Keeper of the Moon (The Keepers: L.A.)

by Harley Jane Kozak

  “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 a
m 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.”