Summon The Keeper

TWO

“HANSEN RESIDENCE.”

The voice on the other end of the line was not one Claire had expected to hear. “Diana?” Unable to remain still, she picked up the old rotary phone and paced the length of the office and back. “What are you doing home? I thought you were doing fieldwork this weekend.”

“Hong and I had a small argument.”

“Like the argument you had with Matt?”

“No.”

There was a lengthening, a scornful pronunciation of that second letter that only a teenager could manage. At twenty, the ability was lost. Three years, Claire told herself, just three more years. She’d been ten when Diana was born and the sudden appearance of a younger sister had come as a complete surprise. Over the years, although she loved Diana dearly, the surprise had turned to apprehension—being around her was somewhat similar to being around sweating dynamite. “These people are supposed to be training you. You could assume they know what they’re doing.”

“Yeah, well, they’re old and they never let me do anything.”

“I haven’t time to get into this with you right now. Put Mom on, please.”

“Duh, Claire, it’s Sunday morning.”

She took a minute to whack herself on the forehead with the receiver. She’d completely forgotten. “Could you ask her to call me the moment she gets home from church?”

“You didn’t say the magic word.”

“Diana!”

“Chill, I’m kidding. What’s the matter anyway? You sound like you just looked into the depths of Hell.”

Reflecting, not for the first time, that her little sister had an appalling amount of power from someone with an equally appalling amount of self-confidence, Claire smoothed the lingering tremors out of her voice. “Just ask her to call me—please.” She read the number off the dial. “It’s important.”

Dean could hear Claire talking on the phone as he came up the basement stairs. Ignoring the temptation to eavesdrop—as much as he wanted to know what she was saying, it would’ve been rude—he continued on into the kitchen, where he found Austin attempting to open the fridge.

“They build garage door openers, push of a button and you can park your car, but does anyone ever think of building something like that for a fridge. No.” He pulled his claws out of the rubber seal and glared up at Dean. “What does a cat have to do to get breakfast around here?”

“Are you okay?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“A few minutes ago…”

Austin interrupted with an explosive snort. “That was then, this is now.” Rising onto his hind legs, he rested his front paws just above Dean’s denim-covered knee, claws extended only enough for emphasis. “You look like a nice guy, why don’t you feed me?”

“Austin!”

“That’s my name,” he sighed, dropping back to all four feet. “Don’t wear it out.”

As Claire came around the corner, she was amazed at how familiar it seemed, as though this were the twenty-second not merely the second time she’d walked into the kitchen. Layered between the sleeping Sara and Hell, there was a comforting domesticity about the whole thing. She shuddered.

“Are you okay?” Dean asked.

“I’m fine. I just had a vision of an unpleasant future.” Shaking her head, hoping to clear it, she added, “My mother wasn’t home, but I left a message with my sister. She’ll call later.”

Austin jumped up onto the counter. “Why was your sister home!”

“The usual.”

“Anyone get hurt?”

“I didn’t ask.”

Leaning back against the sink, Dean looked down at his sock-covered feet. Had she not been his boss, he would’ve asked her if she wasn’t a little old to be calling her mum when she ran into a problem.

“Dean?”

He glanced up to see Claire staring at him.

“Penny for your thoughts?”

Instinct caught the coin she tossed, and to his surprise he found himself repeating his musing aloud.

“No, I am not too old to call my mother,” she said when he finished, ignoring the cat’s muttered, “Serves you right for asking.”

“My mother has been in the business a lot longer than I have, and I could use her professional advice since not one thing that happened this morning was what I expected. Not room six, not the furnace room, not you.”

“Not me?”

“If Austin wasn’t so convinced that you’re a part of this whole mess, we’d be sitting down to rearrange your memories right about now.”

Dean squelched his initial response—why ask if she could do it when there was absolutely nothing in that statement to suggest she couldn’t. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to keep my memories the way they are.”

“Good for you.” Austin sat down and stared pointedly at the fridge. “So if we’re not going to adjust the status quo until your mother’s had a look, what are we waiting for? When do we eat?”

Claire sighed. “I think Dean’s waiting for an explanation.”

“I already explained,” Austin protested, twisting out from under Claire’s hand. “He told me he believed in magic. I told him that’s what was going on.”

“That’s not much of an explanation.”

“It’s enough to tide him over until after breakfast.”

They surrendered to the inevitable. While Dean cooked for Claire, she ran up to her room to get a can of cat food.

As she put the saucer of beige puree on the floor, Austin glanced down in disgust and then glared up at her. “I can smell perfectly good sausages,” he complained.

“Which you’re not allowed to have. Remember what the vet said, at your age the geriatric cat food will help keep you alive.”

“One sausage couldn’t hurt,” Dean offered, his expression as he looked into the saucer much the same as the cat’s.

Claire caught his wrist and moved the hand holding the fork holding the sausage back over the plate. “Austin’s seventeen years old,” she told him. “Would you feed one of these to someone who was a hundred and two?”

“I guess not.”

“You won’t live forever; it’ll only seem that way,” Austin muttered around a mouthful of food.

