Keeper of the Moon - By Harley Jane Kozak Page 0,76

bad day, and Sailor didn’t think this attempt at conversation would improve things. The woman apparently felt otherwise. “I’m askin’ you for the last time, bitch!” she yelled. “What the bitchin’ hell you lookin’ at?”

Sailor sighed. “If you’re talking to me,” she called, “what I’m looking at is a phlegm-colored concrete wall with a steel toilet attached to it. What I’m not looking at is you, which you’d know if you were looking at me, which you aren’t, unless you can see through walls.”

This did not stop the woman from responding, but Sailor put her hands over her ears so it turned into a drone of words, every fourth one being “bitch.” She wanted to teleport in the worst way. Any Elven who found herself jailed faced the primal urge to simply relocate her physical body, and it was a Keeper’s responsibility to bail her out before that happened. Sailor could recall her father getting calls in the middle of the night and running out with his checkbook. Not only did teleporting make the perp a fugitive from justice, but it also alarmed the cops to have people simply vanish from their jail cells. “Bad for business,” her father would say, whenever a Keeper failed in his or her primary objective, which was to hide the very existence of the species. Yet it happened. At any given moment there were several Elven on the lam, and that made things stressful for the community at large.

“Bitch!” The scream penetrated despite Sailor’s hands over her ears. “What you lookin’ at? I’m not asking you again!”

“I would love to believe that,” Sailor yelled back, “but you’re not making it easy.”

The problem with teleportation in her case, in addition to being a bad idea for the usual reasons, was that she wasn’t Elven. The least talented among the Elven could teleport fifty miles; many Keepers couldn’t penetrate a few inches of drywall. She was a prodigy in this respect, but the most she could do was a few miles, and she had to be completely relaxed, which at the moment she was definitely not. For that matter, an Elven wouldn’t be here, because they would have teleported away from Metropole the minute they sensed danger, an impossibility for Sailor, who’d been filled with too much adrenaline.

“Location, location, location,” the woman in the cell yelled. “Shifters aren’t the only shifty ones! Beware the winged ones! Check your messages!”

Sailor blinked. “What did you say?” she called, but now there was only silence.

Okay, she knew what this was about. She was being sent help from beyond. It was just as Merlin had said: spirits used anyone receptive to them as channels. They chose those with few defensive mechanisms: mediums, meditators, children, animals, anyone who was high or had mental problems.

“Did you hear me?” the woman called. “Listen to your message!”

“I am listening to the message,” Sailor called back. “If only I could understand the message.” This was what she found maddening about the spirit world: it was never straightforward, never “Here are this week’s winning lotto numbers.” No, it was all real-estate clichés and “beware the winged ones.” And people wondered why ghosts got such a bad rap.

Okay, so what would happen next? What was the penalty for assaulting someone? How could she afford a lawyer? What on earth was the matter with her? These things never happened to Rhiannon or Barrie. They had adventures, they did good Keeper work, they were great people and they stayed out of jail. The only smart thing she’d done was leave her dagger in the car.

“Quit lookin’ at me, bitch! Just quit it!”

“Listen up!” Sailor called. “I’m doing my best to make lemonade out of lemons over here, but I am just about done being chipper, so if you want to have a screaming contest, bring it on because I am the queen of catharsis. I went to a top-tier acting school, I played Medea—who murdered her children and fed them to her husband for dinner—I can scream for eight shows a week without even straining my voice, and if—”

The door opened. Sailor stopped screaming and jumped up, praying it was Reggie coming to rescue her.

Instead, it was Declan Wainwright.

* * *

Declan nearly laughed, watching Sailor go from hopeful to shocked, apprehensive and finally sheepish, all in the course of thirty seconds.

She wisely kept quiet as the police went through the release procedure, probably gauging his mood. When she’d last seen him, he realized, he’d been bloody angry, but his