The Keepers: Christmas in Salem: Do You Fear What I Fear?The Fright Before ChristmasUnholy NightStalking in a Winter Wonderland (Harlequin Nocturne)

by Heather Graham

  “It was a shapeshifter, June. No mistaking his scent. Given the darkness and the fact that we were...asleep, I don’t think he even bothered to transform. But the scent was strong. Masculine.”

  June frowned, her fingers smoothing the lace at her neck. “Well, that’s a start, I suppose.” She looked from Katie Sue to Jett and smiled. “Of course, if you hadn’t seduced this poor guy within seconds after he came ashore, he wouldn’t be in this mess. Not that I can really blame you.”

  Katie felt her throat constrict with guilt.

  “The truth is, I seduced Katie before she could say hello,” Jett said. “I’m the one who neglected to protect my coat.”

  Kenny held up his hands. “It doesn’t matter who seduced whom. The fact of the matter is that someone knew Jett was arriving tonight and waited to do him harm. And we have to figure out who that is.”

  Another gust of cold air followed the ringing doorbell. “Merry Christmas, one and all!” Vaughn’s voice carried from the foyer, and in seconds he was in the room. Taller than both Jett and Kenny and looking every bit the modern wizard with his long black hair, casual aplomb and black leather jacket, he slapped Jett on the back. “Happy birthday, buddy. Got a bit taller since last time.”

  Jett laughed. “Always wanted to be able to look you in the eye. Mission accomplished.”

  Under other circumstances this would be a joyful reunion leading to a long, celebratory evening filled with eating, stories, gifts and more eating. Now their attendance at the Christmas Eve festivities at Sam’s would be delayed while they scoured the village in search of the shapeshifter who’d stolen Jett’s sealskin. Katie didn’t know if the despair pressing like a weight on her chest was from Jett’s loss, her breaking heart or the cursed darkness so thick against the windows that it felt like cloying ether that would soon render everyone unconscious.

  She stood, shaking off her despairing mood. “Did you find out anything, Vaughn?”

  His face grew grim. “Rebekah and I consulted with the elementals. Eric, the earth elder, believes that the shapeshifter may have left a psychic pattern imprinted on the ground that we can trace to where the thief is hiding. It will be best if we start from the original point where the pelt was taken to determine the imprint. We should head to the beach and start our search there.”

  Kenny said, “I’ll get our coats.” He glanced at Jett. “You won’t mind wearing one of mine?”

  “I’d welcome the warmth. Thank you.”

  June slid into her own coat. “I think I’ll leave the tracking to the men and go nose around town for a while. I have a few hunches of my own. Maybe I’ll manage to make my way over to Sam’s later to cheer you all up.”

  They all waved goodbye, and then Katie Sue sighed. “Can’t you guys feel the pressure? I know it’s the darkness, but it makes me feel so anxious. Like there’s no hope. It’s Christmas, when faith should be at its highest point, and I feel awful.” She turned to Jett and leaned against him, soaking in his strength.

  The empathy filling his eyes did nothing to console her. “I can feel the agitation but I’m ignoring it. Instead, I’m concentrating on being here with you.”

  Vaughn slipped on black leather gloves. “Luckily you haven’t been exposed to the darkness long enough, Jett. Hopefully we’ll solve this crisis before it has a chance to affect you.”

  Kenny walked in with the coats. “Which crisis? We have two at the moment. And what’s with June? Is she dodging her responsibility to help us?”

  “Let’s try to be understanding,” Katie Sue said. “The blackness is affecting her pretty hard, especially given the loss of her uncle.”

  Vaughn smiled indulgently. “Always the peacemaker, Katie Sue.”

  She shrugged. “And if I am? So what? It’s what a Keeper does.”

  As the men prepared to leave, she said, “I can’t join you until I finish rounding up the boys for Samantha. Will you be coming back here?”

  Kenny shook his head. “We’ll let you know where we are as soon as we get a lead. Meanwhile, let’s try to act as normal as possible for the kids’ sake, if nothing else. Christmas Eve should still be happy for them.”

