Keeper of the Moon

chapter 2



When the woman was gone, Declan returned to his own form. Being Vernon Winter had been a constricting experience and a mildly painful one. Among other things, the man had arthritis and fallen arches. But it had been worth it.

“Not a bad job of shifting, for a Keeper,” Alessande told him, gathering up the tea things. “I saw you lose the shape only three or four times.”

“I counted six,” he said. “It’s a miracle she didn’t notice.”

“She’s young. The young are not observant.”

“We’re all young to you, Alessande.” Declan knew her to be nearly a hundred, although she looked thirty in human years. The Elven didn’t begin to show their age until well into their second century. “But it may have been the Scarlet Pathogen. Her eyes looked bloody scary.” More scary than he’d let on to Sailor. She’d been stoic about it, which showed some character, but of course, she hadn’t been looking into her own eyes for the past half hour. And he hadn’t stopped looking at them. They were mesmerizing, whatever their color, and he wondered why he’d never noticed that before in their acquaintance. “What’s the disease doing to her on the inside, that’s what I’d like to know.”

“That’s what we’d all like to know.”

Declan followed Alessande into the kitchen. “We shouldn’t have let her walk out of here.”

She looked at him. “What should we have done, kidnap her? She’s fit, she’s armed and she’ll be home in minutes—the Gryffald estate is a mile down the road. The síúlacht she drank will give her speed and strength enough to take on anything. It will last an hour, two at the most.”

“And then?”

“It will wear off and she’ll drop. She’ll sleep the sleep of the dead for a good twelve hours or more, but she’ll be in her own home and safe enough. I’ve been to her house, years ago at a dinner party her father gave. There were layers upon layers of protective spells cast.” Alessande handed him a mug of coffee, although he hadn’t asked for any.

“Hope they’ve kept it up. Spells fade.” He sipped his coffee. “We should’ve gotten a blood sample from her, have Krabill take a look at it.”

“The síúlacht will mask the effects of the pathogen. Better to wait until it’s worn off.”

“Wait twelve hours? I don’t have that much patience.”

Alessande shrugged. “The síúlacht will be out of her system long before that. Krabill works nights, doesn’t she?”

“You’re suggesting I rouse the girl from her dead sleep to take her to Krabill’s office?”

“You’ve roused me from a dead sleep once or twice, if memory serves.”

He smiled briefly. “She won’t like it as much as you did.”

“Can Krabill develop an antidote, do you think?”

Declan turned his attention to the twilight sky. “Maybe, but that’s not the point. Those four women didn’t just catch this disease. It’s my guess they were deliberately infected.”

“Why do you say that? Because this one was attacked?”

“And because Charlotte was found on the beach at Point Dume.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“I watched the coroner take her body away.”

Alessande’s eyes grew wide. “My God, what was she doing there?” Most Elven had a fear of water that was both logical—being near it physically weakened them—and deeply emotional. “She’d never have gone there voluntarily.”

Declan shook his head. “Charlotte wouldn’t go near a swimming pool, let alone an ocean. Someone forced her there,” he said, “or dumped her there. She was murdered, whatever story they’re giving out. The more we learn about this pathogen, the more we’ll know about the killer who used it. And I want that killer.”

“As murder weapons go, it’s not very effective,” she said. “It didn’t kill Sailor. Besides, that winged creature didn’t need a pathogen. If it wanted her dead, those talons alone could’ve opened an artery, and even I couldn’t have saved her.”

“All right, I don’t pretend to have any of the answers now. But I’ll get them, I promise you.”

She looked at him speculatively. “Why did you not want her to see you? Why did you shift?”

Declan met her look. “Sailor Gryffald and I don’t get along. I wanted to see what she’s like when she’s not on the defensive.”

“And why don’t you get along?”

He thought back to a recent encounter at his nightclub. “I expect I may have offended her at some point.”

“I expect you did.”

Declan laughed. “What does that mean?”

