Книга - Keeper of the Shadows

Keeper of the Shadows
Alexandra Sokoloff


In a town where everyone wears a mask, who can you trust? As a crime beat reporter, Barrie Gryffald’s work is risky enough when she’s investigating mortal homicides. But when a teenage shifter and an infamous Hollywood mogul are both found dead on the same night, her Shapeshifter Keeper intuition screams Otherworldly.Reluctantly, she enlists her secret crush, Mick Townsend, a journalist with movie-star appeal. Together, they dig up eerie parallels to a forgotten cult-film tragedy, but it may be too late. With a cast of suspects ranging from vampire junkies to the ghosts of Hollywood past, no one can be trusted. Least of all Mick…










Mick Townsend.

A newbie on the paper, and a thorn in Barrie’s side from the instant he showed up. For one thing, jobs were scarce enough without extra competition. But that wasn’t even the start of it.

There was something almost preternaturally beautiful about him. Dark gold hair and green eyes, cheekbones you could cut glass with. The way he held himself, that casually aristocratic elegance that was the territory of actors and, well, aristocrats…He moved like a cat, strong as a panther and just as lithe.

Mick Townsend stopped right in her path, towering over her in an alarmingly commanding way. “Gryffald.”

Barrie put up all her defenses as she coolly replied, “Townsend,” and was proud that she didn’t blush.

“You’re looking very Audrey Hepburn tonight,” he said lazily, and looked her over, a direct look that managed to be slow and sexy and aloof all at the same time, which didn’t help her state of mind at all.




About the Author


ALEXANDRA SOKOLOFF is a California native and the daughter of scientist and educator parents, which drove her into musical theater at an early age.

At UC Berkeley (a paranormal experience all on its own) she majored in theatre. After college, Alex moved to Los Angeles, where she has made an interesting living writing novel adaptations, and original suspense and horror scripts, for numerous Hollywood studios.

The Harrowing, her debut ghost story, was nominated for both a Bram Stoker Award (horror) and an Anthony Award (mystery) as Best First Novel. She is the author of the paranormal mystery/thrillers The Price, The Unseen and Book of Shadows, and is the winner of a Thriller Award for her story The Edge of Seventeen.

Alex is also the author of Screenwriting Tricks for Authors, a workbook based on her internationally acclaimed blog and writing workshops.




Keeper of the Shadows


Alexandra Sokoloff






www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


This one’s for my beautiful and wildly talented

co-authors. Sisters, cousins, whatever you are,

Heather and Harley, I love you forever.




Chapter 1


Thereis nothing more beautiful than the city at night, thought Rosalind Barrymore Gryffald as she hit the freeway toward downtown.

Being that the city was Los Angeles, it was easier to feel that way late at night, the later at night the better, because traffic did let up eventually, even if it was sometimes well after midnight. But then, oh, then, the city Was all hers, in all its shimmering glory.

L.A. Lotus Land. The dream machine, the end of the rainbow. Was there anything in the world more romantic

And Rosalind Barrymore Gryffald—Barrie for short, which unfortunately she was; pixieish, people tended to say, to her eternal exasperation…a copper-eyed, copperhaired sprite of a girl—loved her town.

Oh, she knew L.A. had its detractors, the ones who were always joking that there was no there there. But those people just didn’t know where to look. She knew where to look. In fact it was her job to look.

Not only did she live in the most exciting city in the world, she also knew its most secret excitements: there was a world within the world, even more magical than the movies. And that world was her job.

Her day job…well, her day job was actually a night job, the night shift on the Los Angeles Courier where she worked as a crime beat reporter. But her secret job, her all-the-time job, her passion, her calling, was Canyon Keeper of the shape-shifters of Los Angeles.

She was startled out of her thoughts when the digital billboard on the Wilshire Grand Building suddenly loomed up in the dark, a twenty-story-high architectural lighting tour de force featuring car-size butterflies flitting across a rainbow landscape. She was at the downtown turnoffs already.

She steered her vintage Peugeot—which she’d wheedled out of her father when he’d left the country—to the right and took the Third Street exit into the island of glittering skyscrapers that was downtown. L.A. was made up of those dense clusters of tall buildings sticking up in the middle of the relatively flat residential neighborhoods around them, a landscape that was never so apparent as at night.

Downtown L.A. was the oldest and most decrepitly grand of those islands, and the Courier building was right in the middle of it.

It was always a thrill to drive up to the historic Art Deco building in the heart of downtown, lit up like a wedding cake at night, to drive under the building using her very own official parking card.

Barrie charged up the escalator from the garage and breezed past the huge decorative globe in the center of the domed lobby. Ten-foot-high murals towered above her—her cousins would say everything towered above her, but she had a long history of ignoring them.

She rode the decadent Deco elevator up to the sixth floor and felt her heart lurch a little as the ancient contraption jerked, then settled.

Something was up; she could tell from the second she stepped into the newsroom. The entire floor was buzzing.

Her reporter’s mind scrolled through the possibilities. Terrorist attack? Stock market crash? Assassination?

Or, seeing as this was L.A… .Celebrity death?

She grabbed the sleeve of the nearest scrambling reporter, tall, thin, redheaded Steve from Metro.

“What’s going on?”

“Saul Mayo,” Steve said breathlessly, and yanked his arm away.

Saul Mayo, head of World International Pictures, one of the town’s six major movie studios.

“What about him?” Barrie demanded, turning to yell after him.

“Dead!” he called over his shoulder, and skittered away.

Barrie relaxed, at least as much as she ever relaxed. Not that it wasn’t big news; in an industry town, a studio head in his relative prime dying was not just big news, it was huge.

But it wasn’t the kind of news that she was in journalism to pursue. There was only one kind of story that interested her, and that was anything concerning the Others and the Otherworld.

Because Barrie, along with her cousins Rhiannon and Sailor Ann Gryffald, was a very new member of a very old tradition. They were Keepers, from a long line of Keepers, charged with an ancestral duty to guard and keep peace among the communities of vampires, shape-shifters, werewolves, Elven and all non-human beings—the Others, who lived all over the world, hiding in plain sight among mortal populations.

As anyone who knows anything about paranormal beings might guess, there was a large population of Others in Los Angeles. Just as mortals were lured by the shining promises of the city, so, too, were Others drawn here, some hoping to exercise their talents and find the spotlight as actors, musicians and other artists, some seeking protective camouflage in this famously eccentric town. There was a saying that “Everyone in California is from somewhere else.” So not true; Barrie herself was a proud native Californian. But in a community of outsiders, no one looked twice at someone different, and that made Others relatively safe in their conspicuousness.

And almost since the first appearance of an Other, there had also been families born with the mark of certain beings, indicating their potential as Keepers: mortals with some of the powers of the beings they were marked with who could communicate and facilitate between the worlds.

Keepers were sworn to uphold the Code of Silence: to keep the secret of the existence of the Otherworld. And to that end, if there was trouble or outright crime in the Otherworld that threatened to spill over into the human world and expose the existence of the Others, it was the Keepers’ duty to keep the peace—quietly.

Barrie had been waiting to take on that duty all her life. Even so, it had been a shock when it happened so quickly, just months ago, when her father and his two brothers, Keepers of the shifters, vampires and Elven of the L.A. canyon districts, were called to the newly established international Council of Keepers in the Netherlands. Barrie, Rhiannon and Sailor had suddenly been thrust into the Keeping of the Canyon.

Now, instead of the endless waiting and training, it was all real. Rhiannon and Sailor had already been instrumental in solving two recent cases, a series of murders committed by a power-mad vampire and the mystery of a rare blood disease killing off Elven.

Every morning—well, some days more like afternoon—since Barrie had taken the oath in front of the local Keepers’ Council, she’d woken up with a fluttery feeling of exhilaration, almost like that feeling you get when you know you’re going to meet…someone. It wasn’t that she wanted trouble, or crime, of course not, but trouble was inevitable, and when it came, she would be ready for it.

Until just recently she’d been struggling along doing “filler” stories on the Courier, and in the current journalistic climate, with newspapers shutting down all over the country, she’d felt lucky to get those. But a piece she’d done on the string of vampire murders that her cousin Rhiannon and Rhiannon’s now-fiancé, LAPD homicide detective Brodie McKay, had solved, had not just solidified her job but moved her up to the crime beat.

Barrie’s job on the paper perfectly complemented her Keeper duties. As a crime beat reporter—well, actually, crime beat stringer, but she would get there eventually—she was able to get a first look at police reports to scan them for Other-related crimes that needed immediate attention or intervention, to ensure that: 1) humans were not harmed by out-of-control Others, and 2) the Others and the Otherworld remained a secret from the human population of the city.

So, Saul Mayo the movie mogul, being a human, or formerly human, didn’t interest her.

Good riddance, anyway, she thought uncharitably. Mayo hadn’t been known for his humanitarian efforts.

She steered away from the swarm of her colleagues and was headed for the local crime editor’s desk when she saw the one person she didn’t want to see coming toward her.

Mick Townsend.

A newbie on the paper, and a thorn in Barrie’s side from the instant he’d shown up. For one thing, jobs were scarce enough without extra competition. But that was only the start of it.

Townsend was waaay too good-looking to be a journalist, and too stylish, too. In a city of surreally gorgeous people, he was truly heart-stopping, if you liked men who were a combination of all the best parts of young Leo DiCaprio, Russell Crowe and Hugh Jackman.

Only movie stars were supposed to look like that; there was something almost preternaturally beautiful about him. Dark gold hair and green eyes under perfectly arched eyebrows, cheekbones that could cut glass. The way he held himself, that casually aristocratic elegance that was the territory of actors and, well, aristocrats. …He moved like a cat, strong as a panther and just as lithe. He was tall, too, which made Barrie glad she was wearing some serious heels—tonight, Chanel pumps to go with the little Balenciaga number she’d found in her favorite thrift store in Echo Park. Vintage was a particularly good look for her. People were smaller then, too.

Mick Townsend stopped right in her path, blocking her way and towering over her in an alarmingly commanding way. “Gryffald.”

