Summon The Keeper

SEVEN

SUNSET WAS AT SEVEN-FORTY-ONE. Claire called the local radio station for the exact time and, while she had them on the line, asked them to play “Welcome to My Nightmare.” The song, discovered on one of her parents’ old albums, had meant a lot to her during the earliest years of her sister’s training and the events of the afternoon had made her nostalgic for those simpler, albeit equally dangerous, times.

At seven-thirty, she started up the stairs.

At seven-thirty-five, she unlocked the door to room four, passed the man lying in the dressing room, who stirred restlessly in his involuntary sleep, and entered the cubicle holding the bed and the wounded Sasha Moore. In the dim light of the bedside lamp, she stood by the wall and waited for sunset.

At seven-forty-six, either the radio station or her watch off by the longest five minutes in recorded history, she saw the vampire’s lips, pale without their customary sheen of artificial color, slowly part and draw in the first breath of the night. Ebony brows dipped in as both wound and bandage pulled with the movement of the narrow chest. Muscles tensed beneath the ivory skin. Eyes snapped open. A dark gaze swept over the red-brown stains along the left side of the bed and then locked on Claire’s face.

“Spill, Keeper,” Sasha Moore snarled. “What the fuck is going on here?”

At seven-fifty-two, as the newly awakened vampire-slayer began to whimper, Claire stepped out into the hall and locked the door to room four behind her.

“How did you know I wouldn’t kill him when he had every intention of killing me?”

“He’s crazy, you’re not,” Claire answered calmly. “You’ve lived too long to risk exposure by modern forensics.” She turned her attention to the glassy-eyed man, who swayed where he stood, oblivious to his surroundings. Centuries of arriving at accident sites after the inevitable, and invariably messy, cause and effect had already taken place, had given Keepers a distinctly fatalistic, some might even say unsympathetic attitude toward people who played with matches. A Keeper’s responsibility involved keeping the whole metaphorical forest from going up, and they figured the more people who got their fingers burned, the less likely that was to happen. Claire shuddered to think of what might have occurred had she stayed in the attic a few moments longer. “How much will you allow him to remember?”

A spark of cruel amusement gleamed in the shadowed eyes. “Let’s put it this way: He’s going to piss himself whenever he’s outside after the sun goes down and he’s not going to know why.”

“Isn’t that a bit extreme?”

“What? For trying to kill me?” Sasha tossed her head disdainfully. “I think not. Besides, it’s nothing a few dozen years of therapy won’t clear up.” Silver bracelets chiming softly, she stroked the velvet length of Austin’s back. “Imagine living two hundred and twenty-seven years only to die at the hands of yet another amateur van Helsing. What a frigging waste.”

“Yet another amateur van Helsing?” Austin rolled so she could reach his stomach. “This has happened before?”

“Once or twice; the nutballs come out every time we get trendy.” Crimson nail polish glistened like drops of blood against the white fur. “But this…” Her other hand lightly touched the bandage under her clothes. “This is as close as anyone’s ever come.” When she lifted her gaze from the cat, Claire realized that for the first time since the other woman had arrived at the hotel, her eyes neither threatened nor promised. “Thank you for my life, Keeper.”

“You’re welcome. But it was no more or less than I would have done for anyone. Murder creates the very holes the lineage exists to seal.”

The vampire sighed, a fringe of sable hair dancing as she shook her head. “You really lean toward the sanctimonious, you know that?”

“I’m a Keeper,” Claire began defensively, but cool fingers tapping the curve of her cheek cut her off.

“My point exactly. Try to get over it.”

Speechless, Claire watched as Sasha turned her would-be executioner unresistingly toward the door and, when she opened it, finally gave up trying to put together a sufficiently scathing response, settling for: “What are you going to do with him now?”

Pausing on the threshold, the night spreading out behind her like great, dark wings, Sasha locked one hand around her captive’s wrist to prevent him from moving on and turned back toward the guest house. “I’m going to take him to his car and release him.”

“But the sun’s down.”

White teeth flashed between carmine lips. “Obviously.”

“And people complain about the way cats play with their food,” Austin snorted as the door swung shut.

“I’m not sanctimonious, am I?”

“You’re asking me?”

Claire’s eyes narrowed. “Is there anyone else around?”

“Just the dead guy on the stairs.”

Jacques gave the cat a scathing look as he materialized. “I only arrive this moment, and if he says I am here all along, he lies.”

“Cats never lie,” Austin told him, leaping from the counter to the desk to the chair to the floor. “There’s not much point is there, not when the truth can be so much more irritating. If you two will excuse me, I have things to do.”

“What sorts of things?” Claire asked suspiciously as he started down the hall.

The black tail flicked sideways twice. “Cat things.”

