“They are, but my house is right on the water with a small pier. I’ve been there for years and no one’s ever complained about my going back and forth from the water.”

  Stavros nods. “I could think of far less pleasant things to do with a Wednesday evening.” He pauses, cocks his head at the sky, and glances at me. “It is Wednesday, is it not?”

  “Close. Saturday.” I smile.

  “Even better,” he says. “A weekend. That has some significance, yes?”

  “Wow.” Andromeda laughs. “How old are you?”

  “Ehh.” He shrugs. “I lost count. Went overboard in ’56. Used to be a farmer. Decided to try fishing… didn’t quite work out like I expected. Country life had little use for weekends or alarm clocks.”

  “Oh. You seem older.” Andromeda sets her hands on her hips. Sunlight sparkles off beads of water running down her skin. She’s on the cute side of pretty, the sort of girl that men trip over themselves to open doors for. Or at least, that’s what the sort of men who were around in my mortal days would’ve done. “1935 here,” she adds.

  “You don’t look a day over twenty,” says Stavros.

  She blinks at him. “Wow, you’re good. I was twenty when I got the breath.”

  “Ship sink?” asks Stavros.

  “No, that’s me.” I raise my hand. “Since we’re measuring… my ship sank in 1920.”

  Andromeda shakes her head. “Nah. I was the dumb innocent village girl. Fell for the handsome wanderer. Only he turned out to be like you. When I told him I’d marry him, he took me for a romantic night on the docks by the fishing boats, and pulled me in.”

  I cringe.

  “Oh, it didn’t happen like that. He showed himself, and invited me to join him.” She shrugs. “I still haven’t figured out if I screwed up.”

  Uma wiggles her toes like an infant mystified by having them. “This feels so strange.”

  “You haven’t shifted in twenty years?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. “No. I could not allow myself to be seen like this, or my family would have tried to kill me as a demon. The voice within me is dark, but I do not talk to her. I used to work on a cruise ship, cleaning staterooms. I found some things I should not have found, and the criminals tied heavy stones to me and put me in the water. I awoke like this, but did not see the one who made me this way.”

  A heavy silence hangs over us for a moment.

  “I’m sorry you were almost murdered,” I say. “Was it recent? I know you only helped me move a boat, but I wouldn’t mind giving you a hand finding the ones who threw you overboard.”

  Uma chuckles. “I took that swim in 1975. Those men are already dead.”

  “It’s not that long ago… did they have bad luck?” asks Stavros.

  Uma snaps her teeth at him, then laughs. “The worst.”

  “I barely even remember the last time I was on land,” says Andromeda. She looks wistfully towards shore. “Okay, sure. Why not…”

  “Great.” I smile. “Just need to get this thing back to the trailer… I don’t expect it’s going to run after sitting on the bottom for a few weeks.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem,” says Stavros. “Shall we?”

  We all go over the side more or less at the same time. I wind up out front to navigate while the other three push the boat along. Since it would look rather suspicious for a cabin cruiser to throw off a wake like a cigarette boat, we don’t swim anywhere near as fast as we can. Eventually, we reach the Johnston Marina where I’d left my Rubicon, and pull the boat up to the trailer ramp.

  “Wait here. I need to go get the Jeep.”

  The others nod at me.

  So, as brazen as a Woodstock hippie, I walk up out of the water. Unlike a hippie, I radiate a reverse charm that blots me out of the awareness of anyone looking my way. They’ll either disregard me entirely, or not realize I’m naked. Upon reaching my Rubi, I pull open the back door and throw on a swimsuit plus a wrap skirt. It’s too distracting to concentrate on broadcasting mental powers while driving. Whoever came up with this whole magic stuff never took cars into account at all. Anyone who thinks cell phones cause severe distracted driving has never tried to mentally dominate someone from behind the wheel.

  Feel free to file a grievance with the Creator, says Licinia.

  “Yeah. I’ll get right on that.”

