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door Ella's voice carried enough sarcasm to cut steel. "There's French toast."
    "No, thanks, I . . ." Gaia blinked. Wait a minute. Replay that last statement. "Did you say French toast?"
    "Yes, but if you don't want it--"
    Gaia's stomach grumbled. "I, um. I mean, okay. I'll be down in a minute."
    "How wonderful." From outside the door came the sound of Ella's high heels going down the steps.
    Gaia looked down at her stomach. "Traitor," she mumbled. Eating breakfast with Ella was against all of Gaia's principles. Most days Ella was a bitch, pure and simple. She treated Gaia with all the warmth usually reserved for a social disease.
    So what did it say about Gaia that she was willing to ignore those principles just for a little bread and syrup? "I really am weak," she said to the empty room. At least when it came to food.
    She peeled off the oversized T-shirt she had worn to bed and slipped into a pair of worn cargo pants. As she rooted through the pile of clothes on the floor in search of a sweatshirt that had been worn less than three times, Gaia's thoughts returned to her nightmare.
    Gaia was not a big believer in dreams. Somewhere among the thousand and one books that her father had force-fed to her, she had even digested Freud's book on dreams. Gaia wasn't buying it. Dreams were just little movies in your head, not predictions about the future. If you dreamed you were falling, it didn't mean you were going to fall. If you dreamed you hit the ground, it didn't mean you were about to die.
    If you dreamed a friend was trapped, it didn't mean they were really in danger.
And no matter what Mr. Freud said, not everything was about sex
.
    Gaia had been concerned about Mary--concern seemed to come from a different place than real fear. Which was probably why Mary had been in the dream. But there was no reason to worry about Mary anymore.
    Skizz, the drug dealer who had been threatening Mary, had been on the receiving end of
a patented Gaia Moore ass kicking
. He had survived, but he was in the hospital. And when he got out, the police were waiting. There was no way Skizz could be a threat.
    Gaia finally managed to locate a khaki green sweatshirt and tugged it over her head. She dragged her long hair free of the shirt and shook her head. It was just a dream. Dreams didn't mean anything.
    She exited her room and made it down to the second-floor landing before the smell of cooking stirred her into hyperdrive. From there she took the steps two at a time.
    Cooking was definitely rare behavior on Ella's part. When she did cook, Ella usually made obnoxious gourmet dishes with all the taste of old sneakers. Gaia only hoped that Ella's idea of French toast didn't involve bread and snails.
    Gaia reached the bottom of the stairs and slowed her walk as she reached the kitchen. No reason to look too anxious.
    George Niven sat at the breakfast table with the Sunday edition of
The New York Times
heaped in front of him. He looked at Gaia over the top of the national news section and smiled. "Hey. How are you doing this morning, kiddo? Going to have some breakfast with us?"
    Gaia shrugged. "Guess so." She walked across the ceramic tile floor and sat down across the table from George.
    Gaia liked George Niven well enough. George had worked with her father at the CIA for years. He had only one serious flaw. For some reason unknown to science, George was in love with Ella. And in Gaia's opinion,
that was a pretty big flaw
. It made her wonder just how good an agent George could really be when he couldn't even tell that the woman he had married was the world's biggest slut.
    Ella marched across the room, her heels snapping on the tiles like rifle shots. Even though it was barely eight in the morning, her scarlet hair was swept up over her head, her makeup was there in
all its Technicolor glory
, and she was decked out in a teal dress so short, it barely qualified as a blouse.
    "Here," said Ella. She inverted a pan, and two
    slices of browned toast