Keeper of the Shadows. Alexandra Sokoloff
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was in a foul mood. “Weres are beastly dancers,” he complained without even bothering to say hello as Barrie approached him. “I don’t know why they ever let them on to begin with.”
“So, who’s going to win it?” she asked, feigning interest.
“How would I know?” he said coyly.
“Oh, come on, H.H.,” she coaxed. “If not you, who?”
“I’ll never tell.”
“Not even a hint?”
But she’d gone too far. Harvey looked her over shrewdly. “I’m short on time and temper, and you are so not here as a Dancing! fan, Keeper. So, what are you after?”
Barrie felt caught out, and then realized it was better just to lay it on the table.
“I need the scoop on Mayo,” she told him.
He rolled his eyes. “You and half the town.”
“I need to know about Mayo and Johnny Love.”
Harvey stopped and really looked at her for the first time, his gaze narrowing. “That’s original of you, doll. What about them?”
“Exactly. What about them?” She lowered her voice. “You know what I’m saying, H.H. Did Mayo have a thing for Johnny Love? Was there anything between them? Like, during the filming of Otherworld?”
“Funny. That yummy Mick Townsend asked me the same thing.”
She stared at Harvey in disbelief. Was there any way to escape Mick? “You were talking to someone outside the community about Other business?”
“No, I was talking to a fellow journalist about a story. He asked me if Mayo had a thing for Johnny Love, just like you just did, and I told him that Mayo had a thing for all kinds of things.”
“But what do you think?” Barrie asked the question with a kind of ingenue breathlessness that made it sound like Harvey’s opinion was the only one that mattered. Sailor wasn’t the only actress in the family.
Apparently it worked, because Harvey glanced around them, as if checking for prying eyes and ears. “It’s an interesting thing. There were rumors.” Then he looked straight at her. “But I’ll tell you—the great Mayo always had a thing for shifters. The younger, the better. I don’t think he ever got over Johnny dying. But you know, things were such a nightmare for everyone after Otherworld came out. It was one of the great cursed films of Hollywood. So much tragedy associated with it. First Johnny, of course, that nasty OD.”
“It was some special speedball, wasn’t it?” she asked. “Something exotic?”
“Heroin, cocaine and atropine,” Harvey said, and Barrie felt a rush. Atropine was the hallucinogen found in belladonna. The same combination that had killed Mayo and Tiger. “And DJ, well, you could say fame and fortune is no kind of bad luck, but…”
DJ, no last name required, was a vampire who had played a teen vampire in the film. Currently one of the highest-paid actors in Hollywood, he was a total recluse and rumored to be nearly impossible to work with. Blood wasn’t his only addiction, and when you added an ac-tor’s temperament to a vampire’s, then threw in his dark past…it all spelled constant trouble. In fact, DJ was famous for being so unreliable that 90 percent of his salary on any film was withheld until the end of shooting, just to make sure the film was completed.
“Right, DJ…” Barrie murmured.
Harvey shrugged. “Let’s just say I’m not the only one who updates his obituary every few months just to have it ready. It’s a miracle he’s lasted this long. No one in town would give him the time of day if he weren’t, well, brilliant.”
Harvey was starting to warm to the topic, a great thing for Barrie, who now only had to prompt him with wide-eyed attention and the occasional little exclamation. “Then, of course, Robbie Anderson disappeared without a trace. A lot of people think he died not long after Johnny, but no one could ever prove anything. It’s just that…someone that gorgeous and talented? He couldn’t have stayed away from acting.”
“No,” Barrie murmured. “Probably not.” But privately she thought that anyone who had suffered the death of one of his best friends and been witness to the crippling addictions of the other might not be all that hot on the profession. She herself would have fled for her life. She thought of Robbie with a pang, that surreally beautiful teenager, and silently hoped that he’d gotten out and started a new life far from the corruption of Hollywood that he’d been thrust into far too young. Robbie had been British, had never known his mother and was estranged from his father; he’d filed for emancipation when he was just fourteen. He could have disappeared back home, but the media had tracked him relentlessly; it seemed that someone would have found him—if he’d still been alive. The thought gave Barrie a chill. “So much tragedy associated with” this film is right.
“Mayo was opening quite the can of worms when he decided to remake it,” Harvey was saying.
Barrie jolted back to the present. “Mayo was going to remake Otherworld? I hadn’t heard anything like that.” Not that she followed production news religiously, but certainly news like that would have registered with her or one of her cousins at least.
“Oh, it hadn’t been announced yet, but he was gearing up for it. And you can bet your buttons the community wasn’t too thrilled about it.”
Barrie knew that Harvey wasn’t talking about the film community now, but their community, the underground.
“The interspecies politics are such a mess on these paranormal films,” he sighed. “Everyone’s got an agenda.”
“So, a lot of people didn’t want this remake to go through,” she said, and thought to herself, That’s a lot of potential suspects.
“It’s not even just political. Think about it. Three white-hot rising superstars: one kills himself, one disappears, one’s a total train wreck…The town is superstitious, darling, and that’s looking a lot like a curse to me.”
Despite herself, Barrie felt a chill.
The “Dancing!” stars—well, minor celebrities—swirled onto the soundstage with their pro dancer partners, and Harvey went on journalistic alert. Her interview was done.
“Thanks, H.H.,” she said quickly. “I owe you.”
“Yes, you do-o,” he trilled back at her, and gave her a backward wave as he rushed to meet the stars.
As Barrie was walking off the soundstage, musing over the idea of a cursed film, she saw a tall, familiar figure strolling toward her. Oh, great, she thought, even as her heart started racing a mile a minute. Be calm. Just be calm. It was just the glamour, remember?
She struggled to keep her expression disinterested as she stopped in front of Mick Townsend in the center of what was ironically an absurdly romantic set: white roses trailing over a gazebo, a bridge over a mirrored stream. Probably the backdrop to a waltz competition.
“Don’t tell me you’re a ‘Dancing!’ fan,” she said dryly, and was proud of her nonchalance.
“I never miss it,” he deadpanned back.
He sounded so almost-serious that for a moment Barrie had a fantasy of what it would be like to dance with him. Of course she was dreaming—men just didn’t dance anymore—but if he could…oh, if he could lead even half as well as he kissed…
Focus, she ordered herself.
“You’re following me,” she accused aloud.
“Or maybe great minds think alike,” he suggested. “You were just here to see H.H., right?”
She was silent, unable to deny it.
He gave her a killer