As Dean carried the loaded plate over to one of the small tables in the dining room, Claire attempted to organize her thoughts. Of the morning’s three surprises, four if she counted Augustus Smythe disappearing and leaving her the hotel, Dean was actually the one she felt least qualified to deal with. When it came right down to it, Sara and Hell and Augustus Smythe were variations on a theme—extreme variations, really extreme variations, granted, but nothing entirely unique. On the other hand, in almost ten years of sealing sites, she’d never had to explain herself to a bystander. Manipulate perceptions so she could do her job, yes. Actually—to tell the truth, the whole truth—no.

When Dean set down the plate, she stared aghast at the scrambled eggs, sausage patties, grilled tomatoes, and three pieces of toast. “This is more food than I’d usually eat all day.”

“I guess that’s why you’re so…”

“So what?”

“Nothing.”

“What?”

“Skinny.” Hie ears slowly turning red, Dean set the cutlery neatly on each side of the plate and hurried back into the kitchen. “I’ll, uh, get you another coffee, then.”

While his back was turned, Claire rolled her eyes. She was not skinny; she was petite. And he was so—in rapid succession she considered and discarded intense, earnest, and stalwart. Before she worked her way down to yeomanly, she decided she’d best settle on young and leave it at that. “Aren’t you having any?” she asked as he returned with her mug.

A little surprised, he shook his head. “I ate before you got up.”

“That was hours ago. Bring another plate, you can have half of this.”

“If I bring another plate…” Austin began.

“No.” When Dean hesitated, Claire prodded at his conscience. “Trust me, I’m not going to eat all of it; it’ll just get thrown out.”

A few moments later, a less intimidating breakfast in front of her and Dean eating hungrily on the other side of the table the way only a young man who’d gone three hours without eating could, Claire turned suddenly toward the cat and said, “You’re sure he’s a part of this?”

“I’m positive.”

“You were positive that time in Gdansk, too.”

Austin snorted. “So my Polish was a little rusty, sue me.” He stared pointedly up at her, his tail flicking off the seconds like a furry metronome.

“All right. You win.” Chewing and swallowing a forkful of tomato delayed the inevitable only a few moments more. Feeling the weight of Dean’s gaze join the cat’s, she lifted her head and cleared her throat. “First of all, I want you to realize that what I’m about to tell you is privileged information and is not to be repeated. To anyone. Ever.”

Wrapped in the comforting and lingering odors of sausage and egg, Dean ran through a fast replay of the morning’s events. “Nothing personal, but who’d believe me?”

“You’d be surprised. When I got up today, I didn’t expect I’d be telling it to you.” Eyes narrowed, she leaned forward. “If this information falls into the wrong hands…”

Unable to help himself, Dean mirrored her movement and lowered his voice dramatically. “The fate of the world is at stake?”

“Yes.”

When he realized she meant it, he could’ve sworn he felt each individual hair rise off the back of his neck. It was an unpleasant sensation. He pushed his chair away from the table, all of a sudden not really hungry. “Okay. Maybe you’d better not tell me.”

Claire shot an annoyed look at the cat. “Too late.”

“But you don’t even know me. You don’t know you can trust me.”

The possibility of not trusting him hadn’t crossed her mind. Total strangers probably handed him their packages while they bent to tie their shoelaces. If a game needed a scorekeeper, he’d always be the one drafted. Mothers could safely leave small children with him and return hours later knowing that their darlings had been fed, watered, and harmlessly amused. And he does windows.

“I know we can trust you,” Austin muttered, leaping up onto an empty chair and glaring over the edge of the table at a piece of uneaten sausage. “Get on with it. I’m old. I haven’t got all day. Are you going to finish that?”

“Yes.” While she cleared her plate, Claire created and scrapped several possible beginnings. Finally, she sighed. “I suppose Austin’s right…”

“Well thank you very much.”

“…it begins with believing in magic.”

“And ends with?” Dean asked cautiously.

“Armageddon. But if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather leave that for another day.” When he indicated that Armageddon could be left for as long as she liked, Claire continued. “Magic, simply put, is a system for tapping into and controlling the possibilities of a complex energy source.”

“Energy from where?”

“From somewhere else.” It was clear that she’d lost him. She sighed. “It doesn’t have a physical presence, it just is.” In fact, a part of it had reputedly once explained itself by saying, “I AM.” but that wasn’t a detail Claire thought she ought to add.

“It just is,” Dean repeated. Since she seemed to be waiting to see if he was willing to accept that, he shrugged and said, “Okay.” At this point, it seemed safest.

“Let’s compare magic to baseball. Everyone is more-or-less capable of playing the game but not everyone has the ability to make it to the major leagues.” Pleased with the analogy, Claire made a mental note to remember it. She could use it should she ever be in this situation again—owning a hotel complete with sleeping evil, a hole to Hell in the basement, and a handsome, young caretaker to whom her cat spilled his guts. Yeah, right. Her nostrils flared.

Taken aback by the nostril flaring, Dean shuffled his feet under the table, glanced around the familiar dining room, and finally said, “Could I do it?”

