Keeper Chronicles: Awakening (13 page)

She threw her hands up defensively, a small cloud of flour following the movement. “No. No, I don't know anything.” She hesitated. “It just sounds suspicious. Maybe there's more to the story than you know.”

“Well, if there is, I don't want to hear it. He had his chance. I've moved on. Dylan's a good guy.”

Leaving the kitchen, she went to the front hall and then the living room, lighting the fireplaces. Her fingers trembled where she held the matches, and she nearly caught the living room rug on fire by accident.
Stop that. You're not a silly girl anymore.
She and Dylan were in a good place. They deserved a real chance to make things work.

Desperate for something to occupy her mind and hands, she went outside and grabbed a rake from the small shed in the backyard. Halloween was tomorrow, and there were still a thousand things she needed to do for the party. Raking up the leaves and stuffing them into specialty plastic bags was blissfully energetic and monotonous. Rebekah hummed a song as she worked, first raking the leaves into several large piles despite the wind's best efforts to scatter her work. Sweat popped on her forehead and back from the exertion, her muscles pleasantly warmed by the exercise enough so that she eventually took off her coat and draped it over the porch railing. The rainbow of rust and gold and brown leaves cheered her, as did the sight of her breath misting in the brisk air. Rebekah loved the fall. Loved the colors and the food and the holidays. Most people thought of fall as being a time of death—that season when the world started dying and prepared for a long winter's slumber. She knew better.

Fall was the only season when nature truly and completely came alive.

She had finished raking the leaves in the back into two large piles and was walking to the front to start there when a shiver ran down her spine. Someone watched her. Fingers tightening around the rake's handle, she scanned the area for anything out of place. No one lurked in the trees, and the area around the house was clear. She was about to keep walking when she sensed something off and looked up at the house. There. On the second floor, a curtain moved back into place. Someone in that room had been watching her. A quick calculation of the layout of the house told her it was the Mariner's room. One of her new guests had been spying on her.

The peace she had found raking fled, and Rebekah finished the chore as quickly as she could. First Mia was acting strange and now her new guests were spying on her. Something seemed to be going on at the bed-n-breakfast, and she didn't like being the last to know.

She'd have to keep a closer watch on her two guests. On everyone.

Chapter Thirteen

Colette closed the curtain in disgust. “Perfect Keeper reflexes. Keen eye. I hadn’t watched her for longer than ten seconds when she spotted me. And the spell I used—she felt it instantly. She needs trained, Nicholas. Awakened to her duty.”

“That is not our decision to make.” He cracked his neck, and then bent back over his latest trinket. Since the murder the night before, he’d not slept or even closed his eyes for more than a minute.

She loved his dedication to the Keepers and his assignments, but sometimes, she also hated it. Colette peeked out the window one more time, but the woman was no longer around. “We could notify the Council. Force them to intercede.”

His voice was distant when he spoke again, but he never took his eyes off her. “Why shatter her entire world? Will it bring your sister back? Or my wife?”

“No, but...”

“But nothing, Colette. Leave the woman to her ignorance.” He returned his attention to the device he’d been calibrating for most of the night. “We’ve bigger problems to worry about. This first-order is far more advanced than we’d been led to believe. To kill a girl so publically while in human form takes a certain confidence and recklessness. Run a search through the archives for demons that prefer young, female prey and look for anything that might fit the pattern of the last two known kills.”

Biting down the sarcastic remark she wanted to make took a lot of willpower, but Colette knew he’d already forgotten she was there. They’d been working together for eight years, married for four, and she knew his moods as well as she knew the feeding habits of over 300 species of demon. This wasn’t some higher-order hunger-driven animal; first-orders developed rapidly and viciously. She should know. One had killed her sister.

She grabbed her tablet and a pad of paper for notes, sitting on the bed with her back against the old pine headboard. The first few species names she took from her own list of suspects; however, when she finally did a simple search of the Keeper archives, her notepad started to fill up and her hand to cramp. So many. If they were going to have any hope of narrowing down the species list, they’d have to reexamine the evidence from both murders to look for similarities or anomalies that the others missed. Oftentimes it was the small things, the little details that eluded others but seemed painfully obvious to someone with Hunter training, which solved the case.