  I drive around to the ramp and back the trailer into the water. The others push the boat up in place, shift, and walk up the ramp. An older guy with white hair, maybe twenty feet away, walks straight into a signpost. He hadn’t been staring at either of the women, but I think the combined power of three merfolk not wanting to be seen hit him so hard he couldn’t see anything at all—like that post.

  Fortunately, none of my new friends are so old they can’t figure out car doors.

  “I’ve got one more spare set of clothes in the back,” I say.

  They exchange glances and shrugs.

  Great. I’ve got three nudists in my Rubi. I really hope I don’t get pulled over on the way home. That’d make for an interesting conversation with the cop. Well, if it’s a woman. A male cop I could send on his way. Well, I suppose Stavros could handle a woman cop. At least I have an attached garage. Amazing how wonderful those are.

  I grab my phone and hit the contact for Jack Mawyer, the guy I usually drag heaps to.

  “Hey, Alexis. How’s it going?” he asks by way of answering.

  “Hi, Jack. I have that boat I mentioned the other week. Are you still interested in looking at it?”

  “What kind of shape is it in?”

  “Oh, kinda pointy at one end, flat on the other.”

  He chuckles.

  “Seriously, Jack, it’s the berries.”

  You just adore confusing the mortal children, don’t you?

  The man’s forty-something.

  Children. Licinia mentally winks at me.

  “Umm, I’ll take that as meaning it’s in good shape. Okay, bring ’er on by so I can have a look. Berries and all.”

  “See you soon.” I hang up. “I’ll drop you guys off at the house first. It’ll only take me like an hour to deal with Jack.”

  Stavros nods.

  “And.” I smile at Andromeda in the rearview. “I can pick up some beer on the way back.”

  Chapter Two

  Going Nowhere

  Sunday passes in a blurry haze of recovering from the events of Saturday night. Or should I say recovering from the wee hours of Sunday morning.

  I learned something new about Dark Masters. Evidently, the one who chose Andromeda prefers women… so my initial guess as to the relationship between her and Uma had been correct. Though the part of her that remains Andromeda still wants guys, and mortals at that, I guess she likes having them fall all over themselves to please her. Oh well, more Stavros for me then.

  Maybe I’d been alone a little too long, but it’s not like me to go all the way within hours of meeting a guy for the first time. Then again, who knows when or if I’d ever see him again? I don’t exactly have much virtue left to protect. Not after Albert, my mortal husband, then a werewolf ‘husband’ and two vampires to whom I considered myself married. We didn’t have a traditional wedding, though. Try getting a priest to officiate that one… hah. No, I don’t have my virtue anymore. That ship left the harbor a long time ago.

  It also takes a lot of alcohol for one of us to feel anything, but I didn’t buy the beer to get ossified. Andromeda missed the taste. Uma had never had anything other than some homebrew someone in her village made. We stayed up rather late chatting about random things, mostly about my life on land. Honestly, it felt like I’d invited three aliens over. They’d all been at sea so long the modern world confused them.

  When it got late, Stavros and I went to my room while Uma and Andromeda shared a guest bedroom. A little past noon on Sunday, they left via my little pier off the backyard.

  I spent the rest of Sunday debating with Licinia if I loved Stavros or had merely been infatuated with such a strikingly handsome Mediterranean man—who also happened to be a supernatural creature who wouldn’t turn into a mindless slave after intimacy. I wound up deciding that mermaids don’t have much need for love since I’d never be able to have children. That hit Licinia hard, but she tried to make a case that one didn’t need to have kids to justify the existence of love. I suppose the only real regret I have about my change is not being able to start a family.

  Kinda weird how that turned out for me. As a mortal, I’d given up my dreams of higher education to marry Albert because I’d fallen so deeply in love with him. Along with the mores of the time, I’d jumped on the bandwagon of doing the whole family thing and excited myself with the prospect of being able to give my son or daughter things I’d never had growing up—like shoes before the age of fourteen.

  But… that wasn’t to be.

  Maybe that’s why I decided I had no need for love. I still hadn’t gotten over losing Albert.

  This, of course, made Licinia bring up Hannah, the Stricklands’ granddaughter. I mean her grandparents aren’t that old, but if anything were to happen to them medically, I’m not going to be able to resist adopting her.