Elbows still propped on the counter, Claire let her head drop forward into her hands. Cat things could cover everything from a nap on top of the fridge to the continuing attempt to twist Baby’s already precarious psyche into still tighter knots. If it was the former, she didn’t need to know. If the latter, she didn’t want to.

“I thought,” Jacques said softly, “that there were no more secrets between us.”

Without lifting her head, Claire sighed. “No more secrets that concern you. This doesn’t.”

“You think it does not concern us that Sasha Moore is Nosferatu?”

“No.” She wondered when Jacques and Dean had become an us and whether it would last longer than this conversation. “You’re dead. Dean is off limits.”

“But you get hurt defending her and, if we knew, we could be there.”

“You were there.”

“Ah. Oui.” His face fell. “And I could do nothing to save you. But I am dead.” The realization perked him up. “What can a dead man do? And besides, my failure does, not change your silence. You do not tell me. You do not tell Dean—which is, of course, of not so great a consequence.”

“It wasn’t my secret. If she wanted you to know, she’d have told you herself.”

“And yet, now I know.”

Claire straightened, both hands gripping the edge of the counter. “Now you know,” she agreed. “Now what?”

He grinned. “Well, I am thinking; you do not want Dean to know so, if I do not tell Dean, tu me does un recompense.”

“I owe you for not telling Dean?”

“Oui.”

“And what do I owe you?”

His grin warmed and his eyes grew heated under half-lowered lids as he leaned so close his breath, had he been breathing, would have stroked her cheek. “Flesh, for one night.”

“Just one night?”

“One night,” he told her, his voice low and promising, “is all I ask for. After that one night, I no longer need to ask.”

She turned so she was facing him. He was a comfortable amount taller than she was, unlike Dean who loomed over her, and it would only take a tilt of her head to bring their mouths together. She wanted to push his hair back off his face, run her thumbs down the stubble-rough sides of his jaw, watch everything he felt dance across his expression as she slid her arms up under his sweater. She didn’t understand the attraction, but she couldn’t deny it. “Think highly of yourself, don’t you?”

“Not without reason.”

Someone, or something giggled. She frowned, stepped back, and almost saw a flash of purple disappear beneath the shelf.

“Claire?”

“Forget it, Jacques.” Squatting down, she peered at the imp trap. It had been moved from across the mouse hole leaving a tiny opening clear on the left side.

“Then not a night” He dropped down beside her, his knees making no impact with the floor. “An hour. An hour only and I can convince you.”

“No, not a night not an hour.” The miniature marshmallows were missing. “Not ten minutes.”

“Ten minutes would not be worth the effort. I have no interest in a quick and frenzied pawing.”

That drew Claire’s attention away from the imp trap. She turned to face the ghost, both brows lifted almost to her hairline.

“D’accord. I will take a quick and frenzied pawing if it is all I can get. But to be truly intimate with a woman requires a little more time. Give me that time, cherie, and you will be like plaster in my hands.”

“Putty.”

“Pardon?”

Even though she knew he’d take it the wrong way, Claire couldn’t stop herself from smiling. “Like putty in your hands.”

“Oui. Putty.” His accent softened the word, made it malleable. He leaned close again. “Are you afraid that if we become lovers, it will hold you here?”

“What will hold me here?”

“Passion. Pleasure. Complete…” The pause lingered on the edge of being too long, preparing the way for the presentation of each separate syllable. “…satisfaction.”

Claire blinked.

“Just give me a chance, cherie.”

“A chance to do what?”

Feeling as though she’d been caught by her father in a clinch on the rec-room couch, hoping her ears weren’t as red as they felt, Claire straightened and noticed for the first time that Jacques floated high enough off the floor so that he looked Dean—who was a good four inches taller—directly in the eye. “He wants me to give him flesh.”

Dean shrugged. “If it’ll help, there’s a leftover pork chop in the fridge.”

“Not that kind of flesh!” The ghost looked appalled.

“Beef? Chicken? Fish?”

The suggestions emerged too close together for Jacques to reply, but with each he grew more and more indignant.

“Sausage?”

His image began to flicker. “Mon Dieu! Are you so irritating on purpose?”

“Difficult to be that irritating by accident,” Claire murmured. The ridiculous list had banished embarrassment. Suddenly realizing that might have been his intent, she took a closer look at Dean and found his expression of solid helpfulness offset by a distinct twinkle behind the glasses.

“I thought you might want to know that Austin’s outside,” he said. “I opened the back door for him about five minutes ago.”

“Any response from Baby?”

“Not yet”

“So you thought she wanted to know, and now she is told.” Folding his arms, Jacques regained control of his definition. “You may go now, Anglais. The Keeper and I, we have a private conversation.”