“With training and discipline, lots of discipline,” she added in case he started thinking it was easy, “anyone can do minor magics—so minor that most people don’t think they’re worth the effort.”

Feeling like he’d just been chastised by his fifth grade teacher, an intense young woman right out of teacher’s college whom every boy in the class had had a crush on, Dean slid down in his chair until his shoulders were nearly level with the table and his legs, crossed at the ankle, stretched halfway across the room. “Go ahead.”

“Thank you.” An irritated so kind came implied with the tone. Who did he think he was? “Most of the energy magic deals with comes from the center part of the possibilities. The upper end is for emergency use only and the lower end is posted off-limits. For the sake of argument, let’s call the upper end ‘good,’ and the lower end ‘evil.’” She paused, waiting for an objection that never came. “You’re okay with that? I mean, good and evil aren’t exactly late twentieth century concepts.”

“They were at my granddad’s house,” Dean told her. Tersely invited to elaborate, he shrugged self-consciously. “My granddad was an Anglican minister.”

“This is the Reverend McIssac, the grandfather who raised you?”

He nodded.

“What happened to your parents?” Claire didn’t entirely understand his expression, but as the silence went on just a little too long, she suspected he wasn’t going to answer. “I’m sorry, that was tactless of me. I’m not actually very good with people.”

“Quel surprise,” Austin muttered, head on his front paws.

“No, it’s okay.” Dean spun one of the breakfast knives around on the table, eyes locked on the whirling blade. “They died when I was a baby,” he said at last. “House fire. It happens a lot when the woodstove gets loaded up on the first cold night of winter and you find out what condition your chimney is really in. My dad threw me out the upstairs window into a snowbank just before the building collapsed.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I never knew them. It was always just me and my granddad. My father was his only son, see, and he wouldn’t let any of my aunts raise me. He’s the one who taught me to cook.” All at once, Dean had to see Claire’s expression. Too many girls fell into a “poor sweet baby” mood at this point in the story and things never really recovered after that. Catching the knife between two fingers, he looked up and saw sympathy but not pity, so he told her the rest. “They could’ve saved themselves if they hadn’t gone upstairs for me. I’ve always known, without a doubt, how much they loved me. There’s not a lot of people who can say that.”

Swallowing a lump in her throat, Claire reached over and lightly touched the back of his hand. “No wonder you’re so stable.”

He shrugged self-consciously. “Me?”

“Do you see anyone else around here who isn’t a cat?” Austin reached up and batted the knife off the table. “Thank you for sharing. Now, can we get on with it?”

Partly to irritate the cat, and partly to allow emotions to settle, Claire waited while Dean dealt with the smear of butter and toast crumbs on the floor before picking up the scattered threads of the explanation. “You ready?”

He nodded.

“All right, back to good energy and evil energy. Between this energy and what most of the world considers reality, is a barrier. For lack of a better term, let’s keep calling it the fabric of the universe. Those who use magic learn to pierce this barrier and draw off the energy they need. Unfortunately, it also gets pierced by accident.” She took a long swallow of coffee. “In order to continue, I’m going to have to grossly oversimplify, so please don’t think that I’m insulting your intelligence.”

“Okay.” It still seemed to be the safest response.

“Every time someone does something good, it pokes a hole through the fabric, releases some of the good energy, and everybody benefits. Every time someone does something evil, it releases some of the evil energy and everybody suffers.”

“How good?” Dean wondered. “And how evil?”

“The holes are proportional. If say, you sacrificed yourself to save another or conversely sacrificed another to save yourself, the holes would be large.” She paused to watch raindrops hit the window behind his head, the drops merging until their weight pulled them in tiny rivers toward the ground. “The problem is that small holes can get bigger. Evil oozing out a pinprick inspires more evil which enlarges the hole which inspires greater evil…Well, you get the idea.”

“Unless he’s dumber than kibble,” Austin growled. “I can’t believe that was the best you could come up with.”

Claire stared down at him through narrowed eyes. “All right. You come up with a better explanation.”

Twisting around on the chair seat, the cat pointedly turned his back on her. “I don’t want to.”

“You can’t.”

“I said, I didn’t want to.”

“Ha!”

“Excuse me?” Dean waved a hand to get Claire’s attention. “Is that what happened in the furnace room? Someone did something evil and accidentally made a hole?”

“Not exactly,” she said slowly, trying to decide how much he should know. “Some holes are made on purpose. There are always people around who want what they’re not supposed to have and are arrogant enough to believe they can control it.” Recalling an accident site she’d come upon her first year working solo, she shook her head. “But they can’t.”

Dean read context if not particulars in the movement. “Messy?”

“It can be. I once found a body, an entire body, in the glove compartment of a 1984 Plymouth Reliant station wagon.”

“The 1.2 liter GM, or the Mitsubishi engine?”

“Does it matter?”

“It does if you need to buy parts.”

Claire drummed her fingernails against the tabletop. “I’m talking about a body in a glove compartment, not a shopping trip to Canadian Tire.”

“Sorry.”

“May I continue?”

“Sure.”

