Keeper of the Moon

The man glanced at the Elven woman, then said to Sailor, “You’re not in the habit of passing out?”

“Are you kidding? I’m as healthy as a horse. A healthy horse, that is. Well, obviously. It’s a ridiculous saying, isn’t it? Because it’s not as if there are no sick horses in the world. They can’t possibly all be dying accidental deaths.”

“Are you always this talkative?” he asked.

“No.”

He glanced at the Elven woman again. She handed him the gauze and rubbing alcohol.

“What? What is it?” Sailor asked. “Why do you keep looking at each other?”

The woman said, “Whatever it was that attacked you—”

“Other,” Sailor said.

“What?”

“It was Other, whatever attacked me.”

The woman moved closer. “What are you?”

“What am I? I’m a Gryffald. Sailor Ann Gryffald, to be exact.”

“Are you kin to Rafe Gryffald?”

“He’s my father.”

The woman frowned. “You’re the Keeper’s daughter?”

Sailor winced. “Keeper” wasn’t the sort of word you said in mixed company, and the man applying rubbing alcohol to a gauze pad appeared to be mortal. The first rule of Keeperdom was nondisclosure. “The question is,” Sailor said, nodding toward the man, “what’s he?”

He looked up and gave her a smile. “Don’t worry. I’m a friend. You can speak freely.”

Sailor looked to the woman for confirmation. She nodded.

“Okay, then,” Sailor said, and then, as the alcohol touched her wound, “Ouch. My father is the former Keeper. He’s now serving on the International Keeper Council at The Hague.”

“So your uncles are—”

“Piers and Owen. Keepers of the vampires and shapeshifters, but also currently serving on the International Council.”

“And you’ve inherited the family proclivity toward—”

“Otherworld management? Yes. I am the current Keeper of the Elven.”

“Bloody hell,” the woman said. “The grown-ups have left the building.”

Sailor shrugged. In her three months on the job, she’d gotten several negative reactions to her youth and inexperience. The truth was, while she looked like a teen, she was twenty-eight. The three Gryffald brothers, Sailor’s father and two uncles, were well-respected in the Otherworld, but respect isn’t always passed on to one’s heirs, and while Sailor had been born with the mark of the Keeper, she’d assumed she had decades to prepare for the role. Fate had decided otherwise. When her father had summoned her home from New York, she’d come. There was no question of refusing—Keeping was the family business—but L.A. wasn’t rolling out the welcome mat.

“Yes,” Sailor said. “I’m no happier about it than you are, but anyhow, nice to meet you. Except I haven’t met you.”

“Alessande Salisbrooke,” the woman said.

“And I’m Vernon Winter,” the man said.

“Okay, nice to meet you. So what’s my diagnosis here, doc?”

“I’m not a doctor.”

“I thought you said you were.”

“No, I’m a stockbroker.”

“Why are you examining my chest? No, never mind. Stupid question.”

He smiled and once more she found herself drawn to him. Was he mortal? She was no longer sure. “I’m doing it because she can’t,” he said, nodding at Alessande. “She shouldn’t be touching you, because the Elven are highly susceptible to what you’ve got, which is a disease. You’re both lucky to be alive.”

“Lucky to be alive?” Sailor said. “Because of a scratch on my chest? It was weird, the attack, but hardly life-threatening. And I have no diseases. What are you talking about?”

“I’m putting on the kettle,” Alessande said, moving into the kitchen as she talked. “You’ve heard about the film stars who’ve died these past weeks from what the media calls the Celebrity Virus?”

“Charlotte Messenger and Gina Santoro?” Sailor said. “Of course. And last week an acting student from the California Institute of the Arts, who wasn’t exactly a celebrity, and a junior agent at GAA, also not a celebrity, but quite beautiful. Oh. And a sitcom star.”

“Did you know any of them?” Alessande was making kitchen noises, opening cupboards.

“Personally? No. I’ve followed the story online.”

“What else do you know about it?”

“Nothing,” Sailor said.

“Good God.” Vernon Winter taped gauze on her wound. “Don’t you Keepers talk to each other?”

“You mean like send around an email blast? No. What’s it got to do with us?”

“You realize the dead women were Elven?”

