already late afternoon when Barrie hit the freeway, crawling with the rest of the traffic toward downtown.
There was no sign of Mick Townsend at the newspaper office. A blessing; she wouldn’t have to avoid him. She still felt off balance after her dream, and she didn’t want to face his keen scrutiny. And if he had been the one to call and wake her? What did that mean? How had he even gotten her number?
She checked in with her editor, and then dashed out of the newsroom and headed straight for the coroner’s office. Brandt had not been picking up his phone, and she was impatient to get the coroner’s report on Johnny Love; she was sure that Tony would pull it for her.
But in his office, Brandt just shook his head at her request. “I can’t get you the L.A. coroner’s report on Johnny Love because there isn’t one.”
She stared at him. “It was stolen?”
“There never was one. There’s no evidence whatsoever that Johnny Love died in Los Angeles. I just got finished telling Brodie the same thing—he said he was checking into it for you.”
“But...Johnny died at the— I mean, everyone says he died at the Chateau Marmont,” she said.
“That’ll teach you not to believe what you read on the Net,” he said, sounding annoyingly like her father for a moment.
“Where did he die, then?” she demanded.
“I don’t know.” After a long beat, he added, “I’d be happy to look into it, but it’s a big country. That is, if he even died in this country. It would help if I had some idea where to start.”
“I’m on it,” Barrie told him. “Thanks, Tony.”
She left him, feeling in a state of shock.
* * *
Back in her car, Barrie reached for her phone to call Alessande, but she knew that at Alessande’s age—over a hundred years now—she wasn’t big on phones, and when the call went straight to voice mail Barrie decided to drive up into the canyon to see her in person.
Alessande Salisbury was Elven and almost a neighbor, the way such things were measured in L.A. She lived in Laurel Canyon, maybe two miles from the House of the Rising Sun, in a rustic dwelling that looked like a cabin from the outside but was actually a rather luxurious and sophisticated setup inside, with arching bay windows, solar panels and a state-of-the-art kitchen. Alessande was a bit of a recluse but had become a good friend of all three of the Keeper cousins, since she’d saved Sailor’s life, or helped to, when Sailor had recently come under attack by a shape-shifter who had been infecting Elven actresses with an ancient disease.
Barrie parked in the drive outside the cabin, and when no one responded to her knock at the front door, she circled the house toward the garden in the back. A witch’s dream, it was stocked with spiky, feathery, fragrant herbs that could cure or curse any mortal or Other with whatever remedy or malady you would care to name. The sun was setting over the hills, and a whispery wind rustled through the old-growth trees, wind chimes tinkled from somewhere in the garden, and it was all so private it could have been unsettling, if Barrie weren’t so well acquainted with the house and its owner by now.
As she wound her way through the lush growth, she spotted Alessande on her knees and digging, attacking what looked like a stubborn and unnervingly human-looking bit of root. As occupied as she seemed to be, she threw the trowel down, brushed off her hands and stood to face Barrie before Barrie could say a word in greeting. Being Elven, Alessande was typically stunning, and she towered over Barrie: six feet tall with white-blond hair and green eyes, and a knockout figure, both voluptuous and athletic. And she didn’t look a day over thirty, much less the hundred and six Sailor claimed she was. Barrie wondered sometimes how anyone could possibly mistake her for human, even with beauty being as commonplace as it was in L.A.
She gave Barrie a warm hug—awkward as that was given their height difference: nearly a foot between them. As she pulled back, she looked serenely unsurprised to see Barrie, had probably sensed her as soon as Barrie had the thought to drive up to see her. The Ancients were in possession of a psychic sensitivity more characteristic of witches than Others.
And even as Barrie thought it, Alessande gave her a probing look. “You’re looking