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

by Harley Jane Kozak

“Nothing. The girl was a knockout. There was a YouTube thing, she was doing Cordelia in King Lear, and—” Sailor stopped again.

  “It’s okay to get upset about the deaths,” he said. “Cry if you want.”

  “I don’t cry.”

  “Ever?”

  “They made me work on it in acting school so I can if I have to, but it’s very difficult. Something about my tear ducts. The Elven never cry. Ever see an Elven cry?”

  Declan had pulled into a gas station. “I can’t say I ever noticed,” he said, getting out of the car.

  Sailor got out, too, and kept talking. “You haven’t and you won’t. If Gina or Charlotte cried in a movie, the ‘tears’ were glycerin, artfully applied by their makeup artists between takes. So, anyhow... Last, we have Kelly Ellory. I took this from GAA twenty minutes ago.”

  She produced a flyer announcing a memorial service, with a photo of a huge-eyed woman with a short bob. Declan paused at the gas pump and looked at it. He nodded. “That’s Kelly. Pretty girl.”

  “Beautiful,” Sailor replied. “The receptionist gave it to me when I asked her about Kelly. Hard worker, loved being an agent, loved live music and avant-garde theater, had an MBA from Berkeley. Quintessential Rath, with eyes like that and the high cheekbones.” She picked up the squeegee from the water trough and started to clean the windshield. “So, all Elven, but different tribes. All in show business, but different levels, different jobs.”

  “And then there’s you,” Declan said. “And you’re not Rath, or Cyffarwydd or Déithe. Or Elven. But you were attacked. And you didn’t die.”

  “I know. I fit the pattern, and then I don’t fit the pattern. But I am in show business—at least, I’m in show business when not squandering my life away in the food service industry.”

  Declan smiled. “You don’t have to clean my windshield, by the way. You’re not my servant.”

  She moved to his side of the car, feeling his eyes on her. “It’s not every day I get to squeegee a Lamborghini. I bet you do have people who wash your cars for you.”

  “Yes.”

  “What else do people do for you? Everything, right?”

  “Not quite everything.” He caught her by the hand as she went by and pulled her close. And once more he was kissing her. It lasted only three or four seconds, but it left her weak, her arm limp by her side, the squeegee dripping water onto her sandal. Weak, and ridiculously happy.

  “You should always do that particular chore yourself,” she said. “Keep up your skills. Because you’re very good at it.”

  “You have a lot of talent yourself, Sailor Gryffald,” he said, and gently removed the squeegee from her hand. “You’re a very distracting business partner.”

  “Maybe you’re just easily distracted,” she said, and stood on tiptoe to kiss him again, very lightly.

  He smiled, wiped a smudge of soapy water from her shoulder and set about cleaning the other windows. “If you’re convinced we’re looking for a common lover among the victims,” he said, “you’re overlooking an obvious point. How many lovers have you had that were either Keeper or Other?” When she didn’t answer, he turned, raising an eyebrow.

  “I’m counting,” she said, and laughed at his expression. “Come on, you can’t be serious. You want to discuss my sexual history?”

  “Only the nonmortals,” he said.

  “That winged thing that attacked me yesterday was not an old boyfriend, I promise you,” she said.

  “Unless, of course, it was a shifter. But if you’re correct, there goes your theory.”

  “On the subject of sexual history, weren’t you and Charlotte once—” She stopped. It was the wrong thing to say. They’d been in a bantering mood, and this was anything but.

  “Long ago,” he said, but in a quieter voice.

  Sailor could have kicked herself, and there was nothing to say except, “I’m so sorry.”

  “Forget it,” he said. But the moment of playfulness was over. There really was something tough about him. Tough and unapproachable, and she wondered if that was the real Declan Wainwright, if the one who was flirting with her, the one who had twice kissed her, was a facade. A persona he could put on and off like a change of clothes.

  The thought filled her with dismay. But what do you expect? she asked herself. He’s a shifter. Or close enough. And a player—a notorious one at that—and only a fool would expect anything lasting from Declan Wainwright. And she was no fool.

  So why did she feel so blue?

