Keeper of the Shadows

chapter 12



Mick had not brought the Bentley but an actual limo, with an actual driver behind the partition, so they glided down the canyon and onto Hollywood Boulevard like actual movie stars. There was jazz on the stereo and champagne chilling in a bucket in the built-in bar, and Mick casually poured it into two beautifully carved flutes as the limo cruised the curving road.

Barrie took hers and drank too quickly, nervous as she was.

“Your cousins...” he said.

“I know, they’re out of control,” she said.

He smiled. “I was going to say they’re charming. You must have a lot of fun.”

“We do,” she said, and laughed, which relaxed her. The champagne was probably helping, too.

“You three remind me of—” he said, and then stopped.

“We remind you of what?” she asked, curious.

“You remind me of stars,” he said. “Real stars. Movie stars and star stars.”

Barrie felt herself flush warm, and this time it wasn’t just the champagne.

* * *

The premiere was at the Chinese, the famous theater where stars had been putting their shoe prints and handprints and signatures into slabs of cement since 1927. The theater itself was red and black, built in the style of a pagoda with Hollywood’s idea of Asian flourishes in neon, and the courtyard was paved with the iconic handprinted slabs.

The limo glided past the Walk of Fame, the Hollywood sidewalks that bore the brass stars of famous film, TV, radio and music personalities, and came to a stop in front of the Chinese Theater. It was the full red-carpet scenario, with huge spotlight beams crisscrossing the sky, and a press line rushing the red carpet as limos pulled up beside the curb to disgorge celebrity after celebrity.

Barrie found herself suddenly frozen in terror, but then the limo door opened, and the driver stood at attention outside. Mick got out and reached down a hand to help her from the car. And with her hand in his, she found herself emerging with effortless grace, feeling every bit the star he had said she looked like.

Flashbulbs popped wildly; Barrie couldn’t believe the flood of lights. It was as bright as high noon on the beach from all the kliegs—to provide the best backdrop for photos and filming, she knew, but she’d never been the one in the lights. It was dazzling and overwhelming.

But Mick guided her nonchalantly down the red carpet toward the theater entrance as paparazzi snapped and flashed.

At the guard pedestal, the doorman simply bowed to them and let them through.

“You don’t need tickets?” Barrie asked him under her breath.

“Well, I didn’t actually have them, so I used Plan B,” he confessed, and turned his face to her.

She gasped.

George Clooney looked back at her, with that roguish George Clooney smile on his face. Mick had shifted; no wonder the doorman hadn’t asked for tickets. That face was all the entrée anyone could ask for.

Clooney grinned and then dissolved back into Mick.

“I thought you didn’t do that kind of shifting anymore,” she accused, a little stunned.

“Only in emergencies.”

“And this is what you call an emergency?”

“I have to keep in practice for real emergencies, don’t I?” he asked innocently.

With premieres, the movie came first, the party after, so they had little time to talk as they moved with the crowd into the lush red-curtained theater and found seats. Barrie scanned the premiere-goers for DJ and Travis Branson, but there were too many people, and the lights dimmed shortly after they were seated.

At first Barrie was so distracted by Mick’s warm, live presence in the seat beside her, his thigh pressed up against hers, that she couldn’t concentrate on the movie. But gradually the action on the screen captured her attention.

Rocket Man was not a film that she would ever have bothered to see if DJ hadn’t been the star. But even without her case, she probably would have seen the movie simply because DJ was in it. Based on a wildly popular graphic novel series—Meaning comic book, she thought disdainfully—it was a megabudget “tentpole” film: one of those that the studios hope will spawn numerous sequels, spin-offs, video games, toy and clothing lines, even amusement park rides. It was full of car and helicopter chases, all manner of things blowing up, and macho dialogue. In fact, the only watchable thing about it, from Barrie’s point of view, was DJ.

But his casting was what made the movie. Of course a vampire, or any Other, always brought a certain extra something to a performance, but the whole idea of having a quirky, volatile, unpredictable actor known for his excruciatingly intense character roles playing a comic superhero meant that clichéd fight scenes suddenly turned into laugh riots, and the absurd plot points seemed laced with satirical commentary, and there was an underlying mystery and darkness to the character that elevated the proceedings above their comic book roots. Despite his troubled life, or probably because of it, DJ remained as mesmerizingly watchable as he had been all those years ago in Otherworld.

Beside her, Mick seemed oddly riveted himself. At one point she leaned in to him and said, “He’s so good.”

