My 9:20 A.M. plane to LAX boarded on time. I’d no sooner settled into my comfy seat than a cute nerdy flight attendant brought me a glass of complementary champagne, assuring me in a rich southern accent that there was plenty more where that came from. Given half the chance, I could get used to flying first class.
After a seriously hot shower, I’d stayed up into the wee hours of the morning, partying with the cast and crew of Voodoo Wars. Dancing, drinking, and saying my goodbyes to everyone. A large portion of the festivities had been spent with Tikka in her feline form draped around my shoulders like a stole.
Cayden and I didn’t dance with each other, partly because I wanted to leave on good terms with Leandra, and because finding and saving Tikka had been better—in a weird way, more intimate—than any dance could have been. Besides, he basically lived up the hill from me in Los Angeles, so we’d run into each other again.
I fell asleep pretty quickly into the flight. No doubt the two glasses of extremely good champagne helped the process. Unfortunately, the booze also woke me up a couple of hours later with an urgent need to pee.
Lurching out of my seat, still bleary-eyed and fuzz-brained from sleep and bubbly, I made my way to the restroom at the front of the plane. Just my luck, someone was already in there. I turned and looked across the aisle. Although I didn’t remember there being two bathrooms, there was another one, and it was vacant. I opened the door…
…and found myself staring into dark nothingness, wind rushing around my hair, threatening to suck me out of the plane and hurl me into the void. Far below, so far I couldn’t even imagine how many miles down it was, I saw a faint glow of red flickering against the darkness.
Shit.
“Lee.”
That dark seductive voice. I knew if I turned around, he would be there, the faceless man who had been haunting my dreams for months. Hatred and lust ever present in equal parts. Always standing on the edge of some Peter-Jackson-esque death drop. Always faced with the choice of letting him have me or throwing myself over the edge.
A hand fell on my shoulder. Burning my flesh, the heat causing unbearable pain—and pleasure—through my body.
I screamed and hurled myself into the void.
* * *
“Miss? Miss, are you okay?”
My eyelids flew open and I found myself staring at one of the flight attendants, the same nice man who brought me my champagne.
“Yeah… Yeah, I’m fine,” I managed to get out. “Just your run-of-the-mill nightmare.” I also summoned up a smile, which must have been genuine enough to reassure him that he didn’t have a crazy lady on his hands, because he smiled, looked relieved, and went about his business.
Dammit, I still had to pee. This time, though, when I opened the bathroom door—the only one in first class—all the walls were in place.
This better not be another nightmare, I thought darkly as I locked the door behind me.
* * *
After the relentless heat and humidity in Louisiana, the eighty-degree temperature when I stepped outside at LAX seemed downright temperate. Instead of moisture-laden clouds, a few cotton-candy wisps decorated the sky. As much as I’d miss New Orleans, it was good to be back home in Southern California.
I’d deliberately kept my arrival time to myself, deciding to spring for a Lyft instead of arranging for a pick-up, because I figured having some solitary time would help me reacclimate. I wasn’t up to my Uncle Sean’s concerned queries, his son Seth’s interrogation about whether or not I’d slept with Cayden, or Randy’s butt-hurt feelings about the way things had been when I’d taken the job. Like Seth and Sean, Randy was not a fan of Cayden.
All things considered, a nice anonymous Lyft driver who’d leave me to my thoughts seemed just the ticket.
A silver and suitably eco-friendly Prius pulled up to the curb, a Lyft sticker in the rear window and bearing the vanity plate “Britbond.” I checked my phone. Yup, this was my ride.
The driver hopped out, a middle-aged man clad in a shiny fuchsia vest over an equally shiny black shirt and white pants that looked uncomfortably tight. He wore his dyed black hair long, under a pork-pie hat too small for a face as round as a pumpkin.
“Milo at your service, lass,” he said in a pseudo-British accent. “Shall we put your bag in the boot?”
“The…”
“The boot,” he repeated with an annoyingly self-aware little laugh. “Oh, of course, most Yanks don’t understand my Britishisms.”
