She was dressed as someone’s idea of a French maid; someone’s idea of sexy.

OK, it was his idea of sexy, Declan thought, watching her from the far end of the bar.

Sailor’s long legs were encased in black stockings with a seam down the back, stockings that showed a bit of thigh at the top. Her wild hair was pinned up, with one errant lock in her eyes. He wondered what she’d do if he walked over and pinned back the lock of hair for her.

Aside from looking tired, no one could tell she was sick. She was competent, but she was also close to the breaking point. Declan looked for an opportunity to step in and—what? Stop her from keeling over. What he’d like to do instead was pick her up, carry her to the back room and lay her on that Queen Anne sofa.

From there his thoughts turned to darker, more erotic images.

Dear Reader,

Back in 2006, I found myself singing backup in the Killer Thriller Band, and there I met for the first time my fellow Killerettes, Heather Graham and Alexandra Sokoloff. Our friendship has been forged in the fire of nonfunctioning sound systems, stuck elevators and demonic wigs. In fact, it was almost predictable that we’d end up writing a series about LA vampires, werewolves, shapeshifters and elves—and the women who love them.

In Hollywood, my current hometown, it’s not unusual to create “art by committee” but what is unusual is working with people you love and having this much fun. I’ve already forgotten which of us came up with this castle or that character; I just feel lucky getting to tell a part of the story.

Although this is my fifth novel, it’s my first romance, and I would not have attempted it without the encouragement of the talented and generous Heather and Alex. I am exceedingly grateful that they invited me to hop on board the KEEPERS’ series. Happy reading!

Harley Jane Kozak

About the Author

HARLEY JANE KOZAK was born in Pennsylvania, the youngest of eight children, and spent her childhood in North Dakota and Nebraska, where she developed a love of acting (along with cows and college football). She headed to New York at nineteen (attending NYU’s School of the Arts), and eight years later moved to LA. She’s appeared in some fifty plays, three soaps and a few dozen TV series and films (most notably Parenthood, Arachnophobia and The Favor). Giving birth to three children in two years changed the nature of her dreams and turned her thoughts to writing. Her first novel, Dating Dead Men, won numerous awards, and was followed by three more books in the series. Her short prose has appeared in such diverse publications as Butcher Knives and Body Counts, This IS Chick Lit, The Rich and the Dead, Crimes by Moonlight and Ms. Magazine. She is a proud member of the Killer Thriller Band and the Slush Pile Players.

Keeper of
the Moon
Harley Jane Kozak

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Katharine Harto Coen,

Who knows all about true love …

Chapter 1

Magic hour.

It’s the first or last hour of sunlight, when the day is opening or closing up shop, an event so commonplace that only certain breeds of humans notice it—movie people, for instance, who treasure the footage shot in those fleeting moments for the way it can render an aging star young, a dull actor luminous and a plain landscape … enchanted.

Sailor Ann Gryffald loved magic hour, especially sunset, loved to end her seven-mile run on a downhill slope as the sky turned red and the canyon faded to black. The name itself was a kind of incantation to her, like all movie terms. She’d been around film sets most of her life and couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t known the meaning of “magic hour” and “second meal” and “martini shot.”

But Sailor wasn’t only an actress, so she knew that magic hour had other meanings lying just under the surface, the way L.A. itself could hide under a veil of smog. The moments separating the worlds of day and night were when portals opened, shapes shifted with little effort, and even the most unimaginative human might stumble upon signs of the Otherworld.

Sailor was part of that Otherworld. She was a Keeper, a human born with a distinctive birthmark, and the mandate to guard and protect a particular species. In her case, the birthmark was a tree and the species were the Elven. These were not the tiny elves of popular culture in green jackets and felt hats, but tall, intensely physical creatures whose element was earth, whose beauty was legendary, whose powers included healing, telepathy and teleportation. The Elven loved Hollywood, and Hollywood reciprocated, rewarding and occasionally worshipping their charisma and physical beauty. Of course, most humans had no knowledge of Others, had no belief in, and thus no perception of, the extraordinary qualities and abilities their neighbors possessed. It was Sailor’s job to preserve that. A Keeper’s first obligation was to keep secret the very existence of the species, the Elven and vampires, the were-creatures, shifters, leprechauns and ogres whose natures the “real” world could not accept.

Sailor was new to the actual job, had taken it over from her father only months earlier, and found it something of a yawn. But with her birthmark came a fraction of the Elven powers and their beauty, so all in all, not a bad gig. She also had a strong sixth sense that told her things, like …

There was something in the air right now.

Sailor slowed her pace. She was a mile into her run, heading west on Mulholland at a good clip, shoes pounding the dusty road. It wasn’t darkness she felt; the sun wouldn’t set for another hour or more, and the moon was already out. It was a heaviness, making her want to look behind her, making the hair on the back of her neck—

“Hey!” a man yelled.

She turned and spotted him at the end of a driveway, waving his arms as if she were a taxi.

“Hey, what?” she called back, squinting. Did she know him? Were they friends?

“You’re breaking the law,” the man yelled. “Your dog’s off-leash.” He was dressed in a suit, standing alongside a Porsche in front of a small mansion.

Figures that he’d drive a Porsche, she thought.

“He’s not a problem,” she called back.

“He’s a problem if he pisses in my yard.”

The man’s yard was as dressed up as he was, a flawless green lawn accessorized with white rosebushes, more suited to Beverly Hills than the canyons.

“He’s not going to piss in your yard.” Sailor jogged in place and snapped her fingers. Jonquil, a huge, fierce-faced mutt with the temperament of a rabbit, loped over to her. “We’re thirty feet from your yard.”

“There are leash laws,” the man retorted. “You’re not supposed to let your dog urinate at will.”

She laughed. “What are you, the pee police? There are jackrabbits, deer, coyotes, all urinating at will, rattlesnakes, bobcats, possums—”

The man gave her the finger and moved into the house.

Sailor lowered her voice. “Go ahead and pee, Jonquil.” But the big mutt stared at her and inexplicably began to whine.

A rush of wind hit Sailor, so cold she thought, There must be some mistake. I must be dreaming, followed by a flutelike sound blowing in her ear, a flapping of a wing next to her cheek, striking her face. She swatted at it wildly, but something sharp sliced right down the middle of her chest, ripping through her shirt. Man, that’s going to hurt in a minute, she thought.

Jonquil was both whining and barking now, nearly crying, if dogs could cry, Sailor thought, as her legs faltered, refusing to hold her up.

And then she was falling, with the fading sunlight hitting her full in the face, falling onto the gravel and pavement of Mulholland Drive.

Damn, she thought. I’m checking out.

Darkness.

Alessande saw the woman go down. She’d been out gathering fenweddin for a medicinal tea, as fenweddin was best plucked in late afternoon, in full bloom. Alessande was on the hillside, blending in so well that she was effectively invisible both to the woman, whose mind was elsewhere, and the man from the mansion, who wouldn’t notice her unless she walked naked onto his lawn. The dog had looked her way, wanting to play, but Alessande was on a schedule, so she sent him on his way with an abrupt thought command.

But then the air changed, and Alessande turned her attention to it, letting the argument of the humans fade into the background. She took two steps backward, touched a bay laurel tree and contracted her energy until she was dense as the tree’s trunk, connected to it and virtually invisible, protected from a malevolence she could feel but not identify. Then she watched the malevolence materialize. It began as a blinding bit of light that arranged itself into a creature with wings, moving so violently that she could barely see the talon tearing open the woman’s chest.

And then it vanished. As abruptly as it had come, it was gone.

Alessande exhaled, disconnecting from the tree. She moved quickly to the woman, pushing aside the dog that was licking his human’s face, apparently trying to revive her.

The wound wasn’t deep, and it was nowhere near the carotid artery, which was good. But the woman was unconscious, and that wasn’t good. Alessande lifted her carefully. She was tall for a human female, but not heavy, so after picking up a set of keys fallen on the road and sending reassurance to the dog, Alessande moved swiftly. It was rush hour and only a matter of time before a car came along, which would mean curiosity and offers of help. She needed neither, at least not the sort of help a mortal could provide.

She moved down the hillside, directly into the brush, the dog following closely. The woman’s bare legs were getting badly scratched, but it was faster than taking the road to her cabin, and made it less likely that they would be spotted by a passing car. Alessande was dressed in earth tones and blended into the canyon, and while the woman wore hot-pink shorts and a white tank top, now stained with blood, the angle of their descent would hide them from Mulholland. Within minutes they’d reached her screen door, which she kicked open.

When Alessande laid the woman on the sofa and took another look at the long gash, she was relieved to find the blood already clotting. On a hunch she lifted one of the woman’s eyelids and then the other, and let out a long, slow breath.

The whites of the eyes were perfect, bright and healthy. But the irises were deep scarlet.

Declan Wainwright pulled on a pair of black jeans and a Grateful Dead T-shirt, getting ready for the workday, which in his case began at night. The part he enjoyed, at any rate. He had to deal with banking and office hours like anyone else, but he handed off as much as he could to his frighteningly talented assistant Harriet, without whom, he liked to say, he would be mad and penniless.