“Thank you. Most holes can be taken care of with the magical equivalent of a caulking gun. Some are more complicated, and a few are large enough for a significant amount of evil to break through and wreak havoc before anything can be done about them.”

His eyes widened, appearing even larger magnified by the lenses of his glasses. “Has this ever happened?”

She hesitated, then shrugged; this much she might as well tell him. “Yes. But not often; the sinking of Atlantis, the destruction of the Minoan Empire…”

“The inexplicable popularity of Barney,” Austin added dryly.

Claire’s eyes narrowed again, and Dean decided it might be safer not to laugh.

“Holes,” she announced, her tone promising consequences should the cat interrupt again, “that give access to evil draw one of two types of monitors.”

“Electronic monitors?”

“No.” She paused to rub a smear of lipstick off her mug with her thumb. This was turning out to be easier than she’d imagined it could be. At the moment, before the tenuous connection they’d acquired over the course of the morning dissolved back into the relationship of almost strangers, she suspected Dean would accept almost anything she said.

GO AHEAD, TAKE ADVANTAGE. HAVE SOME FUN. WHO’LL KNOW?

The mug hit the table, rocking back and forth.

Dean grabbed it before the last dregs of Claire’s coffee spilled out onto the table. “Are you okay?”

“Yes.” She blinked four or five times to bring him back into focus. “Of course. Did you hear anything just now?”

“No.”

He was clearly telling the truth.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine.” The voice had sounded slightly off frequency, as though the speaker hadn’t quite managed to sync up with her head. Considering the nature of the site in the furnace room, there could be only one possible source for that personal a temptation. And only one possible response.

“Right, then, the monitors. Now what?” she demanded when the pressure of Austin’s regard dragged her to a second stop.

“Nothing.”

“You’re staring.”

“I’m hanging on your every word,” he told her.

He was looking so irritatingly inscrutable, Claire knew he suspected something. Tough. “The monitors,” she began again, fixing her gaze on Dean and blocking the cat out of her peripheral vision, “are magic-users known as Cousins and Keepers. The Cousins are less powerful than the Keepers, but there’re more of them. They can mitigate the results of an accident, but they can’t actually seal the hole. They watch, and wait for the need to summon a Keeper.

“For the sites that can’t be sealed because the holes have already grown too large, Keepers, who’re always referred to as Aunt or Uncle for reasons no one has ever been able to make clear to me, essentially become the caulking and seal the hole with themselves. A lot of eccentric, reclusive old men and women are actually saving the world.”

Dean took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “So the Keepers are the good guys?”

“That’s right.”

“And the woman asleep upstairs is one of the bad guys?”

“She’s a Keeper gone bad.” The words emerged without emotion because the only emotion applicable to the situation seemed a bit much to indulge in over the breakfast dishes. “An evil Keeper.”

“An evil auntie?” he asked, unable to keep one corner of his mouth from curving up.

“It’s a title, not a relationship,” Claire snapped. He looked so abashed she couldn’t help adding, “But, essentially, yes. We found her name written in the furnace room. For safety’s sake, we can’t tell you what it is.”

Replacing his glasses, Dean straightened in his chair, shoulders squared, both feet flat on the spotless linoleum. “Written in the furnace room? On the wall?”

“The floor actually.” It was very nearly the strongest reaction he’d had all morning. Claire wasn’t entirely certain how she felt about that.

“Okay. As soon as you’re done, I’ll get right on it.”

“On it? And do what?”

“Get rid of it. I’ve got an industrial cleanser designed for graffiti,” he told her with the kind of reverence in his voice most males his age reserved for less cleansing pleasures. “Last spring, some kids decorated the side wall, the one facing the driveway, and this stuff took it right off the brick. Took off a bit of the mortar, too, but I fixed that.”

“You’ll just stay out of the furnace room, thank you very much.” Although it would be a unique solution, it wasn’t likely to be a successful one. Fortunately, the dampening field would keep him from attempting it on his own.

Brow creased, he shook his head. “I hate to leave a mess….”

“I don’t care.” Claire smiled tightly across the table at him. “This time, you’re going to.”

“Okay. You’re the boss,” he sighed, slumping back into his chair. “But why can’t you tell me her name?”

“Because Austin was right….”

“I usually am,” the cat muttered.

“…and we really don’t want to wake her.”

Dean nodded. “Because she’s evil. What did she do? Try to use the power coming out of the hole for her own ends?”

Claire felt her jaw drop. “That’s exactly what she tried to do? How did you know?”

“I just thought it was obvious. I mean, she was corrupted by the dark side of the force, but another Keeper showed up to stop her just in time, and although she was beaten in a fair fight, she couldn’t be killed because that would bring the good guys down to her level, so they put her to sleep instead as kind of a temporary solution.”

Mouth open, Claire stared across the table at him.

Dean felt his cheeks grow warm. “But I’m just guessing.” When she didn’t respond, he squirmed uneasily in his chair. “It’s what they’d do in the movie.”

“What movie?” The question slipped out an octave higher than usual.

“Not an actual movie,” Dean protested hurriedly, not entirely certain what he’d done wrong. “It’s just what they’d do in a movie. If they did a movie. But they wouldn’t.” He’d never actually heard a cat laugh before. “I still don’t know why her name would wake her.”