Mick said, “Yes, he is.” His tone was ambiguous.

Even though the explosions took over for actual plot in the end, Barrie had to admit that the movie was much better than she had ever expected it to be, and she joined the applause as the credits rolled.

Instead of moving to a different venue for the premiere party, the studio had walled off Grauman’s famous courtyard and dressed it with parts of the Rocket Man set and some pretty magnificent lighting. She had to admit there were some things that Hollywood just got right, and spectacle was way up there on the list. It was a fabulous party, everything designed to make people feel like the innest of the in-crowd just to be there at all.

Mick went off in search of drinks, and she stood beside a column, scanning the crowd.

All around her partygoers drifted and schmoozed and star-watched, holding their drinks and appetizers: a spread of Asian delicacies, since the main action of the film was a romp throughout Asia.

She caught sight of Darius in the throng, surrounded by men in high-powered suits. Her first instinct was to hide, but he had already spotted her. He excused himself to his entourage and moved toward her, sharklike in his ability to part the crowd.

As he approached her, he took a flute of champagne from a circulating waiter and presented it to her with a small bow.

“Delighted to see you here, my dear.”

“Are you?” she asked, and immediately worried that she’d gone too far.

He smiled thinly. “But of course. You’re proving as resourceful as your father. Much better than my handing everything to you, isn’t it?”

I see, this was all some kind of lesson from the kindly mentor, she thought cynically.

“Did you enjoy the film?”

“DJ is amazing,” she said, glad to have something honest to say.

“Sensational. The film will break three hundred, easily.”

Meaning three hundred million, domestic box office. She knew she shouldn’t be surprised by the inevitable focus on the financial bottom line, but it repulsed her.

“I’m sure you’re right,” she said, forcing a pleasant tone.

Darius seemed to spot someone important in the crowd; he held up a finger as if asking the person to wait and turned a smooth smile on Barrie. “I do hope you find what you’re looking for tonight.”

“Oh, I have no doubt,” she assured him.

He gave her a slight bow. “Happy hunting, then.”

As Darius glided away, she looked over the crowd, searching for DJ. She knew it would be a trick getting to talk to him; every person—and Other—at the party would be lining up to fawn over him. Even so, she was determined to try, but as of yet, there was no sign of him. There was no sign of Mick, either.

Then she saw a familiar face, flitting from group to group.

Harvey Hodge was tuxed to the max and hobnobbing for all he was worth, but he seemed to sense Barrie’s gaze on him. He turned and spotted her, and then, to her surprise, he made a beeline toward her through the crowd.

“Darling, you look fabulous,” he gushed, and air-kissed both her cheeks. She was a little stunned at his enthusiasm; while Harvey was often useful, he had never been much more than condescending to her. Even at his gossipy best, he had a very set hierarchy of who was important and who wasn’t. Yet here he was, acting as if she were the only person at the party who counted.

He dropped his voice and leaned in to her. “I saw you came with Clooney,” he confided.

So, that’s it.

“Oh...well,” she hedged. “Business, you know.”

“And so tight with Simonides, too. I had no idea you were so connected.”

Barrie shrugged modestly. “Deep down they’re just people. Or vampires.”

She had no idea what she was doing in this conversation. She looked desperately around for Mick to save her.

Harvey’s eyes narrowed. “That’s a quaint way to put it,” he said, dripping skepticism.

“That’s me. Quaint. So, how did you like the film?” she asked, floundering.

“That’s tomorrow’s column, sweets,” he said. “You can read it in mock-up.”

And without another word, he was off again.

Talk about a hit-and-run, Barrie thought. But something was bothering her about the brief encounter, something that didn’t fit, that even felt like it might be significant if only she could figure out what it was.

Left to herself in a sea of glamorous strangers, she found herself searching the cement slabs of the courtyard for one she remembered from her childhood. She drifted by the handprints of Myrna Loy and William Powell, the wand prints of the Harry Potter kids, the hoofprints of Roy Rogers’s horse, Trigger...and stopped, looking down at a slab that had three sets of handprints, three sets of footprints: the Pack—DJ, Robbie Anderson and Johnny Love.

She felt a chill, a heightened sense that almost seemed psychic, as if she could feel the presence of the three stars.

And then someone spoke right by her side, startling her; she hadn’t sensed anyone approaching.

“Is this a professional interest, Keeper?”