Sailor snorted. It was an insult, suggesting that a Keeper couldn’t recognize Elven, or, for that matter, vampire, pixie or were. Shapeshifters, by their nature, were trickier and took longer for her to figure out, but except for them, Sailor found it hard to believe her fellow humans were unaware of Others living among them. It was like being unable to distinguish cats from dogs. She said, “I could spot Elven characteristics since I was a toddler. Gina Santoro and Charlotte Messenger? Flamboyantly Elven. The sitcom star? Not. I don’t know about the two. I only saw Facebook photos.” Elven charisma was hard to discern in a still photograph.

“What tribe?” he asked, challenging her.

Who was this guy? “Gina was Rath,” she said. “Obviously. Charlotte looked multiracial. Déithe, of course. Maybe Cyffarwydd, as well. Hard to say, with all her plastic surgery. And I’m not just talking ears.” Softening ear tips was a practice as common as earpiercing for Elven children. “Why, is this a test?”

“Everything’s a test for a Keeper as new as you,” Vernon said. “And looking like a high school cheerleader isn’t going to help your cause.”

Was that a compliment? Was he flirting? “I don’t have a cause. And I don’t have to make my case, because I was born a Keeper. It’s not a job I’m auditioning for or even one I particularly want, but I’m a Gryffald, so I’ll be good at it. And I don’t know what your interest is in this as a stockbroker, but if you’re used to judging people by their faces—”

“It’s not your face I was judging.”

He was flirting. How crazy was this? Sailor was about to respond, but Vernon’s face wavered, suddenly becoming younger. Darker. Handsome. Light shimmered around it. She blinked several times. Okay, the attack had somehow affected her eyesight. That was scary.

Then he went back to being plain again. Homely. Nonshimmering. Her vision was fine. That was a relief.

“Back to the issue at hand,” Alessande said, coming back into the room. She carried a plate of gingersnaps, and Sailor could hear the teakettle on the burner in the kitchen. “The so-called Celebrity Virus is what my tribe is calling the Scarlet Pathogen. It’s only affecting the Elven. Except that now here you are, an Elven Keeper, exhibiting one of its key symptoms. Whatever attacked you? It infected you. You’re not bleeding much, thank God. With the others, there were rumors of excessive bleeding.”

“But—” Sailor’s mind was reeling. How could she have a disease? An hour earlier she’d been on a seven-mile run. “Wait, wait, wait. None of this is true. First, that sitcom girl wasn’t Elven. She was completely mortal. And not very talented, I’m sorry to say, because I don’t like to speak ill of the dead. And second—”

“The sitcom girl didn’t have the disease,” Alessande replied. “She overdosed on meth. One of our people took the 9-1-1 call and leaked misinformation to the press.”

“Why?”

“To draw attention away from the Elven. Standard procedure. Mortals see patterns, even where they can’t understand them. The human girl disrupts the pattern.”

Sailor glanced at Vernon. Despite Alessande’s assurances, it unnerved her to speak of mortals this way in front of one. “But—okay, you said I have the symptom, but then you said I’m not bleeding abnormally. So what symptom are you talking about?”

The teakettle whistled. Alessande gave a nod to Vernon, then went to the kitchen. He crossed to the front entryway and lifted a mirror off the wall.

Sailor watched him walk toward her with the mirror and grew fearful, her hands reaching up to her face, her mind racing with images of what had been done to it when she was unconscious. She didn’t consider herself excessively vain, but she was an actress, after all, and fairly pretty, and so …

The man handed her the mirror. She looked at herself …

… and gulped. Her eyes were no longer green, but a deep shade of scarlet.

Don’t freak, she told herself. Keep it together. Could be worse. She took a deep breath, then turned her gaze resolutely to Vernon. “Okay, what does it mean?”

He looked directly at her, and because she had a fair amount of the Elven telepathic abilities, she could read his thought: Good. You didn’t panic. “We don’t know what it means,” he said. “Yet. We’ll find out.”

“You don’t know? So I could be going blind, or—”

“How’s your eyesight now?”

“Fine. Great.”

He nodded. “I wouldn’t worry, then.”

“They’re not your eyes,” she pointed out. “So, wait.” She spotted the other woman reentering the room. “Alessande, you can catch it from me?”

“We don’t know,” the Elven woman replied. “But so far, so good.”

“So what’s the cure?”

Alessande brought in a tray of tea. “We’ve yet to find out. It’s not like we can send out a press release and confer with the CDC.”