To make things worse, she could feel a storm gathering in her fake hip and knee. With one portal between the dimensions already open, it’d make the next wave of demons to come through all that more numerous. Now more than ever they could use another Keeper around, even one with little training. Every sword helped.

A soft knock at the door startled Colette out of her thoughts, and she had no more stood to answer the door when a voice spoke into the silence.

“Breakfast is served in the dining room.”

“Thank you,” she called out, glancing over at Nicholas. “We’ll be right down.”

A click locked her tablet, and she shut the cover and placed it and the notebook in a cloth satchel she hid in one of the dresser drawers. Nicholas never bothered to hide his gadgets—no one, not even a Keeper, would know what they were looking at or listening to—but he gave himself a quick injection in the arm before following her out of the room.

Colette loved old houses the way some people loved sports cars or watching sitcoms. Looping her arm through Nicholas’ elbow, she took her time admiring the intricate detail work in the trimmings for door and window alike, standing out in stark white relief to the subtle blue and green walls throughout the house. The dining room was near the back in an elegant room framed with large, inviting windows that looked out past the porch and into manicured flowerbeds. Sunlight, filtered through the high clouds, dappled the emerald lawn in shimmering rays. Were she not there to hunt a demon capable of mass murder on a scale normal humans couldn’t comprehend, she might just have enjoyed a vacation here.

The other guests were already seated and talking amongst themselves. She led her husband to a pair of open seats toward the end of the table where they could observe everyone. The first couple, a pair of women in their late twenties, couldn’t keep their hands off one another for more than a second, always touching in some small way. Probably on their honeymoon. Next to them sat a slightly older man and woman with two pre-teen daughters. The kids played something on their phones while their parents talked.

Taking a sip of orange juice from the crystal goblet in front of her, Colette scanned the room for their host as discreetly as possible.

“Excuse me,” the father of the girls said to Nicholas. “You’re the bounty hunter, aren’t you? Is it true what they say? A girl was murdered in the city yesterday? Should we be worried?”

“Not more than usual. There was nothing to indicate that the killer would come out here. So far, he or she has stuck to more populated areas—places where people live or work. It’s unlikely the killer would risk coming somewhere as exposed as this place. There’d be nowhere to hide.”

The double doors leading into the kitchen opened and Rebekah and Mia emerged, each carrying four plates trimmed in gold leaf. Colette’s stomach growled as she looked down at the plate Mia set in front of her.

“For your first course,” the witch said, beaming, “something a little sweat: wholegrain crepes filled with my special lemon cream and topped with a glaze of fresh berries. Enjoy.”

The two girls started to disappear back into the kitchen.

“Rebekah, why don’t you and Dylan join us for breakfast?” Colette asked as innocently as she could. “There’s plenty of room at the table. I’m sure the others wouldn’t mind.”

A chorus of agreement rose from the table. Mia half pushed, half led her friend over to one of the chairs. “I’ve got this. You relax. You deserve the rest.”

“I can’t...” Rebekah protested.

“You can,” the children’s father insisted. “You have to do what your guests want, right?”

“Well, yes.”

The middle-aged man grinned. “Then it’s settled. You’ll join us.”

Mia came back in the room a moment later with two more plates of food, effectively ending the argument. Dylan must have been in the kitchen, as well, because he came in a moment later and took the seat at the head of the table next to Rebekah, pausing to kiss the girl on the cheek. Interesting.

Colette studied him from behind a mouthful of the best crepes she’d ever had outside France. Last night at the bar, his answers had been genuine and honest—and none of Nicholas’ gadgets raised a beep of protest—but that didn’t mean she trusted him completely. If he’d eaten the Keeper’s heart, then he would have known that honesty would be the best way to dispel suspicion.

“How many people are you expecting for the Halloween party tomorrow?” one of the female newlyweds asked.

