She’d been focused on what she could get from Melanie and Hervé, and from Gary, the producer. It had been shortsighted, she realized, and not particularly kind. Her father never would have taken that approach. “Damn. I wasn’t thinking.”
“Next time you will be.”
“I don’t know, Declan. Sometimes I think I’ll never get the hang of this. I’m not sure I have the instincts.”
“Because you’ve been at it for what, a day? Thirty-six hours? Maybe you could cut yourself some slack.” He glanced at her. “Okay, sum it up for me. What have we figured out today?”
“That all four women were on film sets in the weeks before they were killed. That’s the connecting thread. They must have met the killer there.”
“Three different films, though,” he said. “Technical Black for Gina and Kelly, Six Corvettes for Ariel and Knock My Socks Off for Charlotte. So the question is, what kind of movie professional works several jobs simultaneously?”
“Actors can,” she said, “but Ariel’s dad said the man wasn’t an actor. Publicity people, or agents or managers with clients on all three films. Agents love to visit sets. Gets them out of the office, makes the actors feel loved.”
“I’ll buy the agent theory, but not the publicity team. Gina and Charlotte’s films were with competing studios and would have in-house publicists. Six Corvettes was low-budget. I doubt they even have a publicist.”
“Animal wranglers?” she asked. “On-set schoolteachers?”
“No kids in Technical Black,” he said. “No animals in Charlotte’s movie.”
Sailor leaned back in the passenger seat. “What else? Fight coordinators, dialect coaches, stunt teams? Maybe tomorrow, when I’m on the set of Knock My Socks Off, it will come to me. Because I’ll be on the lookout. You know how there are dozens of jobs in a movie but you only really pay attention to the ones that are directly working with you?”
“No, Sailor. I’m not an actor. Also,” he said, “I’m not sure I like the thought of your wandering around Knock My Socks Off without me.”
“Why not?”
He shrugged. “What if you have one of your...episodes? By the way, were you having one with Gary Kiel?”
“Nope. I’m feeling normal, in fact. I think my eyes are returning to normal.”
“I’ve been noticing that.” He paused. “But you were awfully friendly with Gary.”
Was Declan...jealous? she wondered. Aloud, she said, “That was just me being me. You know, using people. Exploiting them. Shamelessly.”
He smiled. “When did you last have one of these pathogen moments? Because you haven’t told me how handsome I am for an hour at least.”
“Missing it?”
He shook his head. “Not really. A shifter can look like anything he pleases. Compliments about looks...they don’t mean much.”
“Or maybe it’s that you’re a man.”
“Possibly.”
“I, however, am not a man.”
“True enough. And no one would mistake you for one.”
“And I am not able to shift.”
“Your point?”
“A compliment once in a while would be okay with me.”
“Good God.” He turned the wheel and pulled onto the shoulder of the road. “Have I been stupid? Have I not told you what a beauty you are?”
“No.”
“What I’d like to do with you?”
“No.”
“To you?”
“Uh-uh.”
“What a wanker I am.” He looked into her eyes, and by the light of the nearly full moon he let his convey to her everything she could imagine wanting to hear from him and a few things she hadn’t thought of.
She felt herself blushing. “I don’t think you’re a...wanker, whatever that is. And I want to do all those things with you. To you. And it’s got nothing to do with the Scarlet Pathogen.”
Declan peered at her in the darkness. She could hear him breathing, even feel it, feel herself breathing along with him. Finally he said, “What do you think we should do about it?”
“You could kiss me,” she said.
He smiled, then looked in the rearview mirror and pulled back onto the road. “Oh, I will,” he promised. “But this time we’re not starting something we can’t finish.”
“Then maybe you should drive faster,” Sailor said.
He did.