  He and Vaughn left, but Jett stayed behind a moment longer. He cupped her face in his hands. “I’m worried about you, Katie. You look so unhappy. Don’t you know how much I wanted you while I was away? You’re all I dreamed about.” He stared into her eyes, his own troubled and searching.

  She pulled back. How could she tell him her heart was breaking when so much more was at stake? She tried to smile but couldn’t—not when she felt seconds away from tears. “I dreamed of you, too.”

  He kissed her with such tenderness that tears slipped unbidden down her cheeks. “It’s Christmas Eve, sweet Katie Sue. It’s my birthday. And I’m here with you. We can still find joy in the night. As for my skin? Perhaps my mother is watching and will lead me to it.”

  Katie Sue hugged her arms around her waist as she watched Jett depart and whispered, “And with it your freedom.”

  Chapter 4

  The shapeshifter passed a hand chapped red from winter wind over the silver-gray pelt lying across his lap. He brought the selkie head cover to his nose and inhaled deeply, then exhaled a slow sigh of satisfaction while gazing at the velvety fur surrounding the empty eyeholes and dark snout with the whiskers still in place.

  Leo couldn’t believe his luck. He’d smelled the selkie’s fur on the air minutes after the Other had come to shore. The scent would have reached him even sooner if the winds hadn’t died down today. No matter. The Other had been so engrossed with the Montgomery woman that he could have sat down beside them to watch; they were both oblivious to his presence while they made love.

  That had been entertaining in its way, but it had also enraged him. He’d admired the sultry blonde with the almond-shaped eyes for the entire two years since he had been brought to Salem by his master. Yet other than a smile and a polite nod, Katie Sue Montgomery had never given him a second look.

  After hearing the symphony of sounds from their lovemaking and having his body react in a way that shamed him, Leo was afraid he would never be able to look her in the eye again without her sighs and cries at the hands of the selkie ringing in his ears.

  Damn that black-haired sea snake.

  Leo had been too weak to shift tonight. Spending the day shielding his master as he moved through town, relishing the disaster he had wreaked on Salem, had drained him of his power to shift. Right around four o’clock, after returning with his master to his lair, the master had looked at his expensive watch and instructed him to go home by the beach road.

  And, lo and behold, even in the dark he could smell why the master had sent him on that route. How the master had known the selkie would arrive at this time was another of his surprising talents. He seemed to know everybody’s business in this tight-knit village.

  The master knew that the scent of selkie skin to a shapeshifter with waning powers was like heroin for an addict. And the master knew him well enough to know he would succumb to his basest desire and commit the atrocity, despite the unspoken law that governed the shapeshifter community. Holding yet another damaging secret over his head would allow the master to bind Leo to him for another decade. The master always mocked the craving for the power that surged through Leo’s system from the potion made exclusively from selkie skin, but the master was also more than willing to use it for his own ends.

  Aah. Just visualizing the moment when he would inject the potion into his veins set his hands trembling.

  In earlier centuries, the usually peaceful shapeshifters struck fear in their fellow Others because their ability to change form made them dangerous as adversaries. Only when laws on shifting were drawn up, with severe consequences for breaking them, did the rest of the Otherworld accept shapeshifters as brethren. Cannibalizing other paranormal beings for power potions was forbidden.

  Leo thought differently. Humans used steroids to enhance their bodies. Rogue shifters like
himself believed that refusing to use all the resources at their disposal, no matter what the source, was actually denying their true abilities. He was willing to risk the severe punishment for such a violation. Once he administered the virility potion, the Keepers would have to subdue him first, and that would be all but impossible once he was enhanced. He would be able to elude the most powerful Keeper or shapeshifter sent to strip him of his power, which would be easy for them to accomplish if he were in his natural form. His addiction to the intensely powerful potion had almost caused his demise in his last community. He’d survived only because the master had intervened and bound him as a veritable slave.

