LITMIR.BIZ

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luck for the to be able to observe the disease. Sailor Gryffald was more valuable in a hospital bed than on her feet.

      And more vulnerable.

      He shook off Alessande’s last words. Portents aren’t facts, he reminded himself. They’re like dreams, open to interpretation, symbolic. We’ve had enough dead. I have no intention of letting Sailor Gryffald join their ranks.

      Declan slowed his heart by an effort of will, and then lowered his eyelids on a long exhale, sent a command to the region deep in his solar plexus, watched the molecules rearrange themselves.

      He turned himself into a hawk and flew home.

      Sailor knew she was moving as fast as she was because of the strangely named brew that Alessande had given her. A long-forgotten memory suddenly emerged from the depths of her mind: she’d been a child, sick with bronchitis, and her mother had given her the same brew, bade her drink it despite the bitterness. It had been like a miracle then, and it was the same now. She could feel it continue to sharpen her senses and heat her blood, and wondered if there would be a backlash when it wore off, some kind of potion hangover. Her theory, backed up by personal research in her college days, was that the better the high, the worse the morning after. She couldn’t remember the aftereffects when she’d been seven, only that one moment she’d been ill and the next playing tag with her cousins.

      However much the potion helped the symptoms, it was unlikely, Sailor guessed, to actually cure this poison or virus—no, what had they called it? A pathogen. The pathogen must be resistant to the usual Elven healing powers. Otherwise Charlotte and Gina and the others would have healed themselves. Might the pathogen have some magical component? She assumed that the medical community, the one comprised of Others, was searching for the cure. She would worry about that later. The first thing to do was get home.

      Should she teleport? No, because Jonquil would be left to find his own way alone. Besides which, teleporting took a physical toll on her. She had a surge of energy now, but who knew how long it would last? Better to conserve it.

      She had been teleporting since the age of two and a half, according to her mother, which so unnerved the poor woman that she’d called her husband home from work to make Sailor stop disappearing from her bedroom and reappearing in the playroom when she was supposed to be napping. Because Sailor wasn’t truly Elven, her powers would never be as strong as theirs, and she needed constant practice to move herself more than a mile at a time. Still, she was very good at it, for a Keeper. Not that she’d always used it responsibly. Keepers, too, had to survive the teenage years, and Sailor’s had been rocky.

      She continued jogging, her focus on Jonquil’s tail ahead of her, the full moon above, her grip on the dagger Alessande had given her. If the thing, the Other, whatever it was, returned, it would not catch her unaware. She didn’t run with an iPod, because it interfered with situational awareness, and now, especially, she needed access to all six senses. She would recognize the warning signs this time: the whoosh of wind, the drop in temperature, the quieting of the cicadas. This time she would be ready. She had always been good with a knife.

      Don’t be stupid, girl. That man’s words reverberated in her head. Stupid? She was in her element out here. Running was her passion, and these roads were as familiar to her as her home. No one was going to scare her off her own turf.

      Her thoughts returned to the man. He wasn’t in the least attractive, and yet there was something about him that she found … magnetic. Perhaps it was his confidence. There was nothing sexier. Or maybe her strange wanton reaction was due to the moon, just risen, perfectly full. It was in Scorpio, the most carnal sign of the zodiac, and yesterday had been Beltane, the ancient Celtic celebration of fertility. A trifecta of sexual energy.

      Even so, that man … who was he and why was he privy to Elven inside information? He knew more about the current crisis than she did, and he was nothing. He was merely mortal.

      Or was he?

      She stopped in her tracks and Jonquil stopped, too, curious. Of course. It was so obvious, she was embarrassed to have been almost oblivious to it. The attack must have thrown her off her game, affecting her powers of observation. Sailor had seen the shimmering effect enough, witnessed her cousin Barrie practice her own shifting skills. How could she not have recognized it? “Vernon” was merely a costume, a convenient face and body to house a man—or woman—who was a shapeshifter. Or, like Barrie, a Keeper of shifters. Although that was less likely. She doubted a Keeper could sustain a shift for half an hour, especially a shift into human form. Humans, Barrie said, were tough.

      So Alessande hadn’t been altogether straight with her, and some shifter out there was also playing her. Some shifter with powerful sexual energy. And, of course, the entire Elven Council—excluding the dead guy in San Pedro and the idiots in the Antelope Valley. And she mustn’t forget the winged Other that had attacked her. There were a lot of people withholding information. She would need a flowchart to keep them straight.

      But she knew whom to find first. As soon as she changed clothes and did something to disguise her eyes.

      She reached Laurel Canyon and took the lead, hugging the shoulder to avoid the traffic, knowing Jonquil would do the same. They were running downhill now, practically at a sprint, and within two minutes Lookout Mountain was in sight and they were taking a right onto the private road that led to the House of the Rising Sun, high on the hill. Her home.

      The House of the Rising Sun was actually a compound with three houses, built early in the twentieth century by Ivan Schwartz, a magician who went by the stage name of Merlin. Sailor had grown up in the main house, which her mother had always called the Castle House. Sailor’s cousin Barrie lived in Gwydion’s Cave, the residence Merlin had built for their grandfather. And Rhiannon, the third cousin, occupied Pandora’s Box, the original guesthouse. Merlin, who had long since passed from this world to the next, nevertheless preferred to stay on at the House of the Rising Sun—as a ghost.

      A Tiffany lamp burned in the main hall, giving Castle House a ghostly glow. Had she left it on? Maybe. She did tend to be careless….

      She followed Jonquil to the kitchen and filled his water bowl, watched him lap it up, then refilled it. The kitchen was old, with beat-up soft wood floors and knotty pine paneling installed in the 1950s, which was decades before she was born, but she knew the history of the estate going back to the 1920s. The house was old even when it was new, Mediterranean Gothic in style, with as many antiques as its owner could fill it with. Sailor loved all of Rising Sun, but especially Castle House, and especially the kitchen. She’d grown up in the oversize room, baked cookies with her mother, done homework at the old pine table, warmed herself near the wood-burning fireplace, napped on the ratty sofa covered with homemade quilts. She thought of Alessande’s kitchen, with its polish and new appliances. If there was an opposite to state-of-the-art, this was it.

      She looked out the window over the sink and saw a light on in Pandora’s Box. Apparently Rhiannon was home. Out the back door she saw Gwydion’s Cave illuminated, as well, which meant Barrie was there, probably writing. The three houses were connected by tunnels, one of the estate’s many splendid oddities, but as adults, the cousins mostly stayed aboveground. For the moment Sailor had Castle House to herself, and could shower and map out what she would say to her cousins before—

      A door slammed open. A gust of wind came through the kitchen. Already spooked by the lamp, Sailor reached for the dagger she’d set down.

      “Sailor! You home yet?” a voice called, and a door slammed shut. “Where are you?”

      “Kitchen,” she called back, and looked around for a dish towel to throw over her bloody shirt, but too late, because her cousin Rhiannon was walking through the archway, accompanied by Wizard, a dog so large he made Jonquil look dainty. Sailor clutched the shirt close and reminded herself not to make eye contact with her gorgeous relative.

      “You’ve been out all this time?” Rhiannon reached down to pet Jonquil, who greeted her and Wizard with enthusiasm bordering on hysteria, as though he hadn’t seen them both a few hours earlier. Rhiannon glanced at Sailor. “Are you slaughtering something for dinner?”

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