I could’ve just given it to him, but I was tired and cranky.
“You’re British?” I smiled sweetly. “I never would’ve guessed. And yes, please, in the trunk.”
“Ah… oh… well then.” He grabbed my monster suitcase’s handle, hefting it with visible effort into the trunk as I got into the back and settled in for a quiet, peaceful ride home. Milo climbed back into the driver’s seat with an audible huff.
“Traffic’s a bit of a sticky wicket, but I’ll have you home before you can say ‘Bob’s your uncle.’”
Did he really just say “sticky wicket” and “Bob’s your uncle” in the same sentence?
Pulling out into the flow of airport traffic, he continued, “As I’m sure you may surmise, I am an actor.” He beamed at me from the rearview mirror like a child expecting praise.
It was going to be a very long trip home.
* * *
The man would not shut up.
He regaled me with stories of auditions—“near misses, all”—and countless extras gigs where he almost was chosen to be a featured extra. Or missed out by one camera frame on standing behind the lead actor. The highlight—or lowlight, as it were—was the recitation of an audition he’d done earlier that day, reading, of all things, from Winnie the Pooh.
Please stop talking.
He didn’t.
I shut my eyes and settled back against the seat—if my choices were listening to him or risking another nightmare, then bring on the bad dreams. At least they were sexy.
* * *
“Here you are, lass.”
I opened my eyes as the Prius rolled to a gentle halt at the top of the Ranch’s driveway in front of the sprawling Craftsman-style house. I’d taken a very satisfying catnap and considered suggesting to Milo that he start a podcast to help people with insomnia. Instead, I got out of the car while he got my suitcase from the trunk and set it on the ground. Shielding his eyes from the sun, he looked around as if searching for something.
“This is pretty far out,” Milo said. “Isn’t the old DuShane mansion somewhere in this neck of the woods?”
I nodded.
“Ah, capital! I’ve always wanted to take a look at it.”
“If you turn right instead of left at the end of our drive and head up the hill, you’ll pretty much run into it.”
With a jaunty, “Thank you, lass,” Milo got back into his Prius and drove away.
Sean’s Xterra was nowhere to be seen, which meant he and his son Seth were probably on the set of Spasm—the sequel to Twitch, and one of the stupidest young adult series ever to achieve success in the wake of the vastly superior Hunger Games.
Part of me was still pissed-off that Sean hadn’t seen fit to hire me for the films. Ever since my near-fatal accident taking a high fall, he’d been massively overprotective. So I was mainly relieved they weren’t home. I needed a chance to decompress.
Pausing in the drive, I looked around. This was where I’d lived since I was six. Instead of swing-sets and jungle gyms, my playground had consisted of a Russian swing, trampolines, a sixty-foot-high fall tower, crash mats, and lots of space to swing swords and punches during fight training. Instead of growing up in Venice Beach—where my screenwriter parents had lived before they’d been murdered by a demon—I’d been raised around the ever-shifting pack of stuntmen that made up the Katz Stunt Team.
Human and supernatural. Male, female, and undeclared. Sean didn’t care, as long as they possessed raw talent, had the commitment it took to hone it, and—most importantly—were team players. If you couldn’t take criticism and play well with others, you had no place here.
As usual, the front door was unlocked. There were wards up, so if someone wasn’t welcome at the Ranch, they became very uncomfortable when they stepped onto the property, and invariably turned tail before getting halfway up the drive. I’d asked Sean if he’d put up the wards and he just replied, “I had some help.”
Walking inside, the sound of my suitcase wheels rolling on the chocolate-colored tiles in the entryway, I sighed in contentment.
It was good to be home.
A huge sunken living room with buttery-soft leather furniture, including an L-shaped couch that took up most of the space in front of the picture window. Huge stone fireplace on the wall opposite the entryway, framed photos on the mantel and hanging above it. Plush sheepskin throws scattered around. Growing up, I’d spent many hours in front of the fireplace, reading while stretched out on those cozy throws.
