Read Online When Darkness Hungers: A Shadow Keepers Novel (Shadow Keepers 5) by J.K. Beck - Free Book Online Page A

happened to be the daughter of voodoo queen Marie Laveau. Which pretty much explained how Leena came by the woo-woo, magical stuff: Her family tree was filled with psychics and witches and voodoo and all sorts of mystical whatnots.
    After Alexis had gotten her head around that rather freakish reality, she’d asked Leena if she could use her psychic whatever-you-call-it to locate Tori’s killer. Leena had hesitated at first, then agreed to try, but told Alexis not to get her hopes up.
    It had been strange to watch Leena pull together an odd variety of herbs and roots, then boil them in a cauldron like something out of
Macbeth
. They’d sat there in the smoke-filled room, both of them holding a photograph of Tori onto which Alexis had smeared her own blood—the blood she shared with her sister.
    Alexis hadn’t really expected anything—the whole situation was just too damn weird. But after a few moments,Leena’s head had shot backward, her eyes had opened wide, and she’d let out a long, strange moan. A moment later she’d fallen over, clutching her head and crying for Alexis to please, please, please turn out all the lights.
    Alexis had hurried to comply, then knelt by Leena’s side, not sure if she should touch her or call a doctor or bring her a handful of ibuprofen.
    It had passed quickly—according to Leena, the migraines never went away that fast—and when she was herself again, she said that she’d seen a place. The Hollywood sign. The Capitol Records building. The Hollywood Bowl.
    Tori’s killer was in Los Angeles—where exactly, Leena couldn’t say. But it was a start. And Alexis had known it was time to come home.
    It had been an unusual beginning for a friendship, but a solid one, and after that the two had formed a plan. Alexis had taken Gutierrez’s advice and quit the FBI, and Leena packed up her things and made the trek across the country, too. “My building’s not going anywhere,” Leena had said. “And no offense, but you’re a total noob. Try to do this completely on your own and you’ll get yourself killed before you even have time to go shopping at the Beverly Center. Besides, a psychic opening up a shop in California? How can I go wrong?”
    Alexis had argued, but only for form. As selfish as it might be, she longed to have a friend with her who understood what she was facing.
    Her parents’ Brentwood house had been sitting empty for the last year—Alexis had been considering selling it after the tenants had moved out. Now she moved back in, grateful for the extent of her parents’ wealth. Sincetheir death, she’d rarely touched her inheritance, choosing to live off her FBI salary rather than what she considered blood money. But upon her return, she spent like Lindsay Lohan on a shopping spree, writing checks left and right to various electronic and hunting/sport supply companies. Let Mom and Dad finance her vendetta against the vampires and her search for Tori’s killer. It was the least they could do considering they’d meted out their own brand of torture.
    She turned the massive wine cellar into a combination workout studio and mission control center. The room had been kept locked while the house was rented, since her parents’ wine collection was still there and worth a fortune. But when she’d moved back, Alexis had brought in a representative from Sotheby’s to take the more expensive and rarer bottles away for auction, keeping only a few for herself tucked away in one corner. Everything else in the room was given a full overhaul.
    Now the cellar was a technological masterpiece, a command and weapons center that rivaled anything she’d had access to while at the FBI.
    Leena had turned down the offer to be her roommate, saying that she was used to living on her own. And even Alexis’s argument that the house was so big, both of them might as well be living alone, hadn’t swayed her. At first, Alexis had been disappointed. She didn’t want to return alone to a house