Keeper of the Moon
Autorzy
Harley Jane Kozak
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15,5K
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17
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 ear-piercing 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.”