Not that Harriet listened to him. “Blarney,” she called it when he talked like that, knowing full well he came from England, not Ireland. Outside of calling him Mr. Wainwright, Harriet was one of the few people who showed Declan no deference, which was one reason he loved her. Another was that she terrified people seeking access to him. She had the face of a horse, and the voice of a drill sergeant. In fact Harriet Brockleman would be the perfect human, in Declan’s eyes, were it not for the fact that she turned off her own phone at nine-thirty each night, went to bed and was unavailable to him.

“Mr. Wainwright,” she called through the beach house intercom system, “are you at home to Vernon Winter?”

“No. Take a message.” Declan exchanged his diving watch for a vintage Rolex, and looked out the French doors to the ocean. The tide was coming in. He wasn’t going to interrupt a perfect sunset by listening to the dour predictions of his stockbroker.

The waves beckoned, and he moved out onto the deck.

The house on Point Dume was four stories tall. The master bedroom occupied the top floor, guest rooms took up the third, then the main living area, and at the bottom, built into the cliff, the maid’s quarters and his office. The upper deck, where he stood now, made him feel he was in the crow’s nest of a ship, out at sea. It was one reason he could stay in L.A., putting down roots, when part of him longed to just set sail and keep going.

The moon was full. It had already risen, its tenure overlapping with the setting sun, and he could feel its energy. His gaze moved to a spot on the beach marked by death. More than a week had passed since the woman’s body was found, and each day it weighed on him more. The woman had once been his lover. Their affair had been as brief as it was passionate, but long after both had moved on to other lovers, the bond had lingered.

Elven women did that to him.

And now she was dead, tossed carelessly onto the beach by an unknown killer, and the rage he felt wouldn’t let him sleep, or work, or play.

Enough was enough. Time to act.

He moved to the edge of the deck, closed his eyes and breathed in the salty air. He let thoughts slip away, his own energy moving into his astral body, the energy field surrounding him. He waited. After a moment there was a gentle shattering of the boundaries that held him in place as a man, a mortal.

And then he was floating.

He spoke not in words but in thoughts, addressing the woman so recently dead. “Charlotte, I will avenge you. Use me.”

Charlotte did not appear. But a tornado of currents circled him, the wind picking up, telling him it was no small thing to choose this path, that he was altering his destiny by involving himself in the mystery of her death. He stayed resolute and unmoving until he felt the spirit world acquiesce and the wind die down.

Declan let out a long breath. He’d done it. He’d shifted the course of his immediate future. He couldn’t know what that future would bring, only that he would now encounter people and events that would pull him into the orbit of a murderer.

A sound broke into his reverie, pulling him back into his body, onto his deck. It was a high-pitched squeal he couldn’t identify. A child?

Crying.

He looked below, to the beach, to the right, to the left. Nothing.

And there it was again.

He closed his eyes to pinpoint the location of the cries. They seemed to come from under the house. His mental focus shifted to the sand four stories below. He couldn’t see it, but he could feel it. Warmth. Life. Terror.

He took the outside staircase two steps at a time, thinking of the panga, a Mexican fishing boat, that had washed ashore a month before from Tijuana, carrying undocumented immigrants, dehydrated, half-drowned. What if it was happening again right now? What if one of them was just a—

Baby. The sound was recurring, a cry interrupted by the waves crashing on the shore. It must have found its way to the storage space where he kept the kayak and the beach furniture, in the area formed by the stilts and the rocks. He hit the sand and was instantly ankle-deep in surf. He clambered barefoot under the deck and then worked his way upward to the dry area, barely able to see in the underbelly of the house, where it was already night.

And there it was, clinging to a plank.

A cat.

He could just make it out in the last moments of sunlight filtering through the slats. An unhappy cat, gray, frightened, mewling.

“So you’re the baby.” He felt its terror and in response, slowed his own breath. “Come on, then.”

But the cat was panicked, hissing, and as he moved closer it stood upright on its hind legs in a freakish posture, displaying its own underbelly. Female, clearly. Her neck seemed stuck to the wall. Declan inched closer and pulled his cell phone from his pocket, used the flashlight app and saw that her collar was caught on a protruding nail. The cat was so freaked out that she was in danger of strangling herself. He put away the cell and crooned to her, using a hypnotic voice. “Come on, girl, let’s get you somewhere safe. Warm and dry … nice bowl of milk … tasty piece of fish …” He pulled his T-shirt over his head and draped it around his hands as a shield from her claws, then grasped her and held on, letting her struggle as he worked on unhooking the collar. But for that he needed his hands, so cradling her against one shoulder, he endured her scratches until he’d released it, at which point she wriggled out of both his grasp and her collar. In a spark of movement she took off under the house and into the darkness.

Leaving Declan behind, wet, bloody, shirtless and swearing, and holding her collar.

Minutes later he was back inside the house, dripping on the bleached wood floors. He set his cell on the kitchen counter, its screen showing a voice mail message from Alessande Salisbrooke. He would call her later.

“Look at this,” he said to Harriet, who’d brought him a towel. He handed her the collar, which had the Gucci logo on the leather and two green gems hanging from the metal ring like charms on a bracelet. “I believe those are real.”

“Emeralds? Leave it to you, Mr. Wainwright, to rescue a cat and end up with a fortune. Does it have a name?”

“The cat? Her name is Tamarind.”

“Yes, here it is on the tag. With a phone number. Shall I call it?”

“You needn’t bother,” Declan said, already stripping off his wet jeans. “There won’t be anyone home.”

Alessande had the door opened before Declan could reach for the doorbell. She ushered him inside and took a long look out at the horizon, as if scanning it for information. “Thanks for coming,” she said.

“My pleasure.”

“Took you long enough.” She closed the door.

He laughed and put an arm around her. “Took me no time at all, you ingrate. I came as soon as I listened to your message. What’s up?”

“I found a woman up on Mulholland, unconscious. I need help with her.”

“You have a dozen family members within shouting distance.”

“They’re Elven. I don’t want any Elven near her.”

“Why not?”

By way of answer, Alessande led him into the living room, where a girl—a woman, actually—lay on the sofa. She was covered by a blanket, so he could only see a long arm and the top of her head. A large yellow dog lay beside her. The dog raised his head at their entrance, but Alessande made a hand gesture and he relaxed, tail thumping on the stone floor.

“Is she sleeping,” Declan said in a low voice, “or unconscious?”

“She goes in and out. It’s like she’s drugged. Go check out her eyes.”

“Her eyes?”

“Lift her eyelid.”

He approached the woman. She had red-blond hair that spilled down the side of the sofa like a waterfall. His pulse quickened even before he came around and saw her face. It was heart-shaped, stunning in repose, with long eyelashes pointing the way to high cheekbones. A face he’d seen when it was awake and animated. Her extreme vulnerability now touched something in him. “I know her,” he told Alessande.

“Who is she?”

“In a minute.” He didn’t want to say the name aloud, knowing sleeping people will sometimes hear themselves called and pull themselves into consciousness. With a finger he brushed back a lock of her hair, gently, and with a growing suspicion of what he would find, he lifted an eyelid. He stared.

After a moment he turned to Alessande. “How exposed were you to her?”

“Enough. I carried her down the hillside. I’d begun to treat her wound when I thought to check her eyes.”

“Get any blood on you?”

“On my jacket. Nothing on my skin, as far as I could see.”

“You were lucky.”

“Do you think I’m all right?”

“I think if you weren’t, you’d already be dead.”

The woman grew restless, and her eyelids fluttered. Declan, acting on impulse, said quickly, “I don’t want her seeing me just yet. I’m going to shift.”

He closed his eyes and slowed his breathing, focusing on his astral body. Then he let in another image, the first person who came to mind—Vernon, his stockbroker. He would do. Vernon was shorter, somewhat heavier and fifteen years older than Declan, with a lot less hair. Declan watched the details coalesce and let the image take him, turning himself around so that he was now inhabiting Vernon’s body, looking at the world from his perspective.

He opened Vernon’s tired eyes and looked into the eerie eyes of the beauty who, until a minute ago, had been sleeping.

As images slid into focus, Sailor waited for something to look familiar, but in front of her was a man she didn’t know, in a house she didn’t recognize. A cabin, really, but a sophisticated one. She could see past the man to a woman, and beyond the woman to a kitchen, state-of-the-art, very modern, with a Wolf range. In a bay window hung an ornament, a carving in wood that she knew well, because her great-aunt Olga had an etched glass version of the same image: a tree with roots so long they circled up to meet its branches. Sailor’s eyesight was remarkably good, which was strange. Then again, at this point everything was strange.

Her head hurt and her chest burned. She was lying on a sofa covered with a soft blue blanket. The blanket was stained with blood.

“How are you feeling?” the man asked.

“I don’t have a clue,” she said. “What happened to me?”