“A lot, I hope. There are three more couples coming in today, and then usually forty or fifty locals stop by.”

A party was a bad idea, especially if it were still storming. “What’s this about a party?” Colette asked.

“Halloween is tomorrow. Every year, my father would host a benefit to raise money for one of his causes. It was always his favorite holiday. We’re keeping with the tradition to honor his memory.”

Dylan reached over the table and squeezed Rebekah’s hand. The action was so unconscious and natural, it helped dispel some of Colette’s lingering doubt about the man. No demon could fake that level of emotion. Not even a first-order.

Nicholas spoke for the first time. “So, what’s this year’s cause?”

“Renovations for the lighthouse.”

Without knowledge of her heritage or birthright, the girl still fought to preserve her light like a real Keeper would have done. Defending it against the ravages of time and the destruction of saltwater spray was honorable. This girl needed trained, no matter what her husband or that overprotective Gabe said. Colette would just have to handle things herself.

The remainder of the breakfast passed with quiet conversation and discussion of party plans which included things like music and dancing and games. Trivialities beneath herself and the Keeper’s daughter. By the third course, Colette felt like she’d explode if she ate another bite and then four more courses were still to come. If they were going to stay here any length of time, she’d have to start watching how much she ate. Thankfully for her, she had a bout of slaying to do if the pain in her leg was right about the coming storm, and she would use all that energy and more.

After the meal, Nicholas went off to speak to Gabe, and Colette lingered hoping to catch the witch girl alone. She had a plan for something that might speed up the search, but if she was going to make it work, she’d need the help of at least one other witch, maybe even a coven. Without contacts in this region, Mia was her best chance.

Colette knocked on the door to the kitchen and stepped back.

“Is everything okay?” Rebekah asked, tucking her black hair behind her ears. She had put on a simple black apron trimmed in purple ruffles.

“Oh, of course. No, everything’s fine. The room’s beautiful. I was hoping to talk to Mia, actually. Those crepes were divine, and I’d hoped she might share the recipe with me.”

Rebekah held the door open. “Yeah, come on in.”

“What happened to your hand?” Colette asked.

The girl hid her hand behind her back. “It’s nothing. I needed to go check the rooms anyway; I’ll give you guys some privacy.”

“Thanks. It’ll just take a minute.” Colette watched the girl walk away and head upstairs before opening the kitchen door and going inside. There had been something off in the girl’s voice—a hint of deception. Colette smiled. If she played her cards right, the girl would discover the truth on her own. All she’d need is a nudge at the right time.

“Hey, Beks. Want me to keep the leftovers...You’re not Rebekah. Where’d she go? You shouldn’t be in here like this.” Her perky pigtails bobbed frantically as the waif of a witch tried to shoo Colette out of the kitchen like she were an unwelcome spider.

“Calm down, witch.” Colette moved past the irritating girl and stuck her finger in a bowl of leftover lemon crème. It really had been quite delicious. That part wasn’t a lie. “Your precious friend is upstairs cleaning. And me—I’m inquiring about a recipe. Tell me, how much magic
do
you infuse in your food?”

The girl blanched. “But you’re a Keeper, like him. What do you know of magic?”

Colette snapped her fingers and a half dozen candles flared to life. Although little more than a parlor trick, it had come in useful on long, cold nights in the woods. No need to worry about matches. “You’re not the only witch in the house. Keeper may be my birthright, but my sister and I also trained in one of the oldest covens in Paris. Now, what exactly did you do to the food?”

“Nothing much. Just a little healing. Something to make the guests feel refreshed while they’re here.”

“So, whoring your skills out then. I understand now.”

Mia bristled, waving her hand and extinguishing the flames. “Did you come here just to insult me or was there something specific you wanted?”

“I need your help for a spell I’m going to perform tonight. Well, yours and that of your coven.”

“What for?”

She dipped her finger into the lemon crème again and casually licked it off; being in America was bringing out her sweet tooth. “To stir the energy trails left in the watch room from the last attack and see if it can show us anything about the demon responsible or where it went.”