end.”
Barrie murmured, “Bless him.” She liked her cousin-in-law-to-be very much, but it was especially useful to have a homicide detective in the family.
How’s that for connected? she said silently in her head, and then realized, unnerved, that she was talking to Mick.
“This is going to be flashback city,” Rhiannon said, reaching for a freshly made bowl of popcorn as Barrie opened the wine.
They trooped into the great room, where Sailor already had a fire blazing atmospherically in the fireplace, and turned off the lights and fired up the Otherworld DVD, then settled in on the couch, like the thirteen-year-olds they had been, for a gory, sexy flashback of a night. Made fifteen years earlier, the film still held up, from the vertiginous, exhilarating swoop of the opening shot to the hazy, erotic, psychedelic underground party scenes, to the thrilling climax on Catalina Island. The story had been written and directed by the werewolf Travis Branson, and it followed the exploits of a young vampire, shape-shifter and Elven, decadent young princes of the Otherworld who topped each other in hedonism and rivalry until they were forced to come of age and join forces to defeat a threat to the underworld kingdom in a supernatural Three Musketeers–like final battle.
All Barrie’s thoughts of Mick Townsend vanished as she gave herself over to the thrills of the film. There were times when the cousins gasped aloud at how close the movie came to revealing secrets that, as Keepers, they were sworn to protect. And they all sighed over the breathtaking beauty of the three stars, each magnetic in his own right but soul-meltingly charismatic together. The cousins shrieked and clutched each other during iconic scenes, like the one in which Johnny Love crawled across the floor toward the screen with deliciously predatory intent, and screamed at the gruesome death by crucifixion of a werewolf who had been captured by the bad guys, sparking off a war.
Barrie could be really cynical about Hollywood in general and actors in particular. After living in L.A. all her life, and being raised by a wannabe-actress mother on top of that, she felt she was entitled to her skepticism. But sometimes movies were just magic, and now she sat in awe over the raw talent of the three young actors.
As she watched Robbie Anderson on-screen, Barrie felt herself transported back to the heartbreaking longing of her teen years. Just the way he moved, with the lithe power of an animal, the way his golden eyes gazed soulfully out of the screen, sent shivers through her body.
But as much as she ached for Robbie, a part of her had to admit Johnny Love was especially incandescent. A phenomenal actor, he seemed to be a completely different person in the final battle when he finally realized and declared where his loyalties lay. As much as Barrie was attracted to the shifter Robbie Anderson, she was left with a powerful draw to the dead young Elven.
The climactic set piece in an abandoned ballroom on Catalina Island was as psychedelically Gothic as anyone could want, ending with the mirrored palace going up in a spectacular inferno.
As the closing credits ran, with haunting music underneath, the cousins sat, stunned and moved.
“Such talent,” Sailor whispered, mesmerized.
“Such a waste,” Barrie said so heatedly the other two jumped in the dark.
“You know, the movie really walked the line on the Other question,” Rhiannon said thoughtfully.
“It crossed the line, if you ask me,” Sailor declared. “The filmmakers thought they were being oh-so-hip but they were playing with hundreds of thousands of lives.”
Barrie and Rhiannon murmured agreement.
“‘Non-disclosure is the first rule of the Otherworld,’” Barrie quoted. “They were all thumbing their noses at the Code.”
“Now I understand why our dads were so upset about the film,” Rhiannon reflected.
“It’s true. It had nothing to do with the sex at all,” Sailor chimed in. Barrie and Rhiannon looked at her. “Okay, it had something to do with the sex. But the politics—yike.”
“I wonder who was the instigator?” Barrie mused. Her cousins both looked at her. “I mean, obviously they got away with what they did in the film. No one stopped the production or the release. So, someone on the film must have been powerful enough that the councils let them do it.”
“The studio itself wouldn’t necessarily know that it was all true, though,” Sailor said.
“Factual,” Rhiannon corrected her absently.
“Based in fact,” Barrie agreed. “But the councils must have known. And the thing is, the writer/director, Travis Branson, and producer, Mayo,