The Last Dream Keeper (3 page)

Daniela narrowed her eyes and nodded.

“I'll text the others.”

She pulled her phone out of her pocket and Lyse watched as Daniela's fingers flew across the screen.

“Something happened last night,” Lyse blurted out. Weir and Daniela both turned to look at her. “I may or may not have killed my uncle. But only after he tried to kill me.”

Lyse crossed her arms protectively over her chest, waiting for Daniela and Weir to respond—but they both just stared back at her, shocked by this surreal revelation.

“And I think he killed Eleanora, too.”

“Is that why there were police at my door this morning?” Weir asked, anger rippling through his words. “Jesus, what did you drag Lizbeth
into
?”

And from the fury on his face, Lyse worried their relationship might never be the same again.

“Y
ou said you ‘may or may not' have killed someone?” Daniela said, and watched Lyse's face contort into an expression of uncertainty.

“I went down to the lake, but the Lady of the Lake was totally fine and there was no body, no police—”

“Hold up,” Daniela said. “Did this happen or not?”

Lyse frowned.

“I don't know. It might've been a dream . . .”

Lyse was one of those women who had no idea what kind of impression she made on the people around her. Classically beautiful with an angular face and deep blue irises the color of a sailor's dream, even when frown lines etched the skin around her mouth and eyes, she was still gorgeous.

“And you'll tell us about it after we find Lizbeth,” Daniela said as Lyse faltered for words.

Lyse nodded.

“Okay, I just wanted you guys to know. In case this is all my fault.”

Daniela watched Weir's frown deepen. She felt sorry for Lyse.
Weir was like a mama bear: Anyone who hurt his little sister was gonna get their ass kicked.

“I just want to find LB,” Weir said, shaking his head. “I don't care about anything else.”

“I told Arrabelle to meet us there,” Daniela said, “and I let Dev know where we were going, too.”

Weir seemed happy to have Daniela take charge.

“Thanks. I appreciate you doing this.”

He directed his words to Daniela, not Lyse.

“Girls, be good and watch the house. We'll be back soon,” Daniela said, kneeling down so the two black cats could nuzzle against her legs. Like the Sphinx, their faces remained forever inscrutable.

“Well, I know they love me,” Daniela mused.
At least, the way a cat loves any human: with a touch of pity because we're not lucky enough to be cats ourselves.

Daniela stood up and indicated that they should head back up Curran. Lyse and Weir followed her without comment, letting her lead the way. She took them around Eleanora's old bungalow, away from Echo Park Avenue, and toward the park.

Weir was much taller than either of the girls and he quickly stole the lead, so Daniela had to jog to keep up with his longer gait.

“Can you slow down a bit?” she asked, dripping with sweat after only a few minutes.

“Sorry,” he said, looking back at her sheepishly. “Was in my head.”

No shit,
Daniela thought. Instead, she said out loud, “I'm sure she's up at the Dragon.”

They were halfway down Cerro Gordo, a street whose houses crowded together like an overgrown brick, wood, and concrete forest, shading them from the worst of the sun. Weir looked so sad Daniela almost reached out and touched his arm.

Thankfully, she stopped herself before their bodies actually connected.

“It'll be okay,” Daniela added a bit lamely.

She wanted to reassure him, but she didn't trust her empathic talents not to behave oddly. Things had been strange and unpredictable since Lyse's arrival in Echo Park, and it had reached the point where even with her gloves on, Daniela was afraid to touch anyone.

They were the conduits to her powers as an empath—and they would also be the instruments of her demise. It wasn't a matter of
if
her empathic powers would kill her, but
when
 . . . because every time she used her talents, she blew out a little bit more of the neural circuitry in her brain. It was an absolute certainty that one day she would cross the fail-safe point and this would be the end: Vegetable-Hooked-Up-to-Heart-Lung-Machine City.

“I just worry about her,” Weir said. “She's physically an adult, but more like a child on the inside.”