Chapter 11
Inside the Snake Pit, Declan took Sailor by the hand and led her through a door she’d never seen, through the back, down a hallway and up a private stairway to a loftlike room. His office, she realized. It had a waist-high wall, like a box at the opera. He showed her the vista below, of the Snake Pit in full open-for-business mode, crowded with people dancing and drinking. A blues singer crooned something into her microphone, a song in a language Sailor could only guess at—Portuguese?—but understood nevertheless. She was singing about love. Or sex. Or love and sex. And possibly heartbreak.
Declan stood behind her and wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight. The sensation of his hands on her abdomen sent a thrill through her. Then one hand slid up and found her breast, and the effect was so electrifying she could hardly stand still. He kissed her neck, her shoulder, her ear. She turned her head so he could kiss her cheekbone, and then he pulled her back, out of sight of the crowd below, and turned her so that they were face-to-face, six inches apart, the air between them pulsing with the need to touch.
They looked long and deep into each other’s eyes, seeing how long they could go telling the truth, revealing exactly how they felt about each other. Waves of heat and telepathy vibrated between them. When she couldn’t bear it any longer, Sailor moved closer until she couldn’t see him clearly, until there was nothing to do but close her eyes and find his mouth. And then his tongue. His teeth. He bit her lip and she bit him in return, and then the pent-up feelings of the day overcame them both and their hands took over, gripping, feeling the heat through their clothes, shoulders, backs, arms....
The craving for skin was too much. Sailor unbuttoned his white shirt until he grew impatient and pulled her hands away, then grabbed the hem of her black lace T-shirt and pulled it over her head. She pushed his hands away and pulled his shirt off without bothering with the last of the buttons. His bare torso was far more muscled than she had imagined, and she ran her hands over his shoulders and biceps wonderingly, hardly believing he was hers to touch. His abdominal muscles caused her to gasp. She’d never touched anything like them.
He seemed to be feeling the same way. His hands were on her waist, then her rib cage, his eyes on her body as he reached the black lace of her bra. Her own eyes closed, and she let out a sigh that turned into a shudder. And then she couldn’t stand it anymore.
She grabbed his belt buckle and undid it, then unsnapped his jeans and pulled down his zipper. He was about to be more naked than she was, and she could see him register that. He immediately slipped his fingers through her belt loops and pulled her close enough to unsnap her jeans. She tried to kick off her boots, but she’d forgotten about the ankle sheath and the knife. And then he’d apparently had enough of the vertical striptease because he picked her up and carried her across the office, into the darkness.
He had more strength than she had any idea he possessed.
Sailor was tall, and she hadn’t been lifted off the ground by a man since her childhood. She felt herself blush all over at the sensation of helplessness, and she resisted, her body tensing until he said, “Get used to it,” his voice low. She didn’t know how he could read her mind in the dark, but she did relax, and then she was being carried through a doorway into another room, lit by low, sultry lights. The next thing she knew she was on a bed, on her back, looking up at the ceiling, the voice of the Portuguese singer giving way to a saxophone.
He pulled off her boots, one by one, tossing them on the floor. Pulled out the knife and placed it on the bedside table. Ripped off the sheath and tossed it alongside the boots.
Pulled down her jeans.
His hands were on her hips now, on the silk of her panties, and she put her knees up so he could slip them off. And then the bit of lace that was her bra was gone, and she didn’t even know how he’d done that, but she was naked now. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness, and she watched him push his own jeans down and off, his swimmer’s body naked now, too, as he moved onto the bed, straddling her, that gorgeous chest above her. She reached up and pulled him down to her, and the whole of him covered her with warmth and skin and muscle.
His arms tightened around her and crushed her to him, and they were as close as it was possible for two people to be. In a moment she felt him between her legs, the hardness of him, and she snaked her legs around his back and reached down to guide him into her, gasping as she found him and felt his answering gasp. And then he was deep inside her, and her gasp turned to a cry. She didn’t recognize her own voice.