  Monday, I bounce out of bed early and head to Marcy’s Gym. My friend, Trisha Buda, who I refer to as Mom, is already sitting by the little area we claimed by our favorite treadmills. While the weekend had been nice and sunny, it’s gloomy today and likely to rain all day into tomorrow. The giant windows behind the treadmills give us front-row seats to rough waters out on Lake Washington. Part of me reacts to the churning surface the way normal people react to the smell of food in the air. It makes me want to jump in and chase down a fish or three.

  Trisha’s sixty-five, and she’s rather overdone it with the tanning bed to the point where she looks like a piece of fried chicken. She’s letting her hair grow out a little, which has resulted in her sporting a fairly stereotypical ‘granny-do,’ an orb of white curly hair. Still, she’s dressed like she’s taking an aerobics class in the eighties. Gah. I do not miss leg warmers and big hair, though the music was amazing. At least she still has the muscle tone to be able to pull off silver spandex leggings.

  “Good morning, dear,” says Trisha. “Hope your weekend was good.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” I say. “And yes, my weekend was quite relaxing.” From there, I spend about ten minutes trying to talk her into cutting back on her use of the tanning bed. I’m afraid she’s going to get melanoma or something.

  Trisha kinda yeah-yeahs me dismissively, though I suspect I might have gotten through to her, even if she won’t admit it.

  Licinia chuckles. She thinks my habit of making friends with almost-elderly women is really my inability to get over the death of my actual mother. Trisha even likes that I call her Mom. I mean, she’s plenty old enough to have a twenty-five-year-old daughter. Little does she know how old I really am. Not many people make it to 118.

  We run for about twenty minutes. Trisha hurries off once we decide to take a break, heading straight for the ‘fitness center’ counter. She returns in a few minutes and hands me a giant plastic cup covered in condensation.

  It’s full of crushed ice and smells a bit like coffee, but there’s something else lurking beneath the surface. This isn’t real coffee. It’s one of the mad scientist concoctions the younger crowd adores. If I still had a normal digestive system, I probably wouldn’t risk this stuff. Somewhere between the chemicals, the sugar content, the calories, or the extra stuff they put in it (what the heck is creatine anyway?), I’d probably be better off with a fast-food milkshake.

  Though, I guess they can’t be as bad as I assume since Trisha has one every time we come here and she hasn’t gained weight or contracted diabetes. Maybe there’s something to what Trisha says about cannabis being a magic cure. If it’s true, this woman will never die. Seriously, if she ever had to give someone mouth-to-mouth, they’d wake up stoned.

  I slurp up a mouthful of the coffee-chalky-icy stuff and force it down. It’s not completely unpleasant, but it’s what people usually call an ‘acquired taste.’ Which is a polite way to say it’s kinda nasty. We go through our warm-up stretches while chatting about stuff that happened since last Thursday.

  “Met a guy,” I say.

  “Oh?” Her eyebrows go up. “What’s he like?”

  “He’s a humble village farmer with movie-star looks,” I say.

  Trisha chuckles. “I thought you didn’t partake in the happy tobaccy, especially in stuff that strong?”

  “I didn’t hallucinate him.” I grin. “Met him at the marina Saturday.”

  “Pics or it didn’t happen.” Trisha takes a long pull on her straw, then shakes her head. “That’s what you kids say these days, right?”

  Laughing, I hop on the treadmill for round two. “Something like that.”

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?” She stretches a little more and steps up onto the adjacent treadmill. “I didn’t think they still had men like that these days. Not like it used to be when I was your age. Seems like all the ones who look half decent now think they’re God’s gift.”

  “He’s not perfect.”

  “Oh? What’s wrong with Mr. Humble Movie Star?” Trisha accelerates to a light jog.

  “He doesn’t believe in clothes.”

  “Stop.” Trisha laughs. “You’re going to give me heart palpitations.”

  I grin. “Sorry, Mom. Anyway, it doesn’t really matter. He’s from overseas and probably won’t be around here again.”

