Keeper of the Moon. Harley Jane Kozak

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СКАЧАТЬ appear. But a tornado of currents circled him, the wind picking up, telling him it was no small thing to choose this path, that he was altering his destiny by involving himself in the mystery of her death. He stayed resolute and unmoving until he felt the spirit world acquiesce and the wind die down.

      Declan let out a long breath. He’d done it. He’d shifted the course of his immediate future. He couldn’t know what that future would bring, only that he would now encounter people and events that would pull him into the orbit of a murderer.

      A sound broke into his reverie, pulling him back into his body, onto his deck. It was a high-pitched squeal he couldn’t identify. A child?

      Crying.

      He looked below, to the beach, to the right, to the left. Nothing.

      And there it was again.

      He closed his eyes to pinpoint the location of the cries. They seemed to come from under the house. His mental focus shifted to the sand four stories below. He couldn’t see it, but he could feel it. Warmth. Life. Terror.

      He took the outside staircase two steps at a time, thinking of the panga, a Mexican fishing boat, that had washed ashore a month before from Tijuana, carrying undocumented immigrants, dehydrated, half-drowned. What if it was happening again right now? What if one of them was just a—

      Baby. The sound was recurring, a cry interrupted by the waves crashing on the shore. It must have found its way to the storage space where he kept the kayak and the beach furniture, in the area formed by the stilts and the rocks. He hit the sand and was instantly ankle-deep in surf. He clambered barefoot under the deck and then worked his way upward to the dry area, barely able to see in the underbelly of the house, where it was already night.

      And there it was, clinging to a plank.

      A cat.

      He could just make it out in the last moments of sunlight filtering through the slats. An unhappy cat, gray, frightened, mewling.

      “So you’re the baby.” He felt its terror and in response, slowed his own breath. “Come on, then.”

      But the cat was panicked, hissing, and as he moved closer it stood upright on its hind legs in a freakish posture, displaying its own underbelly. Female, clearly. Her neck seemed stuck to the wall. Declan inched closer and pulled his cell phone from his pocket, used the flashlight app and saw that her collar was caught on a protruding nail. The cat was so freaked out that she was in danger of strangling herself. He put away the cell and crooned to her, using a hypnotic voice. “Come on, girl, let’s get you somewhere safe. Warm and dry … nice bowl of milk … tasty piece of fish …” He pulled his T-shirt over his head and draped it around his hands as a shield from her claws, then grasped her and held on, letting her struggle as he worked on unhooking the collar. But for that he needed his hands, so cradling her against one shoulder, he endured her scratches until he’d released it, at which point she wriggled out of both his grasp and her collar. In a spark of movement she took off under the house and into the darkness.

      Leaving Declan behind, wet, bloody, shirtless and swearing, and holding her collar.

      Minutes later he was back inside the house, dripping on the bleached wood floors. He set his cell on the kitchen counter, its screen showing a voice mail message from Alessande Salisbrooke. He would call her later.

      “Look at this,” he said to Harriet, who’d brought him a towel. He handed her the collar, which had the Gucci logo on the leather and two green gems hanging from the metal ring like charms on a bracelet. “I believe those are real.”

      “Emeralds? Leave it to you, Mr. Wainwright, to rescue a cat and end up with a fortune. Does it have a name?”

      “The cat? Her name is Tamarind.”

      “Yes, here it is on the tag. With a phone number. Shall I call it?”

      “You needn’t bother,” Declan said, already stripping off his wet jeans. “There won’t be anyone home.”

      Alessande had the door opened before Declan could reach for the doorbell. She ushered him inside and took a long look out at the horizon, as if scanning it for information. “Thanks for coming,” she said.

      “My pleasure.”

      “Took you long enough.” She closed the door.

      He laughed and put an arm around her. “Took me no time at all, you ingrate. I came as soon as I listened to your message. What’s up?”

      “I found a woman up on Mulholland, unconscious. I need help with her.”

      “You have a dozen family members within shouting distance.”

      “They’re Elven. I don’t want any Elven near her.”

      “Why not?”

      By way of answer, Alessande led him into the living room, where a girl—a woman, actually—lay on the sofa. She was covered by a blanket, so he could only see a long arm and the top of her head. A large yellow dog lay beside her. The dog raised his head at their entrance, but Alessande made a hand gesture and he relaxed, tail thumping on the stone floor.

      “Is she sleeping,” Declan said in a low voice, “or unconscious?”

      “She goes in and out. It’s like she’s drugged. Go check out her eyes.”

      “Her eyes?”

      “Lift her eyelid.”

      He approached the woman. She had red-blond hair that spilled down the side of the sofa like a waterfall. His pulse quickened even before he came around and saw her face. It was heart-shaped, stunning in repose, with long eyelashes pointing the way to high cheekbones. A face he’d seen when it was awake and animated. Her extreme vulnerability now touched something in him. “I know her,” he told Alessande.

      “Who is she?”

      “In a minute.” He didn’t want to say the name aloud, knowing sleeping people will sometimes hear themselves called and pull themselves into consciousness. With a finger he brushed back a lock of her hair, gently, and with a growing suspicion of what he would find, he lifted an eyelid. He stared.

      After a moment he turned to Alessande. “How exposed were you to her?”

      “Enough. I carried her down the hillside. I’d begun to treat her wound when I thought to check her eyes.”

      “Get any blood on you?”

      “On my jacket. Nothing on my skin, as far as I could see.”

      “You were lucky.”

      “Do you think I’m all right?”

      “I think if you weren’t, you’d already be dead.”

      The woman grew restless, and her eyelids fluttered. Declan, acting on impulse, said quickly, “I don’t want her seeing me just yet. I’m going to shift.”

      He closed his eyes and slowed his breathing, focusing on his astral body. Then he let in another image, the first person who came to mind—Vernon, his stockbroker. He would do. Vernon СКАЧАТЬ