“You’re a great friend to your friends and a cold bastard to those beneath your notice.”

“That’s not true.”

“It certainly is.”

“Well, she’s never been beneath my notice. She’s a Gryffald.” The Gryffald family had been players in the Los Angeles Councils long before “player” was part of the cultural lexicon. Of course, the current Gryffalds were all young, three neophytes in a city where experience was power. Sailor’s cousins had proved more capable than he’d expected...but this one?

“She has the pedigree,” Alessande said, reading his thoughts in the disconcerting way the Elven had. “Give her a chance.”

“She’s an actress, for God’s sake. Hardly training for a crisis like this.” He turned away from her and looked out the kitchen window, watching the color drain out of the sky.

Alessande moved next to him. “Well, we all have an uphill battle, haven’t we? The girl was attacked by something Other, and that is bad news for our world. Once it becomes known, I fear for what my species may do to yours, Declan, and to the vampires, as well. None of you Keepers will have it easy if it comes to war.”

“I won’t let it come to war, Alessande.”

“You may not be able to stop it.”

“Watch me.” He drained the coffee in his cup and set it down. “Fate put that girl in your path. And you put her in mine. Now I’m calling Kimberly Krabill, and we’re going to find out what this bloody pathogen is and how it works, and how the killer acquired it.”

“If Sailor doesn’t like you, how do you propose getting her to your Dr. Krabill?”

“Charm.” He smiled. “If she’s coming down from síúlacht, she’ll be too weak to resist.”

Alessande looked into his eyes. “Tread carefully. I saw a portent tonight. When she was unconscious.” She hesitated, then said, “For love of that woman, someone will die. And love may bring death to her, as well.”

“My heart isn’t in danger.”

She laughed softly. “You don’t know yourself at all, do you? But be warned, Declan. I don’t think Sailor Gryffald is long for this world.”

* * *

The sky was dark now, night fully arrived. Declan breathed in the canyon air, watched the lights of distant houses go on one by one. Like fireflies, he thought, and then tried to remember when he’d last seen a firefly. They weren’t native to California any more than he was.

It had been instructive, meeting Sailor as a stranger, unencumbered by the undercurrent of hostility that characterized their encounters. More than instructive. With no chip on her shoulder, he found her exceedingly attractive. He wondered if Alessande had been right, that he was a cold bastard. Maybe. The truth was, he found actors to be self-absorbed and vain, with few exceptions. It was hardly their fault. The business was so harsh that survival required a high opinion of one’s own talent and specialness. Sailor was showing more substance than he’d expected, but she was hardly ready to assume the position of Canyon Keeper. His plan was to get her to Krabill and let the doctor oversee her recovery while her colleagues—himself, for starters—took charge of the crisis. Good luck for the investigation to be able to observe the disease. Sailor Gryffald was more valuable in a hospital bed than on her feet.

And more vulnerable.

He shook off Alessande’s last words. Portents aren’t facts, he reminded himself. They’re like dreams, open to interpretation, symbolic. We’ve had enough dead. I have no intention of letting Sailor Gryffald join their ranks.

Declan slowed his heart by an effort of will, and then lowered his eyelids on a long exhale, sent a command to the region deep in his solar plexus, watched the molecules rearrange themselves.

He turned himself into a hawk and flew home.

* * *

Sailor knew she was moving as fast as she was because of the strangely named brew that Alessande had given her. A long-forgotten memory suddenly emerged from the depths of her mind: she’d been a child, sick with bronchitis, and her mother had given her the same brew, bade her drink it despite the bitterness. It had been like a miracle then, and it was the same now. She could feel it continue to sharpen her senses and heat her blood, and wondered if there would be a backlash when it wore off, some kind of potion hangover. Her theory, backed up by personal research in her college days, was that the better the high, the worse the morning after. She couldn’t remember the aftereffects when she’d been seven, only that one moment she’d been ill and the next playing tag with her cousins.