The woman came closer. Elven. Typically beautiful. She was at least six feet tall, both athletic and voluptuous in the particular way that distinguished Elven women from human, except when the humans were surgically enhanced. She had white-blond hair and green eyes so pale they looked haunted. “You were attacked,” she said. She held a bottle of rubbing alcohol and sterile gauze.

Jonquil stood, sensing a party taking place, his huge tail wagging exuberantly.

“Sit,” the woman said, and the dog sat so eagerly that Sailor wondered if the stranger were a dog trainer. The woman said, “Do you remember it at all? It was half an hour ago.”

Sailor thought about it. “There was a bird, or—wings, at least. It sort of sliced me open.” She looked down at herself and moved back the blanket to see that her sternum was bleeding, her chest exposed. She pulled at her torn tank top and jogging bra, trying to cover herself.

“Let’s have a look,” the man said.

“Are you a doctor?” Sailor asked.

“Why else would I want to look at your naked breasts?” he asked, which made her laugh, but that turned into a cough, which hurt.

“Come,” he said. “Let’s see how bad it is.” He wasn’t remotely attractive, she thought, and he was old, at least as old as her own father, but there was something about his hands and the way he moved that—well, it was ridiculous, but she found him appealing.

He, however, was focused on her wound. He frowned, so she said, to distract him, “It’s not deep, is it? And it burns a bit, but I have a high tolerance for pain. I can’t imagine why I passed out.”

The man glanced at the Elven woman, then said to Sailor, “You’re not in the habit of passing out?”

“Are you kidding? I’m as healthy as a horse. A healthy horse, that is. Well, obviously. It’s a ridiculous saying, isn’t it? Because it’s not as if there are no sick horses in the world. They can’t possibly all be dying accidental deaths.”

“Are you always this talkative?” he asked.

“No.”

He glanced at the Elven woman again. She handed him the gauze and rubbing alcohol.

“What? What is it?” Sailor asked. “Why do you keep looking at each other?”

The woman said, “Whatever it was that attacked you—”

“Other,” Sailor said.

“What?”

“It was Other, whatever attacked me.”

The woman moved closer. “What are you?”

“What am I? I’m a Gryffald. Sailor Ann Gryffald, to be exact.”

“Are you kin to Rafe Gryffald?”

“He’s my father.”

The woman frowned. “You’re the Keeper’s daughter?”

Sailor winced. “Keeper” wasn’t the sort of word you said in mixed company, and the man applying rubbing alcohol to a gauze pad appeared to be mortal. The first rule of Keeperdom was nondisclosure. “The question is,” Sailor said, nodding toward the man, “what’s he?”

He looked up and gave her a smile. “Don’t worry. I’m a friend. You can speak freely.”

Sailor looked to the woman for confirmation. She nodded.

“Okay, then,” Sailor said, and then, as the alcohol touched her wound, “Ouch. My father is the former Keeper. He’s now serving on the International Keeper Council at The Hague.”

“So your uncles are—”

“Piers and Owen. Keepers of the vampires and shapeshifters, but also currently serving on the International Council.”

“And you’ve inherited the family proclivity toward—”

“Otherworld management? Yes. I am the current Keeper of the Elven.”

“Bloody hell,” the woman said. “The grown-ups have left the building.”

Sailor shrugged. In her three months on the job, she’d gotten several negative reactions to her youth and inexperience. The truth was, while she looked like a teen, she was twenty-eight. The three Gryffald brothers, Sailor’s father and two uncles, were well-respected in the Otherworld, but respect isn’t always passed on to one’s heirs, and while Sailor had been born with the mark of the Keeper, she’d assumed she had decades to prepare for the role. Fate had decided otherwise. When her father had summoned her home from New York, she’d come. There was no question of refusing—Keeping was the family business—but L.A. wasn’t rolling out the welcome mat.

“Yes,” Sailor said. “I’m no happier about it than you are, but anyhow, nice to meet you. Except I haven’t met you.”

“Alessande Salisbrooke,” the woman said.

“And I’m Vernon Winter,” the man said.

“Okay, nice to meet you. So what’s my diagnosis here, doc?”

“I’m not a doctor.”

“I thought you said you were.”

“No, I’m a stockbroker.”

“Why are you examining my chest? No, never mind. Stupid question.”

He smiled and once more she found herself drawn to him. Was he mortal? She was no longer sure. “I’m doing it because she can’t,” he said, nodding at Alessande. “She shouldn’t be touching you, because the Elven are highly susceptible to what you’ve got, which is a disease. You’re both lucky to be alive.”

“Lucky to be alive?” Sailor said. “Because of a scratch on my chest? It was weird, the attack, but hardly life-threatening. And I have no diseases. What are you talking about?”

“I’m putting on the kettle,” Alessande said, moving into the kitchen as she talked. “You’ve heard about the film stars who’ve died these past weeks from what the media calls the Celebrity Virus?”

“Charlotte Messenger and Gina Santoro?” Sailor said. “Of course. And last week an acting student from the California Institute of the Arts, who wasn’t exactly a celebrity, and a junior agent at GAA, also not a celebrity, but quite beautiful. Oh. And a sitcom star.”

“Did you know any of them?” Alessande was making kitchen noises, opening cupboards.

“Personally? No. I’ve followed the story online.”

“What else do you know about it?”

“Nothing,” Sailor said.

“Good God.” Vernon Winter taped gauze on her wound. “Don’t you Keepers talk to each other?”

“You mean like send around an email blast? No. What’s it got to do with us?”

“You realize the dead women were Elven?”

Sailor snorted. It was an insult, suggesting that a Keeper couldn’t recognize Elven, or, for that matter, vampire, pixie or were. Shapeshifters, by their nature, were trickier and took longer for her to figure out, but except for them, Sailor found it hard to believe her fellow humans were unaware of Others living among them. It was like being unable to distinguish cats from dogs. She said, “I could spot Elven characteristics since I was a toddler. Gina Santoro and Charlotte Messenger? Flamboyantly Elven. The sitcom star? Not. I don’t know about the two. I only saw Facebook photos.” Elven charisma was hard to discern in a still photograph.

“What tribe?” he asked, challenging her.

Who was this guy? “Gina was Rath,” she said. “Obviously. Charlotte looked multiracial. Déithe, of course. Maybe Cyffarwydd, as well. Hard to say, with all her plastic surgery. And I’m not just talking ears.” Softening ear tips was a practice as common as earpiercing for Elven children. “Why, is this a test?”

“Everything’s a test for a Keeper as new as you,” Vernon said. “And looking like a high school cheerleader isn’t going to help your cause.”

Was that a compliment? Was he flirting? “I don’t have a cause. And I don’t have to make my case, because I was born a Keeper. It’s not a job I’m auditioning for or even one I particularly want, but I’m a Gryffald, so I’ll be good at it. And I don’t know what your interest is in this as a stockbroker, but if you’re used to judging people by their faces—”

“It’s not your face I was judging.”

He was flirting. How crazy was this? Sailor was about to respond, but Vernon’s face wavered, suddenly becoming younger. Darker. Handsome. Light shimmered around it. She blinked several times. Okay, the attack had somehow affected her eyesight. That was scary.

Then he went back to being plain again. Homely. Nonshimmering. Her vision was fine. That was a relief.

“Back to the issue at hand,” Alessande said, coming back into the room. She carried a plate of gingersnaps, and Sailor could hear the teakettle on the burner in the kitchen. “The so-called Celebrity Virus is what my tribe is calling the Scarlet Pathogen. It’s only affecting the Elven. Except that now here you are, an Elven Keeper, exhibiting one of its key symptoms. Whatever attacked you? It infected you. You’re not bleeding much, thank God. With the others, there were rumors of excessive bleeding.”

“But—” Sailor’s mind was reeling. How could she have a disease? An hour earlier she’d been on a seven-mile run. “Wait, wait, wait. None of this is true. First, that sitcom girl wasn’t Elven. She was completely mortal. And not very talented, I’m sorry to say, because I don’t like to speak ill of the dead. And second—”

“The sitcom girl didn’t have the disease,” Alessande replied. “She overdosed on meth. One of our people took the 9-1-1 call and leaked misinformation to the press.”

“Why?”

“To draw attention away from the Elven. Standard procedure. Mortals see patterns, even where they can’t understand them. The human girl disrupts the pattern.”

Sailor glanced at Vernon. Despite Alessande’s assurances, it unnerved her to speak of mortals this way in front of one. “But—okay, you said I have the symptom, but then you said I’m not bleeding abnormally. So what symptom are you talking about?”

The teakettle whistled. Alessande gave a nod to Vernon, then went to the kitchen. He crossed to the front entryway and lifted a mirror off the wall.

Sailor watched him walk toward her with the mirror and grew fearful, her hands reaching up to her face, her mind racing with images of what had been done to it when she was unconscious. She didn’t consider herself excessively vain, but she was an actress, after all, and fairly pretty, and so …

The man handed her the mirror. She looked at herself …

… and gulped. Her eyes were no longer green, but a deep shade of scarlet.