  * * *

  They didn’t speak much the rest of the way to the Snake Pit, which was, in any case, close by. It was unfortunate, he thought, her reference to Charlotte, but it appeared to bother her more than it bothered him. For him, it was just a reminder that no matter how captivated he was by Sailor, their job was to find a killer.

  He did need to know what went on at the Elven Council meeting, but he would deal with that later. There was more than one way to extract information from a woman, and intimidation was rarely the best tactic.

  At the Snake Pit he retrieved her purse and keys, then walked her to her Jeep. “When your Council meeting is done, call me,” he said. “Don’t go running off to Fresno or Bakersfield or God knows where. Blood test first. Among other things, I want to know whether you’re getting better.”

  “For the record,” she said, “I have no intention of going to Fresno, ever, in this lifetime.”

  He watched her drive off, thinking how fetching she’d looked in that sundress, with her bare shoulders and back, her golden skin making him want to touch her, feel the warmth of her, run his hands down her spine.... He wondered how many men she would encounter in the next few hours who would be thinking along similar lines. The degree to which this bothered him bothered him.

  Declan was used to women fawning on him. Along with a reasonable amount of money, looks and an accent that for some reason Americans drooled over, he knew he had charm. Even when he’d been living on the streets, there had been women, even when he was too young to know what to do with them. Eventually he’d done everything with them—except marriage. That was the shifter in him: the concept of “settling down” held little appeal. He was always clear about that to the women he got involved with, that he wouldn’t be giving up his freedom. Most were fine with it. The innocents weren’t his type anyway.

  But now there was Sailor Ann Gryffald, and he didn’t know what to make of her or the feelings she aroused in him, or how far he should let those feelings lead him. He’d originally written her off as—well, as she’d once described herself—an actress-slash-waitress, a commodity as common in Hollywood as the lemons falling off trees and rotting on sidewalks. And yes, an innocent. He was revising that opinion. She might look like a starlet, but her ambitions ran deeper. She was waking up to her destiny as a Keeper and seemed determined to educate herself. And by the time they got through this crisis, he reflected, she might not have much innocence left.

  That bothered him, too.

  He took his cell from his pocket and phoned Harriet. “Cancel my calendar for the day, love. And get Darius Simonides on the phone. And Antony Brandt, the coroner.”

  Chapter 7

  Charles Highsmith didn’t actually live in his own Keeper district. People with that much money, Sailor figured, couldn’t be expected to have just one home. So while Charles maintained a residence in Bel Air, he apparently preferred to live with his polo ponies, which was why she now found herself driving to Lake Sherwood.

  Just south of the Conejo Valley, Lake Sherwood was old, man-made and beautiful. It had originally been called Potrero Lake, but in the 1920s, after Douglas Fairbanks had filmed Robin Hood there and in the surrounding forest, the name had been changed. Sailor had learned all this from Merlin, who’d been telling her Hollywood history since her childhood, long before she appreciated it. The terrain was rugged, Old West and ruinously expensive to maintain if you wanted to grow anything other than desert plants. Charles Highsmith did. As she drove up the lo
ng road to his house, she marveled at the huge rolling lawn, with grass as green as a golf course. His water bill had to be as big as his mortgage.

  The house looked new and devoid of personality. Sailor was greeted at the door by a uniformed maid and led across a circular foyer dominated by a sweeping staircase and endless marble, then through double doors to a library. Even though she was on time, the room was filled, and she had the sensation of entering a party in progress. Had everyone else been given an earlier arrival time?

  “Sailor, welcome.” Charles Highsmith was dressed, improbably enough, in cream-colored jodhpurs and a polo shirt, with glossy riding boots that she was certain had never mucked out a stable. “Let me introduce you.” He seemed to have forgiven her for the night before, for which she was grateful. She’d been ready to tough it out, but it was daunting to be the newcomer in a group this tight, their closeness born of years together and countless Council meetings.