However much the potion helped the symptoms, it was unlikely, Sailor guessed, to actually cure this poison or virus—no, what had they called it? A pathogen. The pathogen must be resistant to the usual Elven healing powers. Otherwise Charlotte and Gina and the others would have healed themselves. Might the pathogen have some magical component? She assumed that the medical community, the one comprised of Others, was searching for the cure. She would worry about that later. The first thing to do was get home.

Should she teleport? No, because Jonquil would be left to find his own way alone. Besides which, teleporting took a physical toll on her. She had a surge of energy now, but who knew how long it would last? Better to conserve it.

She had been teleporting since the age of two and a half, according to her mother, which so unnerved the poor woman that she’d called her husband home from work to make Sailor stop disappearing from her bedroom and reappearing in the playroom when she was supposed to be napping. Because Sailor wasn’t truly Elven, her powers would never be as strong as theirs, and she needed constant practice to move herself more than a mile at a time. Still, she was very good at it, for a Keeper. Not that she’d always used it responsibly. Keepers, too, had to survive the teenage years, and Sailor’s had been rocky.

She continued jogging, her focus on Jonquil’s tail ahead of her, the full moon above, her grip on the dagger Alessande had given her. If the thing, the Other, whatever it was, returned, it would not catch her unaware. She didn’t run with an iPod, because it interfered with situational awareness, and now, especially, she needed access to all six senses. She would recognize the warning signs this time: the whoosh of wind, the drop in temperature, the quieting of the cicadas. This time she would be ready. She had always been good with a knife.

Don’t be stupid, girl. That man’s words reverberated in her head. Stupid? She was in her element out here. Running was her passion, and these roads were as familiar to her as her home. No one was going to scare her off her own turf.

Her thoughts returned to the man. He wasn’t in the least attractive, and yet there was something about him that she found...magnetic. Perhaps it was his confidence. There was nothing sexier. Or maybe her strange wanton reaction was due to the moon, just risen, perfectly full. It was in Scorpio, the most carnal sign of the zodiac, and yesterday had been Beltane, the ancient Celtic celebration of fertility. A trifecta of sexual energy.

Even so, that man...who was he and why was he privy to Elven inside information? He knew more about the current crisis than she did, and he was nothing. He was merely mortal.

Or was he?

She stopped in her tracks and Jonquil stopped, too, curious. Of course. It was so obvious, she was embarrassed to have been almost oblivious to it. The attack must have thrown her off her game, affecting her powers of observation. Sailor had seen the shimmering effect enough, witnessed her cousin Barrie practice her own shifting skills. How could she not have recognized it? “Vernon” was merely a costume, a convenient face and body to house a man—or woman—who was a shapeshifter. Or, like Barrie, a Keeper of shifters. Although that was less likely. She doubted a Keeper could sustain a shift for half an hour, especially a shift into human form. Humans, Barrie said, were tough.

So Alessande hadn’t been altogether straight with her, and some shifter out there was also playing her. Some shifter with powerful sexual energy. And, of course, the entire Elven Council—excluding the dead guy in San Pedro and the idiots in the Antelope Valley. And she mustn’t forget the winged Other that had attacked her. There were a lot of people withholding information. She would need a flowchart to keep them straight.

But she knew whom to find first. As soon as she changed clothes and did something to disguise her eyes.

She reached Laurel Canyon and took the lead, hugging the shoulder to avoid the traffic, knowing Jonquil would do the same. They were running downhill now, practically at a sprint, and within two minutes Lookout Mountain was in sight and they were taking a right onto the private road that led to the House of the Rising Sun, high on the hill. Her home.

* * *

The House of the Rising Sun was actually a compound with three houses, built early in the twentieth century by Ivan Schwartz, a magician who went by the stage name of Merlin. Sailor had grown up in the main house, which her mother had always called the Castle House. Sailor’s cousin Barrie lived in Gwydion’s Cave, the residence Merlin had built for their grandfather. And Rhiannon, the third cousin, occupied Pandora’s Box, the original guesthouse. Merlin, who had long since passed from this world to the next, nevertheless preferred to stay on at the House of the Rising Sun—as a ghost.

