Keeper of the Moon

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, meanwhile, 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.

In the courtyard, they sat on a stone bench facing patchy grass decorated with a used intravenous needle, a deflated soccer ball and a tiny broken flip-flop. Magdy pulled a cigarette from his pocket and lit it. “So?” he said, exhaling and looking at her.

“I need to know where you get your síúlacht pills.”

“Why would I tell you?” He had a rough vocal quality common among were. The dishwashers were their own subculture in the bowels of the kitchen, so she’d never spoken to him, but now she could see that he was as physically powerful as he was socially insignificant.

“Because I’m trying to find a killer.”

He shrugged. What’s it got to do with me? his eyes said.

“Julio was murdered last night. Did you know that?”

Nothing to do with me, Keeper.

She opened her purse and counted out five twenties. “I can pay you. Not much, but it’s all the cash I have.”

“A hundred dollars.” He gave a short, derisive laugh. “It’s not much, period, to a dead man.”

“Are you saying someone would kill you if you gave me a name?”

“It’s what I’d do.”

“Then I have a problem.” She had more than one problem, she realized, because her temperature was rising, and Magdy was shimmering in the sunlight, looking less dicey and even friendly. She let him see it, knowing her eyes were pulsing and red, and might accomplish what her own powers of persuasion couldn’t. Especially as English was not Magdy’s first language and she didn’t know what was. Something she didn’t speak anyway.

Magdy’s large brown eyes peered into hers. “So this is it, the sickness?”

“Yes, in part. My body grows hot, I feel my blood flow faster.”

A thought struck her. With a sudden intuitive surge, she understood exactly what had happened to the Elven women. The Scarlet Pathogen had entered their bloodstream and made their blood circulate far too quickly, producing in them not just the warm and fuzzy feelings she experienced, but something much stronger: a fever pitch of passion. The sensations that came over her intermittently were for them a deluge. If Magdy looked appealing to her in this moment, then for an Elven woman he would have looked utterly irresistible.

“I have to know what it is the Ancients know about my sickness,” she said. “Can you just tell me, this source of the síúlacht, is he or she from the Underground?”

Above her, a crow called out.

Magdy looked at the sky. “She’s Elven, but she won’t talk to you.”

An opening, Sailor thought. “Where does she live?”

He took a drag on his cigarette. “Canyon.”

“Somewhere between four and seven hundred Elven live in the canyons, more if you count the multiracial,” she crooned into his ear. “Which canyon?”

“Lost Hills.”

Outside her district, Sailor thought. Reggie’s territory. And vast. “Narrow it down.”

“And what do I get?” he said, with a sidelong glance.

“What do you want?”

His face grew more wolfen. He grinned. It was an answer of sorts.

Sailor’s temperature was dropping, and he no longer looked friendly. She thought of the knife she carried and told herself to stay calm. “I’m just asking for a name. No one will ever know it was you who gave it to me.”

“The woman is Rath.”

“I need a name.”

“And what do I get?” he repeated, the words now a snarl. He could change, she realized. Right here, in broad daylight.

And then, in one swift movement, he moved in and pinned her arms against her sides, then started to suck on her neck. Shit, she thought. That was going to leave a mark. She couldn’t reach the dagger because he was holding her too tightly. This was twice in two days she’d let a guy in too close. The dagger could piss him off anyway, and that could bring on the transformation. And even armed she was no match for a full-on werewolf.

He kept nuzzling, and she looked around, belatedly thinking, situational awareness. She could scream, but that didn’t mean help would come. This looked like a courtyard where screaming women were routinely mauled by men.

“Magdy,” she said, summoning up all her bravado, “are you crazy enough to kill me? Because you mess with me, you better kill me, or I will make your life hell. Maybe you’ll lose your job, maybe your visa, but you will lose your balls one night while you’re sleeping, because I know where you live and I’m good with a knife. You wouldn’t mess with an Elven woman, and I’m an Elven Keeper. Think about it.”

