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

by Harley Jane Kozak

  “You change your mind, call me,” Mulligan said, and took off.

  Declan held out his hand for the police report. “May I?” he said. He’d calmed down, Sailor thought, but he still wasn’t looking anything like the man who’d made love to her that night.

  He read the report and said, “Rhiannon, if you see Brodie before I do, tell him not to worry about the cell phone. It’s mine.”

  “Yours?” Sailor asked. “No, it’s not. You’ve got yours.”

  “I have several. I put one in your Jeep this afternoon.”

  “Why?”

  “Easiest way to track you.”

  She gasped. “You put a tracking device in my Jeep?” She felt herself growing hot with anger. “Why the hell would you do that?”

  He turned to her. “Isn’t it obvious? I can’t trust you to take care of yourself.”

  She drew herself up to her full height. “I’m a Keeper, Declan, like you are. I’m not a kid. I thought you knew that.” She walked away, throwing over her shoulder, “Rhiannon, I’ll meet you at your car.”

  “I’m coming with you,” Rhiannon called back.

  * * *

  To reach Hollywood Boulevard, where Rhiannon’s Volvo was parked, they had to walk down the long drive, passing a handful of House of Illusion staffers gathered on the drawbridge. Those on the closing shift who hadn’t left the premises prior to the explosion were now stuck there until their cars were released when investigators were done. Some people were crying. Others greeted Sailor, but she was too distressed to stop and chat. When someone touched her arm, she jumped.

  “Sorry to frighten you.” It was Dennis, the bartender. “You okay?”

  “No, not even close. This is a nightmare.”

  “Is it true? It was your car that blew up.”

  She nodded.

  “Are you guys parked on Hollywood?” he asked. “Come on. I’ll walk with you.”

  She was glad of his company. She’d worked with Dennis for months and never had a conversation outside of work, but he’d known Julio, and that was all that mattered right now.

  “You have the sickness, don’t you?” he said, as Rhiannon left them to talk and headed more quickly toward her car. “The Scarlet Pathogen.”

  She looked at him. “You know?”

  He nodded. “Your contact lenses tipped me off. Rumors have been running rampant among my people.”

  Sailor often forgot Dennis was a gnome. Gnomes were notoriously well-connected and incorrigible gossipmongers. Bartending was a natural profession for them; tabloid journalism was another. She needed to watch herself with him.

  “Yes, I have the pathogen,” she said.

  “And Julio needed the síúlacht tonight for you.”

  “Yes,” she said. “But I’d appreciate you keeping that to yourself. I didn’t mention it to the cops, for obvious reasons.”

  “I won’t either.” They walked past a few onlookers; there weren’t many, due to the lateness of the hour, but she was surprised there were any at all. “I wanted to talk to you,” Dennis continued, “because Julio came to me a few hours ago. He’d sold me a couple of síúlacht pills earlier today and wanted to buy one back. I figured it was for you.”

  “Why would you buy síúlacht? Does it have an effect on gnomes?”

  Dennis shook his head. “I have an Elven girlfriend. She gets migraines. Hey, you’re shivering.” He took off his jacket and put it around her.

  “No, I’m okay,” she said, trying to understand what Dennis was telling her. “But what does this have to do—”

  “Here’s the thing. Julio asked me if by any chance I knew who made the síúlacht. Said it was important to him to find out. So I figured that if the síúlacht was for you, it was you who wanted the information.”

  “Right, I did. Do. What did you tell Julio?”

  “I told him I had no idea who made the stuff, that he should ask his supplier.”

  “Maybe the supplier made them,” Sailor said. She recalled what Dr. Krabill had said. “If it’s hard to make síúlacht as a tea, it would take someone very good to make it into a pill.”

  “‘Very good’ doesn’t cover it. Genius. And not just genius, but genius with access to the recipe, which is hidden away in some document as old as the Dead Sea Scrolls. We’re talking the stuff of myth and legend. My girlfriend says it has to be an Ancient.”

  “A what?”

  “Ancient. Like the underground, they support themselves dealing in what we’d call the black market. Off the books. Herbs, magic, healing potions. Nothing the IRS would ever see.”