“About giving you flesh?”

A finger, fully opaque in the artificial light of the lobby, jabbed at the air inches from Dean’s chest. “Do not start that again!”

Dean ignored him. When he turned to Claire, the twinkle was gone. “You wouldn’t, would you?”

“And why wouldn’t she?” Jacques asked matter-of-factly. “She is young, she is healthy, she has needs.”

“Jacques!” Her elbow went right through him.

“I only say that since there is no one else, I am here.” He turned on Dean, who was shaking his head. “What?”

“You’re dead!”

“And you cannot stand the thought of a dead man achieving that which you…”

This time Claire protested with power.

“OW!” Pulling himself together, the ghost turned to face her. “I have to say, cherie, I am not at this moment thrilled by your touch. Obviously, the mood has been broken. I will leave you now but, you have my word as a Labaet, I will keep my part of the bargain until we have a chance to speak again.”

“What did he mean,” Dean asked as Jacques vanished, “about keeping his part of the bargain?”

Claire shrugged, running her thumb along the edge of the counter. “Who knows what he thinks.”

A LIE! A LIE!

A PREVARICATION. WE CAN’T USE IT. SAYS WHO? THE RULES. DAMN THE RULES.

Heated air, redolent of sulfur and brimstone, gusted up into the furnace room. DON’T THINK WE HAVEN’T TRIED.

Before Dean could answer, Claire lifted her head and actually noticed what he was wearing. “Are you going out?”

He shoved his hands into the pockets of his faded, leather football jacket. “Yeah. I meet some friends from back home every Saturday night.” He hesitated, then continued in a rush. “Do you want to come, then?”

For a moment, she thought it might be nice to spend an uncomplicated evening with Dean and his friends, going to another pub, listening to music, with Dean and his very young friends, in another dark, smoky, crowded, overpriced pub, listening to over-loud music not being sung by a vampire. “Thanks for asking, but no thanks.”

“My friends wouldn’t mind.”

A LIE!

IN KINDNESS.

BUT…

OH, GIVE IT UP.

Claire hid a smile. “It’s okay. I’ve got things to take care of.”

“I, uh, heard Ms. Moore’s van leave.”

He was far too nice to look as relieved by her refusal as she knew he felt. “It’s her last night at the pub.”

“The stalker?”

“I think he got scared off.”

He thought, as she’d intended him to, that she meant he’d been scared off when he’d been chased away from the vans. “Will you be okay alone?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“And what on earth do you think you could do if I wasn’t?” remained mostly silent.

Should I have insisted? Dean asked himself as he paused halfway down the front stairs to let his eyes grow accustomed to the dark. From what he understood of Claire’s life, it had to be a lonely existence, constantly on the move with few opportunities to make real friends.

A sudden vision of Claire sitting at the Portsmouth with the guys and Kathy, listening to them swap stupid mainlander stories, picking up her round of beer in turn, stopped him from going back into the lobby. They wouldn’t be rude. In fact, they’d be glad to see another woman in the group, but she wouldn’t fit in.

And she wouldn’t try to, he admitted. Maybe you should stay with her, boy. Keep that dead freak away. Wondering just how Jacques knew what Claire’s needs were, he turned toward the office window in time to see her drop to her knees and out of sight. Oh, man, not the imps again.

Fists in his pockets, he continued down to the sidewalk, navigating the uneven brick steps with the ease of familiarity, and made his way out to the bus stop on King Street without looking back. What with scraping the front counter and refinishing the dining room floor, not to mention the weirder stuff, it had been some long week and he wasn’t up to another argument about the types of vermin infesting the guesthouse. Now that he thought about it, he was really looking forward to a nice, normal evening, finding out how many mainlanders it took to screw in a light-bulb, and watching George drink until he puked.

Claire sat back on her heels and glared at the trap. After replacing the marshmallow pieces, she’d moved the cage back over the hole and was now trying, unsuccessfully, to convince herself that an imp, or imps, had taken the bait without being caught. Unfortunately, the evidence suggested one of two possibilities and she didn’t care much for either. The first implied that the power she’d wrapped about the trap wasn’t strong enough to hold even a minor piece of evil, and the second involved her being wrong from the start.

“And I just don’t think I can handle multicolored mice,” she muttered, getting to her feet. Had Austin been privy to her thoughts he’d have reminded her that what she really couldn’t handle was being wrong but, since he wasn’t, the emphasis remained on the mice.

“Still, they’ve been breeding around a major accident site for generations,” she allowed as she locked the lobby door—Sasha and Dean both had keys and if by some strange stroke of misfortune any guests happened to wander by, she’d hear the knocker. “I suppose they should consider themselves lucky if color is the only variation. I mean,” she added to no one in particular, entering her own suite, “look at the platypus.”