He stopped nuzzling and looked at her appraisingly, and she put all the force of her anger into her stare, knowing her scarlet eyes intensified the effect. It was something a werewolf respected, sheer stupid courage. Sometimes.

His nostrils flared, but his grip relaxed, and relief coursed through her. She pulled away from him with as much grace as she could muster and stood, moving out of reach.

“You better get out of here, Keeper.”

She wanted to bolt. She was shaking. But she made herself stand her ground and open her purse. She pulled out the twenties for a second time and held them out.

He was silent. Then he stood and looked at her, fixing his eyes on her in a way that demanded her attention. She saw what he was doing, and she took a deep breath and from his mind to hers came the answer she sought. It was as though he spoke it aloud, though he never opened his mouth.

Catrienne Dumarais.

He plucked the money from her fingers and sauntered toward the building with an insolent swagger. When he reached the doorway, she called to him, “Can you spell that?”

But Magdy entered the building without looking back.

* * *

Reggie Maxx answered his phone on the second ring. He’d already heard about her car and Julio’s death. “What can I do to help?” he asked.

“I thought maybe you could give me a tour of some real estate I want to check out in Lost Hills.”

“You got it,” he said. “And I’ve been doing some research of my own. Where should we meet? I’ll be in Beverly Hills in an hour to get some documents signed. That should take another hour, hour and a half. Then I can be anywhere.”

“Three hours, then,” Sailor said. “Let’s meet at the Mystic Café.”

* * *

Brodie McKay answered his cell on the first ring, sounding both grim and tired. Sailor was driving east, toward Crescent Heights, with Jonquil in the passenger seat, his long ears flying behind him in the wind from the open windows.

“I’m fine, Brodie,” she said in response to his questions. “Yes, I’m alone, but it’s broad daylight and I have my briefcase with me.” In other words, I have a weapon. At least, she thought that was what it meant. Those Keepers addicted to telecommunication talked on their cells in code. Unfortunately, the codes changed weekly and she rarely remembered to study them, something that would have to change. “Listen, I’m driving and there’s a deli up ahead. I know you’re worn out, but could you...meet me there?”

“Give me a street address.”

Less than a minute later she pulled into a parking space to see an extra-large Elven already coming out of the sandwich shop with an extra-large drink in hand. Brodie gave her a hug and indicated an outdoor table.

“Sorry to make you teleport,” she said, “when you’re already exhausted.”

“Not a problem. I was close by. What is it you can’t talk about on the phone?”

“The Ancients.”

He frowned. “What about them?”

“I’m not asking you to go into the details of the investigation, but can you just tell me if you’ve interviewed any of them?”

He shook his head. “No reason to interview them.”

“I’ve heard they have a bunch of really old documents that might reveal something about the Scarlet Pathogen.”

He leaned forward, his voice low. “Sailor, we have our hands full pursuing every credible lead we get. Is it possible the Ancients know something? Sure. Anything’s possible. It’s a question of priorities. We have a limited number of Others on the force, and I can hardly send a mortal into the woods looking for a tribe of antisocial fundamentalists who may or may not have an old book somewhere on a shelf with some reference to a plague reminiscent of this pathogen.”

His tone was kind, but she could see the stress he was under, signs of the all-nighter he’d just pulled. “Okay, Brodie, I get it,” she said. “I know you know what you’re doing, and that you’re doing everything you can. Can you just tell me, have you heard of a woman named Catrienne Dumarais?”

He stopped, his cup halfway to his mouth. Then he knocked back at least ten ounces of ice water and set it down. “I’ve met her once,” he said quietly. “And it was a long time ago. I don’t know if she’s still alive. If she is, and still living where she lived then, there’s no way in hell you could find her.”

“Lost Hills, though, right?”

He shook his head. “It’s been twenty years at least. Somewhere in the Valley, that’s all I remember. But you can’t go wandering around looking for her. I mean it. Hey—” he glanced at the Peugeot “—why are you alone? And Jonquil doesn’t count.”

“I’m heading to the Mystic Café,” she said, “to meet Reggie Maxx.”