  “What underground? And what’s an Ancient?”

  “You don’t know?” Dennis asked.

  Sailor thought of Great-Aunt Olga’s window ornament. The symbol of the Ancients, Aunt Olga had called it, but she had never explained the term and Sailor had never thought enough about it to be curious. “No. Tell me.”

  A police officer approached, and Dennis waited until he had passed. “There are those who don’t subscribe to the laws of the Councils,” he explained. “Some are outlaws. For some, it’s a political philosophy, to remain independent of Keepers. That’s the Underground. A fringe element is the Ancients, Elven who shun technology and progress—and mortals. They live in the canyons, for the most part. Everything between here and the ocean.”

  “My God, why am I just hearing this for the first time?” Sailor asked.

  “Well, you’re new on the job,” Dennis said. “And they don’t ordinarily cause trouble, because their whole mission is to be left alone. But the thing to know about the Ancients is this—they keep the old texts. They’re the historians, the librarians. They have ancient manuscripts, brought across the sea from the Old Lands, and they keep a tight grip on them. Word on the street, or at least at the bar, is that there are mentions in those texts of the Scarlet Pathogen. That it’s a disease that’s made the rounds before.”

  She nodded. “I’ve heard rumors of that. How do I find these Ancients?”

  “Well, that’s the problem. Except for a precious few—the drug supplier, for instance—they don’t want to be found. According to my girlfriend, it would be dangerous even to look.”

  “It’s also dangerous to start a car,” she said, shivering. “But, Dennis, you’re not suggesting Julio knew any of this.”

  “No way. But his supplier might.”

  “And who is that?”

  Dennis looked around and lowered his voice. “You never heard this from me, okay? Julio buys—bought, I mean—from Magdy, the guy in the kitchen.”

  “Who?” Sailor asked. “Oh, wait. The werewolf dishwasher?”

  Dennis nodded. “Magdy didn’t work tonight. I’m guessing Julio called him at home, couldn’t reach him, whatever. So he came to me. But now I’m coming to you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because someone’s killing Elven women, and that needs to stop. And now someone just blew up your car hoping to kill you and got Julio instead. All this secrecy, all these little separate factions among the Others, everyone holed up, nobody talking to anybody—that’s just adding to the problem.”

  “Okay. So I have to go deep into the woods,” Sailor said, “and track these people down, then get them to talk to me.”

  Dennis nodded. “Just don’t go alone and don’t go unarmed. You have no idea what lives in your canyons.”

  * * *

  An hour later Sailor was home, with her cousins sleeping in the bedrooms down the hall, unwilling to leave her alone in the house. She put on her pajamas, called Jonquil, who was euphoric to be allowed up on the bed, and crawled under the covers. Soon Jonquil was snoring, but Sailor lay in the dark, desolate. Her body retained the memory of Declan, the feel of him on her, in her. His smell, his sounds, all hers now. It had been the best night of her life, and then it had become the worst, every beautiful thing overridden by the sounds of crying, the smell of smoke.

  And apart from the horror of Julio’s death was another kind of shock, much
smaller, but plaguing her nevertheless. That Declan had tracked her. Without her knowledge. It made her feel like an animal. It touched something primal in her she knew was part of her Elven nature: the terror of being trapped, watched, spied upon. This man to whom she had given herself without reservation, what else was he keeping from her?

  She realized she shouldn’t have trusted him nearly as much as she had. For all the reasons Barrie had given, she should not have let down her guard with him, shouldn’t have let herself dream.

  Because now she felt utterly bereft.

  She got out of bed and opened the door to her room, quietly, so as not to wake her cousins. “Merlin,” she said softly. “Merlin, are you around?”

  He was in front of her almost immediately. “Yes?”

  “Come in, please,” she whispered, and invited him into her bedroom. He stood in his polite and formal way until she was back under her covers, then seated himself on an old mahogany armchair.

  “You’ve had a difficult night,” he said.

  “The worst possible,” she said. “Merlin, what should I do?”

  “About your young friend who crossed over tonight? Nothing, child. His passing was quick and painless. He has made peace with it, and you must do so, too.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t.”