Barrie looked up—and was stunned to see DJ himself, in Armani, with glistening sequined Converse Hi-Tops on his feet. He balanced a drink rather unsteadily in his hand and was looking her over with predatory intensity.

Meeting actors in real life was always a disorienting experience. They were always smaller than on-screen, naturally, when one was used to seeing their images thirty feet high. But good actors always had a larger-than-life aura, and Barrie almost felt rocked on her heels in the presence of it. First, there was that feral charisma of a vampire. Vampires were all about appetites—for blood, for wine, for life force, for fame. And on top of that there was the pure star power of the actor.

Of course most Others could spot a Keeper just as most Keepers could spot an Other, but it was still slightly surreal that he recognized her. She felt like Cinderella, singled out by the Prince.

“I heard you wanted to talk to me,” he said in a way that made her think he knew exactly how off balance she felt. His voice had a slightly slurred, sexual quality, and his eyes were dilated to huge black circles, which might mean drugs or that he had just fed on blood. Considering this was DJ, quite probably both.

“Yes. I wanted to talk to you about what really happened on Catalina,” she said quickly.

He smiled, but his eyes took on a wary quality. “You want to know what’s real? In this place? Good luck with that.”

Her heart sank. She’d lost him.

He turned his back to her, but oddly, didn’t move. Then she heard his voice. “My house. Tomorrow.”

She jolted. What? Was that an invitation? What does he mean?

And then he was strolling off, as if they had never talked.

“When?” she called after him.

He turned back with a mocking bow. “Dusk, of course.”

As he moved into the crowd, he was instantly surrounded by people vying for his attention, and she wondered if he’d made himself invisible to others during their brief exchange.

Before she had time to process her thoughts, Mick was at her side again, with champagne flutes in hand.

“Oh! I was wondering where you were,” she said. He had been away a long time.

Instead of looking at her, he stared after DJ; his face was taut, unhappy.

“I didn’t want to interrupt. It seemed as if you were—” he paused slightly “—getting somewhere.”

I was. I did, she thought with a little thrill. “He wants to see me tomorrow.” She still couldn’t believe her luck. “I guess Darius talked to him after all,” she mused, and then looked down at the cement slab at their feet. “Unless...”

“Unless what?”

She laughed a little. “It’s silly, but Merlin, our house ghost, says that often ghosts can most easily be called at significant places. I know DJ isn’t a ghost, but...maybe it works for the living, too. Or the undead. I was standing here, thinking about the three of them, and DJ just appeared.”

Mick looked down at the slab with a strange expression on his face. “It’s not silly,” he said.

“It was a little like being haunted,” she confessed. “He’s not just Other, he’s so much bigger than life. They all were,” she added, looking down at the signatures and handprints and footprints at their feet.

“For all the good it did them,” he said tightly. “Immortal at sixteen—and dead. That’s no life.”

She was surprised at his depth of feeling. Then again, he had devoted his life to helping Others, pretty much the definition of passion.

She had a question forming in her mind, but then suddenly she spotted Travis Branson in the crowd. “Look.” She touched Mick’s arm and nodded toward the director. In his mid-forties, lean and handsome, he had that restless, intensely focused energy that she associated with film directors, along with a were’s usual profusion of facial hair, trimmed neatly into a Van Dyke beard.

She murmured to Mick, “You know everything about everyone. Tell me something about Branson.”

He glanced down at her, then over at Branson. “Werewolf, as you know. He wrote the script of Otherworld when he was only in his late twenties and held out to direct it. It was his debut, obviously a smash, and after that he didn’t write his own movies anymore.”

She watched the director expounding to a circle of young men, all of whom had the hungry, slightly desperate look of aspiring actors and filmmakers.

“It’s unusual, isn’t it? You don’t usually see weres as directors.”

Mick smiled slightly. “Very unusual. They don’t tend to have the focus.”

In the background, the swing band launched into one of Barrie’s favorite jazz standards, “Ain’t That a Kick in the Head?” She glanced out over the dance floor. As usual at a Hollywood party, there were very few couples out on the floor; there was too much schmoozing to be done for anyone to waste their time dancing. And no one knows how to dance anymore, she thought.

She refocused on the problem at hand. “What else do you know about him?” she prodded Mick.

“Apparently he had a huge cocaine problem while they were filming Otherworld. But he’s cleaned himself up since then.” Then he said abruptly, “Enough business. I love this tune.” And suddenly she was in his arms and they were on the floor, dancing.