Don’t freak, she told herself. Keep it together. Could be worse. She took a deep breath, then turned her gaze resolutely to Vernon. “Okay, what does it mean?”

He looked directly at her, and because she had a fair amount of the Elven telepathic abilities, she could read his thought: Good. You didn’t panic. “We don’t know what it means,” he said. “Yet. We’ll find out.”

“You don’t know? So I could be going blind, or—”

“How’s your eyesight now?”

“Fine. Great.”

He nodded. “I wouldn’t worry, then.”

“They’re not your eyes,” she pointed out. “So, wait.” She spotted the other woman reentering the room. “Alessande, you can catch it from me?”

“We don’t know,” the Elven woman replied. “But so far, so good.”

“So what’s the cure?”

Alessande brought in a tray of tea. “We’ve yet to find out. It’s not like we can send out a press release and confer with the CDC.”

True enough, Sailor thought. When times were good, the Others lived easily under the radar among humans, blending in with little effort. It was during crises that the mandate for secrecy created problems.

Alessande handed Sailor an earthenware mug, steaming-hot and filled with roots and leaves. “Sip. Don’t burn yourself, but keep on sipping.”

“What is it?”

“Síúlacht. You picked the right hillside to tumble down,” Alessande said. “Not too many of us can make a good batch of síúlacht. I’m one of them.”

The scent arising from the mug evoked a memory, but the memory refused to coalesce. Sailor took a sip and shuddered. The bitterness was intense, but so was the effect. Her senses sharpened, her sinuses cleared and she felt energy return to her.

“It’s a delicate situation,” Alessande said. “On one hand, we need to study the disease, find out whether other cities have experienced it, but on the other hand, we need to downplay it. So far, only the Elven community knows, along with some high-ranking vamps and shifters. And werewolves—Antony Brandt, the coroner, and others with inside jobs, who can control the flow of information.”

“But not the Elven Keepers?” Sailor asked. “That doesn’t make sense.”

Alessande and Vernon looked at one another.

“Well, shit,” Sailor said, intercepting the look. “So the other Keepers do know. Everyone knows but me.”

“Probably the Antelope Valley Keepers don’t know,” Alessande said reassuringly. “And San Pedro. That guy’s clueless. Bakersfield, too.”

“The San Pedro Keeper died last month,” Vernon said.

“Great,” Sailor said. “So except for my colleagues out in the sticks, and the dead ones, I’m the only one the Council doesn’t bother to inform? I’m the Canyon Keeper, for God’s sake.”

“If you’d had the information,” Vernon said, “what would you have done with it?”

“That’s hardly the point, is it?” Sailor asked.

“It may be exactly the point. If you’re so new at this that you plan to share news that’s confidential—”

“Hey, give me some credit, would you? They either don’t trust me, or they consider me too inconsequential to bother with. Whichever, it’s insulting. And for that matter, what are you doing with all this insider information?”

He hesitated, and Alessande said, “He’s my friend. I trust him with my life. Keep drinking. You’ve had a trauma and a racing heartbeat won’t improve things.”

“I’m fine, I’m calm, I meditated this morning.” Sailor took a last gulp and set the mug on the coffee table. It was strong stuff, whatever it was—she’d already forgotten the name. The Elven were good at that sort of thing, the healers of the Otherworld. She pushed herself up off the sofa. “Alessande,” she said, “thanks for rescuing me. But it’s my job to protect your species, not vice versa, and if I’m contagious, I’m not doing you any favors being here. Not to mention that I have work to do, and I can’t do it lying on your sofa.”

Alessande nodded. She reached for a sheath attached to her belt and pulled out a dagger with a four-inch blade. “Someone or something out there means you harm,” she said, placing it on the table. “Can you use a dagger?”

“Yes.” Sailor picked it up admiringly. It was beautifully etched, and she shared the Elven preference for blades over bullets. “I’ll get it back to you.”

“Go straight home and stay there,” Alessande said. “Don’t go out again tonight.”

Sailor started for the door, but Vernon stepped in front of her, barring her way. She felt an energy between them that excited her. When she stepped around him, he grabbed her. His touch was electrifying, but she couldn’t understand why, and that alarmed her. There was something Other about him, but she couldn’t identify it.

“Take your hand off my arm,” she said.

His grip tightened. “Don’t be stupid, girl.”

Sailor almost laughed at his effrontery. “Dude,” she said. “Who’re you calling girl? Not to mention who are you calling stupid? I’m the one holding a knife.”

He smiled fleetingly, and the shimmery thing happened again, changing his face. A shock went through Sailor as she stared at him, the surge of sexual energy intensifying. Then the moment passed and he was the homely stockbroker once more. Had she just imagined the change? Or was something truly affecting her vision?

Vernon let go of her arm. “I’m serious. You should be examined by a doctor, one who understands Others. Your Council needs to study this disease.”

“Come, Jonquil,” she said, and snapped her fingers at the dog, who hopped up from the stone floor and ambled after her. She walked around Vernon, opened the door and then turned back to him.

“The Council,” she said, “can kiss my ass.”

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—investigation himself, for starters—took charge of the crisis. Good luck for the 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?

Chapter 3

Sailor made it to the Hollywood Bowl, resplendant under the full moon, in seventeen minutes. Parking was a nightmare, of course, but she would be leaving long before the rest of the crowd, so she blocked someone’s Acura and left her Jeep, moving fast before parking security could bust her.

She was determined to see Charles Highsmith, the head of the Elven Keeper Council.

Learning Highsmith’s whereabouts had been simple: a call to his office pretending to be a veterinary assistant concerned about one of his polo ponies had yielded the information that he was at the Hollywood Bowl, had been there since six at an open-air preconcert “business picnic” and was unreachable. Of course, one person’s “unreachable” was another’s piece of cake, Sailor decided. The Hollywood Bowl wasn’t the Staples Center; because the criminal element was less addicted to the Los Angeles Philharmonic than to the Lakers, security was lax. She was prepared to use her limited powers of Elvenry and her considerable powers of lying to make her way in, but the usher guarding the entrance was listening to the concert, and she slipped by easily.

She walked carefully. The house was dark, with all the lights focused on the orchestra, but the full moon illuminated the way and made her aware of the occasional Elven. How contagious was she? She hadn’t infected Alessande, so surely an accidental touch wouldn’t do it, but how to be sure?

She made her way to the Garden Boxes, where her father had season tickets, hoping that Highsmith was there, too, and once again her luck held. Highsmith was on the aisle, wineglass in hand.

Under normal circumstances she would have been embarrassed to spoil anyone’s concert experience, but now she touched Highsmith on the shoulder and met his affronted look calmly. The full moon would highlight her scarlet eyes, which she hadn’t yet hidden behind her cousin’s contacts. She needed no mirror to tell her how frightening she must appear. It was written all over his patrician face.

“Remember me?” she said. “I’m Sailor Gryffald.”

They walked to the exit in the near dark, accompanied by the notes of Mahler’s Symphony No. 5. Highsmith led the way. He was an inch or so taller than she was, with an athletic body and a commanding presence that was almost military, even when he was wearing khakis and a polo shirt. His muscular back registered displeasure, which Sailor chalked up to a control freak facing a situation not of his making. She found the man intimidating and—okay, this was weird—attractive. Was that some síúlacht side effect?

In the parking lot he led her to the VIP section and clicked a remote at a black Rolls-Royce Ghost. He let her in the passenger side and turned on the lights. “Look at me.”

He studied her eyes in a clinical manner. She in turn registered a man in his fifties with a hard, handsome face and close-cropped, steel-gray hair. For a split second he looked at her, rather than her eyes, but before she could see his thoughts he switched off the interior light and opened his car door.

“Don’t you want to know how it happened?” she asked, but he was out of the car and opening her door before she knew what he was doing.

“Let’s take a walk.”

“Why? Is your car bugged?” she asked, but she climbed out.

He didn’t answer until they were several yards away. “Cars are vulnerable. That much electronic circuitry makes it difficult to cloak with protective spells. Tell me what happened, please.”

She recited the facts once more, striding through the parking lot. The night had grown cold, but she knew she was running a temperature and welcomed the chilly breeze. Highsmith listened without comment, asking for only a few points of clarification. When she’d finished, he said, “How did you find me here?”

She ignored that, not wanting to get his assistant fired. “The question is, why didn’t I know about the Scarlet Pathogen until I became infected with it?”

“We’re giving no official response while events are still unfolding.”

“Events are unfolding right into my bloodstream,” she said. “And anyway, who’s ‘we’? I’m part of the Council. Shouldn’t I be one of the official responders?”

“No. The executive committee takes care of that.”

“Are you serious?”

“It’s protocol.”

“And who’s the executive committee? You?”

“Keep your voice down.”

Sailor looked around. A chauffeur stood outside a limousine talking on a cell phone twenty yards away, the lone human in sight. She lowered her voice, but not her intensity. “I was attacked. Deliberately infected, which means that maybe those dead Elven women were deliberately infected, too. Maybe they didn’t just pick up the disease on location, which is what the news reports suggest. I expect you would know. I expect you have contacts in the law enforcement community. Because you’re the head of the Council.”