My gaze fell on a photo of me, Sean, and Seth taken a few years ago on a film set, the three of us wearing fantasy-type armor and standing in front of the façade of a castle. I smiled at the good memories.
My smile faded as my glance shifted to a photo of a tall, stern-looking man with a vague resemblance to Sean. Uncle Sam, Sean’s older brother. He preferred to go by Samuel, but Sam was a lot easier for a five-year-old to say and I’d never bothered to change it. He’d treated me like an inconvenience when he visited, always trying to tell me what to do. The more he told me how I should behave, the less inclined I was to listen, and our relationship didn’t improve with age.
Luckily, he didn’t visit very often. The last time he’d graced us with his presence had been at least five years ago.
Everything was neat-as-a-pin orderly, which told me Seth had been home at some point recently, and long enough to clean. Inspired by the surroundings, I went right to my room, threw my suitcase on the bed, and unpacked. Then I took a long, hot shower in the front bathroom, the one with the nicest shower, secure in the knowledge that I wouldn’t be interrupted. Drift, for example, one of the long-time regulars on the crew, knocking frantically and telling me he was gonna explode if he didn’t get in there right away.
God forbid he used one of the other three bathrooms.
After my shower, I wrapped myself in a cozy flannel robe, shoved my feet into fleece-lined slippers, and decided to make some coffee. The kitchen was Seth’s domain and he kept it particularly immaculate. Sparkling counters. Burnished copper pots hanging on hooks. Cast-iron pans so clean you’d swear they’d never been used. And ooh, it looked like Seth had gotten himself a new toy—some sort of “must take master classes before operating” espresso machine. It was a thing of beauty, taking up a third of the long counter next to the fridge.
I wasn’t going to touch it.
Instead, I grabbed the smallest of three French presses, ground up some single-origin beans from Costa Rica that had been roasted two days prior. I knew this because Seth kept the coffee beans in individual canisters, all of them labeled with the date they were roasted. There was a hint of OCD in Katz the younger. Then I brewed myself a very fine batch of java, splashing in some cream even though Seth insisted that cream ruined the “integrity of the coffee.”
Depending on our respective moods, Seth was the occasional bane of my existence. I preferred to think that I irritated him as much as he did me, but I’d done the metaphorical Jan Brady run up the stairs far more often than he had. It hadn’t happened much since my teenage years, but every now and again a strategic retreat was preferable—and more mature—than thwacking him with whatever object happened to be handy.
Mug in hand, I went outside onto the wraparound porch, heading to the west side of the house where two rocking chairs and a little table stood. Setting my coffee on the rickety table, I settled into my chair—the one with an indentation in the cushion that was the exact shape of my butt. Looking out over the Santa Monica mountains, the perimeter of the Ranch’s three acres marked by weathered gray fencing, I gave another happy sigh.
Growing up here, I hadn’t had a lot of time to myself, and this was the one spot other than my bedroom where I was usually assured privacy. Now and again Sean would join me and the two of us would talk or enjoy a comfortable silence. There hadn’t been much of the latter, though, since I learned the truth about my family history. It was hard to be comfortable, finding out that the person you’d loved and trusted most of your life had been lying for years. A lifetime of trust had taken a hefty kick in the teeth, and things weren’t gonna go back to normal for a while.
If ever.
It’s funny how emotions work. I mean, I understood why Sean waited to tell me. My family geas spanned centuries, and it was pretty fucked-up. If I put on my Mr. Spock cap, I had to agree with him. My inner Dr. McCoy, however, still thought it sucked. Still, I hoped that given enough time, the rift could be repaired.
At least he’d never lied to me about Santa Claus.
Seth, on the other hand… Back when I was still young and impressionable, he’d convinced me that Krampus was going to stuff me in his bag along with all the other bad kids and drag me off to be eaten. The rat bastard had waited until I’d gotten up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and had ambushed me on my way back to bed, throwing a mildew-scented potato sack over my head. My screams woke Sean and earned Seth a major grounding.