Picking her way through the sitting room in the dark, she tripped only twice, and was feeling pretty pleased with herself when she flicked on the bathroom light.

“Sweet heaven.”

At first she thought the letters on the mirror had been written in blood, but then she noticed the crushed remains of her favorite lipstick in the sink. Claw marks on the metal case and a perfect, three-fingered, Jaded Rose handprint pressed onto the porcelain identified the graffiti artist beyond a shadow of a doubt. Imps.

Or at least, imp.

This was exactly the sort of petty, destructive mischief they excelled at.

“Mice. Ha!” Claire exchanged a triumphant look with her reflection. “This will prove my point once and for all. I’ll just go and get…”

Then the actual words sank in.

Someone, it said, in barely legible cursive script, needs to get laid.

“You’ll go and get who?” her reflection asked, eyes faintly glowing.

“Shut up.” Jacques would never give her a moment’s peace. Dean would be so horribly embarrassed she’d feel like a slut. And Austin—Claire was only glad that Austin hadn’t been around to hear Jacques declare she had needs. Obviously, she couldn’t show the message to any of them. And there wasn’t anyone else. “Nuts! Nuts! Nuts!” At her last declamation, she slapped both hands down on the counter.

A pair of dusty guest soaps turned into a pair of equally dusty pecans.

“Temper, temper,” warned her reflection, shaking an amused finger behind the lines of lipstick.

“You think this is temper?” Claire muttered, reaching past the seepage and pulling power. One hand shading her eyes from the flash of light, she ran a clean cantrip over the mirror. “Wait until 1 catch that imp.” Her lip curled. “Then you’ll see temper.”

Later that night, Dean let himself into his apartment through the door in the area. The evening had been no different than any other Saturday evening but still, something had been missing. It no longer seemed to be enough that these people were his best friends, his link to home in the midst of those who’d never heard of Joey’s Juice and couldn’t seem to figure out how to wipe their feet.

Undressing in the dark, he lowered himself carefully onto the bed, locked his hands behind his head, and stared at nothing, wondering why the world outside the guest house suddenly seemed smaller than the world within. Wondering why a hole to Hell and an evil Keeper seemed less important than the Keeper sleeping overhead. Wondering why the world had started to spin….

Because you drank a whole lot of beer, his bladder reminded him.

When his bladder turned out to be the only organ offering solutions, Dean surrendered to sleep.

Still later, after letting herself in and relocking the front door, Sasha Moore paused by the counter and listened, separating out the individual rhythms of four lives. One, upstairs. Too slow and unchanging for mortal sleep. Two, downstairs. Slow and regular, a man sleeping the sleep of the just and the intoxicated. Three, close by. A Keeper, tossing restlessly in an empty bed. The vampire acknowledged temptation, then shook her head. Keepers took themselves far too seriously; regardless of how it turned out, she’d never hear the end of it. Four…She smiled and raised an ivory hand, a greeting to another hunter in the night. A greeting between equals.

A rustling, a scrabbling of claws on wood, lifted her gaze to the ceiling. “Mice,” she murmured.

“That’s what I keep telling them,” Austin agreed from the shadows.

The temperature dropped overnight, October arriving with the promise of winter. By morning, the air in Claire’s bedroom had chilled to an uncomfortable sixty-two degrees. She put it off for as long as she could, monitoring the seepage levels from under the covers, but she finally ran out of excuses to stay in bed. When her bare feet hit the floor, she sucked her breath in through her teeth. Nothing rose through the brass register except perhaps a sense of anticipation.

“If you think I’m heading in there to open a vent, think again,” she muttered. It would be simple enough to temporarily ward off the chill by adjusting her own temperature. Simpler still, since it wasn’t likely to warm up any time soon, to put on a second sweater.

Rummaging through the pile of clothes on the floor, she realized she hadn’t done laundry since she’d arrived. Fully aware that, in time, she wouldn’t think twice about wearing an orange sweater over a purple turtleneck with navy sweats—as they aged, surviving Keepers grew less and less concerned with how the rest of the world perceived them—Claire tried not to think about how she looked as she shoved dirty clothes into a pillowcase.

“Running away to the circus?” Austin asked testily, emerging from under a carelessly thrown fold of blanket.

“Doing laundry,” she told him, jumping off the chair with three socks and a bra she’d found on top of the wardrobe.

He stretched out a foreleg and critically examined a spotless, white paw. “Well, you know, I hadn’t wanted to say anything…”

“Then don’t.”