He looked at her speculatively. Then he nodded. “Yes. The police are investigating the deaths, and if they haven’t yet been ruled homicides, they will be any day now.”

“Who are their suspects?”

“If my sources shared that kind of confidential information with me, do you really think I would share it with you?”

“If it would help us find a killer, yes. Don’t you think I have a right to know?”

“I think you’re a novice in a job you neither understand nor appreciate, despite your pedigree. Being the victim of an attack doesn’t change that.”

“But it’s motivating me,” she said. “And I’m a fast learner.”

“Congratulations.”

His sarcasm was like a slap in the face, and Sailor felt her temper rise. “My assailant was a winged creature, a bird or a bat. That’s either a shifter or a vampire, and once word of that gets out—and that’s my call, isn’t it?—all hell will break loose. So you and your executive committee and your protocol and your old boys’ network can shut me out, Charles, but you’ll be doing so at your own—”

“Young woman.” His voice stopped her cold as he turned and looked at her face-to-face. “You’ve been through a disturbing experience. I’ll make allowances for that. But don’t think for a moment that you are my equal simply because you bear your father’s name. I’m the Council’s President and you are its youngest member, and you haven’t earned the right to address me by my given name, let alone speak to me in that manner.”

She was now seriously pissed, but he held up his hand. “If you intend to make an enemy of me so early in your career, you’re not just rude, you’re ignorant.”

Sailor closed her mouth, anger and embarrassment fighting it out inside her.

“Word of this must not get out,” he continued, “or you will cause a great deal of damage. Keep your mouth shut. You should stay out of sight, as well. Your eyes will attract attention.”

“Shouldn’t you be worried I’ll transmit the disease to the Elven?”

His eyes narrowed. “Naturally,” he said, and looked at his watch. “I’ll call for a Council meeting within twenty-four hours, and you’ll hear from me in the next twelve. Until then, stay home. I’ll send my own physician to your house tomorrow to examine you. Where are you parked?”

“I don’t need an escort, thank you.”

“Then I’ll return to the concert, where my absence will have been noted. You’ll have been recognized, as well. That’s how rumors begin. It was an unfortunate move on your part, coming here. That’s why it’s imperative you go home now. I’ll have to do some damage control.”

“I’m sure you’re quite capable of it. Sir,” she added, with as much sarcasm as she could fit into one syllable. She walked away before he could respond, pleased to have the last word.

Go home? Ha. She had things to do, and going home was far down on the list.

Declan knocked on the door of the first of the two guesthouses he came to, interrupting what he imagined to be the early stages of foreplay between Rhiannon Gryffald, the Canyon vampire Keeper, and Brodie McKay, her Elven lover. He was on good terms with both, so he spent a minute in friendly conversation before saying to Rhiannon, “Where’s your cousin?”

“Which one?” she asked, innocence written all over her lovely face.

“Sailor.”

“Oh.” She smiled. “Work, I expect. She waits tables at the House of Illusion. The late shift.”

She went to work? In her condition? Declan hid his reaction and asked, “Did you see her tonight?”

Rhiannon hesitated for a fraction of a second. “We don’t run into each other as much as you’d think.”

Declan saw Brodie raise an eyebrow, which told Declan a several things: Rhiannon knew about the attack on Sailor, but she wasn’t about to tell him, because she hadn’t even told her fiancé. And her fiancé, who happened to be a cop, would no doubt ask her why she’d just lied to a friend and fellow Keeper as soon as Declan was out the door.

And if Rhiannon was able to keep secrets from an Elven who would be looking her right in the eye, she was very talented indeed. Telepathy through eye contact was an Elven specialty, right up there with a strong sexual appetite. Declan wondered how his friends would reconcile the two tonight.

“Thanks,” he said. “Have a nice evening.”

The House of Illusion sat atop a hill on Hollywood Boulevard, east of Laurel Canyon. It was fully illuminated in all its medieval glory, turrets and battlements beckoning tourists and natives, skeptics and believers, devotees and the merely curious.

Declan had a soft spot in his heart for the place, having first seen it as an eighteen-year-old on his first night in L.A. He’d since outgrown its brooding kitschiness, but the tapestries, silvery mirrors and brocade sofas gave him a feeling of history, of Olde England, even—were he sentimental—of homesickness. Many of the furnishings had come from the British Isles, from castles fallen on hard times. The stained glass and stone fireplaces retained bits of history and, in some cases, magic.

The bar was an ornately carved mahogany affair, and Dennis, the gnome tending it, dressed for the period in a striped shirt and high-waisted trousers with suspenders. Declan would never require a uniform for his own waitstaff, and the guy had his sympathy.

Declan took a seat at a barstool, ordered a club soda and said, “Do you know a waitress named Sailor Gryffald?”

Dennis said, “Sailor? Sure. She’s due in—” He glanced at the clock behind the bar. “Seven minutes ago.”

Sailor had made the trip up the long winding drive to the House of Illusion more times than she could count. As a child she’d come with her parents, eyes wide, heart pounding, both terrified and mesmerized by the gargoyles, the heavy wooden doors, the moat that snaked around the castle. These days she didn’t drive over the ornate drawbridge that was the public entrance but around the back to employee parking.

Her waitress training had required her to memorize the history of the place, some of which overlapped with her family history. Ivan Schwartz, its founder, was the magician who went by the stage name of Merlin and was now their family ghost-in-residence. His star was rising in the 1920s, when he built not only the House of Illusion, but the House of the Rising Sun estate, his personal kingdom. He was a social creature, keeping friends in residence, foremost among them Rhys Gryffald, Sailor’s grandfather, for whom he’d designed Gwydion’s Cave. But whereas Rising Sun was welcoming even in its current state of semi-decay, the House of Illusion was modeled after the haunted Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight. It was meant to evoke chills, and it generally succeeded.

Tonight, though, her chills were from another source. Whatever Alessande had given her was fast leaving her system, taking with it energy, heat and mental clarity. The temperature had dropped twenty degrees since sunset, and Sailor couldn’t stop shivering, although the wound on her chest was now hot to the touch. She’d covered it with a gauze pad and buttoned her black velvet waitress dress up to her throat to hide it. It hurt, but pain she could handle. This weakness was another story.

Tough it out, she told herself, as she tied on her apron and reported to her manager, Kristoff, to be assigned a station. He was staring at his table chart and barely acknowledged her. “You’re late. You’ve got station two, but Lauren’s busy with a bachelorette party, so take the four-top for her and the deuce next to it.” Then he looked up. “What on earth?” he said, and she instantly looked away. “What’s going on with your eyes?”

“Yes, sorry, Kristoff, had trouble with my contacts tonight.”

He frowned. “Are your pupils completely dilated? Are you on something?”

“No, just colored lenses. My cousin talked me into them.”

“Black? Black contact lenses?”

They weren’t black, they were green, but in combination with the scarlet of her irises they resulted in a shade of mud. She’d borrowed them from Barrie, and while Barrie’s prescription was mild, it was enough to make Sailor nauseous.

“Dark brown, actually. Yes, okay, not my best look.”

“It’s a terrible look. Customers will think you’re a drug addict.”

She wanted to tell him she didn’t much care, as long as they tipped her, but flippancy didn’t go over well with Kristoff. “Sorry,” she said. “You really don’t want me working blind. I’d be walking into walls.”

He shook his head. “We’re wasting time. Get to work.”

She breathed deeply, trying to adjust to the noise, pace and stress of the restaurant, an atmosphere she ordinarily found bracing. Tonight, though, it felt like an assault. She looked at her watch. Twenty minutes until the second dinner seating, which preceded the midnight magic show. A half hour from now she would either be working at a fever pitch or falling hopelessly behind, and the latter could cost her her job. Kristoff wasn’t her biggest fan.

There were no other Elven on staff, thank God. And if any came in as customers and Kristoff seated them at her station, she would just have to get Lauren to switch tables with her. Lauren was her friend, but a mortal, so Sailor would have to come up with some plausible excuse.

But first she had to stay awake.

She was taking the drink order at the deuce when she overheard a snippet of conversation behind her. “… only thirty-three. Her whole career ahead of her. I heard it was food poisoning,” a man said, to which his companion replied, “I heard it was a parasite picked up on location. Both of them were working overseas.”

She knew they were talking about the dead actresses, but when she cast her eyes around the candlelit room, she couldn’t figure out which table she’d been listening to. The vampires at table six? Ivan Schwartz had been, among other things, a ventriloquist, so he’d played with acoustics when building the House of Illusion, with results that were sometimes magical and sometimes maddening.

The dead Elven. Her heart hurt to think of them, had hurt all week, because she was tied to them in ways she didn’t even understand. But now her conscience hurt, too. She should have been more proactive. Even believing their deaths were from natural causes, as had been reported, she should have asked questions. Now that she knew they were dead precisely because they were Elven—Gina and Charlotte, and the other two, the acting student and the talent agent—she was appalled at her earlier inattention. How irresponsible could she be? For the first time she was glad that her dad was on the other side of the world, because she couldn’t bear to see his disappointment.

