Kitabı oku: «Keeper of the Shadows», sayfa 3

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.