Her memory hadn’t exaggerated one bit; he really could dance.

Barrie was such a control freak in her real life that no one would believe the secret pleasure she got out of just giving herself over to a partner who knew what he was doing. And Mick did know. He led her and figured out what she liked to do, then did more of it. They found a perfect rhythm, coming together and pushing apart in a sexy, sensual tandem. He was like an anchor, strong and lithe as he swirled her and spun her and lifted her, and every touch was like a promise of things to come.

He really was perfect, just perfect.

“You’re perfect,” he whispered.

He even did a mock Fred Astaire tap break as the music changed. And as the song finished he swept her off her feet and dipped her expertly over his muscular thigh, to delighted applause from the onlookers around them.

As he set Barrie slowly back on her feet, his hands lingering on her waist, she was flushed and speechless.

He laughed at her expression and took her hand. “Come on, let’s walk.”

* * *

It was a beautiful Hollywood night, warm, with a dry Santa Ana breeze that rustled through the fronds of the palm trees and made the neon of the street shimmer in the air, and they walked along the glittering sidewalk sprinkled with the bronze and terrazzo stars of radio, TV, film and music personalities.

Mick strolled along with his coat thrown casually over his shoulder, very GQ, and his hand firmly around hers.

“Where did you learn to dance like that?” she demanded.

“Where did you?” he countered. “Look, Barbara Stanwyck.” He pointed down at a star as they passed.

“Are you sure you’re not an actor?” she asked, suspiciously.

“I swear.” He put his hand on his heart. “I just learned to dance to get girls.”

“Huh,” she said. “Most men aren’t that smart.”

“Most men aren’t that ambitious. Rita Hayworth,” he said, and pointed at a star. And then he added, “You’re not all that fond of actors, are you?” It was more a statement than a question.

She looked away uncomfortably. “I’ve lived here all my life,” she said defensively.

“That would do it,” he agreed. He pointed down again. “Jimmy Durante.” Then he looked back up at her. “Is there something else, though?” He paused. “An actor broke your heart, maybe?”

“Not an actor. An actress,” she confessed impulsively.

Mick looked startled.

“My mother,” she told him. “She had the dream. But it didn’t happen for her. Just bit parts, a lot of—”

“‘Sound and fury, signifying nothing,’” he finished for her.

She looked at him wryly. “Exactly.”

“That’s rough.”

She shook her head. “Rough is not the word. I can’t feel sorry for myself. I had absolutely everything growing up. My father loved me, and my mother—she loved me, too, in her way. I had a great education, a wonderful home. I have my cousins, I have Merlin, I have my job....”

“But you had a mother who was never there for you. Don’t make light of it, sweetheart, it hurts.” He stopped on the sidewalk and brushed a hand through her hair, looking into her eyes with that penetrating green gaze. “You don’t have to play tough with me.” His fingers were moving on her face, and it was all she could do not to melt into him and be lost.

She pulled away with effort. “You sound like you know something about actors.”

He smiled faintly. “I’ve lived here all my life.”

And then it suddenly hit her what was bothering her about her conversation with Harvey Hodge. He’d been so impressed that she’d walked in with “George Clooney.” But Harvey was a shifter himself; he should have been able to see that the “Clooney” she’d been with was a fake.

But he hadn’t.

Why?

She didn’t for a moment think that Mick was George Clooney, nothing like that. And she knew he was a highly skilled shifter. It was just that another highly skilled shifter—and professional gossip—like Harvey should have been able to spot the deception.

Mick was watching her closely. “All right, what are you brooding about?”

“I’m not brooding,” she began.

“Oh yes, you are. When you go silent for more than a half minute, you’re concocting plots and conspiracies. So, I want to know what I’m being suspected of.” He looked at her directly, that gaze she couldn’t hide from.

“All right,” she said defensively. “All right. It was Harvey Hodge.”

He looked truly disgusted. “Oh, my God, what did that self-important, self-serving little shi— shifter have to say about me?”

“Nothing. That’s the problem.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

And she decided, I’m just going to say it. Why not?

“He came up to me and wondered what I was doing with George Clooney,” she said. There. It was out. Straight-up.

Mick stared at her, bemused. “That’s it?”

She was pointedly silent.

“And what does that translate to, in that devious little mind of yours?”