  She knew most of the Keepers either by name or reputation. Of course, they all knew her father, but Rafe had socialized with only a handful outside of meetings, and the meetings themselves were closed to non-Keepers and heavily guarded. She tried to gauge her fellow Keepers’ degree of friendship with her father by the way they reacted to her. It wasn’t easy. These people, like Charles Highsmith, were political animals and rigorously polite.

  Everyone must have been curious about her sunglasses, but only one remarked on them, the woman named Justine Freud. In her seventies, Justine was fragile but straight-spined, the oldest Keeper. Sailor wondered why she wasn’t the head of the Council. “My dear, do you have a problem with light?” Justine asked.

  Highsmith responded before Sailor had a chance to. “Let’s wait for the meeting to begin, Justine, and then all questions will be answered. Our newest member needs to mingle before you bear her off for one of your indoctrination lectures.”

  This was said in a pleasant cocktail party tone, but Sailor felt the underlying ice, and Justine said, “Of course, Charles, we must all defer to your wisdom and leadership,” in a replica of his tone. Clearly Darius had been right and there was little affection on either side, but she wondered how she would ever figure out the web of relationships if all animosity was hidden under a veneer of courtesy.

  A man entered the room, with an “Am I late?” expression. Highsmith, noting him, said in a resonant voice, “Reggie has finally joined us, so we can adjourn to the library. Oliver, perhaps you’d do a closing spell?”

  Oliver Kent was one Keeper Sailor knew—tall, black, somewhere in his golden years—and she watched him move to the windows, making hand gestures and whispering quick incantations. The Highsmith estate was no doubt already well-secured via traditional methods against the average burglar or even assassin. The Keepers were more concerned with espionage by Others. Considering what Sailor planned to disclose about this meeting, they were right to be worried. Justine Freud joined Oliver, chanting in a soft soprano, an eerie and dissonant counterpoint to his baritone.

  “Hello,” said a voice behind her. “You’re the new kid. I’m Reggie Maxx, Coastal Keeper.”

  “Sailor Gryffald, Canyon Keeper.” She turned to shake his hand, happy to see someone around her own age. And smiling, no less.

  “How much trouble am I in?” he asked. “How mad was Charles?”

  “Not mad at all, that I could tell. But you weren’t that late. I would have been late, too, because I always am, but because it’s my first meeting I thought I’d try making a good impression and got here on the dot.”

  “Smart,” he said. “Everyone here is old-school about stuff like that. Punctuality.”

  “Of course they’re old-school,” she said. “They’re old.”

  He laughed. “Don’t let her—” he gestured toward a well-preserved brunette “—hear you talking like that. That’s Jill. She’s only fifty-three. Our resident sex kitten, until today.”

  “I think that’s a compliment, so thanks. Please assure her that I never seduce people old enough to be my father. Or grandfather. Which leaves—” she glanced around “—you.”

  He nodded. “I try to hide from Jill, out of self-preservation, but I’ll pass her a note.”

  “Good. Can you sit by me?”

  He could not. Charles Highsmith believed in assigned seating. The meeting was held in the library, a huge book-lined room with a long oak conference table. Sailor made a complete circle, reading the silver nameplates before finding her own name, to the left of Highsmith. There would be no passing of notes. The table could probably seat fifty, and there were thirteen Keepers, evenly spaced. Would they be given microphones?

  Charles called the meeting to order with all the gravitas that would precede a State of the Union address, and hearing aids were adjusted. Keepers, like British monarchs and Supreme Court Justices, rarely retired. Most had to be carried away in coffins—or urns, in the style of their Elven charges, who preferred being scattered to the wind and earth to being stuck in a coffin. They were not, after all, vampires.

  “Due to the emergency,” Charles said, “after the reading of the minutes we will launch into the single item on our agenda. We will also dispense with our customary speakers’ lists, unless things get out of hand.”

  Good God, thought Sailor, listening to Jill the sex kitten read the minutes from the previous meeting. Could she sit through these things for the next sixty years? How had her father stayed awake? When Jill finished, Highsmith took the floor once more.

  “Sailor Gryffald, whom you have just met,” he said, “has had an unfortunate experience, which she will now recount. Sailor?”