True enough, Sailor thought. When times were good, the Others lived easily under the radar among humans, blending in with little effort. It was during crises that the mandate for secrecy created problems.

Alessande handed Sailor an earthenware mug, steaming-hot and filled with roots and leaves. “Sip. Don’t burn yourself, but keep on sipping.”

“What is it?”

“Síúlacht. You picked the right hillside to tumble down,” Alessande said. “Not too many of us can make a good batch of síúlacht. I’m one of them.”

The scent arising from the mug evoked a memory, but the memory refused to coalesce. Sailor took a sip and shuddered. The bitterness was intense, but so was the effect. Her senses sharpened, her sinuses cleared and she felt energy return to her.

“It’s a delicate situation,” Alessande said. “On one hand, we need to study the disease, find out whether other cities have experienced it, but on the other hand, we need to downplay it. So far, only the Elven community knows, along with some high-ranking vamps and shifters. And werewolves—Antony Brandt, the coroner, and others with inside jobs, who can control the flow of information.”

“But not the Elven Keepers?” Sailor asked. “That doesn’t make sense.”

Alessande and Vernon looked at one another.

“Well, shit,” Sailor said, intercepting the look. “So the other Keepers do know. Everyone knows but me.”

“Probably the Antelope Valley Keepers don’t know,” Alessande said reassuringly. “And San Pedro. That guy’s clueless. Bakersfield, too.”

“The San Pedro Keeper died last month,” Vernon said.

“Great,” Sailor said. “So except for my colleagues out in the sticks, and the dead ones, I’m the only one the Council doesn’t bother to inform? I’m the Canyon Keeper, for God’s sake.”

“If you’d had the information,” Vernon said, “what would you have done with it?”

“That’s hardly the point, is it?” Sailor asked.

“It may be exactly the point. If you’re so new at this that you plan to share news that’s confidential—”

“Hey, give me some credit, would you? They either don’t trust me, or they consider me too inconsequential to bother with. Whichever, it’s insulting. And for that matter, what are you doing with all this insider information?”

He hesitated, and Alessande said, “He’s my friend. I trust him with my life. Keep drinking. You’ve had a trauma and a racing heartbeat won’t improve things.”

“I’m fine, I’m calm, I meditated this morning.” Sailor took a last gulp and set the mug on the coffee table. It was strong stuff, whatever it was—she’d already forgotten the name. The Elven were good at that sort of thing, the healers of the Otherworld. She pushed herself up off the sofa. “Alessande,” she said, “thanks for rescuing me. But it’s my job to protect your species, not vice versa, and if I’m contagious, I’m not doing you any favors being here. Not to mention that I have work to do, and I can’t do it lying on your sofa.”

Alessande nodded. She reached for a sheath attached to her belt and pulled out a dagger with a four-inch blade. “Someone or something out there means you harm,” she said, placing it on the table. “Can you use a dagger?”

“Yes.” Sailor picked it up admiringly. It was beautifully etched, and she shared the Elven preference for blades over bullets. “I’ll get it back to you.”

“Go straight home and stay there,” Alessande said. “Don’t go out again tonight.”

Sailor started for the door, but Vernon stepped in front of her, barring her way. She felt an energy between them that excited her. When she stepped around him, he grabbed her. His touch was electrifying, but she couldn’t understand why, and that alarmed her. There was something Other about him, but she couldn’t identify it.

“Take your hand off my arm,” she said.

His grip tightened. “Don’t be stupid, girl.”

Sailor almost laughed at his effrontery. “Dude,” she said. “Who’re you calling girl? Not to mention who are you calling stupid? I’m the one holding a knife.”

He smiled fleetingly, and the shimmery thing happened again, changing his face. A shock went through Sailor as she stared at him, the surge of sexual energy intensifying. Then the moment passed and he was the homely stockbroker once more. Had she just imagined the change? Or was something truly affecting her vision?

Vernon let go of her arm. “I’m serious. You should be examined by a doctor, one who understands Others. Your Council needs to study this disease.”

“Come, Jonquil,” she said, and snapped her fingers at the dog, who hopped up from the stone floor and ambled after her. She walked around Vernon, opened the door and then turned back to him.

“The Council,” she said, “can kiss my ass.”

Chapter 2

When the woman was gone, Declan returned to his own form. Being Vernon Winter had been a constricting experience and a mildly painful one. Among other things, the man had arthritis and fallen arches. But it had been worth it.