He stayed silent, looking at her, moving rhythmically inside her, and she knew he loved making her cry out with pleasure at the feel of him, loved making her lose control, and she decided there were worse things in life than letting a man take over and rule the world for a few minutes. And as the Portuguese singer raised her voice in a crescendo of passion, Sailor rose with her and then, at the high note, let go. Let the world come crashing down beautifully around her, let him take her for his own pleasure, his own crescendo, his own loss of control.
Their arms were still wrapped around one another and stayed that way for a long time, as if they were alone in the world and did not dare to let each other go.
* * *
Some time later, Declan didn’t know how much later, a phone rang somewhere on the floor next to the bed. Sailor’s phone, not his. He reached for it and held it to her ear as she smiled up at him.
He watched her smile fade, listening to the urgent words that he could hear, too.
“Sailor, it’s Rhiannon. Where are you? The police are looking for you. Your car was at the House of Illusion, and someone set off a bomb in it. And, Sailor, there was a man inside.”
* * *
The crime scene was chaos, and Sailor couldn’t get closer than a half block away, even with Brodie there, alongside Rhiannon.
“They won’t let you near, Sailor,” Brodie said. His tall, commanding presence would have been reassuring, were it not for his grave expression. “Bomb squad’s in there. When the detectives need to question you, they’ll come get you.”
“But I need to see him,” Sailor said. “Or at least try to help—”
“Sweetie, you’re blaming yourself, I know you are,” Rhiannon said. “And it’s not your fault.”
Sailor said nothing. Standing outside the crime scene with her were cops and civilians of all kinds, even at four in the morning, and a fair number of House of Illusion staff, customers and magicians. She was engulfed with guilt and grief, and couldn’t do anything but stare in the direction of the mess that had once been employee parking, that had once been her Jeep.
Had once been Julio.
He had a mother, she knew. And probably siblings. A girlfriend. But most of all a mother. When would they show up here, his family members? Would she witness their cries? She could hear them in her imagination, and she couldn’t bear it. She’d hardly spoken as Declan had driven her here. He’d understood and dropped her off as soon as she saw Rhiannon waving at her from the street, then gone to hunt for a place to park.
He joined them now and put an arm around Sailor, pulling her close. There were no sexual overtones in it, but it was territorial, and she saw Rhiannon take note of it.
“Sailor!” A woman called. It was Lauren, her fellow waitress. “Did you hear? God, isn’t it awful? I can’t believe he’s dead.” She came running over and hugged Sailor in the strange way of people who aren’t on hugging terms until tragedy hits.
“Is his family here?” Sailor asked. “Do they know about it?”
“I don’t know. I heard about it from Tafiq.”
Eventually a detective escorted her to a squad car to interview her. She threw a glance over her shoulder at Rhiannon, Brodie and Declan. They were all, she knew, worried about what she might give away, emotional as she was. But emotional didn’t equal stupid.
She studied the detective, using her powers of perception to see if he was were or shifter, but he had none of the telltale signs. Vampires and Elven were so obvious, she didn’t even have to wonder. He wasn’t a Keeper, either. When she gave her name, he merely asked her to spell it. A Keeper would recognize “Gryffald” the way the residents of Hyannis Port knew the Kennedys, and he would have indicated in some way that he was a colleague.
But he was merely mortal.
His name was Grant Mulligan, and she played it straight with him—or as straight as she could, given that she was withholding information like crazy. No, she had no idea why anyone would plant a bomb in her car. No, she had no enemies. She’d hardly been back in town long enough to make any. She couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to harm Julio, either. Everyone had loved Julio.
Ironically, the most difficult thing to explain to Mulligan was that she’d given Julio her car keys simply out of friendship. This, she could see, he found suspicious. He was also staring at her eyes more than she thought necessary, which meant that they were changing color again. He was probably thinking “drugs,” so she told him that she had a rare optical condition, which he could verify with her physician, Kimberly Krabill, who was probably working the graveyard shift at Cedars-Sinai.
