Keeper of the Moon. Harley Jane Kozak

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ his confidence. There was nothing sexier. Or maybe her strange wanton reaction was due to the moon, just risen, perfectly full. It was in Scorpio, the most carnal sign of the zodiac, and yesterday had been Beltane, the ancient Celtic celebration of fertility. A trifecta of sexual energy.

      Even so, that man … who was he and why was he privy to Elven inside information? He knew more about the current crisis than she did, and he was nothing. He was merely mortal.

      Or was he?

      She stopped in her tracks and Jonquil stopped, too, curious. Of course. It was so obvious, she was embarrassed to have been almost oblivious to it. The attack must have thrown her off her game, affecting her powers of observation. Sailor had seen the shimmering effect enough, witnessed her cousin Barrie practice her own shifting skills. How could she not have recognized it? “Vernon” was merely a costume, a convenient face and body to house a man—or woman—who was a shapeshifter. Or, like Barrie, a Keeper of shifters. Although that was less likely. She doubted a Keeper could sustain a shift for half an hour, especially a shift into human form. Humans, Barrie said, were tough.

      So Alessande hadn’t been altogether straight with her, and some shifter out there was also playing her. Some shifter with powerful sexual energy. And, of course, the entire Elven Council—excluding the dead guy in San Pedro and the idiots in the Antelope Valley. And she mustn’t forget the winged Other that had attacked her. There were a lot of people withholding information. She would need a flowchart to keep them straight.

      But she knew whom to find first. As soon as she changed clothes and did something to disguise her eyes.

      She reached Laurel Canyon and took the lead, hugging the shoulder to avoid the traffic, knowing Jonquil would do the same. They were running downhill now, practically at a sprint, and within two minutes Lookout Mountain was in sight and they were taking a right onto the private road that led to the House of the Rising Sun, high on the hill. Her home.

      The House of the Rising Sun was actually a compound with three houses, built early in the twentieth century by Ivan Schwartz, a magician who went by the stage name of Merlin. Sailor had grown up in the main house, which her mother had always called the Castle House. Sailor’s cousin Barrie lived in Gwydion’s Cave, the residence Merlin had built for their grandfather. And Rhiannon, the third cousin, occupied Pandora’s Box, the original guesthouse. Merlin, who had long since passed from this world to the next, nevertheless preferred to stay on at the House of the Rising Sun—as a ghost.

      A Tiffany lamp burned in the main hall, giving Castle House a ghostly glow. Had she left it on? Maybe. She did tend to be careless….

      She followed Jonquil to the kitchen and filled his water bowl, watched him lap it up, then refilled it. The kitchen was old, with beat-up soft wood floors and knotty pine paneling installed in the 1950s, which was decades before she was born, but she knew the history of the estate going back to the 1920s. The house was old even when it was new, Mediterranean Gothic in style, with as many antiques as its owner could fill it with. Sailor loved all of Rising Sun, but especially Castle House, and especially the kitchen. She’d grown up in the oversize room, baked cookies with her mother, done homework at the old pine table, warmed herself near the wood-burning fireplace, napped on the ratty sofa covered with homemade quilts. She thought of Alessande’s kitchen, with its polish and new appliances. If there was an opposite to state-of-the-art, this was it.

      She looked out the window over the sink and saw a light on in Pandora’s Box. Apparently Rhiannon was home. Out the back door she saw Gwydion’s Cave illuminated, as well, which meant Barrie was there, probably writing. The three houses were connected by tunnels, one of the estate’s many splendid oddities, but as adults, the cousins mostly stayed aboveground. For the moment Sailor had Castle House to herself, and could shower and map out what she would say to her cousins before—

      A door slammed open. A gust of wind came through the kitchen. Already spooked by the lamp, Sailor reached for the dagger she’d set down.

      “Sailor! You home yet?” a voice called, and a door slammed shut. “Where are you?”

      “Kitchen,” she called back, and looked around for a dish towel to throw over her bloody shirt, but too late, because her cousin Rhiannon was walking through the archway, accompanied by Wizard, a dog so large he made Jonquil look dainty. Sailor clutched the shirt close and reminded herself not to make eye contact with her gorgeous relative.

      “You’ve been out all this time?” Rhiannon reached down to pet Jonquil, who greeted her and Wizard with enthusiasm bordering on hysteria, as though he hadn’t seen them both a few hours earlier. Rhiannon glanced at Sailor. “Are you slaughtering something for dinner?”

      Sailor looked down at the dagger in her hand and set it on the butcher block in front of her. “Oh, I—This is just—”

      “Very slasher movie, that thing.” Rhiannon frowned at it. “Listen, Dad called. Mine, not yours. Apparently the rumor that we missed paying one lousy electric bill—or, okay, two bills—”

      “Three.”

      “Three lousy electric bills, fine. So somehow he heard that they turned off the power because—and you’ll love this—the alarm system is wired to his computer, and he happened to check in and was able to see that the system was down, so he called the company, who ratted us out, and—” She stopped, taking in her cousin again. “What have you got all over yourself? Paint?”

      There it was. Could she talk about the attack without divulging everything else? Probably not. “It’s nothing. Go on.”

      “That’s it.” Rhiannon picked up an apple from the fruit bowl on the counter and peeled off the sticker. “My dad and his gadgetry. You’d think he could relax the surveillance, knowing that I’m engaged to a cop, but no.” She rubbed the apple on her sweater, apparently an alternative to washing it, and took a loud, crunching bite. She peered at Sailor as she chewed. “You’re a mess.”

      “You’re looking a bit ‘circus refugee’ yourself,” Sailor replied, with a sideways glance. Rhiannon’s lanky body was draped in plaid flannel pants, a tie-dye T-shirt and an argyle sweater, everything in colors so at odds with her flame-colored hair that Sailor felt nauseous.

      “Cleaning closets,” Rhiannon explained. “Carving out space for Brodie. Trying on stuff before I hand it off to the Goodwill, in case I still like it. It’s insane how tiny the closets are in Pandora’s Box. How come nobody in the 1920s believed in storage space? It’s like junk wasn’t invented until 1985. Never mind me. Look at you. Your shirt’s filthy. What did you do, fall down the hillside?”

      “Yeah, something like that. Listen, Rhi, I just need to take a shower and—”

      “It’s like you got run over. And the dagger—is it antique? Let me see that.”

      Sailor, in proffering the dagger hilt-first, let go of her own shirt.

      “Sailor!” Rhiannon shrieked. “What in God’s name happened to you? Look at your chest.”

      “What?” another voice called. “What did I miss?” And into the kitchen sauntered Barrie, the third cousin.

      Barrie was petite by Gryffald standards, but the toughest of the cousins in many ways. When she saw Sailor’s state, however, she turned tender. “You poor thing. What did you do to yourself?”

      “It’s not a big deal,” Sailor said. “Just a jogging … incident. Accident. Happens all the time on the trails. I’m clumsy.”

СКАЧАТЬ