Keeper of the Moon - By Harley Jane Kozak Page 0,98

braced herself to do the same, and less than a minute later she was on the oceanside.

Being close to the sea again made her feel sick, but she told herself that after Geoffrey’s and the beach house she was building up a resistance to the salt smell, the rotting seaweed, the crabs, flies... Besides, if Reggie could do it, so could she.

I’m not running to the ocean, she told herself. I’m running to Declan.

Reggie was leading her along residential roads and back to Point Dume, and her legs pumped hard as she tried to keep him in sight. It helped that she was a runner. They weren’t even into the second mile, so if they kept on course she would run out of land long before she ran out of breath.

And exactly what, she wondered, would she do when she caught him?

Get the vial.

The vial and the Scarlet Pathogen inside would stop the war. Handing that over to the Elven Circle would be proof enough. Even if she couldn’t bring in Reggie—and it was hard to see how she could—the vial itself, plus Alessande’s eyewitness account of Reggie running away, would be compelling proof of his guilt. But what about Highsmith? Who would believe he had played a part in this? The only way to catch him, she was willing to bet, was to catch Reggie and convince him to turn on Highsmith.

She might run out of time, though. Moonrise was twenty minutes after sunset, and sunset was coming fast. But she had to try. The gun was safely tucked into her waistband, and she would use it to make Reggie relinquish the vial.

He was leading her along a small street crowded with houses. He turned once to look back, and she was certain he saw her.

Running always brought her mental clarity, and even now, things started to fall into place. The knife must be enchanted, and the nature of the enchantment, she guessed, was that it could summon Alessande and had made it possible for her to teleport to a place she’d never seen before and couldn’t picture, something that would otherwise be impossible.

And by now Alessande would have called someone, sounded the alarm, summoned help. Declan. He would find her. But meanwhile she had to keep running.

Reggie darted between two bungalows and over a fence, and she followed him, finding herself in someone’s backyard. From there he led her through a gate to a path leading downward. Of course. Reggie was a Realtor and the coast was his turf; he knew where he was going.

He assumed she wouldn’t follow him to the ocean.

Another wave of nausea overcame her as the path swerved and she saw, spread out below her, the ocean. It’s just fear, she told herself, and remembered her mother telling her that when she was little. “It’s only fear. It’s not the water itself, it’s our fear that keeps us away.” But did it matter what it was? The effect was the same. She wanted to stop. She wanted to vomit.

How could he keep going?

Because he wasn’t a strong Keeper. He was a strong man, but the Elven in him was weak, so he had few of their abilities and only a mild aversion to water.

The path turned into a series of wooden steps leading to the beach thirty feet below. She caught just a glimpse of Reggie as he descended. They were both forced to slow down because the way was steep and the steps slippery from the rain. The roar of the surf and the calls of the seagulls were deafening, and she was as frightened now, in a different way, as she’d been in the shack, fighting for her life. The smell of the salt air sickened her, and the crash of the waves stopped her breath, as if each one presaged a tsunami.

But she’d come this far, and her rational mind knew she wouldn’t die from this, she wasn’t going into the water, she was just going to follow him until—

The steps stopped.

She was six or seven feet above the beach, on a tiny outcrop of rock, and Reggie was nowhere in sight. If she jumped she would land in seafoam, at least a foot of it, maybe two, the waves and rain and tide bringing the ocean all the way to the foot of the cliff. It was a desolate place, cold and increasingly dark.

She crouched, wondering what to do, wondering where Reggie was, when a hand snaked itself around her