  Her boredom fled. All eyes were upon her. Hundreds of years of Keeper experience, all waiting. She remembered something one of her acting teachers had told her. “Never sit when you can stand. Standing gives you power.” She stood. She told them everything she remembered of the attack and her subsequent rescue by Alessande Salisbrooke. And at the key moment, she unbuttoned her sundress down to her scar and showed them the marks of the winged creature. Then she took off her sunglasses.

  The faces of her fellow Keepers showed shock, concern and anger.

  “Are your eyes painful, my dear?” a woman asked. Sailor had forgotten her name, but she was Keeper of the Inland Empire, including the prestigious Palm Springs.

  “No,” Sailor said. “It’s probably more painful for you to look at them.”

  “Not at all,” the woman answered. “They’re lovely, in an unusual sort of way.”

  A strapping man, totally bald, stood. Howard Zane, Downtown district. “Let’s focus on the attacker. Any chance it was an actual bird? Something predatory, maybe rabid?”

  “No,” Sailor said. “It was Other. The air quality changed seconds before the attack. And whatever else I’ve got, it’s not rabies.”

  “Then our problems are a lot bigger than four dead women,” Howard said. “Shifter or vampire, which would you say it was?”

  “I can’t say,” Sailor said. “All I registered was Other—you know the feeling. And a rush of wind. And then there were wings all over me, and I was just reacting, protecting my face, closing my eyes.”

  “Either way, this is serious,” Howard said.

  “Either way it’s a tragedy.” This was the Anaheim Keeper, Sailor remembered, a man named George. “But am I the only one who’s relieved? If what we have is a walking, breathing killer, then he can be found and stopped. A biological hazard spread in some mysterious way, that’s a lot scarier to me than one man who has it in for a couple of beautiful actresses.”

  “George,” said Justine Freud, “first, it’s not a ‘walking killer,’ it’s a flying one. And second, are you implying that as long as only women are being killed, things aren’t so serious?”

  “Justine, not everything is a feminist issue,” George said. “I only meant that a serial killer is a lot easier to deal with than an airborne virus. Has the young lady been examined by a doctor?”

  Sailor opened her mouth to speak, but H
ighsmith answered for her. “My physician will examine her this afternoon.”

  She was about to contradict him, but more strident voices overrode her, three people talking at once.

  “Can we get back on point?” Oliver Kent asked loudly. “Because once word gets out among the Elven that a vampire or shifter is killing their women, all hell will break loose. This Council has to come up with a plan that shows we’re on top of it or our charges will take matters into their own hands.”

  “Exactly,” Charles Highsmith said. “Which is why secrecy is of the utmost importance.”

  “Excuse me,” Sailor said. “I think speed is a bit more important than secrecy.”

  “True,” Justine Freud said. Next to her, Reggie Maxx nodded.

  Charles Highsmith stood. “You may take your seat, Sailor. Speed encourages carelessness. What I propose,” he said, putting up a hand to quiet a few voices of dissent, “is that within our individual districts, we make quiet inquiries among the most trusted Elven. There are bound to be rumors of blood feuds, talk of vampires or shifters with whom our charges may have had disagreements.”

  “Disagreements?” Sailor said. “Four dead women would seem to indicate a bit more than—”

  “I have the floor,” Charles said sharply.

  She felt herself blush, her face growing hot. But being spoken to like an errant schoolgirl couldn’t override anger at Highsmith’s muted reaction to the crisis. She recalled Darius’s advice: Talk less, listen more. She made herself look around the table now, to see if she had any allies. No one met her gaze except for Reggie Maxx, who actually winked.

  Reggie was cute, she noticed: broad-shouldered, but also boyish, with freckles and curly, reddish blond hair— Damn! she thought. Here we go again. The telltale flush of heat, the racing heartbeat. And Reggie wasn’t the only one looking appealing. Charles Highsmith himself, patronizing though he was, had the kind of leadership qualities that made General Patton get a movie made about him. And George from Anaheim, bald-headed and potbellied, was so at home in his own body that she couldn’t help feeling comfortable around him. Justine Freud? The picture of ancient wisdom. Focus, she told herself. You’re missing the meeting.