“Not a bad job of shifting, for a Keeper,” Alessande told him, gathering up the tea things. “I saw you lose the shape only three or four times.”

“I counted six,” he said. “It’s a miracle she didn’t notice.”

“She’s young. The young are not observant.”

“We’re all young to you, Alessande.” Declan knew her to be nearly a hundred, although she looked thirty in human years. The Elven didn’t begin to show their age until well into their second century. “But it may have been the Scarlet Pathogen. Her eyes looked bloody scary.” More scary than he’d let on to Sailor. She’d been stoic about it, which showed some character, but of course, she hadn’t been looking into her own eyes for the past half hour. And he hadn’t stopped looking at them. They were mesmerizing, whatever their color, and he wondered why he’d never noticed that before in their acquaintance. “What’s the disease doing to her on the inside, that’s what I’d like to know.”

“That’s what we’d all like to know.”

Declan followed Alessande into the kitchen. “We shouldn’t have let her walk out of here.”

She looked at him. “What should we have done, kidnap her? She’s fit, she’s armed and she’ll be home in minutes—the Gryffald estate is a mile down the road. The síúlacht she drank will give her speed and strength enough to take on anything. It will last an hour, two at the most.”

“And then?”

“It will wear off and she’ll drop. She’ll sleep the sleep of the dead for a good twelve hours or more, but she’ll be in her own home and safe enough. I’ve been to her house, years ago at a dinner party her father gave. There were layers upon layers of protective spells cast.” Alessande handed him a mug of coffee, although he hadn’t asked for any.

“Hope they’ve kept it up. Spells fade.” He sipped his coffee. “We should’ve gotten a blood sample from her, have Krabill take a look at it.”

“The síúlacht will mask the effects of the pathogen. Better to wait until it’s worn off.”

“Wait twelve hours? I don’t have that much patience.”

Alessande shrugged. “The síúlacht will be out of her system long before that. Krabill works nights, doesn’t she?”

“You’re suggesting I rouse the girl from her dead sleep to take her to Krabill’s office?”

“You’ve roused me from a dead sleep once or twice, if memory serves.”

He smiled briefly. “She won’t like it as much as you did.”

“Can Krabill develop an antidote, do you think?”

Declan turned his attention to the twilight sky. “Maybe, but that’s not the point. Those four women didn’t just catch this disease. It’s my guess they were deliberately infected.”

“Why do you say that? Because this one was attacked?”

“And because Charlotte was found on the beach at Point Dume.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“I watched the coroner take her body away.”

Alessande’s eyes grew wide. “My God, what was she doing there?” Most Elven had a fear of water that was both logical—being near it physically weakened them—and deeply emotional. “She’d never have gone there voluntarily.”

Declan shook his head. “Charlotte wouldn’t go near a swimming pool, let alone an ocean. Someone forced her there,” he said, “or dumped her there. She was murdered, whatever story they’re giving out. The more we learn about this pathogen, the more we’ll know about the killer who used it. And I want that killer.”

“As murder weapons go, it’s not very effective,” she said. “It didn’t kill Sailor. Besides, that winged creature didn’t need a pathogen. If it wanted her dead, those talons alone could’ve opened an artery, and even I couldn’t have saved her.”

“All right, I don’t pretend to have any of the answers now. But I’ll get them, I promise you.”

She looked at him speculatively. “Why did you not want her to see you? Why did you shift?”

Declan met her look. “Sailor Gryffald and I don’t get along. I wanted to see what she’s like when she’s not on the defensive.”

“And why don’t you get along?”

He thought back to a recent encounter at his nightclub. “I expect I may have offended her at some point.”

“I expect you did.”

Declan laughed. “What does that mean?”

“You’re a great friend to your friends and a cold bastard to those beneath your notice.”

“That’s not true.”

“It certainly is.”

“Well, she’s never been beneath my notice. She’s a Gryffald.” The Gryffald family had been players in the Los Angeles Councils long before “player” was part of the cultural lexicon. Of course, the current Gryffalds were all young, three neophytes in a city where experience was power. Sailor’s cousins had proved more capable than he’d expected … but this one?

“She has the pedigree,” Alessande said, reading his thoughts in the disconcerting way the Elven had. “Give her a chance.”

“She’s an actress, for God’s sake. Hardly training for a crisis like this.” He turned away from her and looked out the kitchen window, watching the color drain out of the sky.