She put up all her defenses as she coolly replied, “Townsend,” and was proud that she didn’t blush.

“You’re looking very Audrey Hepburn tonight,” he said lazily, and looked her over, a direct examination that managed to be slow and sexy and aloof all at the same time, which didn’t help her state of mind at all.

She sidestepped him and kept walking toward the crime editor’s desk. Unfortunately, he turned and walked with her.

“A lady on the scent of a story, if I ever saw one.”

“Looks like there’s only one story tonight,” she said, glancing at their huddled coworkers.

“Ah, yes. The Prince of Darkness. Requiescat in pace,” Townsend added. Rest in peace.

But there was a bitter quality to his voice that belied his words, and made Barrie stop and look at him for a moment; it seemed more than mere journalistic cynicism, but some deeper feeling.

Interesting, she thought. I wonder what that’s about?

“But that’s not a story you’re interested in,” he said.

“No point. Even if he was murdered, they’re not going to give it to a rookie like me,” she answered innocently. “Enjoy your night.”

She sidestepped him and continued to her boss’s desk where she snagged the police blotter while he paced and talked on the phone a few desks down. She caught his eye and held up the blotter, and he nodded at her distractedly. Now that she’d checked in, her time was hers for the rest of the night.

She had a desk of her own in an anonymous row of desks, and she settled down at it with the blotter while her coworkers swarmed on the Mayo story.

Unfortunately, her hormones didn’t settle down with her; her pulse was racing out of control from that brief encounter with Townsend.

What kind of name is Mick Townsend for a journalist, anyway? she thought irritably. It sounded more like a rock star. And she had a rule: no musicians, no actors. In L.A., that was simple survival.

But she didn’t really think Townsend was an actor. She had darker suspicions: he was a spy from corporate, skulking around to find more people to give the ax. The newspaper would be all of three pages long by the time the suits were through with the bloodbath; it seemed never-ending these days, the worst time in the world to be a journalist. She’d had to fight tooth and nail for the tiny bit of turf she had on the paper.

Fortunately, as a Keeper, she had more than a passing acquaintance with tooth and nail, or fang and claw, or just about any variation on the above. And bloodbaths, come to that. When a person dealt daily—or at least weekly—with the loves, lives, deaths and turf wars of vampires, werewolves, shape-shifters, Elven and whatever supernatural creatures happened to present themselves, a little backbiting among journalists was small potatoes.

Well, okay, it wasn’t the backbiting that was the problem this time, it was Townsend’s charm.

Barrie really hated the fact that he made her uncomfortably aware that she hadn’t had sex in…she didn’t even want to think about it. Except that she was being forced to think of it—constantly. With Rhiannon engaged to Brodie McKay and Sailor newly engaged to nightclub owner Declan Wainwright, the House of the Rising Sun was a literal hotbed, licit though it might be. Barrie frowned and thought darkly, Might as well rename it House of the Rising—

All right, enough of that, she told herself, and forced herself to stare down at the police blotter.

The list of the night’s crimes was already long: Burglary/Theft from Motor Vehicle. Grand Theft. Vandalism. Battery. And the usual collection of oddities: the owner of a La Brea Avenue business reported that someone tipped over a Porta Potty and attempted to break into a storage barn; a Vista Street woman reported a female who had delivered pizza to the address the night before had shown up at 2:00 a.m. with blood dripping from her nose and asking for money; a resident of Orange Grove Avenue reported an unknown person stole four solar lights and a garden gnome from his yard.

Barrie knew how to scan for potentially Other-related crimes; you developed a kind of sixth sense about it. But tonight it didn’t take any special skill to find the case that she would need to look into; it jumped out at her from the reports as if it were lit up in neon:

Dead body in alley off Hollywood and Gower. Mixed race, late teens, street name Tiger. Sus- pected OD.

Barrie felt as if she’d been punched in the stomach.

She knew Tiger. Had known him. He was a street kid, a runaway, one of the eternal hopefuls who left their small towns and got on buses to Hollywood with big dreams of fame, fortune, love—and ended up turning tricks on the Boulevard instead.

Boulevard of Broken Dreams, they called it. You got that right, she thought, feeling a flare of anger and grief.

The Boulevard was part of her Keeper jurisdiction, so she spent a lot of time with the street kids. She was drawn to them, she ached for them, most of them running away from exploitation at home only to fall into the hands of the same kind of predator on the streets.

Tiger was a shape-shifter, and like so many others, he’d thought he could use that talent to make his fortune.

But it was a sad fact that despite their incredible talents, shifters were rarely productive members of society. Their sense of self was too amorphous. After all, they could and would subtly alter their physical form to match other people’s fantasies. And because of that inconstancy and lack of center, they tended toward indulgence of all kinds, which too often turned to addiction.

Along with that ability to create fantasy, they were also some of the most manipulative creatures on the planet. And they far too often got caught in their own manipulative traps.

Tiger was smart, and he was manipulative. Just sixteen or seventeen years old—Barrie had never been able to pin him down about his age—but already he was an expert hustler. He had been using his shifter talents to attract an upscale clientele. She had been sure he was also stealing as well as conducting any number of other illicit activities.

It had taken some time for him to trust her, but Barrie blended in well with the street waifs; at her height and weight she could easily look like no more than a kid herself.

She’d worked on Tiger, bought him meals, flattered him, joked with him, chided him, and time after time had hammered him that he could be using his talents for anything he chose, no dream too big. And she’d thought she’d gotten through to him. She’d persuaded him to check in to a local shelter, Out of the Shadows, that specialized in getting young prostitutes off the street and out of the life.

Not out far enough, as it turned out.

“Damn it,” she said softly.

Someone spoke behind her, startling her. “Gryffald?”

She whirled in her chair—and saw Mick Townsend looking down at her with an odd expression. She suddenly realized she was crying.

Townsend was staring at the tears running down her cheeks. “What is it?” he asked gruffly.

She swiped at her face. “Nothing. I’m fine.”

He was about to speak again when she pushed her chair back, stood abruptly and walked out past him, willing herself not to break into tears again.

She made it across the newsroom and out without crying, but broke down again in the elevator.

Damn Townsend, anyway; he seemed to have a radar for every vulnerability. She hit the side of the elevator with her fist, pounding in frustration, and the concrete pain of it brought her back to herself. Somewhat.

She wasn’t being fair, she knew. Townsend couldn’t help the way he looked. Maybe he had come to L.A. to be an actor, as so many people did. And most came to their senses and realized the competition was hopeless and the ruthlessness required to act soul-killing, and wisely chose other professions.

But some were not so wise or so lucky. Those were the ones who clung to the desperate delusion that they would “make it,” that stardom was just around that next corner. Instead they ended up used-up in their twenties…

Or like Tiger. Dead.

And most likely with no one even to claim his body.

She could do that for him, at least. So she swiped away her tears and stood straighter, resolved.




Chapter 2


Barrie wasn’t exactly dressed for the morgue, so she changed in the car in the parking lot. She never knew where the job would take her, so she always carried several changes of clothes in her trunk. She chose old jeans and a tank top and hoodie, washable and discardable in case she got into an autopsy room. You never could quite get out the smell of the morgue.

Then she drove east, toward the L.A. County Cor-oner’s Office, just minutes from downtown in Boyle Heights.

Her purpose was layered. She had to make sure the right medical examiner got assigned Tiger’s autopsy; it wouldn’t do to have a mortal cutting into a shifter. Too many questions could come up that were better avoided. Then she needed to see if there was anything unusual about the death, and whether there might be some danger for other shifters: a bad batch of meth, for example. Also with the recent scare of a blood disease affecting one species, she had to make sure there was nothing just plain bizarre going on. But mostly, she wanted to make arrangements for Tiger’s funeral.

The coroner’s office was in a gorgeous Baroque building, red with cream trim, dramatic steep front steps lit by streetlamps that cast eerie shadows as Barrie climbed the stairs toward the House of Death.

She signed in with the attendant on duty, telling him she had an appointment with Dr. Antony Brandt, and proceeded down the chilly hallways, trying not to look in through the doors where dozens of bodies in various stages of investigation and storage were laid out.

She reached an office with a plate on the door reading Dr. Antony Brandt, Senior Pathologist. Almost as soon as she’d knocked, Brandt was opening it. Tony Brandt looked every bit the werewolf, even if you didn’t know he actually was one. He had a head full of thick, bushy hair, a powerful barrel torso, shaggy eyebrows over watchful eyes and an ever-present five-o’clock shadow.

He acknowledged Barrie with an ambiguous smile. “I knew you’d be here. Everyone else is lining up for a look-see at the Prince of Darkness.”

Exactly what Mick Townsend had called him, Barrie thought. And, of course, it made sense that the coroner’s office would be expediting Mayo’s autopsy. In death, as in life, celebrities got the spotlight in Hollywood.

“Just as well,” Brandt continued. “No one will bother with this kid.”

So, already a main part of her mission was taken care of. Brandt was taking Tiger’s autopsy, and he was not about to reveal that Tiger had been a shifter. Any Others who worked in criminal justice were experts at hiding the existence of their fellows.

“Can I see him?” she asked.

Brandt led the way down the hall to one of the autopsy suites. In the observation room he handed her a white gown, mask and gloves, which she slipped on before they entered the cutting room.

It was a large space; several procedures could take place at one time. Now, however, the room was quiet and dim, and a single body lay on a single gurney on the far left.

Barrie was startled to see that Tiger was already laid out, not to mention that he had the room to himself. L.A.’s crime rate being what it was, it was about as hard to get a table at the morgue as it was to get one at the town’s latest, hippest restaurant. But Brandt had his own priorities, and they were much like hers, namely to keep the existence of the Otherworld community a secret from the mortal one.

Brandt spoke, as if in answer to her silent thoughts. “Moved him to the head of the list. No one’s going to notice while Mayo is lying in state.”

Barrie thought that a revealingly cynical remark. Even for a studio head, Mayo had a lot of ill will swirling around him.