A Tiffany lamp burned in the main hall, giving Castle House a ghostly glow. Had she left it on? Maybe. She did tend to be careless....

She followed Jonquil to the kitchen and filled his water bowl, watched him lap it up, then refilled it. The kitchen was old, with beat-up soft wood floors and knotty pine paneling installed in the 1950s, which was decades before she was born, but she knew the history of the estate going back to the 1920s. The house was old even when it was new, Mediterranean Gothic in style, with as many antiques as its owner could fill it with. Sailor loved all of Rising Sun, but especially Castle House, and especially the kitchen. She’d grown up in the oversize room, baked cookies with her mother, done homework at the old pine table, warmed herself near the wood-burning fireplace, napped on the ratty sofa covered with homemade quilts. She thought of Alessande’s kitchen, with its polish and new appliances. If there was an opposite to state-of-the-art, this was it.

She looked out the window over the sink and saw a light on in Pandora’s Box. Apparently Rhiannon was home. Out the back door she saw Gwydion’s Cave illuminated, as well, which meant Barrie was there, probably writing. The three houses were connected by tunnels, one of the estate’s many splendid oddities, but as adults, the cousins mostly stayed aboveground. For the moment Sailor had Castle House to herself, and could shower and map out what she would say to her cousins before—

A door slammed open. A gust of wind came through the kitchen. Already spooked by the lamp, Sailor reached for the dagger she’d set down.

“Sailor! You home yet?” a voice called, and a door slammed shut. “Where are you?”

“Kitchen,” she called back, and looked around for a dish towel to throw over her bloody shirt, but too late, because her cousin Rhiannon was walking through the archway, accompanied by Wizard, a dog so large he made Jonquil look dainty. Sailor clutched the shirt close and reminded herself not to make eye contact with her gorgeous relative.

“You’ve been out all this time?” Rhiannon reached down to pet Jonquil, who greeted her and Wizard with enthusiasm bordering on hysteria, as though he hadn’t seen them both a few hours earlier. Rhiannon glanced at Sailor. “Are you slaughtering something for dinner?”

Sailor looked down at the dagger in her hand and set it on the butcher block in front of her. “Oh, I— This is just—”

“Very slasher movie, that thing.” Rhiannon frowned at it. “Listen, Dad called. Mine, not yours. Apparently the rumor that we missed paying one lousy electric bill—or, okay, two bills—”

“Three.”

“Three lousy electric bills, fine. So somehow he heard that they turned off the power because—and you’ll love this—the alarm system is wired to his computer, and he happened to check in and was able to see that the system was down, so he called the company, who ratted us out, and—” She stopped, taking in her cousin again. “What have you got all over yourself? Paint?”

There it was. Could she talk about the attack without divulging everything else? Probably not. “It’s nothing. Go on.”

“That’s it.” Rhiannon picked up an apple from the fruit bowl on the counter and peeled off the sticker. “My dad and his gadgetry. You’d think he could relax the surveillance, knowing that I’m engaged to a cop, but no.” She rubbed the apple on her sweater, apparently an alternative to washing it, and took a loud, crunching bite. She peered at Sailor as she chewed. “You’re a mess.”

“You’re looking a bit ‘circus refugee’ yourself,” Sailor replied, with a sideways glance. Rhiannon’s lanky body was draped in plaid flannel pants, a tie-dye T-shirt and an argyle sweater, everything in colors so at odds with her flame-colored hair that Sailor felt nauseous.

“Cleaning closets,” Rhiannon explained. “Carving out space for Brodie. Trying on stuff before I hand it off to the Goodwill, in case I still like it. It’s insane how tiny the closets are in Pandora’s Box. How come nobody in the 1920s believed in storage space? It’s like junk wasn’t invented until 1985. Never mind me. Look at you. Your shirt’s filthy. What did you do, fall down the hillside?”