“Hey, sister. Y’okay?” It was Julio, her favorite busboy, clearing plates from the table next to her.

“I’ve been better.”

“You look bad, baby.”

“I feel worse.”

“You need something?”

“About fourteen hours of sleep.”

“You change your mind, want something else, you let me know.”

“I don’t do drugs, Julio.”

He looked affronted. “Hey, I’m a full-service dealer. Herbs, homeopathic, healthy stuff. Legal, even. Chinese medicine. Not just party powders and pharmaceuticals.” He looked over her shoulder. “At the bar. El turista. I think he wants you.”

Sailor turned. A customer, swiveling on his barstool, was snapping his fingers, signaling her. El turista was what Julio called any customer he considered too ignorant to be local and this one confirmed the designation by drawling, “Waitress, hand me one of the menus you got there.”

“Customer,” she said, “I’d be happy to.” She strolled toward him, holding out a laminated menu. “But is that how you get your wife’s attention, by snapping your fingers? Because here in L.A. that’s how we summon our dogs. And I’m not your golden retriever.”

Before she could reach the customer, Kristoff stepped in front of her, taking the menu. He handed it to el turista, then steered Sailor toward the kitchen. “I don’t know if you’re sick or hung over or what your problem is,” he hissed, “but talking to a customer like that? I’d fire you right now if we weren’t overbooked tonight, with two waiters calling in sick. You’re on very thin ice. Are we clear?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. You’d better give me a five-star performance the rest of your shift. I see three tables in your section needing attention. And I believe your appetizers are up.”

He marched off, leaving her to retrieve two burning-hot plates laden with crab cakes. He was filling up her section all at once, and she wasn’t going to be able to handle it, not in her condition. But she couldn’t handle being fired either. Jobs were scarce, and it had taken footwork, luck and family connections to score this one. She wasn’t letting it go without a fight.

“Julio,” she said, before heading back out onto the floor. “There’s this tea made of twigs and things, and—”

“Chinese?”

“No. It’s some Gaelic word, starts with an s. Tastes awful. I know it’s a long shot, but—”

“Síúlacht.”

Her eyes widened. “That’s it.”

“Yeah, I have some. Not the tea. Capsules. My supplier, he gets them from some Druid lady in the Valley. Hang tight, mija, I’ll get them.”

Other than being clearly exhausted, Sailor looked good, Declan thought, watching her from the far end of the bar. She looked better than good, in fact, communicating with Dennis in waitress/bartender shorthand, garnishing the drinks on her tray with speed and precision. She was dressed as someone’s idea of a French maid, a sleeveless dress in black velvet, with a ridiculously short skirt. Someone’s idea of sexy.

Okay, she was his idea of sexy, too. Especially her long legs, in black stockings with a seam down the back, stockings that showed a bit of thigh at the top. Her wild hair was pinned up, with one errant lock in her eyes, but she didn’t have a free hand to deal with it, so she kept tossing her head, which didn’t solve the problem but gave her the look of a spirited filly. He wondered what she would do if he walked over and pinned it back for her. By his calculations she had to be close to the breaking point, and he searched for an opportunity to step in and … what? Stop her from keeling over, perhaps, when the síúlacht abruptly left her system. What he would like to do was pick her up and carry her into one of the back rooms and lay her down on a Queen Anne sofa.

From there his thoughts turned to darker, more erotic images.

Julio found Sailor while she stood at the bar, waiting for a drink order, eyes closed, asleep on her feet, like a horse.

He slipped the síúlacht into her pocket.

She opened her eyes with a start, pulled one of the pills from her pocket and sniffed it, then nodded. The pills were rough to the touch, and she imagined grass and twigs compressed hundreds of times, hardened into a caplet. “They smell just like the tea,” she said.

He nodded. “The same, I promise. I gave you two. You take one now, you save one.”

“I owe you.”

Julio shrugged. “You take care of me, mija, so I take care of you.”

She felt as if she was going to go into a coma waiting for Dennis to fill her drink order and knew she was fast reaching the point where she wouldn’t care about her job, her customers or the state of the world so long as she could close her eyes. She looked at the glass of ice water on her tray, took a quick glance around the bar and then, satisfied that no one was looking at her, popped a pill in her mouth and swallowed. She knocked back the water, placed the glass on the bus tray, then replaced it with a fresh one from the bar.

Dennis came back with two white wines. “You okay, Sailor?”

“Give me ten minutes. I’ll be fine.”

It was síúlacht, all right. The aftertaste was unmistakable, and with it came the same memory of her mother giving it to her when she was a child. But now she wasn’t feeling the effect—

And then it kicked in, like a hockey puck to the stomach. Within seconds she was wide-awake, ears buzzing. She could focus and move, and ten minutes later she was not only on top of her station, she was helping Lauren with hers. It was when she was ordering three Irish coffees for the bachelorette party that she saw, at the far end of the bar, Declan Wainwright.

Her heart skipped a beat. And then another.

Damnit.

Declan had been watching her for half an hour, waiting for the moment to step in and get her out of there without creating a scene. He’d done a glamour on himself, nothing taxing, not full-on invisibility, just enough so that she wasn’t aware it was him at the bar, seeing him only as some random customer.

And then she’d popped a pill.

He’d seen the surreptitious glance around, her eyes disguised with colored contact lenses—where on earth had she gotten those?—that told him the pill was something other than aspirin.

He was sure that no one else saw, but at that point he was locked onto her and could practically hear her thoughts: I hope this works. As an Elven Keeper, she had the Elven transparency, both sending and receiving thoughts telepathically. He wondered if she was gifted in all aspects of Elvenry, including their version of witchcraft.

Damn the girl. She was tainting her own blood, clouding the best clue they had to whomever was killing the species she was supposed to be protecting. And she’d done it right before his eyes. He was angry enough that his glamour fell away before he realized it, leaving him openly staring at her.

And now she was staring back.

Sailor literally stopped breathing.

If there was a man living who was more erotically appealing than Declan Wainwright, more her type, better able to take her breath away, she didn’t want to meet him. One was enough for this lifetime. When she was around him she wasn’t herself, and self-consciousness, painful for anyone, was particularly bad for an actress. It killed creative energy. Her attraction to him rendered her graceless, inarticulate and gauche—and that made her defensive.

Breathe, she told herself.

And why was he here? It was one thing to encounter him after hours at his own nightclub, where a drink or two could ease her awkwardness. Here she was at a disadvantage, dressed in an absurd French maid uniform—with sensible shoes—perpetually in danger of being yelled at by Kristoff. How embarrassing.

Her cousins considered Declan a friend, especially Rhiannon, but Sailor had gotten off on the wrong foot with him years earlier, and then again a few months ago, and now every encounter seemed to make it worse. She’d pegged him as someone with a bias against actors/waiters, against any artist who wasn’t—yet—A-list. Which pissed her off.

What pissed her off even more was how susceptible she was to his charms, like nearly every woman in L.A., which made her a cliché. She had no defense against his rakish appeal, his jet-black hair and sky-blue eyes bordered by laugh lines, the early warning signs of middle age. He was close to forty, Sailor knew, a decade older than she was, but he didn’t look it. His body, surfer-lean, was always in jeans and a T-shirt. And he had a timeless aura of … cool. As the owner of the Snake Pit on Sunset, he was a staple of the late-night club scene, as well as being a producer, entrepreneur and unerring judge of talent in the indie music world. A star maker.

And he had all the confidence that came with that. He was used to women coming on to him, and she wasn’t going to join that club. He was never going to know how she felt about him, not if she had anything to say about it.

What was he was doing at the House of Illusion? It wasn’t to see her, that was for sure. She wasn’t in his social sphere. But he was staring at her now, so she could hardly ignore him. They were acquaintances. It would be too weird. Damn.

She served her Irish coffees, asked Lauren to keep an eye on her station, then wiped her hands on her apron, brushed her hair from her eye, and—heart pounding—walked over to him.

“Mr. Wainwright?” The formality was tongue-in-cheek, acknowledging the prickliness of their relationship.

Declan swiveled on his barstool to face her. “Miss Gryffald,” he said drily. The way he pronounced her name betrayed his Celtic origins. The guy had an accent that would make a tax code sound seductive.

“I wanted to ask you—” Damn. She was shaking. “I’m wondering if there’s anything you could tell me about Gina Santoro or Charlotte Messenger.”

“Why?”

“Excuse me?”

“Why would I?” he asked.

“Why would you know anything about them? Or why would you tell me?”

“Yes.”

Did some people enjoy toying with other people? she wondered. Some endorphin rush? “You would know about them,” she said, “because they were both part of the club scene and you are the club scene, and there’s not much that goes on between 2:00 a.m. and sunrise that you don’t know or can’t find out. And you would tell me because you’re a shapeshifter Keeper and you were friends with my uncle Owen, and because I’m an Elven Keeper and it couldn’t hurt you to have an ally on my Council—a new one, I mean. And not to be ageist, but … a young one. One who’s not going to be collecting Social Security anytime soon.” She was talking too fast and with too much energy and saw Dennis glance her way.