Hearing Claire descend to the basement, Dean gratefully left off his attempt to fit old lengths of baseboard into the new dimensions of the dining room and followed. To his surprise, he found her stuffing clothes into the washing machine. Taking in the layered sweaters, he realized she had no intention of turning up the heat. He couldn’t say that he blamed her. “Did you, uh, need help with that, then?” he asked when she turned and flashed him an inquiring glance.

“I can manage, thank you.”

About to mention that she should sort her colors, Dean forced himself to hold his tongue. Maybe Keepers never ended up with gray underwear.

She looked different. For the first time since she’d arrived, he was seeing her without makeup. Without the artfully defined shadows, she seemed younger, softer, less ready to take on the world. A sudden image of her riding into battle in the traditional, Saturday-afternoon-Western warpaint made him smile.

“What?” she demanded.

“Nothing.”

“If it’s the clothes, I don’t usually dress like this.”

“I hadn’t noticed.” Except he had. “You mean the sweaters.” He pulled at the waistband of his Hyperion Oil Fields sweatshirt “I could go out and buy some electric heaters.”

Claire’s eyes narrowed. Obviously Augustus Smythe had never used electric heaters, or there’d be some already in the building. “No. Thank you.” She closed the lid of the washing machine, started the cycle, and turned to face the furnace room door. “I’ll go in and adjust the vents.”

“I wasn’t criticizing.”

“I never said you were.”

“I understand why you don’t want to go in.”

Her chin lifted. “Who says I don’t want to go in?”

“The sweaters…”

“I was referring to the color combination.”

“The colors?”

“That’s right. But since you’re cold…”

“I never said I was cold.”

“Then why offer to buy heaters?”

“I thought you were cold.”

“I never said I was cold.”

“No, but the sweaters…”

“Oh, I see. Well, if I can’t put on a sweater without people thinking I can’t do my job, maybe we’d just better get a little heat in here. And no, I don’t need you to go with me,” she added, crossing to the turquoise steel door. The chains were heavier than they looked and made ominous rattling sounds as she dragged them free, indignation lending strength. About to drop them to one side, a large hand reached over her shoulder and effortlessly lifted them from her grip.

“I’ll hang these here, on the hooks, where they go.”

“Fine.” Claire pressed her right palm against the steel, a little surprised at how warm it was until she realized that her exposed skin had chilled to the point where an Eskimo Pie would’ve seemed toasty. In fact, she could feel the heat radiating off of Dean and he was standing…

She turned to face him, and her eyes widened.

…rather temptingly close. Her breathing quickened as her hindbrain made a detailed suggestion. “Hey! Get out of my head!”

WHAT MAKES YOU THINK YOU DIDN’T COME UP WITH THAT ON YOUR OWN?

“Most people’s joints don’t bend that way.”

THEY DON’T?

“Get out!”

“Instead of lurking around down here, go up to the dining room and let me know when there’s heat coming through the register.”

Dean hesitated. “You’ll be all right, then?”

“Augustus Smythe adjusted these vents for fifty years and he was…”

The realization of what Augustus Smythe was, or at least of what he’d become, filled the narrow space between them.

“…a Cousin,” Claire finished. “I am a Keeper.” She turned back toward the door and took a deep breath. Then another.

“They say that as long as it’s sealed, it’s perfectly safe.”

Tapping her nails against the heavy latch handle, she snorted. “Who says?”

“You did.”

Hard to argue with such an unquestionable source. “Just yell down the register,” she said, shoving open the furnace room door. “I’ll hear you.” She paused, one foot over the threshold. All things considered, it might be best to tie up loose ends before she went any farther. “Dean?”

“Yeah, Boss?”

“Thanks.”

Anyone else would’ve asked her what for, and then she’d have had to face Hell with a caustic comment still warming her lips. Anyone else.

He smiled. “You’re welcome.”

By mid-morning the hotel had warmed about ten degrees, Dean had discovered how the pieces of baseboard fit together, Austin had eaten breakfast, made his morning visit to Baby, and gone back to bed, and Claire had been forced to spend half an hour leaning over the dryer.

“I don’t understand,” Dean had said earnestly, checking out the machine after the third time it had shut off. “It’s never done this before.” After a moment’s rummaging behind the switch with a variety of screwdrivers, he’d replaced the cover and added, “There’s nothing wrong. Try again.”

The dryer had worked perfectly while they were there, but the moment Claire had stepped off the basement stairs and out into the first floor hall, it had stopped. “Never mind,” she’d grumbled as Dean moved back toward the stairs, “it’s my laundry and you’ve got things to do. I’ll just grab a cup of coffee and go watch it run.”

“And that’ll keep it going?”

“It should.”

And it had.

The imp had, no doubt, been switching off the dryer and, with her standing guard, had now gone off to find other ways to irritate, leaving behind no proof she could use. Weighing the alternatives while her clothes dried, Claire figured that the imp must’ve come through before Augustus Smythe. Or very soon after he arrived, before he began using up the seepage as it emerged.