“Yeah, something like that. Listen, Rhi, I just need to take a shower and—”

“It’s like you got run over. And the dagger—is it antique? Let me see that.”

Sailor, in proffering the dagger hilt-first, let go of her own shirt.

“Sailor!” Rhiannon shrieked. “What in God’s name happened to you? Look at your chest.”

“What?” another voice called. “What did I miss?” And into the kitchen sauntered Barrie, the third cousin.

Barrie was petite by Gryffald standards, but the toughest of the cousins in many ways. When she saw Sailor’s state, however, she turned tender. “You poor thing. What did you do to yourself?”

“It’s not a big deal,” Sailor said. “Just a jogging...incident. Accident. Happens all the time on the trails. I’m clumsy.”

Rhiannon took Sailor’s hands in her own and turned them over. “Really? So you trip and fall, but you don’t skin your knees or scrape your palms, you fall directly on your sternum?”

“She probably ran into a tree,” Barrie said.

“With arms outstretched,” Rhiannon said.

“Very common among runners,” Barrie added. “It’s why they don’t route marathons through forests.”

The two women looked at Sailor expectantly, and for the first time got a good look at her face.

“Holy hell!” Rhiannon screamed. “What’s with your eyes?”

“Good God,” Barrie said. “Are those...colored contact lenses?”

“No. But if you have a spare pair, Barrie, I need to borrow them.”

“If you want to borrow anything,” Barrie said, “start explaining.”

Sailor sank into the sofa as a wave of weakness rolled over her. “I need coffee.”

“I’ll make coffee, you talk,” Rhiannon said, walking across the kitchen.

Barrie plopped down on the sofa alongside Sailor. “This isn’t some extreme ploy to get the night off work, is it?”

“Damn. Work.” Sailor sat up on the sofa. “What time is it?”

“Eight-twenty.”

“Okay. I’ll make this fast. Something happened tonight, which—”

“Is it to do with us?” Rhiannon asked.

“Tangentially, yes. It has to do with the family business.”

“Oh.” This time the two spoke in unison.

The cousins were all Keepers. Born in the same year, one red-haired child to each of the Gryffald brothers, the girls came into the world with the birthmarks of their fathers. Barrie’s destiny was to oversee the shapeshifters, Rhiannon’s the vampires. The girls had shared childhood memories, holidays and vacations, then gone separate ways as adults. Now they were back together and living in the family compound rent-free, if not expense-free. Their Otherworld work didn’t come with a paycheck, and all three of them had real-world professions—for Sailor, acting. Which meant, at the moment, waitressing.

“The thing is,” Sailor said, “I’m not sure I should talk about it.”

“Screw that,” Barrie said.

“Okay, but what if I tell you what I know and you feel you’re honor-bound, as a Keeper, to discuss it with—”

“Who?” Rhiannon asked from across the kitchen.

“Whom,” Barrie said. She was a journalist, and she believed in precision.

Sailor shook her head. “Shifters. Vamps. Your fellow Keepers.” She looked at Rhiannon. “Your fiancé. Especially him. You tell Brodie, he’s going to want to talk to me, and he’s got to stay away from me. Because he’s Elven.”

Rhiannon frowned. “What’s that got to do with—”

“You know what I hate?” Sailor continued. “Someone swears you to silence and tells you something, and then it turns out they themselves were sworn to silence, which means they’re expecting more of you than they expect of themselves.”

“You hate that?” Barrie asked. “Because I don’t have a problem with it. Everyone does it.”

“But isn’t it much better,” Sailor persisted, “if someone were to ask you later, to be able to say, ‘Golly, I didn’t know anything about it’?”

Barrie nodded. “Yes, if I were the sort of person who’s ever said ‘golly.’”

“I’m going with Barrie on this one,” Rhiannon said. “Screw that. We’re family.”

