Summon The Keeper. The Second Summoning

“So.” He rolled over on his side and his fingers tightened around hers. “Since I seem to be remaining for a time and we seem to be alone together, so conveniently on a bed, perhaps we could get to know each other better?”

Snatching her hand through his, his grip no more confining than cool smoke, Claire leaped to her feet“Don’t you ever let up? While I appreciate your need for companionship, I do not appreciate being continually propositioned!”

His eyes widened, his expression injured innocence.“But when first I see you, you are so beautiful, how can I not want you?”

“That has more to do with how long you’ve been alone than it does with me.”

“I do not want that Dean and I see him, too,” he pointed out reasonably. “And I am not to blame that it has for me been such a very long time.”

“What do you expect? You’re dead.”

Back up on one elbow, he rested his chin on his palm and waggled both brows suggestively.“The spirit is willing…”

“But the flesh is nonexistent.”

“You are a Keeper. For a time, I can be incubus for you.”

Claire groped behind her for a chair and sat down rather abruptly.“How do you know that?”

“There was a Keeper when I was dead no more than ten or fifteen years. She came to my room,de temps en temps—that is, from time to time. She is not so young as you, but when no one else makes offers…”

The hair lifted off the back of Claire’s neck and she fought the urge to turn and check the space behind her. “Bleached blonde, full-figured, pouty mouth, very red lipstick?”

“Oui.” His eyes narrowed. “You know Sa…”

“Don’t say her name. She’s still here.”

“Then I…” He disappeared. “…am not.”

A little surprised, Claire scanned the area, trying to find him. She didn’t want to have to compel him to return. “I thought you two…you know?”

“Non. You do not know.” His voice came from near the window. “There are legends about women like her, try to suck a man’s soul out his…”

“I get the picture,” Claire interrupted hurriedly, not really in the mood for a graphic description in either language.

“Why is that onestill here?”

How much to tell him?“Do you know what Keepers do?”

“She told me. They guard the places where evil can enter the world.” He rematerialized, cross-legged on the bed, expressive features folded into worry. “But me, I thinkshe want the evil for herself. I do not know what happened, but all at once,she did not come and Augustus Smythe was here. He is not a Keeper.”

“No, he’s a Cousin. Less powerful.She…” It was impossible not to pick up Jacques’ inflection. “…was put to sleep for trying to take over the, um, evil.” Claire could see no reason to be more specific, especially considering Jacques’ transitional state and his lack of certainty over his final destination.

“She was put to sleep?” His voice rose, making it more a shriek than a question. “And ifshe wake up?”

“It won’t happen.”

“So you say. Me, I learn a lullaby or two. And now, what happens? To me?”

Claire frowned, uncertain of what he meant“Nothing happens to you.She can’t do anything while she’s asleep or she’d have done something by now.”

“Je ne demande pas ce qu’ellepeut faire a moi!” Agitation threw him back into French.“I know whatshe can do to me.” He raised both hands and made a visible effort to calm down. “I am asking what do you do now with me.”

“What do I do?” He was persistent, she’d give him that. “Nothing.”

“Nothing happens to me for years.” Jacques lay down again and flung an arm up over his eyes.

“Could you please reattach that? It looks disgusting.”

Jacques sighed but complied.“At least will you visit?”

“When I can.”

“Ah, you have no time because you must guard the place where evil can enter the world?”

“I’m working at sealing the hole.”

“And when the hole is sealed?”

“Then I’ll move on.”

Opening one eye, he peered up at her.“Will you bring back my table?”

“No. You don’t need it.” When he began a sorrowful protest Claire cut him off. “You began haunting the attic when Augustus Smythe moved the furniture up from the room you died in, right?”

“Oui.”

She chewed on a corner of her lower lip.“Did he know you were there?”

“He knew. He did not care.” Jacques rolled back up onto his side. Misery made his eyes surprisingly dark. “For so many years with no one who cared; do you know,cherie, I think that is worse than Hell.”

Which explained why there was no response from the basement. Hell appreciated pain.“I have an idea.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Something heavy hit the floor in the room above the dining room. Dean and Austin stared at the ceiling.

“What do think she’s doing up there?”

“She’s still in the attic,” Austin told him. “And so the question becomes, what’s she doing upthere?”