“I already have a number of allies,” Declan Wainwright said, his voice low. “And if you think trading on your family name will earn anyone’s respect, you’re not much like your uncle Owen. Or your father.”

Sailor was now breathing heavily, her face burning along with the wound in her chest. “You know what?” she said. “Maybe you think that because I’m just a waitress-slash-actress I shouldn’t be talking to you except to take your order—”

“You shouldn’t be talking at all, in a room that—”

“—and that your money means you can afford to make enemies. I can see how you might think that. And yet it would be so easy to win someone’s gratitude and loyalty, someone who might have information that could be useful to you, but I’m sure you have your reasons for being an arrogant b—” She stopped, aghast. Had she just almost called him an arrogant bastard?

He swiveled his barstool until he was facing her dead on. Smiling. His trademark grin, something she’d seen but never provoked. “Go on, pet. Don’t start editing yourself now.”

“Oh, my God. My mouth. I’m sorry. Look, I’ve got—”

“A temper?” He was still smiling. “I’d say so.”

“I was going to say ‘customers.’ But yes, a temper, too.” She turned to go.

“Wait.” He reached out and caught her wrist.

She turned back and stared, electricity surging through her at the touch. His hand was strong, but his hold was gentle. She could easily have pulled free, but she didn’t. Her heart was beating fast.

With his free hand Declan made the “Check, please” gesture to Dennis, and when Dennis made the “It’s on the house” gesture back to him, Declan stood, and pulled her closer. He was taller than she by a few inches, and she was forced to look up at him.

He leaned in, and she couldn’t imagine what he was doing—for one crazy moment she thought he was going to kiss her neck—but it was only to whisper in her ear.

“What did you take just now?”

“What do you mean?” She was practically vibrating with the nearness of him.

“The pill.”

“Oh.” She shook her head. “Just—it’s called síúlacht. It’s nothing, it’s—”

“I know what it is. Bloody hell.” He let go of her, and stepped back, turning to shield his thoughts from her. “All right. Come to the Snake Pit after your shift. This—” he gestured at the bar “—is no place to discuss business.”

She gulped. Shit. She’d talked about Keepers, shifters, Elven in a room constructed for eavesdropping. It had been a huge lapse in judgment.

He put a twenty on the bar for Dennis. “And do me a favor?” he added. “No more pills tonight. Not even vitamins.”

“Okay, but—”

“You think no one’s looking?” Declan raised an eyebrow. “Look around you. Mirrors and magic. Everything you do, love, someone can see.”

Declan watched her walk away, surprised at his own flare of temper, which had made him more sharp-spoken than he’d intended. But her talking openly about Keeper matters in a place like this and on top of that downing a second dose of síúlacht … What bad luck. The síúlacht would mask the effects of the Scarlet Pathogen all over again. That set them back two or three hours, hours that could have been spent tracking a killer by other means. Maddening. What a waste of time.

But it was more than that. If he were to be honest with himself—and he worked hard to be honest with himself, to not turn into the arrogant bastard she thought he was—he had to admit that the one he was mad at wasn’t Sailor but himself. Because she stirred up something in him—she had just enough Elven in her to be his type, with her overt sensuality, her long golden limbs and red-gold hair—and the last thing he needed now was a romantic entanglement. Sailor’s path had crossed his because of this crisis, and it was the crisis that mattered. Finding the killer. Not her.

Alessande’s warning came to mind. The Elven passion for portents and premonitions irritated him because he didn’t like being told what not to do, even by supernatural sources. This time the warnings were unnecessary, redundant, telling him what he already knew: Keep this strictly business.

And it was hardly her fault that she’d messed up his evening’s agenda, because she had no idea she was part of it. Taking síúlacht wasn’t a bad call on her part; it was a perfectly reasonable response to her condition, taking more of what Alessande had given her hours earlier. Not everyone’s an addict, mate, he told himself. And even if she were, it wasn’t his business.

How had she lasted this long, though? He and Alessande had underestimated her stamina. But she would show up at his club, he had no doubt. She wanted something from him.

Would she be safe, though, driving the streets of Hollywood after midnight? Safe from what had attacked her this afternoon? Whether her assailant was a vampire or a shifter, neither was likely to enter her car while she was driving. And once she reached the Snake Pit she would be on his turf, and anyone trying to mess with her there did so at their peril. Let them try, he thought, and instinctively flexed his muscles.

Damn. He was going to have to watch himself. Feeling this protective toward her was a bad sign.

He signaled Dennis, who came over, wiping a shot glass with a bar towel. “Do me a favor?” Declan asked, pulling out a business card.

“Sure.”

Declan nodded toward Sailor, visible in the next room. “Sailor Gryffald. I don’t think she’s well. Call me at this number, would you, if she shows any signs of weakness? Maybe see her to her car?”

“I’ll do better than that,” Dennis said. “I’ll follow her, see she makes it to the door of the Snake Pit.” He smiled at Declan’s look. “Acoustics, friend. I can hear everything at this bar.”

Sailor watched Declan leave with mixed feelings. On the one hand, she’d been both unprofessional and immature, and she desperately wished she could rewind the conversation. On the other hand, no matter how gracelessly, she’d achieved her goal: he had agreed to talk to her about the murders, and Declan Wainwright was a major resource. The challenge now would be to extract from him everything he knew, not just the stuff he would tell anyone. And to get him to share his connections, which were vast.

Okay, the real challenge would be to retain some self-possession in his presence and not act like a kid with a crush.

Fortunately Sailor loved a challenge.

The only thing she couldn’t figure out was why Declan Wainwright cared that she’d ingested some homeopathic twigs and leaves.

And how she was going to survive hanging in the city’s hottest after-hours club dressed in her waitress uniform.

Chapter 4

Declan’s assistant, Harriet, had set up a business meeting for midnight, texting him Reggie Maxx’s confirmation before calling it a day, leaving her boss to his nighttime assistant, Carolyn. Declan stood now in a corner of the Snake Pit’s main room, surveying his club in full swing. The place ran well in his absence, a fact he knew because he was in the habit of shifting and showing up to observe operations. It took him a full minute to spot Reggie, because he was looking for a man on his own and Reggie had brought a date. They were on the dance floor, the date a well-built blonde with a short skirt and a serious shimmy, Reggie a tall, sandy-haired man towering over his fellow dancers.

“Hey, Declan,” Reggie said, coming over to shake hands. He was breathing heavily, flushed from the exercise. The Elven Keeper was in his early thirties, just shy of handsome, but with a freckle-faced charm and impressive physique. “Hope you don’t mind—this is my associate, Kandy. We wanted to, uh, see the band.”

“Not at all. Thanks for agreeing to meet on such short notice,” Declan said.

Kandy shook his hand with enthusiasm. “Are you kidding? I told Reggie he had to. You’re like a celebrity, you don’t need notice. And I’m Kandy with a k, so I’m easy to remember.” She wore six-inch stilettos studded with metal, which also made her easy to remember, Declan thought. “I made Reggie bring me along, because I’ve never been to the Snake Pit and I’ve lived in L.A. like three whole years.”

“Then I won’t interrupt your night for long.”

Kandy giggled. “This is our night. I love your accent, by the way. You’re Australian or one of those, right?”

“English and Irish, love,” Declan said.

“Ooh, Black Irish. That’s where you get that smoky look and those baby blue eyes, right?”

Reggie turned to her. “Kandy, Declan and I need to talk business, so why don’t you take a little tour of the place? Just don’t get in trouble.”

Declan hailed his bartender and told him to keep Kandy supplied with whatever she wanted, then led Reggie toward a staircase leading to the underground level.

Reggie gave a sheepish laugh. “She’s … a great assistant, actually. Paralegal. Draws up real estate contracts like you wouldn’t believe. Anyhow, she wanted to come and she’s … persuasive.”

Declan could well believe it. As an Elven Keeper, Reggie would have a strong measure of his species’ sexual appetite, and their magnetism. There were mortals who found the Elven irresistible without, of course, knowing what they were dealing with, and Kandy was their prototype. “No surprise,” Declan said. “She’s pretty, you’re a guy, it’s a full moon.”

“Yeah, true.” Reggie said. “Anyhow, I’m very curious as to what you wanted to see me about.”

Declan led Reggie into his office, a futuristic-looking space in gunmetal gray. He closed the door. “I need information.”

“Name it.”

“The Scarlet Pathogen deaths. Anything you can tell me about them?”

Reggie looked around, as though someone might be hiding under the concrete desk. “Why are you asking me?”

Declan gestured toward a leather sofa, inviting Reggie to sit. “You’re one of the few Elven Keepers it’s not a chore to have drinks with. What are you drinking, by the way?”

“Scotch, straight. Thanks. But what I meant was—I’m not a cop.”