  “Ahh.” She tsks at me. “I thought you knew better than to do the one night hookup thing.”

  “You assume some hogmagundy occurred?”

  “It’s all over your face, dear.” She cackles. “And there’s a word I haven’t heard in ages. My grandmother used to say that.”

  It’s dark enough outside that the windows reflect the busy gym, and me. As far as I can tell, I’m not blushing, no hickeys, nothing unusual. “I read a lot of classics. So, okay, maybe I was a little more impulsive than I’m ordinarily prone to be, but, in the immortal words of Socrates—I regret nothing.”

  “Dear, I don’t believe he said that.”

  I slow to a walk and glance over at her. “He didn’t?”

  “No, hon. I think he said something like ‘this tastes horrible, what am I drink—’” She tosses her head to one side, tongue lolling out.

  “You’re so bad.” I giggle.

  “My dear, you have no idea. Be glad you didn’t meet me forty years ago or I would’ve corrupted you.”

  I laugh and work back up to a fast jog. “So how are your neighbors doing?” I ask, as the first beads of sweat appear.

  “They got some local TV news station involved. I mean, strictly speaking, the place forbids anyone younger than fifty-five from being a permanent resident, but it’s not like Pearl and Jim adopted all those kids. They’re watching them only as long as Jace is deployed with the Army.”

  “So you didn’t go through with your pill-planting scheme?” I ask, grinning. She’d been toying with the idea of planting some manner of drugs on the property of the complainers, an elaborate and foolish plan to help allow the kids to stay.

  She shakes her head. “Didn’t have to. Once the TV station mentioned the place was about to evict a couple of oldsters for watching the kids of an active-duty soldier, the crapola hit the fanola.”

  I snicker.

  “Or, as my mom used to say, the eggs hit the aluminum siding.”

  She whistles. “There’ve been flag-waving bikers protesting, too. I’m afraid if it turns into any more of a circus, the place is gonna kick out my friends and the busybodies across the street who complained.”

  “That would be poetic justice at least.”

  “Except for the part where Pearl and Jim need to find a new place to live while taking care of three kids under seven.” She scowls. “What is wrong with people?”

  “I’m not even going to try to answer that.”

  She looks over at me. “It’s odd seeing you so calm. I take it you’re not working any cases?”

  “As a matter of fact, I have a client appointment later this afternoon. It might be interesting, but I have a feeling it’ll be a lot like this treadmill—a lot of effort and I wind up in the same place as before I started.”

  She laughs.

  “If your neighbors get the boot and they need a place to stay, I have room. They could live at my place while they look.”

  “That’s quite generous of you, but I doubt it’s going to get to that point.”

  I smile. “That’s good. Whoever complained about them is only fit to lead blind monkeys.”

  “Okay, that’s a new one,” says Trisha.

  “I thought since we were sharing family sayings and all. That one’s from my granddad.”

  Trisha hits a button on the treadmill, and slows down from her jog until she’s standing still. “Well, I think that’s enough of this thing for one day. You wanna hit the pool or the machines today?”

  “You have to ask, Mom?”

  She grins. “Yeah, yeah. If the pool’s an option, I should just assume. I swear you were born at the bottom of the ocean.”

  “Gee, what a sweet thing to say.”

  Chapter Three

  Pro Bono

  Five minutes before I’m supposed to have a meeting with a prospective client, a young woman walks into my office with a little girl in tow who looks around five or six.

  The woman’s got model looks, average height with a narrow face and delicate features. Both have thick, dark brown hair. The daughter’s face is a little rounder, probably from the father, and her mood appears to be somewhere between sad and bored. If the resemblance in their faces wasn’t so strong, I’d never believe that woman had a kid with a stomach that flat. They’re even almost dressed alike: denim jacket, hot pink t-shirt, yoga pants, and flip-flops.

  “Hi. Umm, Alexis?” asks the woman. “Alexis Silver?”

  Her voice is familiar, the client I spoke with on the phone, Lindsay Adams. “Yes. You’re early. This must be Shiloh.”

 

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