Dean leaned into his polishing cloth with a certain amount of violent activity.“Finding antiques.”

“I’m amazed you left them up there together.” The cat flopped down on the polished end of the table and stretched to his full length. “A woman. A man. Didn’t you say he was a sailor? You know what they say about sailors.”

“They don’t say it about dead sailors.” He peered sideways at the cat. “Austin, can I ask you a personal question? Were you castrated?”

Austin rolled over and blinked up at him.“My, thatis personal. Why do you ask?”

“Something Claire said.”

“She sees all, she tells all.” The cat snorted. “If you must know, yes, I was. I was with a less enlightened—and, as it turned out, allergic—family before I moved in with Claire.”

“How do you feel about it?”

“It broadened my horizons. I was no longer forced by biology to endlessly pursue females in heat and could turn my attention to philosophy and art.”

Dean nodded, understanding.“It pissed you off.”

“Of course it pissed me off!” Ears back, Austin glared up at him. “Wouldn’t it piss you off? But…” he spent a moment grooming the dime-sized spot of black fur on the side of a white paw. “…I got over it. Eventually it was a relief to be able to go outside and not come home with my ear shredded by some feline Goliath out to overpopulate the neighborhood.”

“Did you talk to the other family?”

“Not afterthat.”

A crack of displaced air heralded the sudden appearance of a ladder-back chair in the far corner of the dining room. Closely followed by Jacques, who displaced no air but made up for it in personal volume.

“Libert?! I am free! She was right! I go where the furniture is!” He advanced on Dean, his arms flung wide. “Freed, I gladly apologize to you.”

Dean backed up a step as Jacques walked through the table.

“You are not a Newfie like an insult even though you are from the colony of the despicable British.”

“Newfoundland joined Canada in 1949,” Dean told him stiffening.

“Bon. Just what this country need, moreAnglais. It has no matter, we start again, you and I. So tell me, Dean, why do you stay here in such a place?” He paused and looked him up and down. “Should you not be fishing or whacking on the seals or something?”

Dean folded his arms.“I stay,” he said through clenched teeth, “because Claire needs me.”

“For what?” As Dean’s expression darkened, Jacques raised both hands, palms out. “No, no, it is not another insult. I want to know because I think of you. Since I must stay, you can go if I can do for Claire what you can do.” His volume dropped dramatically. “You know ofher? Sleeping upstairs? I tell you, it is not safe for a young man in a building whereshe is.”

“You must think I’m really stupid,” Dean snarled. “It’s sure as scrod not my safety you’re thinking of.” If he’d ever even considered packing it in and shipping away from this weirdness, he certainly had no intention of going anywhere now.

“Then think of the Keeper’s safety. When you are here she must protect you all the time. Her attention it is divided.”

“I can protect myself!”

“How?”

“His strength is the strength of ten,” Austin muttered, dropping his chin onto his paws, “because his heart is pure.”

Nose-to-nose, both men ignored him.

“If Claire allows me a body…”

“If Clairewhat?” Dean interrupted.

The cat looked up.“It’s an incubus kind of a thing. Not generally approved of by the lineage, but there have been exceptions.”

“And I have been already excepted,” Jacques announced smugly, and disappeared.

“I hate it when they do that,” Austin said, dropping his head again. “You never know when they’re really gone.” As Dean turned toward him, eyes wide behind the lenses of his glasses, he added, “I know, of course, but you don’t.”

“Is he gone?”

“Yes.” Claire answered as she came into the dining room brushing cobwebs off her shoulders. “He’s upstairs investigating the rest of the hotel. I spread the stuff from the room he died in as widely as possible.”

“Inmy apartment?”

“Of course not. I didn’t put anything in the basement at all.”

Dean folded his arms.“Is it true what he said?”

“That depends. What did he say?”

“That you…” She lifted an eyebrow and Dean suddenly found it difficult to continue. “That you gave him a body.”

“He said I gave him a body?”

Her tone lowered the temperature in the room about ten degrees. His crossed arms now a barricade, Dean couldn’t stop himself from stepping back. “Not exactly.”

“Whatexactly did he say?”

It wasn’t a request. Moistening dry lips, Dean repeated the conversation.