  This time he would cast a spell to augment the potion’s power, making him the strongest he’d ever been in his life. Powerful enough to turn the tables on the master and expose him to the Keepers of Salem, finally breaking the magical bond holding him captive to the master’s every whim.

  After finally eliminating the master, the last of his wicked bloodline, he would retire. He would occupy one of the mansions whose front doors he’d never gotten past. Shapeshift his way into a home he especially desired, then stay for as long as he wanted.

  How convenient that he’d come upon the selkie whose lover was his very own intended target. The mansion he wanted was Montgomery Home. The inhabitant whose home—and heart—he wanted to possess? None other than the newest selkie Keeper, Katie Sue Montgomery.

  He’d heard her cousins talking when he was working around town. Katie Sue was hooked on the foolish Other who preferred to be a seal instead of the man she needed.

  He would be that man for Katie Sue Montgomery. He would use his powers to destroy Jett and shapeshift into the selkie’s human form, then give her the happy ending she wished for: Jett as a man, forever. Then he would take her as he longed to, with the sultry Keeper of selkies none the wiser. And with Katie Sue Montgomery bound to him, his supply of selkie skins would never end. He could dominate the woman, and ultimately Salem, even more effectively than his master intended to annihilate them all with his spell.

  Why the master hated the people of Salem was not his to question. What mattered was breaking the master’s control over him. He ran a hand across the fine pelt in his lap. The master’s obsession with his own plans to destroy Salem’s inhabitants must have blinded the cruel overlord to the fact that his thrall knew how to turn his addiction into the master’s own demise. This selkie skin could make that happen. The silvered markings along the neck proved that this particular selkie came from noble lineage. The effect would be sublime.

  The excitement burning inside him was almost unbearable. He had the tools, the ancient spell written on its original parchment, which he had stolen from Twists & Tales, and the perfect flame to create the finest ash required for the spell.

  The hunger gnawing at his insides subsided for the moment. Between his duties today for the master, his regular job and stealing the selkie pelt, the fatigue plaguing him now could cause an error in judgment. He had only one chance to create this potion, and if he made a mistake, everything would be ruined.

  He would rest for an hour before he began.

  Chapter 5

  Katie Sue made a cup of calming tea as Bridgette herded the boys together. The woman was a miracle worker, Katie thought as she headed for the kitchen, drawn by the cinnamon scent of snicker-doodle cookies mingling with the savory smells of the different meat and fruit pies Bridgette had prepared for the celebration.

  Katie snatched a cookie and smiled as Bridgette entered the kitchen. “These look wonderful. I can’t believe you found time to do so much baking.”

  “I won’t swear everything’s edible,” Bridgette said. “I just don’t feel like myself these days.”

  Katie Sue exhaled. “It isn’t only you. It’s me, it’s everyone—we’re all so tightly wound.” She set her tea and cookie down and gathered the other woman in for a hug. “Don’t let this wretched blackness affect you, not on Christmas Eve. I love you too much to see you unhappy.”

  Bridgette rested her head on Katie’s shoulder. “Will it ever go away?”

  Katie shivered. It had damned well better! “Soon. My cousins are investigating, and you know we Keepers don’t like to fail.”

  “And Jett?” Bridgette stepped back, patting her pink cheeks. “Will they find his skin?”

  “They’re out looking now. An earth elemental gave Vaughn some ideas for tracking the thief.”

  Bridgette untied her apron. “Let me get the logs from outside for tomorrow’s fire, and then we can go.”

  “I can do that. Why don’t you finish getting ready for the party? It will do me good to do something useful.”

  Before Bridgette could argue, Katie Sue pushed her from the kitchen. “Go. I’ll meet you back here in twenty minutes.”

  Katie Sue carried a few logs topped with kindling into what had once been the original kitchen of the old Victorian home. Her parents had remodeled with modern appliances to accommodate the growing number of occupants. This cozy area now served as an informal family dining room with a long farm table and ladder-back chairs. An old stone fireplace along the outside wall offered light and warmth to penetrate the all-pervading darkness. A cast-iron log rack next to the hearth was used to dry the wood before using it.