She approached the table and looked down at the young shifter, so pale on the slab. They always looked so much smaller in death. She felt tears prickling her eyes again. Such a smart, cheeky kid. Such a waste. Such a crime.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered to him, and touched his hand. It was cold, and she shivered. If she’d only tried harder, followed up sooner…

Brandt was watching her. “You knew him, then.”

She set her jaw, trying to compose herself. She wasn’t going to do Tiger any good by falling apart now.

“Who caught the call?” she asked Brandt.

He named a couple of homicide detectives in the Hollywood Division. “They didn’t think it was important enough to involve Robbery Homicide,” he added.

Robbery Homicide was a special division in the LAPD, the most coveted assignment. It handled the highest-profile murders. Certainly Mayo would have been moved there instantly. The haves and have-nots again.

“Is there any chance it was suicide?” Barrie didn’t think so, but she had to ask.

“Oh, this was no suicide.” She tensed up in every muscle. “Why?”

“He didn’t die in that alley. the body was moved. That’s clear from the patterns of livor mortis.”

Barrie knew that livor mortis meant the settling of the blood after death due to gravity. It appeared as bluish, blotchy discoloration of the skin where the blood had pooled. She listened closely as Brandt continued, indicating regions of Tiger’s body with a short metal pointer as he spoke.

“Lividity does not appear anywhere that the body has been in direct contact with the ground. He was found sitting up, slumped against a wall, but if you look at the pattern here, you’ll see there is no lividity in the relevant parts of his legs. He died lying down on his back. He was positioned sitting up at some later time.”

Brandt loved to expound, and she was grateful for it; she picked up all kinds of useful information from his mini-lectures.

“Now ask me what else is interesting about this,” he said.

Barrie tensed up. “What else is interesting about this?” she asked softly.

He held her eyes with his piercing ones. “I’m not entirely sure, but it looks to me like the unfortunate young man may have had some help.”

“Some help dying?” Barrie stammered. “So, he was murdered?”

“You’re getting ahead of yourself, fair Rosalind.” There weren’t many people Barrie allowed to call her by her real name, but Brandt was one. It was his Shakespearean quality; everything he said sounded vaguely Elizabethan. “But these bother me.” He aimed the pointer at some faint purple circles at the top of Tiger’s arm. They looked almost like—

“Fingerprints?” she asked, feeling a prickling at the back of her neck. “You think he was held? Forced?”

“Could be. On the other hand, it’s common for addicts to help each other shoot up. And an addict bruises easily, so it may mean nothing. I am merely pointing it out as an anomaly, and in fact…I never said it. But it’s something to keep in mind.”

“Now, moving a body is a crime, but it’s not necessarily murder. If he was shooting up in a gallery and someone didn’t want the cops around, they may just have dumped him. But I don’t think so. I think someone wanted this kid dead. He definitely didn’t stick that needle in his own arm.”

“Murder…” Barrie said, her thoughts far away. And she knew exactly where to go to find out what she needed to know. “I have to go,” she mumbled.

Brandt raised his impressive eyebrows. “I’m cutting him in a half hour. You don’t want to stay?”

Barrie shuddered. True, she regularly worked with the undead, but the actual dead were a different story. And she had no desire at all to see Brandt slice into Tiger.

“I need to get out to Hollywood to see someone. Can I check back with you about the tox screen and whatever else you find?”

“Of course. And I’ll make sure your soon-to-be-cousin knows.”

Barrie had to blink to understand that Brandt was referring to Brodie McKay.

“Thanks. And, Tony…” She had to swallow to get the words out. “I’ll claim the body if no one else does. I’ll make sure the Council gives him a proper burial.”

He smiled at her sadly. “You’re a good kid, kid.”

Barrie was both buzzed and depressed as she left the coroner’s building. She could feel the adrenaline rush of a mystery, the thrill of the hunt; at the same time she was grieving Tiger’s death and the possibility of evil intent behind it, which kicked her protective Keeper instincts into high gear.

If a shifter had been murdered on her turf, there was going to be hell to pay.




Chapter 3


There were two main east-west Boulevards that ran through the district called Hollywood: Sunset Boulevard and iconic Hollywood Boulevard itself. Despite the tourist trappings of the day, at night the Boulevards had a shadowy, sleazy side. Between those thoroughfares every conceivable taste could be serviced: girls, boys, top, bottom, pain, pleasure…and some tastes inconceivable to most human beings.

This no-man’s-land was where Tiger’s body had been found, and where Barrie was headed next. She knew Tiger ran with another young prostitute who called himself Phoenix, and he would be her best bet for information. The street kids often banded together for protection and community; Tiger and Phoenix had cribbed together, sometimes in one of the appalling motels that lined the side streets of Hollywood, sometimes on the stoops of shops or warehouses late at night. Whether the boys’ intimacy translated to actual sex was an open question; Barrie suspected the two had been lovers as well, in some ambiguous way, but drugs often killed any real sex drive. Phoenix was a shifter, too, but nowhere near as skilled as Tiger was. She reflected that it was a talent a bit like acting, in a way. Some had a little; only a very few were stars. Tiger had been a star. Not that it had helped him, apparently.

She found Phoenix in a foul but atmospherically lit alley where she knew a lot of the street kids congregated in between tricks to recover, dose and socialize. He was sitting on a dirty stoop, smoke from a cigarette curling around his head. A perfectly cinematic shot, if not for his obvious agony. He was ravaged with weeping, and broke down again when he saw Barrie. All he managed was “You heard,” before his words dissolved in tears.

She had delivered Phoenix to the Out of the Shadows shelter at the same time as she’d taken Tiger there; the two youths were joined at the hip, so to speak. She’d suspected at the time that Phoenix, by far the weaker of the two, would be back on the street in no time. She’d had higher hopes for Tiger.

She sat beside him and rubbed his back lightly as he cried, careful not to touch too hard, too much.

“He was working again?”

“Not the street!” Phoenix said defiantly. “He was moving up. Building a real list.”

Barrie bit her lip to suppress an outburst, considering that a “list” was basically a collection of sexual predators. What there was about prostitution that could be considered “moving up” in any way was so far beyond her that she couldn’t even begin to process it, but she didn’t want to insult or alienate Phoenix. She wasn’t about to denigrate any bit of pride the boy could take in his profession. And pride was what Phoenix was expressing, as his words spilled out about his friend.

“Tiger was good. He could do anyone. Jimmy, Kurt, Jim, Heath, Johnny. He was goin’ places.”

Phoenix meant that Tiger could change his appearance to look like the dead stars Phoenix named. Barrie realized with a shiver that they were all stars who’d died tragically young, either from addiction or their own reckless behavior, shooting stars who burned out too fast on their talent and lifestyles: James Dean in a car wreck at twenty-four, Kurt Cobain a suicide at twenty-seven, Jim Morrison of a heroin overdose (hotly disputed) at twenty-seven, and the youngest of all of them, Johnny Love, a sixteen-year-old movie idol who in the 1990s had burned up the screen in cult classics like Race the Night and Youngbloods and then died shooting up a lethal speedball at sixteen, just after the huge success of his last movie, Otherworld.

Barrie thought uncomfortably, and not for the first time, how chillingly easy it was to become what you pretended to be. Now Tiger had joined the list of his dead idols.

She shook her head and tried to focus on the boy beside her. “Was he working for someone?” She avoided the word “pimp.”

Phoenix straightened his shoulders, clearly proud of his dead friend. “He was doin’ it himself. He hooked up with someone big. Real big. He had a regular date with someone in the movies, really connected, who was into shifters big-time. And he was paying big money for Tiger to shift.”

Barrie’s heart started beating faster. “Someone in the movies? Do you know who?”

Phoenix shook his head. “Someone who was going to do things for him. Get him parts. Tiger was really high about it.”

Could it be? A connection between Tiger and Saul Mayo? Barrie had the strongest feeling, an almost psychic hit, that she was on to something. Maybe something huge.

“A producer? Director? Actor?” she asked, trying to be casual.

“Tiger didn’t say much.”

“Did you ever actually see this guy?”

Phoenix shook his head. “I saw his car once. A limo.”

Not helpful. Every third car in this town was a limo.

“If that person—or anyone—comes around looking for Tiger, can you let me know?” She gave Phoenix a card; he looked down at it listlessly and shrugged. Her heart tore. “Phoenix, I can drop you at Out of the Shadows. You know Lara would be glad to have you.”

His eyes grew hooded. “Maybe I’ll cruise over later.”

She sighed. It was so hard to get the kids out of the life. It was abuse, but for them it was abuse on their own terms. She touched his arm.

“You call me if you need anything, Phoenix. I’m so very sorry about Tiger.”

Mayo’s body had been discovered at the Chateau Marmont. The hotel was a Hollywood institution, built in the 1920s and modeled after a French castle, with one elegant old main building towering over a spread of luxury bungalows that fairly dripped old film studio elegance. It was known for its beautiful views, ornate turrets and tiny wooden elevators, the junglelike pool area, and the young celebrity clientele populating the hopping cocktail bar.

Barrie pulled into the side alley where the front entrance was tucked away and looked up at the Gothic palace on the hill. Its aura had been paid for in blood, the hotel being the site of several legendary tragedies: John Belushi’s death from a drug overdose, and the near death of Jim Morrison, who used to joke that he used up the eighth of his nine lives when he fell headfirst onto a garden shed while trying to swing from a drainpipe to his window at the Chateau.

And tragically, sixteen-year-old Johnny Love.

Barrie recalled uneasily that Phoenix had said Johnny was one of Tiger’s favorite shifts.

And Johnny Love had died of an apparent overdose in his teens.

Just like Tiger, Barrie thought. So much like Tiger.

It was not much more than the cruel chance of Hollywood that one had ascended to iconic superstardom and the other had died anonymously in an alley.

She frowned as something prickled at the edges of her consciousness, some fact that she knew was important but that she couldn’t quite get to.

As she was grasping for the thought, she was distracted by the sight of a hearse pulling up, a Hollywood Ghost Bus loaded with tourists out to see “the darker side of Tinseltown.” Barrie grimaced; it was all oh-so-edgy and cool from the outside, but tonight she couldn’t see anything even resembling humor.