Claire sighed and lifted her right hand into the air, fingers flicking off the points.“First according to my mother and my cat, you don’t need my protection and, as things stand right now, there’s nothing to protect you from. Second, I need you to run this place. Jacques certainly isn’t going to be cooking, cleaning, or unclogging toilets. Third, I didn’t make the exception for him,she did.”

Feeling both foolish and reassured. Dean watched his finger rub along the edge of the tabletop.“Will you?” The silence drew his gaze back to Claire’s face. “Uh, never mind.”

“Wise choice,” Austin muttered.

Claire sighed again. Her life used to be so simple.“Look, Dean, I realize Jacques made it sound like he and I, that we…” She paused, wondering why she was so embarrassed about something that hadn’t happened. Maybe because somewhere deep in the back of her mind she’d considered it? Clearing her throat, she started again. “Put yourself inhis place, trapped between life and death, trapped alone in that attic for decades.”

“Okay. I guess I feel sort of sorry for him,” Dean allowed reluctantly. “But every ghost story I’ve ever heard says he’ll be a nuisance at best.”

The can of furniture polish crashed suddenly to the floor.

“See?”

“That was Austin.”

A cupboard door opened and one of the plastic salt shakers put out for guests flung itself halfway across the room.

“That was Jacques.”

“Just meeting expectations.” He materialized by Claire’s side, grinning wickedly.

“Ground rules,” Claire told him, folding her arms and trying not to smile. “First, no throwing things.”

“He started it.” Jacques nodded at the cat.

“If he took poison, would you?”

“What would be the point?”

She had to admit that under the circumstances it was a stupid question. Actually, under most circumstances it was a stupid question.“Second, when you’re in a room with either Dean, or me, or both of us, you must be visible.”

“And thirdly? There is always a thirdly, yes?”

“Thirdly, if we’re all going to live together for a while, let’s make an effort to get along.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“I cannot go down there with you.” Jacques squatted at the top of the stairs to better watch Claire descend. “Why not?”

“Because there’s nothing of yours in the basement.”

“Is it because he lives in the basement and you keep us from fighting over who is most important in your life?”

“Something like that.” Claire smiled as she moved out of his line of sight. For the moment, it was surprisingly entertaining being the center of someone’s universe.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“Cleaning is woman’s work.” Sprawled on the bed, the ghost peered around the room.

Dean very carefully coiled the vacuum cleaner cord around the back of the machine.“Is it?”

“Oui. Any man would know.”

“Like you know it?” He picked up his divided bucket of cleaning supplies.

“Oui.”

“Why don’t you tell Claire?”

“That cleaning is woman’s work?”

“Yeah.”

“I cannot. She is in the basement.”

Dean mourned the missed opportunity. Even after only three days he had a fairly good idea of Claire’s response to a declaration of that type.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“I think you need to rub harder.”

“Don’t you have something to do?” Dean growled, scowling up at the ghost. While searching for paint for the sign, he’d come across a can of paint remover and, although the dining room was still a catastrophe, Claire had decided he should spend the rest of the afternoon stripping the front counter.

Sitting on the countertop, Jacques thought about it, soundlessly drumming his heels.“No,” he said cheerfully after a moment. “I will remain here and watch you.”

“Don’t”

“Dean.”

He leaned around the flailing legs.“Yeah, Boss?”

Carrying a second box of tripleX videos from the sitting room, Claire pushed her hair up off her face with the back of her hand.“Jacques isn’t hurting anything. He’d help if he could.”

“I would,” Jacques agreed cheerfully. “Truly I would help if I could.”

“Yeah. Sure.” Until this point, Dean had always been able to give any new acquaintance the benefit of the doubt. Until this point they’d all been alive, but if he disliked Jacques solely because he was dead, didn’t that make him as much of a bigot as if he disliked him because he was FrenchCanadian? Now, if he disliked him because of the way he acted around Claire, that opened a whole…

He threw his weight behind the scraper.

…new…

Muscles bulged in his jaw as he gritted his teeth.

…barrel of fish.

“I think you reached the wood right there,” Jacques pointed out conversationally.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“Claire?”

She paused, one hand on the doorknob.“What is it, Jacques?”

“You have put nothing of me in your bedroom.” Standing on the threshold, he pushed against an invisible barrier. “I cannot come in.”