  With the load in her arms, Katie caught her toe on the area rug. She lost her balance and the wood tumbled onto the hearth.

  The old fireplace had been fashioned from locally mined granite blocks of different sizes. Rectangular slabs of stone raised the hearth about a foot above the wood-planked floor. The apron of the hearth was paved with black slate.

  Katie cleared the logs off the hearth, placing them one by one into the rack, only to find the end slate on the right side of the hearth had shifted from the impact, exposing an opening beneath the hearth.

  “What the heck?”

  Prickles of apprehension raced up her spine. Her mouth dried. She slid the square slab farther to the right, then peered inside the perfectly square opening to see half of a large oak box.

  A secret compartment? Wow. Old houses held secrets, but this was her first time uncovering one. She reached in for the box, but it was too big to fit through the opening. She pulled on the outside piece of granite and it slid away to reveal more of the box. With the granite removed, she easily slipped the wooden receptacle from its hiding place. Clearly the box had been fashioned specifically to fit into the space. It had two small hinges and a flat hook and latch.

  She slipped the hook free and opened the lid. Releasing a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, she frowned, not understanding at first what she was looking at. Inside the box lay a selkie skin, a beautiful silver-and-white coat. Not Jett’s.

  Katie Sue’s heart hammered in her chest. Of course. Miranda’s pelt.

  The coat that Jett’s mother never found. The coat she had died without. After all these years, she had found it.

  What was it doing here?

  Awestruck, she stared at the lush pelt. Miranda had been a selkie princess. Her father had ruled the selkie realm for almost a century. Returning this coat to Jett would finally close the circle on the mystery of his mother’s lost skin. Jett could finally bury the dead. Unbelievable. Jett’s last words before he left had been that maybe his mother would lead him to his coat, and this was almost as good.

  Katie replaced the fireplace stones, then took the back stairs up to her room, carrying the box as if it were a child in her arms. Miranda’s selkie coat! But how—and why—had it been hidden in Montgomery Home?

  And Jett. If his coat was lost forever, he could try using this one, since selkie coats adjusted to the wearer regardless of gender—but then a wicked thought twisted through her head. If this coat were to be destroyed, too, he would be stranded with her. For life. Maybe she’d been wrong earlier and she could make him happy as a mere human. Maybe he would continue to love her, even if he couldn’t escape to his own world, which tugged at him daily whenever he was on dry land.<
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  Could she be so cruel as to deny him the chance to live out his destiny just to appease her own desires? She swallowed hard, pushing the poisonous idea from her mind. Love based on deception could never survive. Jett needed to find his coat and return to the sea to fulfill his destiny.

  She closed the door to her room behind her and laid the box on her bed. The soft fur felt like silk to the touch. The glistening silver shimmered in the soft light. The musky smell was pleasant—almost like a mossy perfume. She lifted the coat from its confines and spread it out on the bed.

  It was exquisite.

  She pulled her sweater over her head to change into her party clothes, but once she was undressed she found herself reaching for the selkie coat instead of the dress hanging on her closet door.

  What was she doing?

  The skin seemed to draw her to itself, as if needing human touch. She ran her fingertips over the head cover, where the whitest fur ran along the snout and surrounded the eye openings. As if mesmerized, she lifted the coat and draped it over her shoulders. Gently, she fitted the face cover over her own face, and the unexpected happened.

  As if taking on a life of its own, the skin molded itself to her face, flowed over her neck and shoulders and began to seal itself along an invisible seam down her torso. Within seconds her arms and legs were bound. Panic bubbled in her chest and her breath grew labored as the skin tightened around her. Not that she was suffocating, but the odd sensations were making her hyperventilate. Even knowing full well that she would be okay, sheer incredulity forced her to fight the transformation.

  Without legs to stand on, she fell to the floor, feeling her insides adjust to the new skin as she began transforming. Then, as if she’d been shocked by an electric current, pain rose up her spine and shot into her head. The struggle to breathe was the last thing Katie Sue remembered before losing consciousness.