She wished she knew how long it had taken, how many accidental uses, before it became habit. It would have been so much easier for him to use the seepage—power just lying around for the taking—than to reach into the narrow area of the possibilities that the Cousins could access.

How many excuses had it taken before he didn’t bother making excuses anymore? Before he used what he wanted. And every time he used it, it corrupted him a little more.

Which explained why Dean, who’d lived next to Hell for eight months, hadn’t been affected. He couldn’t use the power. At least Claire hoped he hadn’t been affected. “I shudder to think of what he must’ve been like if he’s this nice after Hell’s been working on him.”

She’d cleared the seepage twice, and she’d only been there a week. They were admittedly low levels of seepage, nothing like the buzz she’d felt on her first night, but she’d still have to start being a lot more careful.

When her laundry was finally dry, she’d lost three socks and gained a child’s T-shirt. Claire would’ve liked to have placed the blame on Hell, but this particular irritant was the result of human error. Given the metaphysical design flaw inherent in clothes dryers, those in the know were fond of pointing out how the loss of an occasional sock was nothing to complain about considering the odds against everything else coming back.

“Jacques, get away from the window!” Running her blade along a piece of molding, Claire scraped off a long curl of medium green paint. The counter had probably never been that actual color—when scraping paint there always had to be a medium green layer. “Anyone walking by and looking up can see right through you.”

“Perhaps they would not see me at all. The vampire-hunter, he did not see me.”

“He didn’t believe in ghosts.”

“I do not see why that should matter.”

“Neither do I, but it does.”

“If you gave me flesh, it would not happen,” he pointed out reasonably.

“Just move,” she told him without looking up.

Jacques glanced down toward the sidewalk, opened his mouth to say something, and shook his head. Floating closer, he sat down on the floor with his back against the outside wall. “So, if someone who believed walked by…?”

“They’d see the sunlight streaming right through you.”

“And that would be a problem because?”

“People who see ghosts seldom keep the information to themselves.” Carefully working stripper-soaked steel wool carefully along the grain of the wood, she wrinkled her nose at the smell. “And I don’t feel like dealing with tabloid reporters.”

“I know reporters, but what are tabloids?”

“Sleazy newspapers that deal in cheap sensationalism. Hundred-year-old woman has lizard baby, that sort of thing.”

“Is that not what Keepers deal in?”

“No.”

“Hole to Hell in basement?”

“It’s not the same.”

“Woman sleeps for fifty years?”

Shifting her weight back onto her heels, she turned and glared at him. “You know what your problem is? You never know when to quit!”

He cocked an eyebrow and spread his hands. “Evidentment. If I knew when to quit, I would not be haunting this place, and if I were not haunting this place, I would not have met you. Voila, all is for the best.” Wrapping a weightless grip around Claire’s fingers, he leaned forward and murmured, “Have I ever told you how sexy I find big, pink rubber gloves?”

She laughed in spite of herself, pulling her hand back through his. “You’re unbelievable.” The laughter vanished when he started to fade. “Jacques?”

“If you do not believe,” he told her mournfully, “you cannot see me.”

“Stop it!”

Rematerializing, he grinned triumphantly. “You do not want to lose me.”

Lips pressed tightly together, Claire bent back over the bit of unstripped molding on the counter. Her search for the Historian had ended up at a medieval bazaar selling Japanese electronics, and her hour with Sara had brought her no closer to an answer. She’d have to study both ends of the balance if she wanted to figure it out and that meant spending time next to the pit. Since she’d been in the furnace room once already today and since stripping the counter had been her idea…

She’d like to see it finished before she left. She’d like to see the dining room finished, too—wallpaper, trim, blinds, maybe new light fixtures.

This is nuts. The steel wool stopped moving. When she closed this site, need would summon her to another. It might be in Kingston—there were, after all sixty thousand people in the city and townships and population density was directly proportional to how often a Keeper was needed—but it might be across the continent. Or on another continent entirely. I am not getting attached to this place.

“Claire? I do not want to lose you either. Please, I am sorry. Come back to me.”

“I haven’t gone anywhere.” The silence clearly stated he didn’t believe her. She shifted from knee to knee and finally sighed, “Could I give you flesh to help me finish this?”

“Non.” Although she didn’t turn to look she could hear the relieved smile in his voice. “I can take flesh only to give you pleasure.”

“It’d give me pleasure to have some help with this.”

“It does not work that way.”

She sighed again, resting her forehead on the edge of a shelf. “Why,” she asked dramatically, “am I not surprised?”

