"What the hell?" said a voice behind me. Eve strode around to my front. "Why didn't you call?"

She wheeled on the severed man when he got too close and slammed a kick into the side of his dangling head. His torso flew sideways so fast he toppled.

"Now put yourself together or the next kick is going to knock that half clean off." She turned on the other two. "Clothes on. Scalp on. Eyes back in."

She marched along them like a drill sergeant. "Is this how you think you get a necromancer's attention? Well, congratulations. You've just placed yourself on their blacklist. No necro, anywhere, is ever going to speak to you, no matter how nice you are."

The pioneer woman aimed at sulky scowl at Eve. "Who do you think you are, giving us orders?"

"Let's just say you don't want to find out," Eve said, peering down at the woman from her full six feet. "Now-"

"You don't scare me," the Victorian woman said.

She advanced on Eve. The other woman circled around behind her. The man stepped forward, his hands clenching into fists. Eve stood her ground, looking bored.

"You spooks wanna rumble? I've got a better idea. What you need is a break. A vacation. I'm thinking Scotland. Got some great castles there."

She drop-kicked the man, then shot an energy bolt into the Victorian woman's stomach. The pioneer woman ran at Eve, then froze in a binding spell.

"Hey, Kris?" Eve called. "That's your cue."

Kristof appeared, leaning against a tree, as if he'd been there all along, watching from the other side.

"Sorry," he said. "It looked like you were having fun. I hated to interrupt."

"I was, but now it's time for transport and I could use some help. You take the ugly guy. I'll take the ugly women."

The Victorian woman squawked as Eve grabbed her arm and that of the still-frozen pioneer woman.

"Back in a jiffy," she said as she vanished.

UNGRATEFUL

WHEN THEY WERE GONE, I looked at the house. Should I go back inside? No. Not just yet. I crept from the yard and found the coffee shop Jeremy had mentioned. Some Starbucks clone in a strip mall, the kind of place it seemed no neighborhood could be without.

I ordered, calling Jeremy while I waited in line, so he'd know where to pick me up. I told him Eve had shown up and "solved the problem." Another day, another rescue.

I sat in a too-comfortable armchair, the kind these places always seem to have, that look so cozy and inviting until you sink down and realize you can't reach your coffee. So you clutch the mug in your hands and tell yourself the comfy chair makes up for the inconvenience.

Two women about my age plopped onto the sofa next to me, though the coffee shop was three quarters empty. They then proceeded to speak loudly enough to entertain us all.

"And I told her, 'You are not quitting ballet, not after I paid for lessons for five years.' All those hours shuttling her to the dance studio, watching her rehearsals…"

"Ungrateful kids," her friend said, shaking her head. "You want them to grow up with some culture, some grace, and all of a sudden they have better things to do."

"Well, if that's what she thinks, she can think again. I made an in-vestment. And like all my investments, it damned well better pay off. Ungrateful little…"

My jaw clenched so tight my head hurt. I lifted my cup to sip my coffee and watched the surface quiver as my fingers shook.

How many times had I heard some variation on those words from my own mother? My earliest memory was of her dragging me from a preschool pageant, her fingers clamped around my arm, where I'd have welts for weeks, all because I'd been ungrateful enough to cry when the hair stylist's curling iron had burned my scalp. Even the last time I'd spoken to her, I'd heard the speech. My eternal ingratitude for the sacrifices she'd made on my behalf.

As the women continued, my mother's voice rolled over me, taking me back to when I was first coming into my powers.

"Do you have any idea what it's like, Jaime? Getting calls from high school that you're cowering in the bathroom? Having to delay a commercial shoot because some ghost is bothering you? Changing your wet bedsheets? Pissing the bed at your age because you're scared} I've worked my ass off to make something of you. Your father saddles me with his screwed-up family problem and his screwed-up kid, then kills himself-takes the easy way out. Your precious Nan is no help, always coddling you, putting me down because I ask a little of you in return. You should be tripping over yourself to help, not complaining because you missed a week of school, failed another test. As if you wouldn't have failed anyway. At least I gave you an excuse. Any other parent wouldn't put up with this, you know. They'd have shipped you off long ago."

I'd grown up believing her-that any other parent would've gotten rid of me. A child has no other point of reference, no wider view of the world.

I'm sure I wasn't easy to raise. I had my problems, supernatural and otherwise. But now I look around and see the way other parents raise supernatural children. Jeremy taking in a feral child werewolf, no relative or responsibility of his. Paige adopting the daughter of a dark witch, a stranger. Even other human parents faced with supernatural children handled it just fine. Talia Vasic raising Adam on her own, helping him deal with his demonic powers before she knew what they were. Hope talking about how close she was to her mother, a woman who probably still didn't know why her daughter was "different." It didn't matter. A parent loves. A parent helps. A parent accepts.

Still, I wasn't the only supernatural raised by an unloving parent. Jeremy talked little of his father, but from what I've gleaned, the man had been a cold killer with nothing but contempt for his quiet, nonaggressive son. Jeremy got over it. Flourished. Grew up to be a leader, a man who accepted his differences and didn't complain about them or feel sorry for himself.

"You should have called."

I looked up. The other women were gone and Eve now sat in their place. She propped her long legs on the table between us.

"Yeah," she said, cutting me off as I started to answer. "You wanted to handle it yourself. I know. But see, that's not how this arrangement works. We're partners. If I need a ghost contacted in another plane or I need something done in the living world, I call you. If you need a pesky spook scared off, you call me."

"And you know what? I'd love to be able to find any ghost myself, to surf the Internet when I need information. But I can't. No more than you can deal with jerks like those three."

I looked around, then took out my cell phone, pretending to talk into it. "You took them to Glamis, didn't you? To Dantalian."

"Oh, they'll have fun," she said. "Dantalian's not so bad. Gets lonely, though. Six hundred years is a long time to be cooped up, even for a demon. Like a cat confined to a small apartment. He appreciates new playthings to bat around." She stretched one leg and "nudged" my knee. "And if you think that distracted me from my lecture, you're wrong. You need to call me, Jaime. If I'm around, there's no need for you to deal with shit like that."

"I know. I just-"

"-don't want to need help. Fine. But everyone has her specialty. Yours is helping ghosts. Mine is kicking their asses. Whole different skill set."

"I didn't help them," I said as I looked out across the shop. "Didn't even try."

"You were breaking and entering, for God's sake. You can't stop to take requests."

She went on, trying to convince me that I hadn't been wrong to ig-nore the ghosts. But I knew I hadn't handled it well. I should have told them I was busy, but would speak to them later, outside. They still might have turned on me, but at least I could say I'd done my duty.