“He couldn’t tell it was you in shift,” she burst out. “Not only is he a shifter, it’s his whole job to expose people, and he couldn’t tell what was going on.” It took her a moment of mental scrambling to even be able to voice the implications. “If you can do that, you really are good.”

He held her eyes. “Oh, I am. Very good.” And then he laughed. “Barrie, I did it to please you. Does everything have to be a conspiracy?”

“What makes you think George Clooney does anything for me?” she said without thinking.

“Oh, really?” he said with a spike of interest. “Not Clooney?” He looked her over speculatively, so intimately she felt herself blush from the soles of her feet to the crown of her head. “Who, then?”

“Well...”

“Oh, come on, tell. Is it a pirate you’d be wanting, me love?”

Suddenly she was looking at Johnny Depp, pirate accent and all.

“Or maybe you prefer someone a little more classic?”

It was Cary Grant in front of her now, that sculpted face, the quirky, bemused arch of his eyebrows...

As they walked, he continued to shift.

“Nope, nope, nope, doggone it, I’ve got it....” And there was Jimmy Stewart, with his unforgettable stammer.

“A little younger?” Leo DiCaprio looked out at her with the heartbreaking eyes of Jack in Titanic.

“A little rougher?” Now she was walking alongside Russell Crowe, striding with the sexy bulk of L.A. Confidential.

Marlon Brando. Paul Newman. Robert Redford.

She was bowled over by the transitions. She was walking with a pantheon of the most gorgeous men that Hollywood had ever produced.

“Stop. Stop.” She was laughing, giddy, breathless.

Suddenly his hands were on her waist and he was looking down into her eyes. “What, then?” His voice was low and husky. “Tell me what you want.”

And Barrie looked back at him. “I want to know who you are. I want you to be you.”

He leaned down to her and kissed her, with all the color and neon of the Boulevard pulsing around them.

And as his lips feasted on hers, she felt all the sexy roughness of Russell Crowe, the dashing wildness of Johnny Depp, the innocent beauty of a young Leo DiCaprio, and the aristocratic charm of Cary Grant, all rolled into one endlessly fascinating, endlessly desirable man.

Heat flooded through her, from her lips to the very core of her; she felt she’d just burst into flame. His tongue was inside her mouth, tasting, teasing...and then plunging, sliding so deep she lost her balance. But he caught her, lifted her up and set her on the low wall of a planter, arching her backward so he could crush her mouth open under his. Her back was against the brick of the building, and he was pulling her hips forward against his, then cupping her breasts in his hands. Her nipples strained through the beaded silk of her bodice, into his palms, and now he moaned and lifted his head to kiss down her neck, biting, sucking, turning her insides molten.

Her legs curled around his thighs, and the huge bulge of him was pulsing urgently against her. She gasped in delirium as he kissed her cleavage, his tongue slipping inside her bra to lick her nipples, and she could feel him throbbing against her core, half-inside her even through their clothes. She felt herself opening from within, feverish to feel him inside her....

“God...oh, God...”

And suddenly he was pulling back, dragging her to her feet and holding her against him hard, but no longer kissing her. She could still feel the pulsing bulge of his sex against her thigh, but he’d ceased moving urgently against her, and she was reeling with desire and confusion. “What...?”

His fingers were strong on her back, and his voice was gruff and shaky, but resolved. “Our first time isn’t going to be in an alley. I want you in silk sheets and a proper bed and completely to myself.”

He held her close, and she stood pasted against him with her eyes closed as their racing hearts slowed... feeling his touch in every cell of her body as his fingers caressed her waist, and she breathed in the faint smell of cologne and the heady scent of pure male. He whispered her name against her ear, and she opened her eyes dreamily....

“Let’s go home,” he said huskily.

She turned in his arms—and froze.

Behind Mick, halfway down the block, a slim shadow was crouched down on the sidewalk. She stiffened against Mick and clutched at his arms. “Oh, my God...”

She broke away from him to run down the street, but in the few seconds she had taken to react, the figure had vanished.

She could hear Mick pounding down the sidewalk after her.

The mysterious shadow was gone, but there was a bouquet of flowers lying in the middle of the sidewalk. She stepped up to it slowly and looked down.

In a second Mick was by her side. “Barrie, what—” Then he fell silent, seeing what she saw.

They were looking down at Johnny Love’s star. Someone had placed a bouquet of flowers on it.

“I thought I saw Tiger,” she said to Mick softly. “But it couldn’t have been.”

She looked up and down the sidewalk. They were alone.