Sasha Moore checked out that evening, paying for her room in cash. “Will I see you in the spring?” she asked, effortlessly swinging her heavy duffel bag up onto one shoulder.

Claire stared at her, aghast. “The spring?”

“Comes after winter. The snow melts. The dog crap lies exposed on the lawn.”

“I won’t be here in the spring.”

“I hope you’re not expecting old Gus to come back. He’s blown this popsicle stand for good.” The vampire paused at the door. “Oh, yeah; Dean’s memory of me’s going to get a bit foggy. I don’t like to leave too many specifics behind.” Ebony brows rose and fell suggestively. When it became obvious that Claire was not going to respond to this mild provocation, she snapped pale fingers. “Hey, Keeper!”

Wandering thoughts jerked back to the lobby. “What?”

“Domo arigato on that lifesaving thing. I know, I know, you’d do it for anyone, but this time you did it for me. In return, can I offer you these words of wisdom, culled from a long and eventful existence? You needn’t bother answering ’cause I’m going to anyway.

“First of all, at the risk of sounding like Kenny Rogers, God forbid, you should make the best of the hand you’ve been dealt Second, a genuine, unselfish offer of help is the most precious gift you’ll ever be given. And third, remember that you never have to travel alone…” Teeth flashed. “…hitchhikers make a handy protein supplement when on the road. Thanks for coming, you’ve been a wonderful audience, maybe we can do this again sometime—less the asshole trying to kill me, of course.”

Claire stared at the closed door for a moment, then jerked around to the window as the red van roared down the driveway, honked twice, and disappeared into the night.

“Is Ms. Moore gone?”

Dean’s voice seemed to come from very far away. She nodded, without turning.

“Did she say if she’d be back in the spring?”

It was only just October, not even winter yet, spring was impossibly far away. “I won’t be here in the spring. I’ll have finished up and moved on.”

“Okay.” That wasn’t what he’d asked, but since it was clearly on Claire’s mind…“That, uh, book you’ve got soaking? It’s starting to stink up the fridge.”

“It needs to soak a little longer.”

“But…”

“I need that information, Dean, and I’m not going to risk losing it because you don’t like the way it smells.”

“Is Claire coming out for breakfast?”

“In a minute,” Austin told him, staring alternately at his empty dish and Dean. “She has to have another shower first. The Historian appears to have led her through an area populated by ruminants.”

“Say what?”

“She crawled through some cow shit. Are you going to feed me, or what?”

Weighing the bag of geriatric kibble in one hand, Dean scratched the back of his neck with the other. “There should be a lot more in this.”

“Not necessarily. I told the mice they could help themselves. With any luck we’ll run out on the weekend when the vet’s closed, and you’ll have to feed me something decent.”

The next morning, Dean handed Claire a cup of coffee and watched in concern as she slumped against the sink and stuffed a whole piece of toast into her mouth. “Manage to avoid the cow shit this morning?” he asked hesitantly.

Claire snorted, blowing crumbs onto the spotless stainless steel. “This morning,” she said, and paused to swallow, “I crawled through the cow. Same end result though,” she added after a moment.

“You know, lady, I got a cousin who does renovations. Not too expensive,” the locksmith assured her as he screwed down the new plate. He nodded toward the charred, smoke-damaged interior of room six. “Why leave a room in that condition when you can fix it up and use it that’s what I say. You gotta spend money to make money, you know?”

“We’re not that busy. Which,” she added dryly, “is a good thing. I called you four days ago.”

“Hey, I couldn’t have got here faster if you’d been Old Nick himself.”

WANNA BET?

The locksmith pulled bushy brows down toward his nose. “Did you say something?”

“No.”

“Thought I heard…Never mind. You know, you don’t have to stay with me. I can just come down when I finish up.”

“Like I said,” Claire told him, keeping the glamour centered over the actual contents of the room, “we’re not that busy.”

“Oh, I get it. Lonely, eh? I know how you feel; some days when I don’t leave the shop, I’m ready to climb the walls by four, four-thirty. No one to talk to, you know? What was that?” He leaned around the door, staring at the floor by the curtained window, then settled back on his heels, shaking his head. “It sorta looked like a bright blue mouse.”

“Trick of the shadows,” Claire said tightly. It figured that the locksmith would see the imp when neither Dean nor Austin ever had.

A few moments later, his weight on the newly installed doorknob, the locksmith heaved himself to his feet and flicked the open flange with his free hand. “Quite the secondary locking system. I guess you can’t be too careful about this kind of thing, eh? I mean, one tourist wanders in here, hurts himself on a bit of loose board and the next thing you know, you’re being sued.”

Peering through the glamour, Claire checked that Aunt Sara remained undisturbed by all the banging. “If a tourist wandered in here, being sued would be the least of my concerns. But you needn’t worry, this is only a temporary measure.”