And now, she realized, the movie mogul Saul Mayo would be part of the tour, maybe even more of a celebrity in death than he had been in life. It was outrageous, enraging. And so very, very Hollywood.

Barrie breathed in to calm herself. Then she gave up her Peugeot to a valet and walked into the hotel through the side alley entrance.

As she entered the dim, elegant, edgy lobby, her mind was going a mile a minute. She knew she was going to have to play this carefully. She was bound to run into other journalists digging up dirt on Mayo’s death, and she didn’t want anyone else, not anyone, picking up on a possible connection between Mayo and Tiger.

Least of all Mick Townsend. But here he was, larger than life, strolling around the sunken, tiled lobby, looking irritatingly suave and baronial in the lush surroundings that came complete with grand piano, heavy velvet drapes and candelabra. He seemed not just at home but as if he owned the place.

“Gryffald,” he said, apparently unsurprised to see her. “Selling out and going for the Mayo story after all?”

“Just like you, I guess,” she retorted, but she was secretly glad he’d jumped to that conclusion. It would save her the trouble of making up a story to keep him from guessing the real trail she was on.

“So, how’d he die?” she asked. If Townsend was going to be so damned chummy she could at least get some information out of him.

“OD,” Townsend said shortly. “Some exotic drug cocktail. Coke, heroin and belladonna.”

Belladonna? Barrie thought, startled. Coke and heroin was a common combination, called a speedball, among hard-core drug users. Adding a hallucinogen, particularly one with such an occult history as belladonna, was more Other territory than human, although in Hollywood Others often started edgy trends that humans then adopted without knowing the Otherworldly source.

Mick continued, “Of course, we’re not allowed to report that. Total blackout until it’s confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt—or lawsuit.”

He circled the piano, stopped to run his fingers lightly and expertly over the keys. She recognized the opening of an old jazz standard, one of her dance favorites.

Damn, he could play the piano, too. Perfection was so annoying. Barrie felt a warmth spreading through her and was alarmed to find herself wondering what it would feel like to have him run those skilled fingers over her body.

All right, that has to stop now.

Townsend pushed back abruptly from the piano, grimacing. “The story’s already jumped the shark. It’s not enough that Mayo died of an OD at the Chateau Marmont. There’s some genius of a bellhop insisting that he checked into a bungalow with a young guy who was the spitting image of Johnny Love. Ghosts, for God’s sake,” he said, disgusted.

Now it was adrenaline Barrie felt racing through her, accelerating her thoughts.

A bellhop saw Johnny Love?

Phoenix said Johnny Love was one of Tiger’s favorite shifts.

Tiger had a powerful Hollywood client who paid big money for shifting.

Tiger’s body was moved from somewhere else into that alley.

She’d been right. There was a connection between Mayo and Tiger.

She was very still, letting none of her thoughts show on her face. In fact, she used a little glamour—a temporary illusion, a very unstable form of shifting that her father had taught her when she was just a little girl—to keep her expression neutral, a trick a shifter or shifter Keeper could do to make sure she wasn’t giving anything away.

It was a huge lead. What if Tiger had died here, with Mayo? What if—

Her breath momentarily stopped at the next thought.

What if they both had been killed here? Together?

She had to contact Brandt right away.

She swallowed to be sure her voice was steady and said, “That’s ridiculous. The ghost of Johnny Love? The hotel must be getting a kickback from the ghost tours.”

Townsend laughed, a rich, genuine sound that made Barrie’s face suddenly flush warm. “I bet they are.” Then he looked at her, a long look that made her even warmer. “I think we should have dinner and talk about it.”

She was caught totally off guard. “It’s almost two in the morning,” she pointed out.

“Breakfast, then,” he said. “Brunch. Cocktails. Whatever your body clock has in mind.”

She was itching to get to Brandt, which was why she responded without thinking. Really without thinking. “All I have in mind is bed.”

Townsend half smiled, but even his half smile sizzled through her whole body. “Even better.”

“I meant sleep,” she mumbled.

“Sleep is always good,” he said seriously. “Eventu-ally.”

Feeling completely out of control, Barrie said, “‘Eventually’ won’t work for me. Have a good night.” She turned and walked out of the lobby with whatever was left of her dignity, and immediately ducked into the ladies’ to avoid running into Mick again. She sat in front of one of the makeup mirrors and was extremely annoyed to see the red in her cheeks.

“You look like you’re in heat,” she muttered. But looking in the mirror gave her an idea. She put her hands flat on the top of the vanity, and as she stared into her reflection in the mirror, she slowed her breathing and concentrated on her auric body, the energetic field that a shifter manipulates in order to shift. As her eyes bored into the mirror, she began to see the faint outline of light around her own reflection. She pushed with her mind…and slipped on a different kind of glamour, what she thought of as a beauty spell, that would at least temporarily make her devastatingly attractive to anyone who looked at her. She closed her eyes, and felt the glamour float over her head and settle delicately over her entire body, like a gauzy dream of a dress, a sexy and intoxicating softness… .

She opened her eyes. …

The woman who looked back at her from the mirror had her features and coloring, but magically enhanced: a classic Hollywood goddess, too beautiful to be real. In this moment she could have given Lauren Bacall or Myrna Loy or Rita Hayworth a run for her money.

Barrie breathed in, feeling the pure power of that beauty. Then she stood and went out in search of the bellhop.

With the glamour on all she had to do was smile at the young male desk clerk and say she would just love to talk to the man who’d seen the ghost. The clerk pointed her toward the bell stand with a felled-by-lightning sort of look on his face.

The bellhop was in his late twenties but still had the gangly awkwardness of adolescence, and looked equally starstruck to see Barrie coming toward him.

“M-may I help you?” he stammered.

She gave him a dazzling smile. “I hope so. Did you really see the ghost of Johnny Love?”

“I’m not supposed to talk to any more reporters,” he said without much conviction.

“Good thing I’m not a reporter, then,” she said, and watched him waver, captivated by her false loveliness.

He glanced around to see if anyone could overhear them and then leaned toward her. “It wasn’t a ghost, it was a real person. He just looked exactly like Johnny.”

Not a ghost, then. A shifter, Barrie thought, and felt her pulse spike. Was it Tiger?

“And he checked in with Mayo?” she asked.

“I’m not supposed to say that,” the bellhop said, still enraptured.

“Good thing you didn’t, then.” She twinkled at him. “It will be our little secret.”

As she was turning away from him, she heard footsteps and an already achingly familiar voice speaking behind her. “Ah, there you are…darling.”

Darling? And what’s with the British accent?

As she turned, Mick Townsend was at her side, taking her hand, lifting it to kiss her fingers.

Whoa!

Even as desire rushed through her bloodstream at the feel of his lips on her skin, Barrie was reeling with confusion. What is this?

Mick gave her a look that sizzled through her to her toes as he spoke. The British accent was perfect, one of her perpetual downfalls, as intoxicating as catnip to a kitten. “I’ve just been telling this gentleman about our dilemma, and he’s been kind enough to find us a suite for the night.”

Barrie realized that the desk clerk was hovering behind him, and from the look he gave her it was clear the glamour she’d put on was still working.

She tried to focus and sort out what was going on. Our dilemma? A suite? Even as she wanted to rip into Townsend for whatever game he was playing, her intuition was telling her to go along with him, at least until she knew what was going on.

“It’s a bungalow, darling,” Mick said pointedly, and stroked her cheek, making her pulse skyrocket. “Pool-side.”

Bungalow. Mayo died in one of the bungalows. Her eyes widened, and although she kept her thoughts to herself, she saw Mick give her the barest nod. Can he really have talked his way into Mayo’s suite?

“That’s so very lovely of you,” she told the desk clerk, smiling as sweetly as she could. “We were—”

“—not looking forward to spending our wedding night at the airport,” Mick finished for her smoothly, his fingers now tracing an erotic pattern on her forearms.

Wedding night? Now, that’s just too much. She shot Mick a blistering look, and he smiled at her with mock adoration. “I explained all about the flight delay, our bags being held hostage. But none of that matters tonight. We have this beautiful place, we have each other… .”

He bent suddenly and kissed her. A lingering, promising, maddening touch of that full, firm mouth. Barrie felt the ground cartwheel beneath her.

Mick drew slowly back, his eyes on hers…then slid his fingers down her arm to take her hand and turned her so they both faced the desk clerk. “May we see it?”

Mick steered her after the desk clerk, and Barrie followed along in shock, down an abbeylike hall toward a set of heavy wooden doors. “He’s really putting us in Mayo’s room?” she whispered to Mick. It was a crime scene, or at least under investigation. She couldn’t imagine how he’d managed it.

“Not exactly,” he said, barely moving his lips.

She opened her mouth again, and when he put a finger on her lips to silence her, she could feel the tingle start from somewhere in her core. He nodded toward the desk clerk, and she went along in silence.

The clerk held the door open for them and they stepped outside into the junglelike plaza. The landscaping of the Chateau was lush and tropical—with tiny lights sprinkled in the trees for a fairy-tale glow—and designed for maximum privacy; as they followed the clerk, Barrie could barely see the outlines of the bungalows down the paths that curved off into the foliage. She was hyperconscious of Mick’s hand closed warmly around hers, his thumb stroking her fingers with a light, sensual touch…and hyperconscious that he was one of the most beautiful men she had ever seen. He carried himself like a rock star. She might have put on an artificial glamour, but there was a natural glamour about him that was almost hypnotic. She felt like the mistress of some exotic celebrity, suddenly transported into a Hollywood fantasy.

Ahead, the shimmering water of the pool glowed blue and inviting in the center of the buildings. The lights, the softly rippling water, the light breeze on her skin, the heat coming off the gorgeous man beside her…Barrie was having all kinds of ideas she didn’t want at all. Mick glanced at the pool and then at her face, and she suddenly had the uncomfortable feeling he knew exactly what she was thinking.