At that moment, Daniela thought he looked just like a little boy himself: eyes wide with concern, brows lifted in exasperation.

“She's smart,” Daniela said. “I know you worry—and you have good reason to—but she's not a little kid anymore.”

Lyse had moved ahead of them and was nearing the end of the street where a set of stairs led down to one of the entrances to Elysian Park.

“Let's go,” Daniela said, eyes on Lyse, getting farther away from them.

“Thanks,” he said, smiling. “I needed to hear that. She's
not
a little girl anymore. You're right.”

“Glad I could ease your mind,” Daniela replied—and they took off in pursuit of Lyse's retreating back.

Behind her, Daniela could hear Weir's heavy work boots hitting the asphalt.

“I know you and Lyse have a
thing
—” Daniela began.

“Had,” Weir said, looking glum.

“Okay,” Daniela said, “didn't know that. Well, anyway, there's
something you should know about us . . . about Lyse and me and Lizbeth.”

She stopped, realizing she actually couldn't walk and talk at the same time. She turned and faced him, marveling at how rough he looked in the sunlight, fear and worry cutting deep grooves into his handsome face.

“There's no way to say this that doesn't sound utterly ridiculous,” Daniela continued, not sure what to do with her hands as she spoke. Whenever she felt passionate about a subject, she tended to pinwheel her arms around her head as she talked.

He gave her a funny look, but she ignored it.

“I . . . we . . .”

“Go on,” Weir said, eyes flicking past her shoulder to where Lyse was still trudging toward the stairs without them.

“Argh, I don't know!” She threw up her hands, letting out a protracted breath.

Screw it,
she thought.
This “need-to-know information” is now needed.

“We're witches. We prefer the term ‘blood sisters,' but we answer to either/or.” She planted her fists on her hips and held them there. “I know it sounds crazy, like something out of a bad movie, but it's the truth. I'm not fucking with you.”

Daniela felt Lyse's return before she saw her.

“She's not,” Lyse said, coming to stand beside Daniela. “Fucking with you.”

The crudeness was obviously for Daniela's benefit.

We haven't spent a whole lot of time together,
Daniela thought,
but she's already got my number.

“I didn't know any of this before I came back to be with Eleanora when she got sick,” Lyse continued. “They just sprang it on me, too.”

“What are you talking about?” Weir asked, eyes narrowing.

“That there's more going on here than you know,” Daniela added. “And I wanted you to be aware of this before we run into anything out of the ordinary—”

“I'm confused here,” Weir said, turning to Lyse. “You say you may or may not have killed someone, but you don't know?”

From the look on Lyse's face, it was obvious she was embarrassed.

Killing someone or not killing someone—would seem pretty black-and-white to Weir,
Daniela thought.
But when you stepped into the world of the covens . . . well, all bets were off.

“And you—” His eyes fixed on Daniela. “You just drop ‘I'm a witch' on me, totally out of the blue like it's nothing?”

“I just wanted you to be prepared—”

Weir shook his head.

“Are you guys on drugs?”

“Weir,” Lyse said, reaching out to touch his arm—but he pulled out of her grasp. “I know it sounds crazy to you, but it's real. I swear it. I didn't believe it at first, either. Eleanora raised me like you've raised Lizbeth, and I had no idea she was the head of a coven of witches—”

Weir's eyes narrowed further, and, seeing the change in his expression, Lyse stopped speaking.

“I'm not talking about this right now,” Weir said, tone prickly. “I can't even . . .”

He turned away from them, his words trailing off. His body language let them know he was done with the conversation.

“I just want to find my sister,” he added, not looking at either of them. “I don't care what you guys do on your own time. I just want LB safe.”

Denial is strong in this one,
Daniela thought, channeling her inner Yoda. It was easier to ignore the obvious than to change your perception of how the world worked.