  “You will. Give it time.”

  “And what about the four Elven women?”

  “Ah,” he said. “They suffered a different sort of death. Much more personal, face-to-face with their killer. Those women are urging you on, wanting to help, but they are unskilled in communication. They’re still traumatized, which is not uncommon in the case of violent death, especially murder. Also, where there is illness involved, there can be confusion and disorientation. They haven’t, well, settled yet. It’s particularly hard on Elven, who tend to live much longer lives. There is something so unfinished about the young ones who die. One thing seems clear. If I understand them correctly, the words ‘location, location, location’ are shared by all four of the dead women. It is what they had in common.”

  “But they didn’t have it in common,” Sailor said. “They were killed in different places. Except maybe in Charlotte’s case, because we don’t know where she was killed.”

  “Nevertheless, that is the connecting thread. They repeat it like a chorus. And they chatter at me, they send me...orders. ‘Look for the cap,’ ‘Return the call.’ One of them screams, ‘Listen to the messages!’ which is presumably what you’re attempting to do. Another insists, ‘Don’t go near the water!’ which I don’t expect you ever to do.”

  Sailor sat in bed, hugging her knees to her chest. “But this is crazy,” she said. “None of that means anything to me. Is the Spirit world always so chaotic?”

  “Not always, no. But consider with whom we are dealing—three actresses and an agent. While I love theater as much as anyone and more than most, thespians can be a bit high-maintenance and very dramatic. I should let you sleep, dear.”

  “Yes, but would you—would you mind staying?” she asked. “Until I doze off?”

  “Not at all,” he said kindly.

  She thought she was too upset to sleep, but her body decided otherwise, and as the moon was setting she began to dream of cars on fire, of eyes glowing red and crows flying outside her window.

  Chapter 12

  The next day began with a ritual the cousins called the Morning Report. Over coffee and whatever passed for breakfast—the three of them were idiosyncratic in their eating styles—they discussed Keeper business, which usually devolved into girl talk. Today, though, their mood was uniformly somber.

  “I realize it’s a cliché,” Barrie said, picking at a cheesecake Rhiannon had brought home from work the night before, “but you really can’t blame yourself, Sailor. You didn’t kill your friend, and you’re not responsible for the actions of some madman simply because you were his target.”

  Rhiannon, flipping an egg in a skillet, shuddered. “I can’t even imagine what his family is going through. Brodie hasn’t been home yet. He spent the night with the investigative team. What an unholy mess.”

  Sailor told them what Dennis had told her. “Have you ever heard of this Underground movement?” she asked, peeling an orange.

  “Oh, yes,” Rhiannon said. “The Underground’s a coalition of the various species. We’re talking very small numbers. Dad said the Councils take no official position, as long as they stay off the radar, which is usually the case. As for the Ancients, I remember Great-Aunt Olga mentioning them, but I thought it was something she made up to scare us with. Keep us in line.”

  Barrie shook her head. “No. They’re real. Or at least they were in the sixties, according to my research. They kept to themselves, lived off the grid and avoided mortals. It could be they’ve died out since then.”

  “No, Dennis says they’re alive and I believe him,” Sailor said. “I think they know more about the Scarlet Pathogen than anyone else does, except maybe the killer himself.”

  “I don’t suppose,” Barrie said, “that you’d consider staying home and letting Rhiannon and me use our resources to find these Ancients for you?”

  “You know I can’t.” Sailor held up a hand as Rhiannon prepared to object. “I have so many leads to follow, so many pieces of this puzzle to figure out, and mostly I feel so awful about Julio. So, no. Staying home would be hell. If you’re willing to hit me over the head with a hammer, go for it. Otherwise, I have to be what I should have been for months now—a Keeper.”

  “That is just crazy,” Rhiannon said. “At the very least, one of us has to be with you at all times.”

  “I have to be in Pasadena at two,” Barrie said, “for a shifter Council meeting. This morning I’m interviewing Scott Donner, who Kelly Ellory worked under at GAA. It’s a story for the paper. I can try to change the appointment.”