Ignoring Austin, who seemed in danger of falling off the chair, Claire wrapped the tattered remains of her dignity around her, well aware that this bystander seven years her junior had offered his last statement out of kindness, deliberately handing back control of the conversation. “Names,” she said, coolly, “are more than mere labels; they’re one of the things that connect us to each other and to the world.” Which was one of the reasons she wasn’t planning on identifying the hole in the furnace room. If Dean thought of Hell by name, it could give the darkness a connection and easier access.

One of the reasons.

What they’d do in the movie, indeed.

“If she does get woken up,” Dean wondered, frowning slightly, “is she able for you?”

“Say what?”

He hurriedly translated his question into something a mainlander could understand. “Is she stronger than you?”

“No!”

Austin snorted.

“All right. I don’t know.” Claire glared at the cat. “She’s a powerful Keeper, or she wouldn’t have been able to seal the hole, not to mention attempting to use it. But…” Her eyes narrowed. “I am also a powerful Keeper, or I wouldn’t have been summoned here. Waking her would be the only way to find out which of us is stronger, and I’m not willing to risk the destruction of this immediate area on a point of ego.”

“So she’s still sealing the hole? Like a cork in a bottle?”

“Essentially.”

“You’re here to pop her out and close the hole?”

“It’s more complicated than that.”

“And that’s why you called your mother?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” He took a deep breath, and laid both hands flat on the table. “The woman in room six is an evil Keeper.”

“That’s right.”

“And you’re a good Keeper?”

Claire leaned back and pulled a vinyl business card case out of her blazer pocket. “My sister made these for me. She meant them as a joke, but they’re accurate enough.”

Aunt Claire, Keeper

your Accident is my Opportunity

(abilities dependent on situation)

The card stock felt handmade and the words had the smudgy edges of rubber stamp printing. “Should I call you Aunt Claire?”

“No.”

He’d never heard such a definitive no before. There were no shades of maybe, no possibility of compromise. When she indicated he could keep the card, he slipped it into the pocket of his T-shirt. “I’ve always wanted to see real magic.”

Claire leaned forward, eyes half lidded, palms flat on the table. “You should hope you don’t get the chance.”

It would’ve been more dramatic as a warning had she not placed one palm squarely on a bit of spilled jam.

Dean handed her a napkin and managed not to laugh although he couldn’t quite control a slight twitch in the outer corners of his mouth. “So was Mr. Smythe a Keeper, too?”

Claire showed her teeth in what wasn’t quite a smile. “Augustus Smythe was, and is, a despicable little worm who walked out and left me holding the bag. He’s also a Cousin.”

“Did he put her to sleep?”

“No, a Cousin can’t manipulate that kind of power.” As much as it irritated her to admit it, Dean’s little synopsis had to have been essentially correct. “At some point, there was another Keeper involved.”

“But Mr. Smythe is a Cousin, and you said Cousins monitor unsealed sites.”

“Your point?”

“You said this site is sealed, that she was sealing it like a cork in a bottle…”

“No, you said like a cork in a bottle.”

“Okay. But if the hole is sealed, what was Mr. Smythe doing here?”

“Probably monitoring the seal since she can’t and monitoring her since the power that’s keeping her asleep is coming from the site.”

“Evil power is keeping her asleep?”

“Trust me…” She tossed the napkin down onto her plate. “It’s not likely to corrupt her.”

“But if it was a temporary solution, why has Mr. Smythe been here since 1945?”

“Has he?”

“Sure. He complained about it all the time.” With a flick of two fingers, Dean began spinning the knife again. “Why did Mr. Smythe sneak out like he did?”

“I have no idea.” The handle of her mug creaked slightly in her grip. “But I’d certainly like to ask him.”

“What are you after doing now?”

“Nothing hasty. Nothing at all until I get that second opinion. When I have more information, I’ll get to work closing things up but as long as the hole remains sealed, it’s perfectly safe. We’re in no immediate danger.”

“No immediate danger?” Dean repeated. When she nodded, he leaned back in his chair, continuing to spin the knife. “That’s, um, interesting phrasing. What about long-term danger?”

“That depends.”

“On what, then?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“There’s a whole lot you’re not telling me, isn’t there?”

“There’s a whole lot I don’t know.”

“Mr. Smythe was supposed to leave you more information?”

Claire snorted, sounding remarkable like Austin at his most sardonic. “At the very least.”

“Which is why we need you,” the cat told him, looking up from a damp patch of fur. “Smythe’s not here, and you are.”

“But I don’t know anything,” Dean protested.

“You should make a good pair, then. She thinks she knows everythi…Hey!” he protested as Claire picked him up and dropped him onto the floor. “It was a joke! Keepers,” he muttered, leaping back up onto the chair, “no sense of humor.”

The wisest course, Dean decided, would be to ignore that observation altogether. Stilling the knife, he looked up from her elongated reflection in the blade. “If you don’t mind me asking, where do Keepers and Cousins come from?”

