Free Keeper Chronicles: Awakening by Katherine Wynter Page A

you seen Rebekah?”
    The woman shook her head. “No. She wasn’t at breakfast this morning. Come to think of it, I didn’t see her come back last night either, and I wanted to check her hand again. Is she okay?”
    “I’m sure she is. Excuse me.” He backtracked his step through the door and ran smack into someone.
    “Hey, what’s going on?”
    Gabe turned to see Dylan Hurley, the man he’d questioned the day before about Moore’s concussion, standing with his arms crossed. He glared in that grunge-musician-ironic-hipster kind of way. Gabe couldn’t give a demon’s ass what the vagrant thought. “Out of my way.” He pushed past the musician.
    When Dylan grabbed Gabe’s forearm, Gabe kneed him in the crotch and left him there moaning on the floor. He had to see Rebekah.
    Mia, her pigtails streaked with black and a half dozen metal studs protruding from different parts of her head, ran out from the kitchen with a knife in her hand. “I’m a chef and I know how... Gabe? What are you doing?”
    “Out of my way, witch,” he growled as she blocked his way to the basement stairs.
    Her face hardened. “I will stab you if I have to,” she warned. “Don’t think I won’t, Keeper.”
    He tried a different approach. “I just need to know that she’s okay. That’s it. I swear I’ll leave right after.”
    When he tried to move around her, she shifted position and kept the knife pointed at him. “Not like this you don’t. She’s been through a lot. Her father died yesterday, remember? You took her boyfriend to jail. The last thing she needs right now is you running down there half-crazed and acting like a lunatic. Her father wouldn’t have wanted it.”
    Boyfriend?
    As gently as he could, he picked up the little pixie of a girl and set her out of his way. “I’ll be quiet, I promise.”
    Although he hated to admit it, the little witch had a point about one thing. Rebekah didn’t need to know he’d been there. He’d just sneak in and out. Unnoticed. Hurrying downstairs, he stopped at the bottom and listened. Nothing. Maybe she was sleeping? Gabe knew the rooms downstairs as well as he knew his own house. After all, he’d spent most of his teenage years sneaking down them when her parents were out. Sometimes when they weren’t.
    The small living room was empty but tidy, with a neat couch and a few family pictures along one wall. Gabe was even in one, though as a child when the two families had shared a picnic by the beach. A desk with a computer sat on the opposite wall, the screen darkened. Best of all, there was no blood. Listening for any sound, he tiptoed past the couch and down the short corridor to the first room. He opened the door and shut it quickly; her father’s room—unchanged. She wouldn’t have gone in there.
    Going to her bedroom next, he hesitated at the door with his hand on the brass knob. Maybe he shouldn’t be doing this. Maybe he was being paranoid. Then he thought back to the girl lying dead on her bed, heart ripped out of her chest. She hadn’t heard her killer or even sensed that anything was wrong. Rebekah was a Keeper and had all the benefits he did, but since she’d never been taught to use them, it was like they didn’t exist. She was as helpless as that teenager had been.
    Gabe closed his eyes and opened the door, breathing in deeply. Nothing smelled wrong. He opened his eyes a fraction and sighed. The room was empty. Unfortunately, that meant she was either in the bathroom or dead somewhere he hadn’t looked. He rushed to the bathroom and opened the door.
    Steam filled the room. Naked, Rebekah was half bent over toweling her legs dry. The steam softened her skin, making her look delicate as an apparition with subtle, firm curves only partially concealed, and the golden light from the vanity set her skin glowing. As a teenager, she’d been beautiful, but as a woman, she was a vision.
    “I...I...” He fumbled for something to say.
    She hurriedly pulled the towel up