  “No,” Sailor said. “You blow off Scott Donner, he’ll never reschedule. And you may learn something important. Anyway, what I’m doing this morning is a one-woman operation.”

  Rhiannon reached over to give her arm a shake. “Sailor, someone is trying to kill you.”

  “It’s harder to hit a moving target,” Sailor said.

  “Look,” Rhiannon said sternly, “I have a Keeper meeting of my own this afternoon, an emergency meeting, and I think it’s vital that we all attend our Councils—”

  “It is,” Sailor said.

  “But if one of us can’t be with you, you have to be with Declan. Or Brodie.”

  Barrie shook her head. “Declan will be in Pasadena with me. At the shifter Council. He won’t miss that.”

  “He will if he thinks Sailor’s off roaming the city on her own.”

  “Then don’t tell him,” Sailor said, gathering up her purse and cell phone. “And Brodie’s got plenty to do without babysitting me. I have about three hundred friends in this town, I’m sure I can—”

  “Reggie Maxx,” Rhiannon said. “He called here last night, returning your call.”

  “Perfect. There you go. We talked about pooling our resources, so we may as well do it in person. The only question is, what do I do for a car?”

  “The only question,” Rhiannon retorted, “is what we tell Declan when he asks where you are and how you’re doing.”

  “You tell him,” Sailor said, “that I will be in touch once I have something new to report.”

  “No,” Barrie said, handing over a set of keys. “We tell him that Sailor’s driving my car while I drive the Caddy. And then he’ll tell us how to put a tracking device on a Peugeot.”

  * * *

  Barrie’s Peugeot was smaller than the Jeep but still big enough for Jonquil to ride shotgun. Given his temperament, he would be useless in a fight, but he looked tough, and he was good company. And Sailor wasn’t leaving him alone in the house. If a killer could find out what she drove and where she worked, he would have no trouble finding where she lived—but he wouldn’t find her dog there, not if she could help it. Barrie, me
anwhile, was driving her own father’s beloved antique Cadillac, a car Sailor wouldn’t touch. The Peugeot was Uncle Owen’s car, too, but the Caddy was more like a member of the family than a vehicle, and Sailor would rather face a serial killer than Uncle Owen should she damage it.

  She headed to Echo Park. Back in the silent era, it had been the center of the film industry, but she saw no signs of its former glory on the street where Magdy lived. She’d found the address through Lauren, her fellow waitress, who’d dated the sous chef who’d hired Magdy. Because of the tragedy, people were going out of their way to help one another. She hoped that this trend would continue when she talked to Magdy, but she doubted it would extend to his neighbors in the ratty apartment complex she pulled up to. At least a large dog in the car would be a disincentive for anyone looking to steal the Peugeot’s tires.

  It was reassuring, in a place like this, to have a weapon, and she had brought along Alessande’s dagger. She was growing fond of the knife and suspected it was charmed. The Elven tended to do that, layering spells and incantations into their tools and weapons. She’d added a tactical vest to black jeans and a white T-shirt so that her dagger was more accessible than it had been in the ankle sheath. So far the attacks on her had been stealthy, not face-to-face, but that could change. Later she would go home and dress in something more feminine for Kelly Ellory’s memorial service. But for now, the tougher she looked, the better.

  The intercom for Magdy’s apartment seemed to be broken, so she pressed random buttons until someone buzzed her in. She walked down a hallway, following signs out a door to a courtyard, into another building and up a floor to a steel door. She knocked.

  A little boy wearing shorts and nothing else answered. A littler boy, in a T-shirt and diaper, came up behind the first one to stare at her. Then Magdy appeared. Sailor almost didn’t recognize him, as she was used to seeing him in kitchen whites, not a muscle shirt. His hair was matted and tangled, and he needed a shave and some sleep, but it was him. He was shorter than she was, but far stronger. He met her gaze with an unspoken What do you want? and she simply removed her sunglasses and looked at him, letting the scarlet of her irises register on him. “I need your help,” she said. He spoke sharply in another language to the boys and they ran back into the apartment. Magdy, too, disappeared, but only briefly. Then he came out and closed the door behind him. Wordlessly, he walked down the concrete stairs. Sailor followed.