LITMIR.BIZ

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He pointed.

      Brodie picked up the small magnifying glass that Tony had indicated, then walked down to join Tony by the foot of the gurney. Tony slipped on gloves and moved the thigh. The skin was mottled and bruised looking.

      “No lividity?” Brodie asked.

      “The discoloration and bloating you see are because he was dumped in a pond out by one of those housing projects they never finished off Laurel Canyon—suspiciously near your theater,” Tony said. “But use the magnifying glass and check out his thigh. There are marks. They’re tiny, and they’re practically buried in swollen flesh, but they’re there. And, of course, the body was pretty much drained of blood. There is a slash at the throat, but despite the damage and decay, I believe it was postmortem.”

      Despite his feelings about autopsy and corpses, Brodie donned gloves, shifted the dead man’s leg and peered through the microscope, searching for the telltale marks, then looked up at Tony.

      “Third body in two weeks with the same marks and same method of disposal,” Tony said.

      “And I know I’ve seen this one at the theater,” Brodie said wearily.

      “And the killer dumped them all close to that theater,” Tony told him. “Your captain seems to have been on the mark.”

      Brodie nodded. “Yeah, without his insight the victims might have fallen on to the big pile of cold cases, with no leads to go on. The captain is…a smart guy.”

      “Guess that means you stay undercover,” Tony said. “Too bad L.A.’s three best Keepers have been called to council. This is one hell of a mess.”

      Brodie thought about the stunning young auburn-haired woman with the big green eyes he had seen at the café. She’d rushed to what she thought was a crime scene like a bat out of hell. She’d been ready, he thought. But she wasn’t ready enough. She loved her music too much. In a way, he understood. It was difficult to realize that you could—had to—lead a normal life, then let it all go to hell when necessary.

      He wished to hell that Piers Gryffald, Rhiannon’s father and the previous Keeper of the Canyon vampires, was still there.

      But he wasn’t.

      And the body count was rising.

      Driving in L.A. was not like driving in Savannah. People in Savannah moved at a far more human pace. Everyone in L.A. was in a hurry, which seemed strange, because often they were hurrying just to go sit in a coffee shop and while away their time, hoping to make the right connection. Some hopefuls still believed that they could be “discovered” in an ice cream parlor, and God knew, in Hollywood, anything could happen, even if the statistics weren’t in their favor.

      At least coming home—to the house that had been her old summer home and was now her permanent base—was appealing. She had to admit, she loved the exquisite old property where she lived with Sailor and Barrie. Each of them had her own house on the estate—the compound, really—that had been left to their grandfather, Rhys Gryffald, by the great Merlin, magician extraordinaire, real name Ivan Schwartz.

      Somehow during his younger years, Merlin had learned about the Keepers. He’d longed to be one, but only those born in the bloodline, born with the telltale birthmark indicating what they were destined to become—werewolf Keeper, vampire Keeper, shapeshifter Keeper and so on—could inherit the role. Since he couldn’t be a Keeper, Ivan did the next best thing: he befriended one. In fact, he had become such good friends with Rhiannon’s grandfather that he had first built him a house on the property, opposite the guesthouse that already existed, and then, on his death, Merlin had willed the entire compound to him.

      Good old Ivan. He had loved them all so much that he had never actually left.

      The House of the Rising Sun, the main house, loomed above her as she drove along the canyon road, and she had to admit, it was magnificent. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t known the house all her life. Her grandparents had three sons—her father and her two uncles—and her dad had been mentored by a Keeper in Savannah, which had turned out to be a very good thing, since he’d fallen in love with her mother, a musical director for a Savannah theater. But then he’d returned to L.A. and assumed responsibility for the Canyon vampires—and she shouldn’t have had to take over for another zillion years, give or take. She had grown up in Savannah, where her mother had kept her job, and her father had traveled back and forth on a regular basis. Despite the distance, her parents enjoyed one of the best marriages she had ever seen. And she’d grown close with her L.A. family, because she’d spent summers and most holidays there at the House of the Rising Sun. Sailor had always lived in the House of the Rising Sun itself, except for her acting stint in New York.

      Barrie was now in Gwydion’s Cave, the house Merlin had built for their grandfather, and she herself had the original 1920s guesthouse, called Pandora’s Box.

      Pandora’s Box. A fitting name for all of L.A. in her opinion.

      The main house really was beautiful! Regal, haunting and majestic, high up on a cliff. The style was Mediterranean Gothic, and it seemed to hold a thousand secrets as it stood proud against the night sky.

      As a matter of fact, it did hold a thousand secrets. All right, maybe not a thousand, but a lot of them. Like the tunnels that connected all three houses. And the little red buttons that looked like light switches and were set randomly around the three houses. Little red buttons that set off alarms in all three residences, in case someone in any one of them needed help.

      The property could only be reached via a winding driveway that scaled the cliff face, and the entire property was protected by a tall stone wall. She had to open the massive electric gate with a remote she kept in her car or else buzz in and hope someone was home to answer.

      Grudgingly, she had to admit that she loved the House of the Rising Sun and living on the estate wasn’t any kind of punishment. It was still breathtaking to watch the gate swing wide to allow entry to the compound, and then awe inspiring to see the beautiful stone facades of the houses appear.

      Sometimes she wondered why Merlin had bothered with the wall. The Others that the Keepers were assigned to watch weren’t the type to be stopped by walls or gates. But then again, Merlin had lived in the real world with its real dangers, too, as did they—although calling the surreal world of Hollywood “real” seemed like a contradiction in terms.

      She clicked the gate shut behind her and drove forward slowly, noting that Barrie’s car was parked on the left side of the property, while Sailor’s, unsurprisingly, was not. Since there was no garage—all the available land had been used for the houses—she assumed that if Sailor’s car wasn’t there, neither was Sailor herself. Barrie was determined to save the world, not only by overseeing the shapeshifters but also by practicing the kind of hard-hitting journalism that could bring about change in L.A., if not the world, so, she tended to keep reasonable hours. Sailor, Keeper of the Elven, was determined to rule the world from the silver screen, which meant she was likely to be out and networking at all hours.

      Still thinking about the way the Elven had handed her his card and told her that she should see the play, Rhiannon pulled into her usual parking place and exited the car, bringing her guitar with her as she headed for Pandora’s Box. Slipping her key into the lock, she shoved a shoulder wearily against the door, stepped in and flicked on the lights.

      She was tired. And she worked in a café, for God’s sake. She should have brought home a gourmet tea to sip while she unwound, but after only a few minutes with Mac Brodie she had been too disconcerted to think of it.

      She set her guitar case in its stand and headed into the kitchen. There she quickly brewed a cup of tea and added a touch of milk, then headed back out to the living room to sink into the comfortable old sofa and lean back. She closed her eyes.

      “No, you really should come see the show….”

      There was a tap at her door. She listened for a minute without rising. She was tired. And frustrated. And, she had to admit, unnerved.

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