After taking her contact information and advising her not to leave town, he gave her his card and a copy of his preliminary report for her insurance company. “The bomb squad will keep your car, what’s left of it,” he said, “but you can get started on your claim.” With that mundane advice, he let her go.
By now the sun was rising. Brodie had gone off to inform the detectives working the Scarlet Pathogen murders that this was a new development in their case, and not some random car bomb. Rhiannon explained that while sitting on the curb with Declan and wearing his jacket, obviously freezing. Sailor herself was immune to the cold, her physical sensations subordinate to her emotional distress.
“How did it go?” Rhiannon asked, and Sailor told them she’d gotten through it well enough, mentioning Mulligan’s curiosity as to why she’d given Julio her car keys.
“Yes, why did you?” Declan asked.
Sailor felt a spasm, a kind of retroactive horror at what she’d done, the part she’d played in Julio’s fate. But there was no question of covering up with these two as she had with the cops. She plunged ahead, telling them about the síúlacht that Julio had given her in the parking lot.
“You took a pill tonight?” Declan asked, frowning.
“Síúlacht, yes,” Sailor said, “Look, I teleported today more than I’ve done in the last year, I was truly worn out, and—”
“But you didn’t mention to me that you’d taken something,” Declan said. “Why?”
“Because I knew you’d disapprove and—”
Rhiannon, looking from one to the other, said, “But síúlacht, surely it’s—”
“As legal as aspirin,” Sailor said. “And as innocuous.”
“Not if you’ve got any Elven in you,” Declan said. “Then it’s powerful. Enough to repress the symptoms of the pathogen.”
“You make it sound like I do drugs, Declan,” Sailor said. “I don’t. Alessande Salisbrooke gave it to me, Kimberly Krabill said it was a good choice, and—”
“The point is, you didn’t tell me.”
“I’m telling you now. I gave Julio my car keys because he’s my friend. Was my friend,” she amended, and felt an intense pain behind her eyes. “I thought I was helping him out. I didn’t know.”
Declan looked at her steadily for another long moment, then turned to Rhiannon. “Can you take her home?”
“Of course.”
“And activate your security system?”
“It does
n’t work,” Rhiannon said. “We didn’t pay the bill.”
“It works now,” he said. “Your bill is paid.”
“You paid the bill?” Sailor asked.
“We’ll repay you, Declan,” Rhiannon said. “And don’t worry about Sailor. Barrie and I are there, and Brodie will be back, too, once he’s off work tonight. We have weapons, and we’re all well-trained in their use. We’ll keep her safe.”
He nodded. “Okay. She shouldn’t go running around tomorrow, either.”
“Stop!” Sailor said. “‘She,’ as you put it, can take care of herself and—”
“You’re doing a hell of a job,” Declan snapped. A spark had ignited between the two of them and it had nothing to do with the fire they’d felt an hour earlier. “That car bomb was meant for you. Those body parts scattered around that lot? That was supposed to be you, Sailor.”
Rhiannon held up a hand. “If I may just say something here?”
“Sorry, no.” Sailor, to her horror, found she was about to cry. It was so unusual that the prospect further upset her. “What would you want me to do about it, Declan? Don’t you think I wouldn’t undo it all if I could?”
“I want you to take this seriously.”
“I’m completely serious,” Sailor said. “I couldn’t be more serious. Do I seem casual?”
Mulligan approached and Sailor stopped. Mulligan looked at the three of them and said to her, “The bomb technicians found a cell phone they believe came from your Jeep. What’s left of Julio’s was in his pocket. Yours?”
“No, I’ve got mine.”
“Any idea whose?”
“No idea at all,” Sailor said. “Could it belong to the person who planted the bomb?”
“Could be,” Mulligan said. “I’m a little concerned about your safety. We should talk about protective custody.”
“No,” Sailor said.
“She’s got family,” Rhiannon said. “We’ll be looking out for her.”
Keeper of the Moon (The Keepers: L.A.) Page 17
