Keeper of the Night - Heather Graham

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       She set her fingers on his chest, straightening the collar of his tailored shirt. “That’s okay—I don’t think I could even begin to describe my first impression of you.”

      He caught her hands. “But it’s changed?” he asked softly.

      “The jury is still out,” she told him. It wasn’t, though. Not really. He was dedicated. He was…noble, even, she thought. He was Elven, she was a Keeper. Elven could be anything, and he had chosen, like her, to protect and serve.

      There were a million reasons she should back away. They were embroiled in a horrible situation together, surrounded by death and tragedy, by a threat to everyone and everything they knew, to the entire world of the Others and the city where they all hid in plain sight.

      And yet the worst of it was that she was worried not for her world but for her heart and soul.

      And not a drop of the fear tearing through her could save her.

      Dear Reader,

      Welcome to the world of THE KEEPERS: L.A. I hope you enjoy this new four-book foray into the world of the guardians of the supernatural known as the Keepers. Writing these books—joined for this go-round by Harley Jane Kozak and Alexandra Sokoloff, two very good friends—has been a true labor of love.

      When Harley and Alex and I began to think about this second go-round, our first concern was…where else? And, again, the answer came to all of us at the same time: Los Angeles, City of Angels, City of Dreams.

      And a city where at any given time you might see any kind of performance, any kind of costume, any kind of anything happening right there in broad daylight—or the dark.

      I’m actually in L.A. as I write this. Contestants for The Voice are scurrying around my hotel, all of them filled with hopes and dreams. And naturally, to sustain all the dreamers in the city, you have the exclusive clubs, the new “it” places and all the people who own and run them. And then there are those with the true power: the producers, the agents and the directors, who are thrilled—and sometimes challenged—by the choices the producers make.

      What better place for a few new Keepers—a bit disconcerted by their sudden call to duty—to govern those denizens wearing masks beneath their masks?

      I hope that you’ll have as much fun reading about these new Keepers as we had writing about them.

      Thank you, and enjoy!

       Heather Graham

      About the Author

      New York Times bestselling author HEATHER GRAHAM has written more than a hundred novels, many of which have been featured by the Doubleday Book Club and the Literary Guild. An avid scuba diver and ballroom dancer and a mother of five, she still enjoys her south Florida home, but loves to travel as well, from locations such as Cairo, Egypt, to her own backyard, the Florida Keys. Reading, however, is the pastime she still loves best, and she is a member of many writing groups. She’s currently vice president of the Horror Writers’ Association, and she’s also an active member of International Thriller Writers. She is very proud to be a Killerette in the Killer Thriller Band, along with many fellow novelists she greatly admires. For more information, check out her website, theoriginalheathergraham.com.

       Keeper of the Night

      Heather Graham

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      Sometimes in life we get to meet people and in a few

      minutes we feel we’ve known them all our lives. I’ve

      known both Harley and Alex now for years, but from

      the time I met them I felt that I’d known them since

      childhood. To my prized and beloved cohorts on this

      Keepers journey, Alexandra Sokoloff and Harley Jane

      Kozak. I cannot remember a time when we weren’t

      friends, and I certainly can’t imagine not having

      you in my life.

       Prologue

      Perception, to paraphrase the old saying, is nine-tenths of the law.

      And so the world happily—well, mostly happily—accepts the truth of that. And, perception, of course, is the main duty of those born to be Keepers and maintain order among the paranormal races.

      As centuries slipped by, man became a “show me” species and lost his belief in what he couldn’t see plainly with his own eyes, and that was good for all the decent and law-abiding creatures. As the twenty-first century progressed, populations exploded. Human beings covered the earth, with birth rates at an all-time high.

      And other beings flourished, too, learning how to coexist in a world where the magic of the earth and skies was no longer recognized, and human credence was more and more limited to one particular sense: sight. Many people began to lose faith not just in the unexplainable or unknown, but even in their own omnipresent God.

      While those of an…unusual bent had once headed strictly to places like New Orleans, where even many among the human population believed themselves to be vampires or other denizens of the night, many places in the world became the destinations of choice for the truly different. The well-known among the races—vampires, werewolves and shapeshifters—were ready to expand their territory, as were Others who had once chosen to remain in their native lands, the Elven, gnomes, leprechauns, fairies and more.

      With that expansion came the need for an international council, the first of its kind, to keep order, and Keepers from across the world were selected to meet at a secret rendezvous in order to construct a code that would be universally accepted. They would serve as the last word when it came to events that could disturb the status quo, because even the Otherworld races considered the most vile and beastly in human mythology were trying to blend in and survive.

      With so many of the most experienced Keepers serving on the council, some of the most promising young Keepers were thrown into difficult situations with little warning.

      And since so many of the paranormal races still liked to settle where the abnormal was the norm, where theatrics abounded, even the most absurd people and situations frequently went unnoticed, it was no wonder that the population of the Otherworld exploded off the charts in one particular place: La-La Land, also known as Hollywood, California.

      City of dreams to many, and city of lost dreams for too many others. A place where waiters and waitresses spent their tips on head shots, and the men and women behind the scenes—the producers—reigned as the real kings.

      So many of the paranormal races—the vampires, the shifters, the Elven and more—traveled there, and many stayed, because where better to blend in than a place where even the human beings hardly registered as normal half the time? With so much going on, no one set of Keepers could control the vast scope of the Greater Los Angeles Otherworld, and so it was that the three Gryffald cousins, daughters of the three renowned Gryffald brothers, were called to take their place as peacekeepers a bit earlier than had been expected.

      And right when L.A. was on the verge of exploding with Otherworld activity.

      Hollywood, they were about to discover, could truly be murder.

       Chapter 1

      There was blood. So much blood.

      From her position on the stage, Rhiannon Gryffald could see the man standing just outside the club door. He was tall and well built, his almost formal attire

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