“Just outside Wappakenetta.” When both Dean and Austin stared at her blankly, she sighed. “We have a sense of humor, it’s just no one appreciates it. If you’re asking historically, Keepers and Cousins are descendants of Lilith, Adam’s first wife.”

Dean started to grin.

“I’m not joking.”

“You’re not serious! Adam’s first wife?”

Enjoying his reaction, she waved off his question with a dismissive gesture borrowed from Marlon Brando in The Godfather. “I only know what I’m told, but some of our people are very into genealogy.”

“But you’re talking about Adam and Eve!”

“No, I’m talking about Adam and Lilith.”

“The Bible, the Christian Bible, as literal truth?” Dean suspected that his granddad, who held some fairly radical views for an Anglican minister, would be appalled.

“No. Not truth as such. The lineage—that is, Cousins and Keepers—consider all religions are attempts to explain their energy. Think of them as containing capital T Truths as opposed to merely being true.”

“But you said Adam and Lilith,” Dean reminded her. “Twice.”

Were all bystanders so literal, she wondered, or was it just this one? “Forget them. Forget them twice. If you prefer, there had to have been, at some point, a breeding pair of what was essentially the first humans. Postulate, a second female, with genetic coding to handle magic that the other didn’t have. It’s the same story in a different language.”

“Okay.” He took a deep breath, followed that theory out to its logical conclusion, and half prepared to duck. “So essentially, you’re not—that is, not entirely—human?”

She took it better than he’d thought she would and seemed more intrigued than insulted, as though the idea had never occurred to her before. “I suppose that depends on where you set your parameters. If you’re speaking biologically…”

“I wasn’t,” Dean interrupted before she could add details. Unfortunately, it didn’t stop her.

“…we’re, certainly able to interbreed, but that doesn’t really mean anything because so could the old Greek gods.”

“They were real?”

“How should I know?” One painted fingernail tapped against the side of her mug as she thought it over. “Under those parameters, I suppose you could say, we’re…” She smiled suddenly and taken totally by surprise, he found himself lost in it. “…semi-mythical.”

Austin snorted. “Spare me. Semi-mythical indeed.”

“It does cover all the bases,” Claire protested.

“You want to cover the bases? Play shortstop for the Yankees.” Swiveling his head around, Austin stared up at Dean. “She’s human. The Keepers are human. The Cousins are human. I barely know you, but I’m assuming you’re human. I’m not saying this is a good thing, it’s just the way it is.”

“Okay.” Dean held up both hands in surrender. “So, if Mr. Smythe is a Cousin, and she’s a Keeper, what are you?”

Austin drew himself up to his full height, his entire bearing from ears to tail suggesting he’d been mortally insulted. “I am a cat.”

“A cat. Okay.”

While Dean did the breakfast dishes and slotted the morning’s experiences into previously empty places in his worldview, Claire went through the papers Augustus Smythe had left in the hotel office in the hope of discovering some answers. If the registration books were complete, the hotel had never been a popular destination and bookings had fallen off considerably after Smythe had changed the name from Brewster’s Hotel to The Elysian Fields Guest House in 1952.

“Might as well call it The Vestibule of Hell,” she muttered mockingly, turning yellowed pages and not at all impressed by her earlier flash of prescience. It appeared that windowless room four had been popular throughout the existence of the hotel, and the guests who stayed in it seemed to have had uniformly bad handwriting.

She had to call Dean out of the kitchen to open the safe.

“The very least Augustus Smythe could’ve done,” she grumbled, arms folded and brows drawn into a deep vee over her nose, “was leave me the combination.”

“He left you Dean,” Austin observed from the desk. “Something he probably figured you’d get more use out of.”

Ears red, Dean cranked the handle around and got up off his knees as the safe door swung open. “Anything else, Boss?”

Having chased Austin halfway up the first flight of stairs before being forced to acknowledge that four old legs sufficiently motivated were still faster than two, Claire ducked back under the counter. “Not right now.”

As she straightened, their eyes locked. “What?”

Dean felt a sudden and inexplicable urge to stammer. He managed to control it by keeping conversation to a minimum. “The combination?”

“Good point. Write it down. Use the back of that old bill on the desk,” she added, walking over to the safe. Squatting, she heard pencil move against paper then the combination appeared over her shoulder. “Six left, six right, seven left?”

“That’s right. I should, uh, finish the dishes now.”

“Good idea.” As he returned to the kitchen, Claire grinned. He really did turn a very charming color at the slightest opportunity. Then she looked back down at the piece of paper and shook her head. Six sixty-seven. Cute. Hell was in the basement; the safe was on the first floor, one up from the Number of the Beast. First the Elysian Fields, now this. Augustus Smythe seemed to delight in throwing about obscure hints. A cry for help or sheer bloody-mindedness?

In the safe, she found a heavy linen envelope marked with the sigil for expenses. On the back, Taxes, Victuals, Maintenance, and Staff had been written in an elegant copperplate. Another, later hand had added, Electricity and Telephone. The envelope was empty.