They had turned down one of the pale curving paths, and the desk clerk stopped in front of a bungalow that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. There was an arched door with windows on either side completing the curve, white roses and lilies in the planters beside it wafting an intoxicating scent. “Here we are,” the clerk said, and glanced at Barrie. Mick nudged her, and she gave the clerk a big smile.

“Gorgeous,” she said. “We’re so very grateful.”

The clerk opened the door, and she and Mick stepped into an elegantly retro cottage, low lights revealing clean lines and lots of windows with gauzy curtains, and everything impeccably decorated in old Hollywood style: Art Deco mirrors and tile, low curved couches, a small kitchen. Through a half-open door, Barrie caught a glimpse of a bedroom with a four-poster bed.

To her mortification, Mick caught her look and held her eyes before he turned to the desk clerk.

“It’s perfect, my man. We’re going to name our first child after you,” he declared, whipping out what Barrie was sure was a hundred-dollar bill, even as she was blushing as crimson as the desk clerk at the idea of a first child.

“There are robes in the closet, and…well…” The clerk cast around for something safe to say. “Enjoy.”

He backed out with one last furtive look at Barrie as he closed the door behind him.

“Beautiful,” Mick said, looking straight at her with a heart-stopping intensity, and for a moment she wondered if he meant the success of their ruse—or her. She was suddenly regretting changing into jeans and a hoodie. And then she realized where her thoughts were going and ordered herself to focus.

“Was this Mayo’s suite?” she demanded, moving farther inside, partly to get some distance from Mick, who was radiating way too much…everything. In every way.

“No. Two bungalows down,” he said, and she was infuriated to see he was holding back a smile that seemed all-too-knowing in the circumstances. “I saw the crime scene tape,” he added.

“What are you planning to do, break in?”

He turned his hand over and displayed a key in his palm. “Grabbed it from behind the desk while he was ogling you.”

Damn the man, he thought of everything.

“You can drop the accent now, you know,” she told him. It was making her want to sink into that four-poster bed and do unspeakable things to him. Or let him do unspeakable things to her. Or…

Stop that.

She had to keep her head.

“Oh, of course,” he said in his normal voice. “If you insist. Let’s see what we’ve got.”

He stepped to the front door and opened it a wedge to look out onto the dimly lit walkway, then nodded to Barrie. She moved past him through the door, a little too close for comfort. It seemed anytime she got within three feet of him her whole body started to melt down.

Mick came after her. “This way,” he said, and reached for her hand; she pulled away and stopped on the shadowed path. “Why bring me along?” she demanded. Journalists weren’t big on sharing scoops; the whole setup was highly suspicious.

He half smiled in the dark. “Because I needed to get out to the cottages and that clerk was so obviously smitten with you, I knew he’d bend over backward to help if you were involved.”

Barrie had to admit the glamour had done its work. In fact it even seemed to be affecting Mick a little; he kept looking at her in a way that was making it hard to concentrate on rooting out a story or even breathing.

“Are you coming or not?” he asked, and started down the path again.

She stood for a moment, then followed. “And what do you think you’re going to find in Mayo’s bungalow?” she said too crossly as she caught up with him.

The smile disappeared from his face; he looked serious, even grim. “I have no idea, but don’t you want to see?”

She had to admit she did.

She felt a thrill of the illicit as she followed him under the crime scene ribbon, stretched discreetly back from the main walkway. He gallantly held it up for her to slip under, and then they both moved down the path toward the door of the dark bungalow. It was bigger than the one the desk clerk had given them. Two bedrooms, Barrie thought, and higher ceilings.

Mick inserted the key in the lock, and she found herself holding her breath as the door swung open.

They stood for a moment letting their eyes adjust to the dimness.

The bungalow was even more luxurious than the clean-lined and pretty one they had just left. Here there was dark wood, velvet couches and stained glass in the arched windows, with thick Persian rugs on the hardwood floors. The lights from outside were an eerie glow through the colors of the stained glass.

Barrie looked around her in the dark, and even though she knew it was mostly her imagination, she felt a chill, a dark heaviness to the air. Did Tiger die here? Tiger and Mayo both? What intruder was here with them?

Mick moved forward slowly, stepping silently on the luxurious rugs. “Feel anything?” he asked her, his voice low and tense. She was unnerved, wondering what he could possibly mean.

“Creepy,” she said softly, surprising herself.

“Yeah,” he answered, and moved into the bedroom. She stood for a moment in the pools of red and blue and amber light, and then followed him.

The bed, like the one in the other suite, was four-poster, but this one was massive, with heavy and intricately carved posts, and the window screens were covered with iron filigree. There were standing candelabra lined up beside the bed; the whole setup had a medieval look that gave Barrie another shiver. Tiger, what did you get yourself into? she thought, her heart wrenching with sorrow. And then she felt a surge of blistering anger at the middle-aged mogul who had deliberately, maliciously brought a teenage boy into this kind of gilded prison to use for his narcissistic pleasures.

“The Prince of Darkness,” Mick said, his voice taut, almost as if he’d heard her thoughts, and Barrie heard the same strange bitterness in his voice that she’d noticed when he spoke of Mayo in the newsroom.

Why is that? she wondered. And what does he think he’s going to find here that the cops wouldn’t have already taken away?

Even as she thought it, Mick pulled something dark and metallic from his jacket pocket. Barrie’s heart constricted in fear.

Oh, my God…a gun… .

And then she went limp as she realized it was a small flashlight.

He turned it on and shielded the beam with his hand to keep the light away from the windows, then stepped to the bed where he ran the flashlight beam up the post closest to him.

Barrie watched, mystified. Mick stopped the light on the wooden post about a foot above the mattress and leaned in to examine the wood. She could see by the tightening of his body that he’d found whatever it was he was looking for.

“What is it?” she said, and heard her voice quaver.

He moved abruptly back and strode around to her side of the bed. She backed away to let him pass. He trained the light on the other post, at the same level as he had before, and once again she saw the change in his body language.

He looked at her and nodded toward the post, holding the flashlight steady, and she stepped warily in beside him to look.

She saw scratches in the post, light marks where the wood had been scraped.

“What…?” she started, and then she had a sinking feeling she understood.

“Handcuffs,” Mick said tightly.

“What does that…?”

“It means he did have a kid here with him. The scratches are fresh, and the evidence fits with Mayo’s…proclivities.”

Barrie was opening her mouth to demand how he knew, when suddenly they both froze at the sound of the door opening in the outer room.

A male voice called from the living room, “Who’s in here?”

Mick killed the flashlight and grabbed her hand, pulling her toward the closet. He silently hustled her inside, edging the door closed behind them. The closet was large, empty except for two plush terry-cloth spa robes hanging from the bar, an ironing board clipped to a rack and a shelf of spare pillows and blankets. He pulled her back against the wall and up against his side, behind the robes. Not enough cover by any means; if whoever was outside opened the closet door they would be discovered.

Barrie’s heart was pounding, and she could feel Mick’s heart beating the same fast tattoo beside her. He still had hold of her hand and even through her fear she was wildly aware of his body against hers, long, hard muscles and a faint musky cologne that only enhanced his purely intoxicating male scent. Barrie was faint with terror, adrenaline and a sudden, unwanted desire.

Footsteps approached on the hardwood floor. Whoever had been outside was in the bedroom now. A crack of light suddenly appeared under the closet door.

Barrie’s eyes widened, and Mick put his fingers over her mouth, locking his eyes on hers, willing her to be still.

Whoever was outside was silent, but she could feel his presence, hovering…and at the same time she was roiling inside from the touch of Mick’s fingers…her insides seemed molten.

Then the steps retreated and the crack of light under the closet door went dark.

Barrie breathed shallowly and silently, straining to hear. Someone just checking the room? Were they gone? Mick’s eyes were fixed on hers, and she felt a surge of relief…and attraction so strong her legs buckled underneath her.

Suddenly his arm was around her waist and he was leaning down to kiss her. Not a light brush of the lips this time, but a full-on, hungry, demanding kiss. Barrie gasped, shocked and terrified, but unable to push him away or protest. And then as his mouth opened hers and his hands moved on her waist, she didn’t want to protest; she was kissing him back, silently, greedily devouring him, biting his lips, her own hands slipping under his jacket, pulling up his shirt, to find hot, smooth skin. His hard stomach jumped as she stroked his skin, her hand moving lower… . His fingers were on her throat, and his tongue surged against hers, thrusting deeper.

She felt her body melting into his, opening herself to the hardness of his sex and thighs as he pressed her against the closet wall and kissed her neck, licking the hollow of her throat. her breasts were full in his hands, her nipples taut against his palms, and she wrapped her leg around his, and he lifted her hips so she could feel him hard and wanting, moving against her…seeking, straining through the fabric of their clothing… .

Barrie was breathing shallowly, aching to have him inside her. He pulled down the zip of her hoodie and bent to tongue her nipples through the thin cloth of her tank top, and she breathed into his ear, “Please…please…” and she didn’t know if she was saying please yes or please no…

And then terror overcame lust and she managed to push him away and they stood panting in the darkness.

In silence.

“He’s gone,” she said in a small voice.

Mick stepped forward, his face taut with desire. “Come here,” he said roughly, and reached for her again. She gasped and ducked and fled through the dark bungalow and into the night.

Driving was a challenge; her whole body was vibrating from Mick’s kisses, his maddening touches, the feel of his body hard on hers… . She was so weak with thwarted desire she could barely concentrate on the road.

But even in her confused—and aroused—state, she couldn’t rest until she swung back by the morgue to see Brandt.

From the time she was young, Barrie had been instructed never to speak of Keeper business on the phone or in email or a text; you never knew what conversation might be picked up in these zero-privacy days. She and her cousins had developed their own language to use if they needed to use the phone, and they had a code word they changed every week that clued the others in to a Keeper-related message. There was a whole set of codes used by Keepers and Others. But she needed to see Brandt to ask him a question she didn’t dare ask on the phone, even in code.

Five minutes in and out, and she had her answer.

Tiger’s tox screen had showed the same lethal combination of heroin, cocaine and belladonna as Saul Mayo’s.