She didn't blame Weir for not wanting to dig deeper into the conversation. She knew being forced to deal with the supernatural could make normal human beings switch off. They weren't interested in facing things that went beyond their realm of comprehension. Were eager, in fact, to put magic, and all the weird stuff that went along with it, into a
nice little box and chuck it out the window, enjoying the supernatural only when they experienced it in the guise of “entertainment”—like in a movie or book.

“Me, too,” Lyse said. “I want to find Lizbeth. Anything else we can talk about later.”

Daniela nodded her agreement, relieved Weir hadn't had a complete and total freak-out—and she was more than ready to let him live in denial, if it kept him from losing his shit.

Why does everyone hate change so goddamned much?
Daniela wondered as she followed Lyse and Weir down the stairs leading into the park.

There was no answer from the powers that be—and she wasn't about to stir things up.

Not until they found Lizbeth.

*   *   *

The park was quiet. There were only a few intrepid hikers and dog walkers on the path, so they were able to keep a steady pace as they made their way down the dirt trail that took them deeper into the heart of the park. Daniela was in the lead, Lyse and Weir neck and neck behind her. Above them, the clouds amassed like a murder of angry crows, dark feathered and full of menace. It was going to rain again—which was good for the drought-starved state of California, but it worried the hell out of Daniela.

It feels like someone's tampering with the atmosphere,
she thought—her empathic abilities had always made her very sensitive to magic use.
Drawing out the darkness and making the air heavy with rain.

Normally Daniela didn't give in to negative thinking, but every day there seemed to be more to worry about . . . and then there was the blood moon on the horizon. Daniela had never been a fan of these total lunar eclipses—and this year there'd already been two of them—but with the third only days away, and all the bad things happening here and abroad,
it made Daniela nervous. The blood moon was bad business, and its influence made people behave strangely, the world getting even crazier—if that was possible—than usual.

She wished her mother were still alive. Marie-Faith Altonelli would know how to handle everything. She was by far the most formidable human being Daniela had ever known. Her mother didn't let a little thing like fear stop her from doing what needed to be done—and Daniela wished she were more like the slender woman with the olive skin and hooded eyes . . . eyes that saw everything, belying their sleepy appearance.

Daniela felt a ping of magical energy and knew they were near the grove of ancient eucalyptus trees where the coven met and performed their rituals. Through the influence of spell-casting, the grove was impossible to find unless you knew what you were looking for. Long ago the Echo Park coven had chosen it for its remote locale, but as the city of Los Angeles had grown up around it, the grove had lost its isolated quality, forcing the blood sisters to use spells and charms to keep the trees hidden from prying eyes.

Daniela had felt an affinity for the sacred grove from the first moment she'd laid eyes on it. There was something wild about the place, a feeling of raw power in the air. So many blood sisters had used their talents here that the trees no longer just existed in the physical world. The grove had become a clearinghouse of psychic and magical energy extending far beyond the earthly plane.

“We're close,” Daniela said, turning to look at Lyse and Weir as they moved away from the magic encircling the grove.

Weir nodded and tried to smile back, but Daniela could see the strain on his face. She knew he saw himself as more of a parent than a big brother. Deciding to save Lizbeth from a life of institutionalization made him feel responsible for her continued well-being.

“It'll be okay,” Daniela heard Lyse say to Weir. “I'm sure she's up there.”

Daniela knew Lizbeth had not enjoyed a great childhood.

Weir's father didn't like having a daughter “on the spectrum,” thought it reflected badly on his genetic line. After Lizbeth's mother divorced him, he distanced himself from their child. He'd had nothing further to do with Lizbeth until her mother died, and then, as her legal guardian, he'd had her institutionalized.

She was barely functioning already—the trauma of losing her mother had been a terrible blow to the little girl—and the shock of being sent away to such a cold and inhumane place had pushed her inward. And it was there, alone in that facility, where she'd become locked inside herself, mute and unable to connect to the outside world.

Then Weir had come to rescue her.