Keeper of the Moon. Harley Jane Kozak

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.”

      Rhiannon took Sailor’s hands in her own and turned them over. “Really? So you trip and fall, but you don’t skin your knees or scrape your palms, you fall directly on your sternum?”

      “She probably ran into a tree,” Barrie said.

      “With arms outstretched,” Rhiannon said.

      “Very common among runners,” Barrie added. “It’s why they don’t route marathons through forests.”

      The two women looked at Sailor expectantly, and for the first time got a good look at her face.

      “Holy hell!” Rhiannon screamed. “What’s with your eyes?”

      “Good God,” Barrie said. “Are those … colored contact lenses?”

      “No. But if you have a spare pair, Barrie, I need to borrow them.”

      “If you want to borrow anything,” Barrie said, “start explaining.”

      Sailor sank into the sofa as a wave of weakness rolled over her. “I need coffee.”

      “I’ll make coffee, you talk,” Rhiannon said, walking across the kitchen.

      Barrie plopped down on the sofa alongside Sailor. “This isn’t some extreme ploy to get the night off work, is it?”

      “Damn. Work.” Sailor sat up on the sofa. “What time is it?”

      “Eight-twenty.”

      “Okay. I’ll make this fast. Something happened tonight, which—”

      “Is it to do with us?” Rhiannon asked.

      “Tangentially, yes. It has to do with the family business.”

      “Oh.” This time the two spoke in unison.

      The cousins were all Keepers. Born in the same year, one red-haired child to each of the Gryffald brothers, the girls came into the world with the birthmarks of their fathers. Barrie’s destiny was to oversee the shapeshifters, Rhiannon’s the vampires. The girls had shared childhood memories, holidays and vacations, then gone separate ways as adults. Now they were back together and living in the family compound rent-free, if not expense-free. Their Otherworld work didn’t come with a paycheck, and all three of them had real-world professions—for Sailor, acting. Which meant, at the moment, waitressing.

      “The thing is,” Sailor said, “I’m not sure I should talk about it.”

      “Screw that,” Barrie said.

      “Okay, but what if I tell you what I know and you feel you’re honor-bound, as a Keeper, to discuss it with—”

      “Who?” Rhiannon asked from across the kitchen.

      “Whom,” Barrie said. She was a journalist, and she believed in precision.

      Sailor shook her head. “Shifters. Vamps. Your fellow Keepers.” She looked at Rhiannon. “Your fiancé. Especially him. You tell Brodie, he’s going to want to talk to me, and he’s got to stay away from me. Because he’s Elven.”

      Rhiannon frowned. “What’s that got to do with—”

      “You know what I hate?” Sailor continued. “Someone swears you to silence and tells you something, and then it turns out they themselves were sworn to silence, which means they’re expecting more of you than they expect of themselves.”

      “You hate that?” Barrie asked. “Because I don’t have a problem with it. Everyone does it.”

      “But isn’t it much better,” Sailor persisted, “if someone were to ask you later, to be able to say, ‘Golly, I didn’t know anything about it’?”

      Barrie nodded. “Yes, if I were the sort of person who’s ever said ‘golly.’”

      “I’m going with Barrie on this one,” Rhiannon said. “Screw that. We’re family.”

      Sailor took a long look at her cousin Rhiannon in her strange clothes and another look at her cousin Barrie, and the two of them looked back at her with Gryffald eyes.

      After a deep breath, she told them the story of her evening.

      Declan Wainwright stood outside the gates of the House of the Rising Sun. He’d parked off Lookout Mountain and hiked the few hundred yards to this spot, where he could see into the main house—Sailor’s house—one of several on the compound and the only one showing movement. He counted three people and assumed they were the Gryffald cousins. He was waiting for Sailor to be alone, to pass out from fatigue, as Alessande had predicted, so that he could make his way into her bedroom and extract some blood. He’d worked his way through college as an EMT, so that would be easy. If she was deeply asleep, she wouldn’t even wake. He would return in the morning to get her to Kimberly’s lab, recruiting her cousins to help, if necessary. But for now, he needed her blood.

      And, to be honest, he needed to see that she was safe.

      He wasn’t used to waiting. Harriet excelled at expediting things for him, a perk of money and power. He’d spent the past hour texting with her, rearranging his calendar, rescheduling meetings planned for the next morning and setting up two for tonight. One was with Kimberly Krabill, the physician, and the other was business. He glanced at his watch.

      He would have to break in. If there was as much magic here at the House of the