Chapter 4


Barrie finally made it back to the canyon about dawn. the hills were bathed with rose-gold light, and the traf-fic…well, okay, the traffic had started hours ago, in the predawn dark, but she turned up the road toward the House of the Rising Sun, the compound she shared with her cousins, before the real gridlock kicked in.

She’d managed to curb the obsessive random images of sex with Mick in every conceivable position…by getting angry.

I don’t even know him. He doesn’t know me. And, okay, that was probably just the desk clerk outside the closet door, checking up on the room because he saw the light. But what if it wasn’t? Of all the stupid, dangerous, inappropriate things to do…

Her inner rant was momentarily silenced by another full-body flashback of Mick kissing her while he slowly ground his hard and oh-so-enticing length between her thighs… .

Stop it.

She clenched her fingers on the steering wheel and stared hard out the windshield to focus…and realized she was home.

The House of the Rising Sun—really a set of three houses—was protected by a tall stone wall that encircled it on multiple levels. She buzzed open the massive electric gate with a remote, and it swung wide to allow entry to the haunting drive, revealing the beautiful stone facades of the houses. Each of the cousins had her own, all part of the estate that had been left to their grandfather by his friend Merlin the Great: magician extraordinaire, aka Ivan Schwartz. The senior Gryffalds had passed the houses on to their three Keeper sons; Barrie had grown up in the house called Gwydion’s Cave, after a mythological Welsh magician. And now that their fathers had been called to council, the international gathering of Keepers, the three houses belonged to the three cousins.

Barrie parked her car in the circle and walked through the pool area with its gazebo and jasmine-covered trellises toward the Cave, as she thought of it.

The pool brought on another very unwelcome flashback of the dark sensuality of the Chateau and the feeling of Mick’s hands on her skin, her breasts… .

Stop it.

Barrie ran the last steps to her door and flung it open. Inside, she slammed the door behind her and had at least a moment of peace as she let herself relax in the familiar luxury of home.

Gwydion’s Cave was decorated with old peacock fans, marble pieces, antique mirrors and rich remnants of decadence from the days of the speakeasies. There was even a Victrola with a collection of recordings of the bawdiest songs from the 1920s.

It was a period Barrie especially vibrated to, a time when women threw off their corsets, claimed the vote and danced their way into independence in society. But she also loved the twenties for their sheer style, one of the few traits she shared with her complicated mother, so being able to live in the Cave, in such old Hollywood splendor, was icing on the cake of her Keeper existence.

She started down the hall lined with antique mirrors and felt a wave of exhaustion that had her swaying on her feet. A double murder, an Otherworldly mystery, and a powerful unexpected attraction…and it was up to her to sort it all. …

Sleep. I need to sleep. This all won’t seem so…over-whelming…in the morning.

She barely had the energy to engage the elaborate security system behind her, then she stumbled off to bed.

But of course she couldn’t sleep. She lay in her bed, a carved canopied thing with satin sheets and pillows, and could think only of Mick Townsend.

God, she wanted him. Her whole body was on fire…the slightest move of her clothing or the sheets on her skin was making her crazy with desire.

She closed her eyes and stretched her arms out to her sides, imagining Mick holding her down, the whole delicious weight of him on top of her, his mouth on her breasts, his knee parting her thighs so his hot hard length could slide into her core… .

The fantasy was so strong, the memory of his touch so vivid, she could almost feel him on top of her, his hands on her wrists, the tip of him teasing her open…and then the thrust of him, the massive pleasure of his sex inside her, filling her, inflaming her… .

She moaned and writhed underneath him, and his thrusts deepened…quickened…driving her to the brink…it was so good…so real… .

Her eyes flew open and above her she saw—

Golden skin, blond hair, blue eyes…

She gasped aloud and sat straight up in shock and terror.

Daylight streamed through the cracks in the drapes.

She was alone.

Well, not completely alone. Her cat, Princess Sophie, was curled up on a pillow beside her. Sophie lifted her head to blink at her sleepily.

Barrie caught her breath and lay slowly back. “Johnny Love,” she said softly. “Oh, my God.”

That was the dream image she’d had before she’d woken up. Not Mick, but the young dead actor.

She shivered, disturbed.

But she knew where the image had come from.

As she’d hit the bed last night—this morning—she’d kept her eyes open long enough to reach for her iPad and search “Saul Mayo and Johnny Love” on Google. She had learned one very interesting thing. Mayo had been the producer of Johnny Love’s last movie, the cult classic Otherworld. So, the two had known each other, worked together.

And she’d incorporated the photos of Johnny Love she’d been looking at into her dream.

She shivered to shake off a strange chill and grabbed for her phone to check the time.

11:00 a.m., which meant Sailor was probably back from her run, the little freak. If Barrie was lucky, both her cousins were still at home. She definitely needed to talk.

And there would be no more obsessing over Mick Townsend. It was daylight; it was over. “It never happened,” she said aloud.

She even felt a touch of guilt. After all, in the rush of hormones she’d completely forgotten, but the fact was she had glamoured herself. “It was an attraction spell, for heaven’s sake,” she murmured. Which meant that everything would undoubtedly be completely normal when she saw him again. Which made her feel relieved…and a little sad.

She sat up in bed and was confronted with myriad images of herself. There were mirrors all over the bedroom. But despite her appalling behavior with Mick Townsend last night, it wasn’t like she was some sex-crazed exhibitionist. She’d grown up with a wall-size mirror as a constant companion in the dance classes she’d taken as a child, and she had always been especially fond of mirrors set across from each other to create infinite images. As shape-shifter Keeper, she dealt with beings whose specialty was multiple and deceiving images, so the metaphor fit. It was her bedroom, after all, so why shouldn’t she have it the way she wanted it? Secretly she was thrilled that Merlin had decorated Gwydion’s Cave like a Roaring Twenties cathouse; it meant she could live surrounded by that decadence and pretend that it wasn’t her own taste.

She stretched her way out of bed, then pulled on her favorite tangerine silk Chinese-dragon-patterned robe and stepped out onto her patio adjacent to the pool. It was a perfect time of day and perfectly lovely; the hills were bright with sunshine, and the estate was deep enough in the canyon to always feel far removed from the city hustle.

She could see both her cousins’ cars parked in the drive, so she hurried through the pool area over to the main house, enjoying the feel of the warm dry breeze on her skin.

As they’d settled into their Keeper duties, the cousins had established a morning ritual, the Morning Report, a meeting of the three of them over coffee while they discussed any Keeper or house-related issues. Since Barrie was almost always on the night shift, and both Rhiannon and Sailor often kept odd hours themselves, it was often more like a prenoon meeting.

Barrie punched the code into the keypad by the front door and entered Sailor’s Mediterranean Gothic mansion, with its several bedrooms upstairs, a grand living room and staircase, and a family room that led out to the pool. All three of the cousins’ houses might have been curio museums; they were filled with Merlin’s collections from a lifetime of loving magic—and the eccentric. Rhiannon’s house featured superb carnival attractions: glass booths housing an animatronic gypsy fortune-teller and a magician who seemed to have a mind of his own. In the main Castle House, now Sailor’s place, there were Tiffany lamps and Edwardian furniture, and busts and statues and all manner of art.

Barrie found Sailor and Rhiannon in the kitchen at the breakfast table enjoying extra-large cups of coffee. There was a whole pot steaming fragrantly in the coffeemaker and pastries arranged on a plate, the heavenly muffins and scones Rhiannon was always scoring from the Mystic Café where she played guitar and sang several nights a week.

Both her cousins looked up at Barrie as she stepped into the kitchen: Rhiannon, a fiery beauty with flaming red hair, and Sailor, with her movie-star profile, softer auburn hair and gorgeous eyes.

They looked so expectant that Barrie asked automatically, “What happened?”

“That’s what we’re waiting for you to tell us,” Rhiannon said.

Sailor overlapped her. “You were out all night, we were hoping there was a man involved.”

“Only if he’s good enough for you,” Rhiannon qualified.

Oh, no, Barrie thought to herself grimly. There is no man. No man at all.

Aloud she said lightly, “Not a man. Two of them. Only they’re dead.”

“Oh, it was business,” Sailor said, and sounded disappointed, which gave Barrie a surge of irritation. Now that her cousins were happily paired off she was constantly feeling the pressure of their hopeful expectations for her. Well, it’s not that easy to find someone in L.A., she thought at them resentfully…and instantly had a sudden, unwelcome memory of Mick Townsend crushing her against him. She felt her stomach flip with desire. She had to force herself away from the thought to focus on Rhiannon.

“I said, ‘Who’s dead?’” Rhiannon repeated.

“I’m sure you’ve heard about the first one. Saul Mayo,” Barrie answered, and watched their faces.

“Oh, my God, of course I heard, it’s all over town!” Sailor exclaimed. And then she frowned. “But he’s not one of ours.”

“I know. There was another, a shifter,” Barrie said, and suddenly felt the prickle of tears. “He died on the Boulevard…”

“Oh, no, Barrie, not Tiger,” Rhiannon guessed, and reached across the table to take her hand. Her cousins knew all about Barrie’s crusade to help the young street shifters.

Barrie nodded and swallowed back the tears. “It looked like an OD, but I think they’re connected.”

“Tiger and Mayo?” Sailor gasped. “That’s huge.”

“I know,” Barrie said, feeling a flush of anger. “And I’m not going to let whoever did it get away with it.”

“What do you need?” Rhiannon asked.

Barrie felt another rush of warmth, this time affection. The cousins were new to Keeperdom. But in a matter of just months, Rhiannon, as Canyon Vampire Keeper, had captured a murderous vampire, and Sailor, Elven Keeper, had tracked down the source of a rare blood disease fatal to Elven, and their successes were largely because of the cousins’ pledge of loyalty to each other before any other Keeper alliances.

“Well, here’s the thing,” Barrie told them. “I think you can help.”

She filled Sailor and Rhiannon in on everything she had learned last night, leaving out all encounters with Mick Townsend, because, of course, none of that ever happened.

