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beneath the waves, then pictured Triton until I saw him clearly. A few more deep breaths, and I knocked on his mind door. It opened a sliver, and I stuck my ethereal foot in. My little voice cautioned me against using Triton’s name, but, otherwise, I let ’er rip.
    Of all the nerve! You show up after eons of silence—and just when I finally met a great guy, I might add—then vanish and appear again? I don’t think so, bub. I don’t know what’s going on, but getting that obscure message was annoying as hell. I sensed Triton raising a brow.
    Yes, I said hell. I’m that ticked. And, okay, it was good to hear from you, but this popping in and out is not acceptable. I want to know where you are, why you’re back, and what this big evil is that has you in hiding. Very, very softly, I heard, Not safe.
    Well, when will it be? Because I have a nice afterlife filled with friends and activities, and I don’t want anyone screwing it up.
    Nothing.
    You hear me? I will not be yanked around, not by you and not by anyone else. Again, nothing, but Triton’s mind door ever so slowly closed on my ethereal foot. Ouch.
    I came back to myself, blinked at the room, and opened my fingers to find I’d squeezed the charm hard enough to make an impression in my hand. Damn.
    Well, all right. I’d given Triton my bit of what for. I hadn’t expected any response from him, so I suppose it was a victory that he’d answered me at all, however briefly.
    What could be such a big darn deal that we couldn’t do a mind hookup? Was someone telepathically eavesdropping? Hunting Triton? It would have to be him, because I was a breeze to find. My crazy Covenant stalker did it, which is why Saber insisted on all the security.
    Sitting here wondering what kind of danger I was in and where it was coming from wasn’t getting my homework done. Much as I loathed our current assignment on period furniture, I went to my desk and dropped the chain and charm in a tiki motif mug by the monitor. While the system booted, I added fabric softener to the wash load and grabbed a Fig Newton to chew on. Beat chewing on questions about Triton.
    I waded into my History of Furnishings textbook wondering why anyone had thought heavy styles like baroque looked good. To me, they just looked hulking. And, once you got that furniture into a room, no way did you want to move it out again. Of course, the wealthy had servants to drag furniture around. I wondered how many had suffered hernias. Then again, people weren’t so mobile in earlier times. Family homes were passed down through generations and still were, for that matter. I set my chin on my fist and thought about my own family. I’d been raised with furniture just as chunky as some of the pieces in the book, though not as elaborately carved and costly. The tables and chairs, chests and bedsteads in my family home were sturdy, serviceable. They had to be to stand up to the beating that first my brothers, then my nieces and nephews gave them. Had my family missed the things they couldn’t take when they’d finally fled St. Augustine?
    I looked at the full-page photo of an oak trestle table darkened to black brown with age. The surface looked pitted, scarred, beloved. I hesitated, then touched the photo with one fingertip and was jerked back in time. The children huddled under the table, shooed there by the women. They didn’t cry, but their eyes were huge and frightened as they peeked at me between their mothers’ skirts. I’d cared for these babies, coddled and laughed with them, but no more. I was a vampire now, and if they knew not what that meant, they’d been told stories enough to fear me.

    I raised my gaze, and my heart bled to see the face of my mother contorted in horror. Her pallor was severe, so much so that I feared she would collapse. Instead, she gripped a cleaver in her arthritic, trembling hand. Two sisters-in-law, they who had chided me for not choosing a husband, wielded long knives and regarded