing to slits. “And you’ll need a boat to get to that island.”

I really wanted him to take me, but I didn’t want to lie about what we might be facing. Not that I knew much about the details. “Yeah, but I’m pretty sure it’s going to get ugly.”

He smiled and the chipped tooth was proof of his next words. “I can do ugly.”

He probably could. He was definitely a tough ole boy. He stood up, grabbing the beer. “Give me a couple minutes. I need to let Mona know and call Stew.”

12

Stew is Bubba’s brother-in-law. He has the same dark good looks as Bubba’s wife, Mona, but none of her fire. Mona’s ambitious, driven in both her career and her home life. Stew, on the other hand, is a handsome, charming, cad. He has a bail bondsman’s license, but the only time he uses it is when he’s covering for Bubba. Mostly he pays bass in a band, making just enough money to pay for a cheap apartment and his booze. Food he cadges off of the most recent in a successive line of sweet young things who think that his being in a band makes him cool.

He arrived promptly, a sure indication that he was broke. While he half-listened to Bubba, enough to parrot the appropriate answers, the focus of his attention was my T-shirt. Apparently the jacket wasn’t doing as good a job of concealing things as I’d hoped. Terrific.

“You’ve got my cell number. Call me if anything comes up. If you can’t get me, call Mona.” Bubba was repeating himself, but it was probably a good idea. Sometimes you have to use a sledgehammer to drive a point home to Stewie.

“I got it already.” Stew wrenched his gaze away from my boobs long enough to glare at his brother-in-law. “It’s not like it’s the first time and it’s not like it’s rocket science. Give me some credit.”

I went downstairs to write Dottie a note about the wards before I could say anything unfortunate. Bubba followed a few minutes later.

We drove to the PharMart in Bubba’s behemoth of a four-wheel-drive truck. It’s an older model but tricked out with every conceivable luxury, including the requisite chromed mud flaps with a naked woman and a bumper sticker proclaiming him a “PROUD REDNECK.” He calls the truck Baby. His vanity plates say: BADA55. How he got that past the censors at the DMV I’ll never know.

PharMart is one of the bigger pharmacy chains. The stores are all pretty much identical: big tan brick boxes with windows all along the front. Their product selection is good and they’re not terribly overpriced. This particular store is the one where I usually get my prescriptions filled. It was also the site where Bruno, Matteo, and I had set the trap for Lilith that had gone so terribly wrong.

More important, that was where Dahlmar had given me my sire’s head.

Better than roses, in my opinion.

I felt the power of the PharMart’s wards buzz across my senses as Bubba steered the truck into the parking lot. It didn’t occur to me until we were pulling up next to the Ferrari to wonder how Creede had managed to drive