Declan moved to a bar across the room. “No, but you’re the Coastal Keeper, and Charlotte Messenger’s body was found on the beach. Your jurisdiction.”

Reggie grimaced. “Well, there’s that.”

“And you know the cops are involved, that this is more than a health department matter, a communicable disease.” Declan handed him a glass of scotch and sat on a leather chair opposite the sofa.

Reggie took the highball glass. “Yeah, that’s true.” He took a sip of scotch, avoiding eye contact. He didn’t want his thoughts read.

Typical, Declan thought.

He hadn’t encountered the Elven or their Keepers until his late teens, when he’d headed west from New York City. The dry heat made Southern California a favorite Elven habitat, and their incandescent looks made them naturals in the film industry. Outwardly social, they thrived on the admiration of lesser mortals, not to mention casual sex, but Declan knew that at heart the Elven were as clannish as Gypsies, distrusting outsiders. Reggie was now exhibiting that Elven reticence. “I don’t expect something for nothing,” Declan said. “Excuse my directness, but we’re both businessmen. I’d like you to handle a real estate transaction I’m planning.”

Reggie blinked. “Don’t you have a Realtor?”

“For my Hollywood properties. This involves Malibu. I want to buy Dark Lagoon.”

“Dark Lagoon’s not for sale.”

“That’s about to change,” Declan said.

“Interesting.” Reggie sat forward, all ears now. “But why Dark Lagoon? It’s not even attractive. Have you walked around there?”

“Frequently. I’m obsessed with wetlands. The lagoon is a stopover for migrating birds along the Pacific Flyway.”

Reggie laughed shortly. “Sorry, not into birds. Too … flighty.”

Declan smiled. “Ever seen a golden eagle drag a goat off a cliff?”

Reggie eyed him speculatively. “You can’t do anything with the place, you know.”

“That’s the point. I want to save it from being developed. Save the coastal commission from having to spend their own money to buy it and protect it. I’ll pay a fair price, even a generous one, then donate it to them.”

“Happy to help, then,” Reggie said. “I’ll take a look at the property tomorrow. There’s a house just south of there that I rent out to film companies, and I’m meeting a location scout at noon.”

“That can’t be pleasant for you, hanging out on the beach.” Even Elven Keepers, Declan knew, disliked water. It wasn’t necessarily the full-blown phobia it was for the Elven themselves, but for some, it came close.

“In this economy, I’ll put up with some unpleasantness.” Reggie took a long sip of his drink, then said, “So what do you want to know about the celebrity deaths?”

“The night Charlotte’s body was found. Because it was your district, I assume someone notified you?”

“You’d think.” Reggie put down his glass and lowered his voice. “Elven Keepers operate a little differently. You shifters have some autonomy. We go through a chain of command, an executive committee.”

“With Charles Highsmith leading that committee?”

Reggie glanced at Declan. “Off the record, right?”

“Completely.”

“Yeah, Highsmith controls things. I mean, theoretically we could overturn his decisions, but it’s like herding cats to get a consensus on anything, especially if Highsmith’s against it. Anyhow, it was Highsmith who got the call from the sheriff’s department when they found Charlotte.”

“Who’s the contact in the sheriff’s department?”

“Guy named Riley. Werewolf.”

“But no one contacted you? Malibu’s your district.”

“Highsmith called me the next day to tell me it was under control,” Reggie said. “Meaning the flow of information was contained, the right cops were assigned to the case, the right medical examiner doing the autopsy.”

“But Elven women keep dying,” Declan said. “Doesn’t Highsmith consider that worth controlling?”

“As a matter of fact,” Reggie said, “he’s called a closed meeting for tomorrow. I got an encoded email ten minutes ago, telling me and the other Elven Keepers to stand by. Time and place to be announced.”

“Now what prompted that, I wonder?”

Reggie shrugged. “You understand, what gets said in closed meetings I can’t share with you, Declan, much as I’d like to. Closed meetings are a big deal. We haven’t had one since winter solstice.”

Over five months ago. “Was Rafe Gryffald at that one?”

Reggie nodded. “I think Rafe Gryffald was the only thing holding Highsmith in check the last ten years.”

Declan paused, then said, “Met his daughter yet? Sailor?”

“No. I’ve seen her around, but we haven’t met. Why?”

“She may be there tomorrow, but she’ll be in over her head and could use a friend.”

“Happy to help. Can I ask what’s your interest in this?”

“I have friends among the Elven,” Declan said. “Also, the other species are about to get involved, so we’ll need interspecies cooperation, which has to start with the Keepers.”

“I’m all for that. But to be honest, you should be talking to Highsmith, not wasting your time on the second string, which would be me.” Reggie gave Declan a wry smile. “Not that I’m not flattered. All I can tell you—and it’s not much—is that the cops are convinced these deaths are homicides, and they’ll be making that announcement anytime now.”

Declan nodded. The moment they’d found Charlotte on the beach, he’d known in his gut that her death was a murder. But now, it seemed, the whole world knew it, and that hardened his resolve.

Reggie was watching him closely, reading his thoughts to some degree. “And you have a personal stake in this, don’t you?” he asked. “Didn’t you used to date Charlotte Messenger?”

“Yes.”

“Bad luck, her being found so close to your house.”

“Bad luck her being dead at all,” Declan said. “But worse luck for her killer.”

“Why is that?”

Declan smiled grimly. “Because I am going to send him to hell.”

The bouncer must have been given her name, Sailor thought, because he waved her through with no questions. Elven, she thought, and gave him wide berth, then entered the darkly atmospheric club.

She’d been a regular at the Snake Pit since turning legal. Back then it had been the heady thrill of drinking alongside celebrities. But some months ago she’d been part of a movie deal made right there at an A-list table, a role she’d been euphoric about playing—until the deal fell apart. The whole incident had left a bad taste in her mouth, and since then she’d avoided the chaotic main room, sticking instead to the quieter venue next door where Rhiannon could often be found singing and playing her beloved Fender. In the main room the music—and crowd—was rougher-edged.

Sailor made her way toward the stage through throngs of people, some dressed to the nines, some with the grunginess of migrant farmworkers. She took care to steer clear of any Elven. She was still in her waitress uniform, black polyester velvet, but theatrical, and with enough spandex to cling to her like an ace bandage. She’d traded her comfortable shoes for a pair of heels she kept in the trunk of her car, but she still longed for a shower and some real clothes. Her arms were bare and the concrete room cold, with a blue mist coming up from the floor, but she welcomed the sensation. She suspected she was running a fever.

Unless it was the thought of seeing Declan at any moment that was raising her temperature.

The band was tuning up, an unwashed quartet wearing chain mail, but Declan wasn’t anywhere nearby, so she climbed a spiral steel staircase to a cavernous green room furnished with cubist sofas, where one couple openly snorted cocaine and a trio of uncertain gender engaged in some act of sex. No Declan there, either.

But she noticed something. Her vision was sharper than usual, colors more vibrant and people more attractive. It had happened at work, too, now that she thought about it. Not all night, not consistently, but in waves. Similar to what she’d experienced when she’d awakened in Alessande’s house. Once she’d taken the síúlacht she couldn’t recall it happening anymore. Until now. So maybe it was a symptom that the síúlacht suppressed, and maybe now the síúlacht was wearing off.

She descended to the basement, a different scene altogether, with its own bar and two poker games in progress. She asked a cocktail waitress where she might find Declan Wainwright, and the woman nodded toward a corner.

Sailor saw the back of his head, his black tousled hair, and then her heart did a fluttery thing and her bravado started to slip. Not good. She needed confidence if she hoped to be taken seriously. Unless she could get her game on, this wouldn’t work.

A restroom was to her right, and Sailor slipped in. It was stark and dark, illuminated by floating votive candles, on the assumption that no one wanted to see herself clearly at this hour of the night. Sailor leaned in to stare at her flickering reflection, giving herself the equivalent of a half-time locker-room talk. “I know that in Hollywood terms Declan Wainwright is a rock star and you’re at the bottom of the food chain. But in Otherworld terms, you’re both Keepers. And that’s why—”

Three women entered the bathroom, two heading for the stalls, one stationing herself at the adjoining sink. Sailor glanced at her: nightclub-chic, exotic clothes. Great. Here she was in her cheap uniform with her crazy eyes, talking to herself.

“Be careful, sister,” the woman said.

Sailor looked at her, startled. The woman was applying lipstick, her face close to the mirror. She paused, pressed her lips together to blot them, then said, “The one who can fly through the air, he is not to be trusted. Nor can you trust your own kind.”

“Excuse me?” Sailor said.

The woman shrugged, still looking at herself in the mirror. “I’m a messenger. I hear words, I repeat them. Does the message mean something to you?”

An image of the winged creature flashed through Sailor’s mind. “Yes, I think so. But who are you?”

“I just said. A channeler, okay? I hear messages. Usually from the dead. Not always. Runs in the family. Kind of a drag. Anyhow …” With a last look at herself, she turned to go.

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