She was gratified by the gasps from her cousins when she told them about Tiger’s special ability to portray dead Hollywood stars and the bellhop’s statement that Mayo had checked into the Chateau with a young man who looked like Johnny Love. She left out the whole sneaking-into-the-bungalow-where-Mayo-died incident, and especially the almost-sex-in-the-closet-with-Mick-Townsend incident, and ended with, “I searched Johnny Love and Mayo on Google, and Mayo produced Otherworld, Johnny’s last movie.”

“Otherworld!” both cousins exclaimed in unison.

Of course they knew the movie. They all knew the movie. It had come out just as the cousins were going boy crazy, and the movie had been cast with the most gorgeous of all up-and-coming stars. The three leads in particular were a collection of teenage heartthrobs who positively burned up the screen.

And it had been scandalous in the community, because all three were actual Others playing Others. It walked a very dangerous line, which added to the controversy.

“We were thirteen,” Sailor remembered.

“And we had to beg our parents for weeks to let us see it,” Rhiannon added wryly.

“Too gory!” Sailor exclaimed in mock parental shock.

“Too sexy!” Barrie gasped, and put her hand to her head as if she were about to faint.

“You’re too young!” Rhiannon scolded. The three of them giggled like thirteen-year-olds.

“But we wore them down,” Sailor said with satisfaction.

“We were nothing short of insufferable,” Rhiannon agreed.

“And then we went back…how many times?” Barrie wondered.

“Dozens, I’m sure,” Rhiannon said.

The film had exceeded all teenage expectations and parental fears: bloody, gory, sexy and so controversial. At the time the filmmakers, a collection of Others with a few key humans like Mayo who were in the know, were pushing the envelope, portraying Others so authentically. It was always dangerous to flirt with that boundary between the worlds, and danger was seductive.

“Never has such a bounty of male lusciousness been assembled all in one place,” Sailor said.

“I remember that every week you had a different favorite,” Barrie teased her. “Oh, Johnny. Oh, Robbie. Oh, DJ…” She pretended to swoon over each young actor in turn.

“I remember you didn’t eat for weeks, you were so gone on Robbie Anderson,” Sailor retorted.

Despite herself, Barrie felt a blush rising in her chest and cheeks. It was true. She’d had a painful crush on the young shifter. She had written him dozens of letters that she’d never sent, pouring her heart out, telling him why they were meant for each other. She was destined to be a shifter Keeper, after all… .

“He was the first shifter you wanted to Keep—for yourself,” Sailor crowed, voicing Barrie’s own thoughts.

“Oh, Lord, the pain of it,” Rhiannon sighed. “I wouldn’t be a tween again for all the money in the world.”

Truthfully Barrie was shocked at how strongly the memories of that crush were hitting her; it was as if she’d never grown out of it.

Or maybe you just have sex on the brain. Damn Mick Townsend.

Rhiannon was looking at her probingly. “What’s the matter?”

Barrie shook off the feeling and focused on the present.

“I keep going back to the fact that Mayo checked into the Chateau last night with a young man who was a dead ringer for Johnny Love. And that Tiger’s specialty was shifting as dead movie stars. And that Johnny Love died at the Chateau. And I found out from Tony Brandt that they both died of overdoses of a drug cocktail that sounds really Other: heavy on the belladonna.”

“But what does all this have to do with Otherworld?” Rhiannon asked practically.

“I don’t know yet, but I’m thinking the movie has to have something to do with my cases.”

“But only Tiger is your case,” Sailor worried. “Mayo wasn’t an Other.”

Barrie felt her defenses going up. “No, he wasn’t, but his death is related. I can’t investigate Tiger’s death without investigating Mayo’s.”

Now both her cousins looked concerned. “You need to be really careful about this, hon,” Rhiannon said. “There’s going to be a lot of heat on the Mayo investigation.”

“But no one else knows the two are related, and I’m going to keep it that way,” Barrie answered stubbornly. “And don’t worry,” she said before Rhiannon could object. “I’ll talk to Brodie first thing.”

Rhiannon’s fiancé wasn’t only a homicide detective with the elite LAPD Robbery Homicide division, he was an Elven.

Like Brandt and the other Others who worked in law enforcement and criminal justice, Brodie subtly used his position to get assigned to Other-related cases, to ensure that the existence of the Others was kept secret. And now Barrie had a feeling her soon-to-be familial connection to Brodie was going to come in very handy.

Rhiannon looked somewhat mollified. “Well…as long as you’re careful.”

“What’s up next?” Sailor asked.

“I’m going to find out everything I can about Johnny Love and Mayo and the movie.”

And she knew exactly who she needed to see to get the inside scoop.




Chapter 5


Barrie showered and dressed and fed the cat, then headed down the canyon to the flatlands, the Fairfax District where NBS, one of the major television networks, had its soundstages.

On the way she listened to the news on the radio to see how Mayo’s death was being reported. The mainstream media was being incredibly tactful, as they always were with celebrity deaths, not speculating on the manner of death; the official word was that he had “col-lapsed” in his bungalow at the Chateau. She would have to check the Net for the more fringe theories.

As usual the NBS parking lot was jammed with busloads of tourists there to see the tapings of various television shows. Barrie had never seen the appeal of tapings, she found them incredibly boring herself, but she knew NBS’s most popular reality show, That’s Dancing! was filming today, and that would be where she could find Harvey Hodge.

Harvey was NBS’s self-proclaimed “Entertainment Connection,” the on-camera entertainment reporter for NBS News. H.H., as he was known, was a shifter who always had all the best Hollywood gossip because he could literally be a fly on the wall and pick up any dirt that was to be had on anyone.

And Barrie knew that Harvey never missed a taping of That’s Dancing!

Harvey was a handful, but Barrie had taken great pains to cultivate him as a source. Luckily being a Keeper was its own modest form of fame, and she was able to use that to her advantage. She’d sussed out Har-vey’s great weakness: he wanted to be as much of a celebrity as the stars he reported on, and she knew how to play the starstruck kid. It was a lot of work, but she could usually wheedle and flatter Harvey into talking to her, and he really did know everything about every Other in show business.

The tough part would be making it onto the set of That’s Dancing! The show was down to the last few episodes, with just four couples left, and it seemed from the lines that every dance fan in the world was trying to crash the gate.

The guard was militantly checking soundstage passes, so Barrie called up what she could vaguely remember about one of the contestants and glamoured her way by him in a swish of tulle and sequins. The effort left her gasping for breath on the other side, but at least she was in.

She found Harvey in the press pit, a corner of the soundstage draped with curtains for reporters to conduct their interviews and film their stand-ups.

He was in a foul mood. “Weres are beastly dancers,” he complained without even bothering to say hello as Barrie approached him. “I don’t know why they ever let them on to begin with.”

“So, who’s going to win it?” she asked, feigning interest.

“How would I know?” he said coyly.

“Oh, come on, H.H.,” she coaxed. “If not you, who?”

“I’ll never tell.”

“Not even a hint?”

But she’d gone too far. Harvey looked her over shrewdly. “I’m short on time and temper, and you are so not here as a Dancing! fan, Keeper. So, what are you after?”

Barrie felt caught out, and then realized it was better just to lay it on the table.

“I need the scoop on Mayo,” she told him.

He rolled his eyes. “You and half the town.”

“I need to know about Mayo and Johnny Love.”

Harvey stopped and really looked at her for the first time, his gaze narrowing. “That’s original of you, doll. What about them?”

“Exactly. What about them?” She lowered her voice. “You know what I’m saying, H.H. Did Mayo have a thing for Johnny Love? Was there anything between them? Like, during the filming of Otherworld?”

“Funny. That yummy Mick Townsend asked me the same thing.”

She stared at Harvey in disbelief. Was there any way to escape Mick? “You were talking to someone outside the community about Other business?”

“No, I was talking to a fellow journalist about a story. He asked me if Mayo had a thing for Johnny Love, just like you just did, and I told him that Mayo had a thing for all kinds of things.”

“But what do you think?” Barrie asked the question with a kind of ingenue breathlessness that made it sound like Harvey’s opinion was the only one that mattered. Sailor wasn’t the only actress in the family.

Apparently it worked, because Harvey glanced around them, as if checking for prying eyes and ears. “It’s an interesting thing. There were rumors.” Then he looked straight at her. “But I’ll tell you—the great Mayo always had a thing for shifters. The younger, the better. I don’t think he ever got over Johnny dying. But you know, things were such a nightmare for everyone after Otherworld came out. It was one of the great cursed films of Hollywood. So much tragedy associated with it. First Johnny, of course, that nasty OD.”

“It was some special speedball, wasn’t it?” she asked. “Something exotic?”

“Heroin, cocaine and atropine,” Harvey said, and Barrie felt a rush. Atropine was the hallucinogen found in belladonna. The same combination that had killed Mayo and Tiger. “And DJ, well, you could say fame and fortune is no kind of bad luck, but…”

DJ, no last name required, was a vampire who had played a teen vampire in the film. Currently one of the highest-paid actors in Hollywood, he was a total recluse and rumored to be nearly impossible to work with. Blood wasn’t his only addiction, and when you added an ac-tor’s temperament to a vampire’s, then threw in his dark past…it all spelled constant trouble. In fact, DJ was famous for being so unreliable that 90 percent of his salary on any film was withheld until the end of shooting, just to make sure the film was completed.

“Right, DJ…” Barrie murmured.

Harvey shrugged. “Let’s just say I’m not the only one who updates his obituary every few months just to have it ready. It’s a miracle he’s lasted this long. No one in town would give him the time of day if he weren’t, well, brilliant.”

Harvey was starting to warm to the topic, a great thing for Barrie, who now only had to prompt him with wide-eyed attention and the occasional little exclamation. “Then, of course, Robbie Anderson disappeared without a trace. A lot of people think he died not long after Johnny, but no one could ever prove anything. It’s just that…someone that gorgeous and talented? He couldn’t have stayed away from acting.”