“I know.”

He stared soulfully at her.“I want only to be where you are.”

“Why don’t you try being back in the attic where your bed is and I’ll see you in the morning.” She pushed the door closed.

“Even though you close the door on my face, I still desire you!”

She had to smile.“Good night, Jacques.” Switching off the light and dropping her robe, she climbed into bed.

“Claire?” His voice came faintly through the door. “I would just sit in the chair. My word as a Labaet.”

“Goodnight, Jacques.” After a moment, she sighed. “Jacques, go away. I can still feel you standing there.”

“I am on guard so that your sleep is not disturbed.”

“The only thing disturbing my sleep is you. Why won’t you go away?”

“Because…” He paused and she felt him sigh. Or she felt the emotion behind the sigh; as he wasn’t breathing, he didn’t actually exhale. “Because I have been so many years alone.”

Alone. Once again, the word throbbed between them, and once again it evoked an emotional response. Claire couldn’t deny the urge to bring the small tapestry cushion—the cushion that gave him access to her sitting room—into the bedroom. She couldn’t deny it, but she managed to resist it. “You can stand at the door if you want to.” After a moment, she pushed her face into Austin’s side and murmured, “This could become a problem.”

“I told you so.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Well, I would’ve if I’d been there.” He touched her shoulder with a front paw. “You’re attracted to him, aren’t you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, I’m a Keeper.”

“So?”

“I feel sorry for him.”

“And?”

“He’sdead.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Down in the furnace room, the flames reflected on the copper hood were a sullen red. It could have told the Keeper that the spirit was trapped in the same binding that held it—accidentally caught and held.

BUT SHE DIDN’T ASK US.

It would have been even more annoyed had it not recognized all sorts of lovely new tensions now available for exploitation.

FIVE

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AT SEVEN-FORTY THE NEXT MORNING, at the far end of the third-floor hall, the vacuum cleaner coughed, sputtered, and roared into life. Three-and-a-half seconds later, Dean smacked the switch and it coughed, sputtered, and wheezed its way back to silence. Heart pounding, he stared down at the machine, wondering if it had always sounded like the first lap of an Indy race—noisy enough to wake the dead.

Or worse.

Which is ridiculous. He’d vacuumed this same hall once a week for as long as he’d worked here with this same machine and the woman in room six had slept peacefully—or compulsively—through it. Contractors had renovated the rooms to either side of her and obviously she hadn’t stirred. Mrs. Hansen had all but stuck pins in her, and still she slept on.

The odds were good that he wasn’t after waking her up this morning.

His foot stopped three inches above the off/on switch and Dean couldn’t force it any closer.

Apparently, his foot didn’t like the odds.

So he changed feet.

His other foot was, in its own way, as adamant.

You’re being nuts, boy. He carefully cleaned his glasses, placed them back on his nose, and, before the thought had time to reach his extremities, stomped on the switch, missed, and nearly fell over as his leg continued through an extra four inches of space.

Clearly, parts of his body were more paranoid than the whole.

Okay, uncle. He unplugged the machine and rewound the cord. There had to be an old carpet sweeper up in the attic, and he could always use that.

On his way back to the storage cupboard, he bent to pick up a small picture of a ship someone had left on the floor. He had no idea where it had come from; guests had found Mr. Smythe’s taste in art somewhat disturbing, so the walls had been essentially art free ever since the embarrassing incident with the eighteenth-century prints and the chicken.

Upon closer inspection, the picture turned out to be a discolored page clipped from a magazine slid into a cheap frame. A cheap, filthy frame.

Holding it between thumb and forefinger, Dean frowned. What was it doing leaning against the wall outside room six? And could he get it clean without using an abrasive?

“Put that down!”

Behind his glasses, Dean’s eyes narrowed as he raised his gaze from the felted cobwebbing to the ghost “Is it yours, then?”

“It is mine as much as it is anyone’s.”

If the picture belonged to Jacques, that explained why he’d never seen it before. “Why should I put it down?” he asked suspiciously.

Jacques’ expression matched Dean’s. “Why do you hold it?”

“I found it on the floor.”

“Then put it back on the floor.”