Alessande moved next to him. “Well, we all have an uphill battle, haven’t we? The girl was attacked by something Other, and that is bad news for our world. Once it becomes known, I fear for what my species may do to yours, Declan, and to the vampires, as well. None of you Keepers will have it easy if it comes to war.”

“I won’t let it come to war, Alessande.”

“You may not be able to stop it.”

“Watch me.” He drained the coffee in his cup and set it down. “Fate put that girl in your path. And you put her in mine. Now I’m calling Kimberly Krabill, and we’re going to find out what this bloody pathogen is and how it works, and how the killer acquired it.”

“If Sailor doesn’t like you, how do you propose getting her to your Dr. Krabill?”

“Charm.” He smiled. “If she’s coming down from síúlacht, she’ll be too weak to resist.”

Alessande looked into his eyes. “Tread carefully. I saw a portent tonight. When she was unconscious.” She hesitated, then said, “For love of that woman, someone will die. And love may bring death to her, as well.”

“My heart isn’t in danger.”

She laughed softly. “You don’t know yourself at all, do you? But be warned, Declan. I don’t think Sailor Gryffald is long for this world.”

The sky was dark now, night fully arrived. Declan breathed in the canyon air, watched the lights of distant houses go on one by one. Like fireflies, he thought, and then tried to remember when he’d last seen a firefly. They weren’t native to California any more than he was.

It had been instructive, meeting Sailor as a stranger, unencumbered by the undercurrent of hostility that characterized their encounters. More than instructive. With no chip on her shoulder, he found her exceedingly attractive. He wondered if Alessande had been right, that he was a cold bastard. Maybe. The truth was, he found actors to be self-absorbed and vain, with few exceptions. It was hardly their fault. The business was so harsh that survival required a high opinion of one’s own talent and specialness. Sailor was showing more substance than he’d expected, but she was hardly ready to assume the position of Canyon Keeper. His plan was to get her to Krabill and let the doctor oversee her recovery while her colleagues—investigation himself, for starters—took charge of the crisis. Good luck for the to be able to observe the disease. Sailor Gryffald was more valuable in a hospital bed than on her feet.

And more vulnerable.

He shook off Alessande’s last words. Portents aren’t facts, he reminded himself. They’re like dreams, open to interpretation, symbolic. We’ve had enough dead. I have no intention of letting Sailor Gryffald join their ranks.

Declan slowed his heart by an effort of will, and then lowered his eyelids on a long exhale, sent a command to the region deep in his solar plexus, watched the molecules rearrange themselves.

He turned himself into a hawk and flew home.

Sailor knew she was moving as fast as she was because of the strangely named brew that Alessande had given her. A long-forgotten memory suddenly emerged from the depths of her mind: she’d been a child, sick with bronchitis, and her mother had given her the same brew, bade her drink it despite the bitterness. It had been like a miracle then, and it was the same now. She could feel it continue to sharpen her senses and heat her blood, and wondered if there would be a backlash when it wore off, some kind of potion hangover. Her theory, backed up by personal research in her college days, was that the better the high, the worse the morning after. She couldn’t remember the aftereffects when she’d been seven, only that one moment she’d been ill and the next playing tag with her cousins.

However much the potion helped the symptoms, it was unlikely, Sailor guessed, to actually cure this poison or virus—no, what had they called it? A pathogen. The pathogen must be resistant to the usual Elven healing powers. Otherwise Charlotte and Gina and the others would have healed themselves. Might the pathogen have some magical component? She assumed that the medical community, the one comprised of Others, was searching for the cure. She would worry about that later. The first thing to do was get home.

Should she teleport? No, because Jonquil would be left to find his own way alone. Besides which, teleporting took a physical toll on her. She had a surge of energy now, but who knew how long it would last? Better to conserve it.

She had been teleporting since the age of two and a half, according to her mother, which so unnerved the poor woman that she’d called her husband home from work to make Sailor stop disappearing from her bedroom and reappearing in the playroom when she was supposed to be napping. Because Sailor wasn’t truly Elven, her powers would never be as strong as theirs, and she needed constant practice to move herself more than a mile at a time. Still, she was very good at it, for a Keeper. Not that she’d always used it responsibly. Keepers, too, had to survive the teenage years, and Sailor’s had been rocky.