No outstanding bills. Claire put the envelope back in the safe and closed the door. Great. When the seal goes and something calling itself Beelzebub leads a demonic army out of the furnace room, the lights’ll stay on and a well-fed staff can call 911 as they’re disemboweled.

As she sat back on her heels, a flash of brilliant blue racing along the inside edge of a lower shelf caught her eye. Thumb and first two fingers of her right hand raised, just in case, she leaned over and with her left hand yanked a dusty pile of ledgers onto the floor. The hole in the corner was unmistakably mouse.

Which didn’t mean that only mice were using it.

Mice weren’t usually a brilliant blue.

She moved closer and sent down a cautious probe.

“Problem?”

“OW!” Rubbing her head, she crawled back from the shelf and glared up at Dean. “Try and make a little more noise when you sneak up on people!”

“Sorry. I’ve finished the dishes and I was wondering if you want me to put a new padlock on room six.”

“Definitely.” It was an emotional not a rational response. Sara wouldn’t be leaving the room any time soon and—should she decide to—a padlock wouldn’t stop her, but for peace of mind there had to be a perception of security. “I’ll have a locksmith repair the door plate.”

“But he’ll see her.”

“No, he won’t.”

It was another one of those statements, like “rearrange your memories,” that Dean had no intention of arguing with. “Okay.” He squatted beside her and peered at the hole. “Looks like a new one. I’ll set out some more traps.”

“Mousetraps?”

The sideways look he shot her seemed mildly concerned. “Yeah. Why?”

“Have you caught anything?”

“Not yet.” Rising, he held out his hand. “They’re smart. They take the bait and avoid springing the trap.”

Claire debated with herself for a moment, then put her hand in his. “They might not be mice,” she said as he lifted her effortlessly to her feet. “All I’m reading is the residual signature of the seepage, but this place could easily be infested with imps.” Which would explain why her running shoes had still been wet this morning.

“Imps?”

“I saw something and it was bright blue.” A little surprised that he hadn’t released her, Claire pulled her fingers free of his grip.

“Imps.” Dean sighed. “Okay. Is there anything I can do about it now?”

“Not now, no.”

“In that case, I’ll be upstairs if you need me.”

“Don’t go into the room.”

He looked uncomfortable. “I was thinking about dusting her.”

“Don’t.”

“But she’s covered in…”

“No.”

According to the site journal, found tucked under a stack of early seventies skin magazines in the middle left-hand drawer of the desk, three Keepers had sealed the hole before Sara; Uncle Gregory, Uncle Arthur, and Aunt Fiona. Aunt Fiona had died rather suddenly which explained why Sara had been summoned off active service at such a relatively young age—she’d been the closest Keeper strong enough to hold the seal when the need had gone out.

“Relatively young age,” Claire snorted, rubbing her eyes. The yellowing papers she studied seemed to soak up the puddle of illumination spilled by the old-fashioned desk lamp without the faded handwriting becoming any more legible. “She was forty-two.”

Sara had made it very clear in her first entry in the site journal that she hated the hotel and everything to do with it. It was also her one and only entry.

“Oh, this is a lot of help. A considerate villain would’ve had the courtesy to keep complete notes.”

Confident of her abilities, Claire had no doubt that she’d been summoned to the hotel to finally close the site. It was the only logical explanation. Unfortunately, sealing the hole would cut the power that kept Aunt Sara asleep, and Claire had meant it when she’d told Dean she didn’t want to find out which of them was more powerful.

Keepers capable of abusing the power granted by the lineage were rare. Claire had only heard of it happening twice before in their entire history. The battles, Keeper vs Keeper, good vs evil, had been won but both times at a terrible cost. The first had resulted in the eruption of Vesuvius and the loss of Pompeii. The second, in disco. Claire had only a child’s memories of the seventies, but she wouldn’t be responsible for putting the world through that again.

Augustus Smythe’s entry, which should have, and possibly did describe how he’d come to monitor the site, was unreadable. Ink had been spilled on the last third of the ledger, had soaked through the pages, and dried to create what could most accurately be described as an indigo blue brick. The skin magazines would’ve been as helpful.

“Coincidence?” Claire asked the silence. “I don’t think so.” The sound of something scuttling merrily away inside the wall only confirmed her suspicions.

She was searching through yet another pile of paid bills in the top drawer of the desk when, for the first time that day, the phone rang. Used to the polite interruptive chirp of modern electronics, Claire had forgotten how loud and demanding the old black rotary models could be.

Coughing and choking, she picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

“Claire?”

“Mom…”

“What’s the matter?”

Startled by the intensity of the question, Claire jerked around but could neither see nor hear anything moving up on her. “What do you mean? What do you know?”

“You were choking.”

“Oh, that.” Wiping her chin with her free hand, Claire relaxed. “The phone startled me, and I tried to breathe spit. It’s nothing.” Breath back, she explained the problem.

“Oh, my.”

“Exactly. Do you think you could come and have a look at it? At them. Tell me what you think.”

“I’d like to help you, Claire, but I don’t know. If I were needed, I’d have been summoned.”

“I need you. Who says a summons can’t use the phone?” She could feel her mother weakening. “This is huge. I’d hate to screw it up.”

