Deep Waters

do. Hayden was very fond of Otis, and I liked Hayden, even if he was a little weird."
    "The fact that you liked Hayden didn't mean that you had to take care of Otis."
    "Unfortunately, it did." Charity sighed. "Somehow, Crazy Otis has always seemed like one of the family here on the pier. A particularly unpleasant relative, I admit, one I'd prefer to keep stashed out of sight in the attic, but, nevertheless, a relation. And you know what they say about your relations. You can't choose them. You have to take what you get."
    "I understand." Elias stopped rubbing Otis's head and picked up the teapot again.
    "You don't have to keep him, you know," Charity said in a burst of rash honesty. "He's not a very lovable bird."
    "As you said, he's family."
    "Parrots like Otis have long life spans. You'll be saddled with him for years."
    "I know."
    "Okay," Charity said, cheered by the fact that Elias was not going to change his mind on the subject. "Otis is settled. Now about this situation with Far Seas."
    "Yes?"
    "All of the rents on the pier are due to be renegotiated before the end of September. Today is the fourth of August. We've got to act quickly."
    "Just what action do you plan to take?" Elias set down the teapot.
    "As I said, we want to approach Far Seas as a united front." Charity realized with a start that she was staring at his hands. They were very interesting hands, powerful hands imbued with a striking, utterly masculine grace.
    "A united front?" Elias watched her as she hurriedly raised her gaze from his hands to his face.
    "Right. United." She noticed that his eyes were the color of the sea during a storm, a bleak, steel gray. Her fingers clenched around the clipboard. "We in tend to contact Far Seas immediately. We want to lock in long-term leases at reasonable rents before the corporation realizes what's happening here in Whispering Waters Cove."
    "What is happening here?" Elias's mouth curved faintly. "Aside from the impending arrival of our visitors from outer space?"
    "I see you've already met some of the Voyagers?"
    "It's a little hard to miss them on the street."
    "True." Charity shrugged. "They're quite an embarrassment to the town council. Most of the members think the Voyagers give Whispering Waters Cove a bad image. But like the mayor says, one way or another, the cult should be gone by the middle of August."
    "What happens then?"
    "Haven't you heard?" Charity grinned. "Gwendolyn Pitt, the leader of the group, has told her followers that the alien spaceships will arrive at midnight on the fifteenth to take them all away on an extended tour of the galaxy. During said tour, everyone will apparently be treated to a lot of pure sex and philosophical enlightenment."
    "I've been told it's difficult to mix the two."
    "Yeah, well, evidently the aliens have mastered the problem. As you can imagine, the town council is hoping that when nothing happens that night, the Voyagers will figure out that the whole thing is a hoax and will leave Whispering Waters Cove bright and early on the morning of the sixteenth."
    "In my experience people tend to cling to a belief even when they are confronted with clear evidence that it's false."
    "Well, it won't bother me or anyone else here on the pier if some of them decide to stay in the area," Charity admitted. "Most of the Voyagers seem pleas ant enough, if a little naive. A few have become good customers. I've made a killing during the past two months with paranormal and New Age titles."
    The long blue and white tunics and bright head bands worn by the members of the Voyagers cult had become familiar sights in and around the small town. Gwendolyn Pitt and her followers had arrived early in July. They had parked their motley assortment of trailers, motor homes, and campers on a patch of prime-view land that had once been an old campground.
    The town's mayor, Phyllis Dartmoor, had initially been as hostile toward the group as the council members, but after a short flurry of fruitless efforts to force the Voyagers out of town, she had become surprisingly sanguine about the situation. Whenever the local newspaper produced an editorial denouncing the new comers as a blot on the landscape, she reminded everyone that the cult would likely disintegrate in the middle of August.
    "The Voyagers do add some local color," Elias said as he handed Charity one of the small, handleless cups.
    "Yes, but they don't enhance the new upscale image that the town is trying to create to draw