“No,” Barrie murmured. “Probably not.” But privately she thought that anyone who had suffered the death of one of his best friends and been witness to the crippling addictions of the other might not be all that hot on the profession. She herself would have fled for her life. She thought of Robbie with a pang, that surreally beautiful teenager, and silently hoped that he’d gotten out and started a new life far from the corruption of Hollywood that he’d been thrust into far too young. Robbie had been British, had never known his mother and was estranged from his father; he’d filed for emancipation when he was just fourteen. He could have disappeared back home, but the media had tracked him relentlessly; it seemed that someone would have found him—if he’d still been alive. The thought gave Barrie a chill. “So much tragedy associated with” this film is right.

“Mayo was opening quite the can of worms when he decided to remake it,” Harvey was saying.

Barrie jolted back to the present. “Mayo was going to remake Otherworld? I hadn’t heard anything like that.” Not that she followed production news religiously, but certainly news like that would have registered with her or one of her cousins at least.

“Oh, it hadn’t been announced yet, but he was gearing up for it. And you can bet your buttons the community wasn’t too thrilled about it.”

Barrie knew that Harvey wasn’t talking about the film community now, but their community, the underground.

“The interspecies politics are such a mess on these paranormal films,” he sighed. “Everyone’s got an agenda.”

“So, a lot of people didn’t want this remake to go through,” she said, and thought to herself, That’s a lot of potential suspects.

“It’s not even just political. Think about it. Three white-hot rising superstars: one kills himself, one disappears, one’s a total train wreck…The town is superstitious, darling, and that’s looking a lot like a curse to me.”

Despite herself, Barrie felt a chill.

The “Dancing!” stars—well, minor celebrities—swirled onto the soundstage with their pro dancer partners, and Harvey went on journalistic alert. Her interview was done.

“Thanks, H.H.,” she said quickly. “I owe you.”

“Yes, you do-o,” he trilled back at her, and gave her a backward wave as he rushed to meet the stars.

As Barrie was walking off the soundstage, musing over the idea of a cursed film, she saw a tall, familiar figure strolling toward her. Oh, great, she thought, even as her heart started racing a mile a minute. Be calm. Just be calm. It was just the glamour, remember?

She struggled to keep her expression disinterested as she stopped in front of Mick Townsend in the center of what was ironically an absurdly romantic set: white roses trailing over a gazebo, a bridge over a mirrored stream. Probably the backdrop to a waltz competition.

“Don’t tell me you’re a ‘Dancing!’ fan,” she said dryly, and was proud of her nonchalance.

“I never miss it,” he deadpanned back.

He sounded so almost-serious that for a moment Barrie had a fantasy of what it would be like to dance with him. Of course she was dreaming—men just didn’t dance anymore—but if he could…oh, if he could lead even half as well as he kissed…

Focus, she ordered herself.

“You’re following me,” she accused aloud.

“Or maybe great minds think alike,” he suggested. “You were just here to see H.H., right?”

She was silent, unable to deny it.

He gave her a killer smile. “That’s why we need to team up. This is a big enough story for two people, and we’re obviously on the same track… .”

She raised an eyebrow. “If we’re thinking alike, what is it we’re thinking?”

His luminous green eyes met hers and held them. “I’m thinking about last night.”

Immediately her heart was racing again, and she was finding it hard to breathe. She struggled for distance and control. “Last night was—inappropriate. Adrenaline rush, the circumstances…it happens, but it doesn’t mean anything. If you want to team up on this, then we have to focus on the case and the story.”

For a moment she thought she saw a flash of amusement on his face, but he nodded seriously and said, “Per-fectly understood. Strictly business.” He held out a hand for her to shake.

She hesitated, then put her hand in his. “Strictly business,” she echoed, even as a betraying rush of lust raced through her veins at his touch. She pulled her hand away quickly. “So, what are we thinking? About the case?”

“That the same person killed Mayo and that poor kid,” he said softly, and she felt a jolt, realizing that he did know about Tiger, and more than that: he seemed to care. He continued, still holding her gaze. “That someone didn’t want the remake of Otherworld to go forward, so that someone hired Tiger to lure Mayo to his death, dose him with a fatal exotic cocktail, and then the killer fed Tiger the same stuff.”

She had to hand it to him: it was exactly what she was thinking. But she wasn’t about to let him know that. Not yet.

“Is anyone saying there was a third person in that bungalow at the Chateau?” she demanded. If he wanted to work with her, he had to prove he had something to offer besides lethal charm.

“Not that I’ve been able to find out. Most of the rest of the town is so focused on Mayo they’re not looking anywhere else.”

“And someone went to a great deal of trouble to make Mayo and Tiger look like unrelated cases,” she pointed out.

“Someone who knows how the LAPD is structured,” Mick agreed. “Mayo’s case went straight to Robbery Homicide, while the Hollywood division detectives who caught Tiger’s case just accepted the obvious.”

Damn, he was good. Barrie could feel herself weakening, even though she knew it was madness. But how much did he know? That was the question.

“So, why do you think this someone used Tiger to get to Mayo?” she hedged, probing.

Mick looked grim. “Mayo wouldn’t be the first power player to have a taste for underage prostitutes. Word is this Tiger had some kind of resemblance to Johnny Love,” he said distastefully. “Which explains the bellhop saying he saw Johnny with Mayo. Add a touch of pseudo necrophilia to Mayo’s list of perversions.”

So, he’s assuming Tiger looked like Johnny Love. She was relieved, but also suddenly deeply conflicted.

What am I doing? I can’t work with a mortal.

It was against all the rules. One of her primary duties as a Keeper was to guard the existence of the Others. She couldn’t very well team up with Mick without revealing far too much unless she flat-out lied to him. And that was just too risky. As discreet as she knew how to be, it would be too hard to keep up the front if they were actually working together. She felt a kind of pang, too, a surprising realization that she didn’t want to lie to him.

Yes, the real puzzlement here was this pull she had to work with him, even knowing that it would be nothing but trouble, that it would violate every aspect of her job.

Mick was watching her. “What’s wrong?” he asked directly, and she realized she hadn’t said anything for several moments.

“I just…I’m sorry, I have another appointment,” she said lamely. “Not related to the case,” she added quickly, in case he decided to follow her, although so far there didn’t seem to be any way to stop him. “But I have to go.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to sit somewhere and talk?” he asked, and those green eyes were on hers again. “I think I can spring for coffee at the Farmers’ Market.”

“Can I get a rain check?” she hedged, and immediately regretted it. Now she would just have to fend him off again. And the problem was, she didn’t want to fend him off.

It was all too confusing. She had to think.

“I have to go,” she repeated gracelessly, and left him, hurrying over the bridge, past the luxuriant fake white roses.

She was upset enough over the encounter that she decided to drive straight home. She needed to remember who she was. It was absolutely crazy to bring a mortal into Keeper business; there was something wrong with her head that she had even been contemplating it. But she was sure her cousins could set her straight.

She made one stop, though, on her way up toward the canyon: the great Amoeba Records on Sunset, where she bought a collector’s edition DVD of Otherworld.

She had homework to do.




Chapter 6


Barrie staggered into the main house, her arms loaded down with bags of microwave popcorn, M&M’s, ice cream bon bons—all her favorite movie foods—plus a bottle of good red wine and the Otherworld DVD. She’d made another spur-of-the-moment stop on the way back to the house for munchies—might as well make work fun—and also called her cousins, requesting an emergency meeting. Luckily both of Rhiannon’s employers were Keepers themselves, though of different districts, and were accommodating of her sometimes unusual schedule. And Sailor didn’t have to be at the House of Illusion, her night job, this week because she’d landed a voice-over gig.

“I’ve got treats, too,” Sailor told Barrie, standing by the butcher-block table in the kitchen and waving a knife. Barrie dumped her bags on a counter and peered over her cousin’s shoulder suspiciously. As usual, Sailor’s idea of treats was not Barrie’s—everything looked morbidly healthy and low-fat and sugar-free: cut-up fruit and vegetables and fat-free dips.

Barrie sighed pointedly, and Sailor leveled the knife at her. “Just because you have the metabolism of a hum-mingbird…”

Not true, of course, it was just that Barrie often forgot to eat. “I do some of my best thinking on sugar,” she justified, ripping into the M&M’s.

Rhiannon floated in through the back door, her face lit up like a Roman candle, a sure sign she’d just been on the phone with Brodie. Sure enough, the first words out of her mouth were “Brodie can’t make it till later. But he’s looking into everything he can on his end.”

Barrie murmured, “Bless him.” She liked her cousin-in-law-to-be very much, but it was especially useful to have a homicide detective in the family.

How’s that for connected? she said silently in her head, and then realized, unnerved, that she was talking to Mick.

“This is going to be flashback city,” Rhiannon said, reaching for a freshly made bowl of popcorn as Barrie opened the wine.

They trooped into the great room, where Sailor already had a fire blazing atmospherically in the fireplace, and turned off the lights and fired up the Otherworld DVD, then settled in on the couch, like the thirteen-year-olds they had been, for a gory, sexy flashback of a night. Made fifteen years earlier, the film still held up, from the vertiginous, exhilarating swoop of the opening shot to the hazy, erotic, psychedelic underground party scenes, to the thrilling climax on Catalina Island. The story had been written and directed by the werewolf Travis Branson, and it followed the exploits of a young vampire, shape-shifter and Elven, decadent young princes of the Otherworld who topped each other in hedonism and rivalry until they were forced to come of age and join forces to defeat a threat to the underworld kingdom in a supernatural Three Musketeers–like final battle.

All Barrie’s thoughts of Mick Townsend vanished as she gave herself over to the thrills of the film. There were times when the cousins gasped aloud at how close the movie came to revealing secrets that, as Keepers, they were sworn to protect. And they all sighed over The breathtaking beauty of the three stars, each magnetic in his own right but soul-meltingly charismatic together. The cousins shrieked and clutched each other during iconic scenes, like the one in which Johnny Love crawled across the floor toward the screen with deliciously predatory intent, and screamed at the gruesome death by crucifixion of a werewolf who had been captured by the bad guys, sparking off a war.





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