“Okay. I know Reggie. Once you’re with him, stay with him until one of your cousins gets back. Promise me.”

“Promise.” It was an easy promise to make. What Brodie didn’t need to know was that en route to the Mystic Café, she was going to make a stop. One that wouldn’t take more than an hour or two.

* * *

The problem was, no drive-on pass awaited Sailor at Metropole Studios.

“No,” the guard said. “Nothing for Gryffald, nothing from GAA, nothing from Darius Simonides. And sorry, but you’re holding up the line. You’ll have to make a U-turn. You can’t come onto the lot.”

She snarled under her breath. A drive-on pass was the gold standard, allowing a visitor a parking space inside the studio lot. For lesser mortals, including auditioning actors as low in the food chain as she was, there were walk-ons. With those, a visitor had to find her own parking and enter the lot on foot. Even then there was a guard gate to get past, which meant being on a confirmed appointment list and providing photo ID.

And now Darius wasn’t returning her calls, and at this point his assistants were as sick of hearing from her as she was of talking to them. She could hear the trained politeness in Joshua’s voice reaching its outer limits. No, Mr. Simonides hadn’t left instructions; no, Joshua had not arranged a pass of any sort for her at Metropole; yes, it was possible Mr. Simonides had forgotten his promise. Joshua couldn’t really say.

Sailor found a parking place two blocks from Metropole’s south entrance gate. In the shade. After a twenty-minute walk Jonquil was happy to return to the Peugeot and work some more on his beauty sleep. The sun was still hidden by clouds and thus not beating down on the car, so Sailor opened the sunroof, cracked the windows halfway to let air in and kissed him goodbye. “I’ll be back soon,” she promised him. On impulse, she left Alessande’s dagger in the car, too. She couldn’t say why, only that her sixth sense told her to, and when it was that strong, she listened.

As she walked toward Metropole, her thoughts turned to Declan. All morning she’d wondered how to avoid his calls, and now she wondered why he hadn’t called. It was starting to seem silly how angry she’d been at him....

Why hadn’t he called?

Surely he wanted to. You couldn’t fake what they’d done in bed, or resist thinking about it afterward and reliving it over and over. Of course Julio’s death had changed everything, but even so, Declan had to be thinking about her. Because she sure as hell couldn’t stop thinking about him. Lying with him in the most intimate conceivable way had been like a mating ritual. She and Declan were very different people. He was older and, by all social and economic standards, more powerful, but on a fundamental level they were equals. And having mated with him, there was no going back. That hour in his bed had changed her, changed her dreams. She had sometimes wondered if she was a woman whose primary passion was her art, a woman for whom romance would always be a distant second, one who would be happy with a succession of lovers kept in the background of her life. She now knew the answer: no.

Which was a problem.

Declan had felt it, too, the intensity of their coupling—she knew that. But maybe for him it happened all the time. He was notoriously, famously single, always linked to women, never staying with them, never living with them. Never marrying them. His spying on her wasn’t an expression of love but simple intelligence gathering, along with some control issues. She wasn’t angry about it, as she’d been last night, but she wasn’t fooling herself, either. It showed a lack of trust and a lack of honesty, both of which troubled her.

But why hadn’t he called?

She reached Guard Gate #3, the Melrose entrance. She could try talking her way in, but she knew she would be turned down, that any cover story would prompt corroborating phone calls, and the whole thing would end badly.

She looked at the sky, the clouds racing by, a hawk circling high above, and she pictured herself in a bungalow inside Metropole Studios, one of the old flat one-story buildings that had been built in the 1940s. She knew exactly how they looked from auditions, five in the past six months, and also from a film job she’d gotten once as a teenager. Only a day’s work, but she’d memorized the whole place, the tiny streets, the big soundstages. Everything.

For teleporting, that was what mattered: the ability to picture the destination.

She got as close as possible to the wall around the studio, minimizing the distance she would have to travel to conserve her energy. She closed her eyes, loosened her shoulders, relaxed the tension in her face, took five deep breaths and let herself dissolve as she pictured just where she wanted to be.

And then she was there.