“So you are going to fix it?”

“Sooner or later.”

“Hopefully sooner, eh?” He pulled the door closed and nodded with satisfaction as the lock clicked into place. “When the time comes, and you need some help, don’t forget my cousin.”

Claire had a vision of the locksmith and his cousin facing down the hordes of Hell. It was strangely comforting.

The ink soaked out of the site journal had turned the onions blue. The brine had been absorbed and the whole thing smelled like pickled sewage. With a cheese sauce.

When Claire opened the plastic container, Austin left the building.

Breathing shallowly through her mouth, she used a fork to tease apart the pages. The process had been partially successful. The few pages of Augustus Smythe’s notes now legible made it clear he knew an incredible number of dirty limericks but offered no other useful information.

The first four pages after his summoning remained stuck together in a glutinous blue mass.

“One more week should do it,” Claire sniffed at Dean, peeling another three onions and dropping them into fresh brine.

“Great,” Dean gasped. He snuck a look at the card.

Aunt Claire, Keeper

Your Accident is my Opportunity

(face it, life stinks)

Later, he threw out the fork.

“This is the sixth morning in a row she’s come out of that wardrobe looking wiped. Two days ago, she fell asleep in that old armchair up in room six, and yesterday she didn’t have enough energy to take the chains off the furnace room door.”

Austin lifted his head off his paws and gazed across the dining room at Claire, who’d fallen asleep with her cheek on an egg salad sandwich. “Did you take them off for her?”

“No. I figured if she was too tired to open the door, she was too tired to face Hell.”

“I’ve said all along you’re more than just a pretty face. What did Claire say?”

Dean grinned. “That I was an interfering, idiotic bystander.”

“That’s all?” The cat snorted. “She must’ve been tired.”

“What’s happening in that wardrobe, Austin?”

“From the steely-eyed determination on her face when she goes in, I’d say she’s trying too hard. The other side has kind of zen thing going, you can’t force it.”

“So she’s doing it to herself, then?”

“Well, I don’t think she’d have chosen to fight her way through those pre-Christmas sales this morning but, yeah, essentially.”

“If there’s anything I can do, will you let me know?”

“Sure.”

As Austin laid his head back down, Dean’s concern evolved into full-blown worry. Any other morning, that question would’ve brought a suggestion that he feed the cat.

“What have you done, that Claire suddenly try so hard to find this Historian?”

“I didn’t do anything,” Dean told him, getting a can of oven cleaner out from under the sink. “I’m not the one exposing myself to Mrs. Abrams.”

“I do not expose myself. She has no business to be in the parking lot to peer through the windows while you attach the blinds. I vanish the moment I see her.”

“But did she see you?”

“She did not scream and run. She waves to you, puts two thumbs up in the air, and leaves quietly.” Jacques pressed his back up against the wall between the two windows, the one place in the dining room where he couldn’t be seen from outside when the new vertical blinds were open. “It is not my fault she is always looking in.”

Dean might have believed him had he not sounded so defensive. “You’re careless. You don’t care how much trouble you cause.”

“I am causing trouble?”

“That’s what I said.”

“So, you say it is my fault that Claire tries so much harder to leave us?”

Shrugging, Dean dropped to his knees in front of the stove. “If the shroud fits.”

“And what does that mean, if the shroud fits?”

“It means you’re always all over her. Give me flesh, give me flesh.” His accent was a passable imitation of the ghost’s. “You’re too pushy.”

Jacques disappeared and reappeared sitting on the floor behind the peninsula. “I am too pushy? You are too…too…too nice!”

“Too nice?”

“Oui. You are like mushy white bread and mayonnaise. And…” He folded his arms triumphantly. “…you are always cleaning things. If I could, I would leave also.”

“Then leave. Claire said she could send you on.”

“And leave her with you? She would be too bored in a week.”

“Lecher.”

“Monk.”

“Bottom feeder.”

“Betty Crocker.”

“Stereotype!”

Before Jacques, reeling under a direct hit, could come up with a response, the ka-thud, ka-thud of a galloping animal filled the house, growing overwhelmingly louder the closer it came. The glasses in the cupboard began to chime as the vibrations brought their edges together. “Something is out of the pit,” he moaned as Austin threw himself around the corner and into the kitchen.

The noise stopped.

He glared down at the cat “That was you? But you weigh only what, two kilos?”

“Can we discuss my weight another time,” Austin snapped. “Claire’s in trouble!”

TROUBLE IS GOOD.

BUT WE DIDNT CAUSE IT.

SO?

Hell sounded sulky. IT’S THE PRINCIPLE OF THE THING.

WE DON’T HAVE PRINCIPLES!

OH, YEAH.