Smiling at the memory, I took another sip of coffee. Seth could still be a rat bastard at times, but damn, he knew his coffee. He was wrong about the cream, though. It made the rich chocolatey caramel flavor even more decadent.
I rocked back and forth, perfectly content within the moment. There was a crisp coolness in the air that signaled autumn. The sun was still high enough over the mountains to afford plenty of light. The land around the ranch was lit by a soft rosy glow, with sage brush, anise, and eucalyptus casting their scents over the valley. A part of Los Angeles unappreciated by the countless hordes of people who thought LA began and ended with the Sunset Strip and Rodeo Drive.
Movement at the inner edge of the fence caught my eye. Two goats huddled up against a eucalyptus tree, nibbling on the sparse grass and weeds. And was that a jackrabbit? I squinted, shielding my eyes from the late afternoon glare. No, it was five jackrabbits. There were more birds in the trees than normal, a mix of crows, ravens, sparrows, blackbirds, robins, and ones I didn’t recognize.
Huh. Maybe Sean or Seth had set up feeders during my absence. Whatever the reason, I kind of liked the Disneyesque vibe the animals gave the place. Although the birds would just as soon poop on me as sit on my shoulder and chirp.
My gaze fell on the DuShane mansion, hunkered against the base of the mountains about a mile away. Unoccupied for years, it looked like the love child of a Gothic castle and a Moroccan pleasure palace—extravagantly, awesomely tacky. Decades of Santa Ana winds and weather had long since taken the shine off the place, but it must have been quite the spectacle back in the day.
Built in the early 1920s by a maverick film producer, the mansion had seen some amazing parties, and was home to some of Hollywood’s most gruesome legends. It was the kind of place that kids dared each other to sneak inside, bring back a souvenir, or spend the night. The kind of stupid dare that could get someone killed or traumatized for life.
It was also the perfect place for horny teenagers to hang out, get drunk, and flex their overactive hormones. There hadn’t been a groundskeeper for more than a decade, and if one was willing to scale the foreboding ten-foot-tall wrought-iron entry gates and equally high cement wall topped with wicked iron spikes, the odds of being disturbed were slim to none.
Thick chains with an industrial strength padlock secured the double gates, but the chains weren’t drawn tight, and there was a gap kids could squeeze through. Rumor had it there was a section of wall at the back of the property where the cement had crumbled away, the hole hidden by an overgrowth of ivy.
It wasn’t the make-out spot it might have been, however, because people really did die there. After DuShane had vanished, or more likely split town just ahead of the law, subsequent owners had either vacated quickly or met gruesome ends.
Some pretty shady rumors had circulated back in the day, and they’d been embellished over the years. That DuShane had built his mansion this far out in the boonies lent credence to the rumors, at least in my opinion. Still, he’d been one of the power players in Hollywood, and the studio system had maintained a much tighter grip on the reputations of their stars. With the Internet and #metoo movement still decades away, a lot of unsavory things had remained hidden.
A shiver went through me, for no apparent reason. Not cold, just suddenly uneasy. Staring up at the mansion, I thought about its current owner—Cayden. He’d bought it just a few months ago, and was still very much alive. About the same time he’d purchased the place, I’d had a waking dream while sitting in this very spot—the first time Scary Sexy Dude had made an appearance. Cayden was kind of scary and sexy. Hell, there was no “kind of” about it.
Could he be…?
No. I shook my head at the absurdity of that thought. Yeah, Cayden wanted to sleep with me—that much was obvious. And what a nice, homogenized way of describing acts most likely so carnal that we’d have to change the rating system. I also suspected that Cayden and sanity were rarely on speaking terms.
But did he want to hurt me? My gut said no.
Yes, but is your gut reliable? an inner voice whispered.
That was the million-dollar question.
Sipping my coffee, I watched the sun complete its slow descent behind the mountains. The solar lights strung in the porch eaves came on and wrapped the Ranch in a comforting glow.
For now, it was enough.