“There?” A nod indicated the picture’s previous position against the wall—far, far too handy to the sleeping Keeper.

“Oui, there! What are you,stupide?”

“Why do you want me to put it there?”

“Because that is where it was!”

“So?”

“Do you try to block my way,Anglais?”

“If I can,” Dean growled, taking a step toward the dead man. The way he understood it, Jacques had been dead as dick and haunting the hotel at the same time as the evil Keeper’s attempt to control the accident site. It wouldn’t surprise him to discover the ghost had been her accomplice and now, with Claire unwilling to give him a body, he had only one other place to turn. Dean couldn’t let that happen, not after everything Claire and her mother and the cat had said. “What are you planning, Jacques?”

Jacques folded his arms and rolled his eyes.“I should think,” he said scornfully, “that what I, as you so crudely say, plan, would be obvious even to a muscle-boundimbecile like yourself.”

“You’re after waking her?”

“Waking her?” The ghost shot a speculative look in Dean’s direction.“Oui, if you like. I wake her to new sensations. And when I tell Claire that you gather what allows me to walk within the hotel, that you try to keep me from her, she will not like that, I think.”

…what allows me to walk within the hotel. Dean’s scowl faded as he realized, for the first time in his life, he’d leaped to the worst possible conclusion, his response based solely on his irrational reaction to a dead man. The picture had nothing to do with the sleeping Keeper. Working from the attic, Claire must’ve sent it to the third floor hall without considering where it might end up.

He’d completely forgotten about Jacques’ anchors. He opened his mouth to explain and was amazed to hear himself say, “Sure, run and hide behind Claire.”

“Run and hide?” Anger blurred Jacques’ edges.

“Too dead to stand up for yourself?”

“Claire…”

“This has nothing to do with Claire.” Dean set the picture back on the floor—as far from room six as he could put it without appearing to give ground—then straightened, shoulders squared. “This is between you and me.”

“Me, I think this has everything to do with Claire,” Jacques murmured, studying the younger man through narrowed lids. “But you are right,mon petit Anglais, this is between you and me.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Claire had been vaguely disappointed not to find Jacques waiting for her when she passed through the sitting room on her way to the bathroom. Thoughts of him spending the night pressed up against her bedroom door had inserted themselves into her dreams and jerked her awake almost hourly. She’d wanted to share her mood with him while she still felt like giving him a body in order to wring his neck.

It didn’t help that the morning’s measurements had shown a perceptible buildup of seepage. With no access to the power sealing the hole, she couldn’t cut it off, and she certainly couldn’t let it build up indefinitely.

Teeth clenched, she gave the shower taps a savage twist, snarled wordlessly when the pipes began banging out their delivery of hot water, and bit back an extremely dangerous oath when the temperature spent a good two minutes fluctuating between too hot and too cold.

She finally began to calm as she lathered the Apothecary’s shampoo—guaranteed not tested on mythical creatures—into her hair, and by the time she’d sudsed, rinsed, and dried, she’d relaxed considerably. When Hell actually let her blow-dry and style in peace, she left the bathroom feeling remarkably cheerful.

Her good mood lasted through dressing and right into the day’s search for the Historian.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Curled up on a pillow, Austin lifted his head as the wardrobe door opened and Claire emerged soaking wet“You’re cutting it close,” he said. “You’ve just barely left. What happened?”

“Tropical storm,” Claire told him tightly, pushing streaming hair back off her face. “Came up on shore after me and followed me about ten kilometers inland. Good thing I was driving an import or I’d never have stayed on the road.”

“One of the Historian’s early warning systems?”

Claire shrugged, her sweater sagging off her shoulders.“Who knows?” Trailing a small river behind her, she picked up some dry clothes, held carefully at arm’s length, and headed for the bathroom.

Dumping her wet clothes in a pile on the floor, she dressed quickly and, stomach growling, picked up her blow-dryer.“This one’s going to be quick and sleazy,” she muttered, bending over and applying the hot air. “I’m too hungry for style.”

When she straightened, Jacques stared at her from out of the mirror.

“Oh, hell,” she sighed.

“Got it in one,cherie.” His lips curled up into the lopsided smile that raised his looks, from passable to strangely attractive— strangely attractive were it not for Hell’s signature substitution of glowing red eyes. “I’m sorry I missed you earlier.”