Sailor took a long look at her cousin Rhiannon in her strange clothes and another look at her cousin Barrie, and the two of them looked back at her with Gryffald eyes.

After a deep breath, she told them the story of her evening.

* * *

Declan Wainwright stood outside the gates of the House of the Rising Sun. He’d parked off Lookout Mountain and hiked the few hundred yards to this spot, where he could see into the main house—Sailor’s house—one of several on the compound and the only one showing movement. He counted three people and assumed they were the Gryffald cousins. He was waiting for Sailor to be alone, to pass out from fatigue, as Alessande had predicted, so that he could make his way into her bedroom and extract some blood. He’d worked his way through college as an EMT, so that would be easy. If she was deeply asleep, she wouldn’t even wake. He would return in the morning to get her to Kimberly’s lab, recruiting her cousins to help, if necessary. But for now, he needed her blood.

And, to be honest, he needed to see that she was safe.

He wasn’t used to waiting. Harriet excelled at expediting things for him, a perk of money and power. He’d spent the past hour texting with her, rearranging his calendar, rescheduling meetings planned for the next morning and setting up two for tonight. One was with Kimberly Krabill, the physician, and the other was business. He glanced at his watch.

He would have to break in. If there was as much magic here at the House of the Rising Sun as Alessande had indicated, he couldn’t do it by shifting. He’d once become a sparrow and encountered an enchanted force field so strong that he’d lost his shift energy, felt his wings fail and fallen twenty feet to the ground. Better to take his chances as a normal burglar. The grounds had a dilapidated aura, suggesting that nonmagical security was minimal. Declan liked trespassing anyway; it made him feel like a kid again.

At the age of ten he’d told his foster parents that he would rather eat what came out of a garbage can than what came out of their frying pan, which had resulted in a hard kick to his gut. “Compared to what that drugged whore of a mother fed you,” his foster father had bellowed, “this is the dining hall of the Q.E. Two.”

Declan had waited until nightfall, climbed down the fire escape and made his way to Southampton’s docks, which he knew well enough, his mother having numbered a few sailors among her client base. When he’d found the Queen Elizabeth II in her berth, his curiosity grew.

He’d turned himself into a swallow and flown aboard.

The ship had delighted him. He’d reverted to human form and stayed aboard and in his body all the way to New York. For him, it was second nature to steal food, sleep in small places and keep out of the way of grown people. He could do it all without resorting to his abilities, most of which he didn’t understand, a few of which scared him. His mother, in one of her lucid moments, had told him that there were others like him, maybe not in Southampton, but in big cities and also in America, quite a lot of them. Keepers, she’d called them. With birthmarks like his.

She’d been right. America was filled with them. Keepers and shapeshifters and Others of all sorts, creatures that looked human but had other qualities and talents, magical, fascinating, at times frightening to a ten-year-old...

Few things frightened him now.

The lights in the house went out. A door opened, and he could hear two people saying goodnight to one another. That would be Rhiannon and Barrie, he thought. They all lived on the compound, so it was likely they’d left Sailor in the main house and were heading to their own. Their voices trailed off, along with the sound of footsteps on a stone path. When it was quiet, he scaled the wall easily and made his way to the main house.

Entering the house—a small castle, really—required only the removal of a window screen and crawling through. He used his cell phone flashlight to look through a stack of mail on the kitchen table, confirming that it was Sailor’s house. Then the dog appeared—Jonquil, she’d called him—greeting him like an old friend. Apparently he and “Vernon Winter” smelled the same.

“Where is she?” he whispered, scratching Jonquil’s soft ears. “Upstairs? Asleep?”

Jonquil, as if he understood, bounded up the winding staircase. Declan followed, his footsteps disturbingly loud on the creaking stairs. He searched each room, and while he found Sailor’s bloodstained jogging clothes on the floor of the master bedroom, he did not find her.

Where the hell was she?