“Under the circumstances, that wouldn’t make anyone very happy.” She paused. Claire waited, poking her finger through the black coils of the cord. “It would be nice to spend some time with you. Would you like me to bring your sister?”

“I don’t think so, Mom.”

“You haven’t seen her for almost a year.”

“We talk on the phone.”

“It’s not the same.”

“Yes, I know. But, please, leave her home anyway.” The thought of Diana within a hundred miles of an open access to Hell brought up an image of the Four Horsemen trampling the world under their hooves as they fled in terror.

After supplying detailed directions, Claire hung up, glanced out into the shadowed lobby, and sighed. “Are your work boots dry, Dean?”

He looked down at his feet. “They should be. Why?”

“You walk too quietly without them. Please, put them on.”

With no memory of turning, he’d taken three silent, sweat sock muffled steps toward the back door before he recalled what he’d come out to the lobby to say. “I made a fresh pot of coffee, if you’re interested. And pecan cookies.”

Dean stared at Claire over his seventh cookie. “So your mother is your cousin?”

“No. She’s a Cousin.”

“And your father’s…?”

“A Cousin, too.”

“And you and your younger sister, Diana, are both Keepers?”

“Yes.”

Behind his glasses, his eyes twinkled. “So, you’re your mother’s Aunt?”

“No.”

“But…”

“Look, I didn’t make up the stupid nomenclature!” Strongly suspecting that Dean was being difficult on purpose, Claire tossed back her last mouthful of coffee, choked, and ended up spraying the tabletop and both her companions.

“Oh, thank you very much.” Austin jumped down onto the floor and vigorously shook one back leg. “I just got that clean!”

After handing the still sputtering Keeper a napkin, Dean quickly used another to mop up the mess. When things got back to normal, and when the cat had been placated, he asked, “Why won’t your mother be here until tomorrow afternoon?”

“That’s when the train from London gets in. Tomorrow morning she’ll get a lift from Lucan into London, then catch the train from London to Toronto to connect with the 1:14 out of Union Station, which means she’ll be here about four.”

“Oh.” He’d been half hoping to hear that the delay involved for low altitude brooms. After the excitement of the morning, he was ready for his next installment of weird. Things hadn’t been this interesting vacuuming the flying carpet or waiting until the flight path cleared since he’d left home. Actually, things hadn’t been this interesting at home—although his granddad’s reaction to his cousin Todd getting an eyebrow pierced had come close. “Why doesn’t she drive?”

“Because she can’t. None of us can.”

Dean blinked. Okay, that was the weirdest thing he’d heard so far. “None of your family?”

“None of the lineage.”

“Why not?”

“Too many distractions. We see things other people don’t”

There’d been a couple of members of Dean’s family who’d seen things other people hadn’t, but they were usually laid out roughly horizontal and left to sleep it off. “Things like blue mice?” he asked innocently, biting into another cookie.

“No. They’re nothing at all like blue mice,” she told him curtly. If she responded to his teasing, he’d keep doing it, and she already had one younger sibling; she didn’t need another. “They’re bits of the energy, small possibilities that…Austin! Get out of there!” Leaping to her feet, she snatched the butter dish out from under the cat’s tongue. “Do you know what this stuff does to your arteries?” she demanded. “Are you trying to kill yourself?”

“I’m hungry.”

“There’s a bowl of fresh, geriatric kibble on the floor by the fridge.”

“I don’t want that,” he muttered looking sulky. “You wouldn’t make your grandmother eat it.”

“My grandmother doesn’t lick the butter.”

“Wanna bet?”

Claire turned her back and pointedly ignored him. “Small possibilities,” she repeated, “that sometimes seep through and run loose in the world.”

Dean glanced around the dining room. “What do they look like?”

“That depends on your background. You’re a McIssac so, if you had the Sight, at the very least you’d see traditional Celtic manifestations. Given that Newfoundland has a wealth of legend all its own you’d also probably pick up a few indigenous manifestations.”

“You’re not serious?” he asked her, grinning broadly. “Ghoulies and ghosties and things that go bump in the night?”

“If you want.”

His grin faded. “I don’t want.”

“Then don’t mention it.”

Down in the furnace room, having spent the last few hours testing the binding, the intelligence in the pit rested. It would have been panting had it been breathing.

NOTHING HAS CHANGED, it observed sulkily.

Although physically contained, the pentagram could not entirely close it off from the world. There was just no way it was that easy.

It seeped through between the possibilities.

It tempted. It taunted. And once, because of the concentration trapped in that one spot, it had managed to squeeze through a sizable piece of pure irritation.

THE OLD MALE IS GONE.

THE YOUNG MALE IS STILL HERE.

The heat rose momentarily as though Hell itself had snorted. THAT GOODY TWO SHOES. WHAT A WASTE OF TIME.

THERE’S A NEW KEEPER.

WE’VE DEALT WITH KEEPERS BEFORE.

WE DIDN’T EXACTLY DEAL WITH THE OTHER. WASN’T SHE INTENDING TO CONTROL…

SHUT UP!

It also talked to itself.