“Just get on with it.”

The image shook its head.“You would think,” it said teasingly, “that you were in a hurry to get somewhere. You can’t leave,cherie.” The smile disappeared.“Neither of us can leave. We have been thrown together here, why not make the most of it?”

She had every intention of leaving, but her mother’s suggestion that she not argue with Hell had been a good one. “What did you have in mind?”

“With the power of the pentagram, you could give me a body nightly as easily as you could snap your fingers.”

Claire frowned.“Don’t you mean opening the pentagram would give me that power?”

“Things are not sealed so tightly as all that.” Red eyes actually managed a twinkle. “Augustus Smythe knew the benefits of using the seepage. How do you think he kept himself amused?”

“I thinkthat’s fairly obvious.” She folded her arms. “If I can use the seepage without releasing the hordes of Hell, what’s in it for you?”

He looked hurt“Must there be something in it for us?”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps we find that a happy Keeper is a Keeper easier to live with.”

“I’m sure that Augustus Smythe was a joy.”

“He was Cousin,cherie. You are a Keeper. Surely you are stronger?”

“That has nothing to do with it.”

“Perhaps.” The image saddened. “You get so few chances to have another’s life touch yours. A frenzied fumbling in the dark—and we have nothing against that,cherie—and then you move on. Only when Keepers are old do they stay in one place long enough to find a mate for the soul and, by then, they are too old to recognize such a one. You have a chance,cherie, a chance few Keepers get.”

Claire’s nostrils flared. “He’s dead.”

“Ah, I see. You will not take the risk, even though there is no danger to you, because it is what a Keeper does not do. A Keeper does not take risks for such a minor thing as happiness.” The image saddened. “For once in your life,cherie, can you not give in to desire without questioning if it is what a Keeper should do?” It raised its left hand and pressed it against the inside of the glass. “Can you not reach out and meet me halfway?”

She felt her right hand lift and forced it back down by her side.“You’re good,” she snarled.

The image in the mirror let its hand fall back as well, fully aware that the mood had been broken.“Technically, no. But we accept the compliment.”

“Give me back my reflection. Now!”

“As you asked so nicely,cherie…” Jacques’ image faded slowly, calling her name as though he were being pulled into torment.

“You’re not Jacques,” Claire told it and found herself talking to herself.

“Claire!”

When she opened the bathroom door, Austin tumbled in and rolled once on the mat. He took a moment to compose himself, then said, with studied nonchalance, as though he hadn’t just been trying to dig his way through the door, “Dean and Jacques are fighting.”

“You mean they’re arguing.”

“No. I mean they’re fighting.”

“That’s impossible.”

“So one would assume, but they seem to have found a way.”

She tossed her blow-dryer down by the sink and ran her fingers through her hair, forcing most of it into place.“All right,” she sighed, “where are they?”

“The third-floor hall.” Austin paused, licked his shoulder, and stepped out of the way. “Directly in front of room six.”

His foresight kept him from being trampled as Claire raced for the stairs.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

The effect depended on who delivered the blow. If Dean punched his fist through Jacques’ immaterial body, then Jacques felt it. If Jacques drove his immaterial fist through Dean’s body, then Dean felt it. It wasn’t much of an effect either way, being closer to mild discomfort than actual pain, but neither the living nor the dead cared. The point was to score the point.

“Stop it! Stop it this instant!” Breathing heavily from her run up the two flights of stairs, Claire flung herself between the combatants, then sucked in a startled gasp as Jacques’ hand sliced through her body from hip to hip dragging a sensation of burning cold behind it. When she staggeredback, she found herself pressed up against the warm length of Dean’s torso and that was almost as disconcerting.

Jerking forward, she turned sideways and presented a raised hand to each man.“That will be quite enough! Would one of you like to explain what the h…heck is going on?”

Silence settled like three feet of snow.

“I’m waiting.”

“It is not your business…” Jacques began. His protest died as Claire turned the full force of her disapproval in his direction.

“Everything that happens in this building is my business,” she told him. “I want an explanation and I want it now.”

Jacques smoothed back translucent hair.“Ask your houseboy.”

“I’m asking you.”

“Why?Le cochon maudit, he started it.”

As Claire turned to face him, Dean bit back an answering insult.

“Well?” she prodded.

“He accused me of picking up his anchors. Of keeping him from walking around the hotel.”

“Were you?”

“No!” When he saw Jacques’ mouth open, he shifted his weight forward and said, “Okay, I picked up that picture there, but I didn’t know it was one of his anchors.”

“You accuse me of hiding behind Claire.”

“And look where you are.”

“Fini! Je suis a bout! I have had it up to here!”

“FREEZE!”

Jacques stopped his forward advance, and Dean rocked back on his heels.

Arms folded, Claire turned slowly to face Dean.“Did you really say that?”

Dean nodded sheepishly, gaze locked on the carpet.

“Why?”

Ears red, he shrugged without looking up.“I don’t know.”

Since he was telling the truth, Claire ignored the rude noises coming from behind her.“All right, then, I suggest—no, this needs something stronger than a mere suggestion—Iinsist that we continue this, whatever this is, downstairs. We’re uncomfortably close to her.”

“Her?” Jacques repeated, coming between Claire and the stairs.“By her, I am wondering, do you mean,her?”

“She’s in room six,” Claire told him, pointing with broad emphasis at the splintered door. She opened her mouth to demand he get out of her way when she realized all his attention was on Dean. The air crackled as he moved past her.

“You thought that I, Jacques Labaet, did want to wakeher?”

Several hundred childhood stories of vengeful spirits passed through Dean’s head, but he held his ground, wondering why adults thought it necessary to scare the snot out of kids. “I only thought it at first.”

“You dare to give me this insult!”

“The picture was right by her door.”

“And so were you!”

“I was vacuuming!”

“The carpet,” Jacques spat, drifting up so they were nose-to-nose, “is clean! Perhaps you mean to wakeher, and I come in time to stop you!”

It was only twenty after eight, but Dean had already had a bad morning. The carpet was not clean, it hadn’t been vacuumed in a week and it didn’t look as though it was going to get vacuumed any time soon. Sure, he’d discovered a suspicious side of himself he didn’t much like, but he didn’t think he deserved to be accused of treachery by someone intent on necrophilia. Of a sort. “You go to Hell,” he said with feeling.

Jacques disappeared.

“Oh, shit!” Claire clamped a hand over her mouth, but it was too late.

Dean’s eyes widened and, fumbling for his keys, he raced for room five.

With no time to explain, Claire flung herself down the stairs.How could he have done that? She missed a step, fell five, caught her balance, and picked up speed.There’s no way he should’ve been able to do that. By the time she turned onto the basement stairs, her sock-covered feet barely touched the wood. One more floor and she’d have been the first Keeper to fly with out an appliance.

She turned the chains and padlocks to rice and then kicked piles of it out of the way as she dragged open the furnace room door.

“Claire!” Suspended over the pit, Jacques flickered like a bulb about to go out. “Help me!”

Skidding to a halt at the edge of the pentagram, Claire hadn’t the faintest idea of what to do. Because of the seal, Jacques hadn’t gone directly to Hell, but there was sufficient power in the area directly over the pit to shred his ties to the physical world. When the last strand ripped free, his soul would be absorbed, seal or no seal.

“Claaaaaaaaire!”

She could barely hear her name in the panicked wail. Making it up as she went along, she reached out with her will.

HE WAS GIVEN TO US!

“It doesn’t work that way.” Slowly, she wrapped possibilities around the thrashing, flickering ghost. “You know the rules.”

RULES DO NOT APPLY TO US.

“You wish. Souls come to you by their own actions. They can’t be given to you.”

BUT HE’S DEAD.

“So?” It was like scooping a flopping fish out of a tidal pool with a net made of wet toilet paper.

WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO JUDGE HIS ACTIONS.

“Not on this side you don’t.”

WE’RE HELPING HIM PASS OVER.

“Not if I have anything to say about it.” Holding him as securely as possible, Claire began to pull Jacques toward the edge of the pit. His struggles made it difficult to tell how quickly he was moving, but after a few tense moments he was definitely closer to the side than the middle.

When eldritch power crawled like a bloated fly over the part of her will extending over the edge of the pentagram, she realized Hell was analyzing the rescue attempt. She felt it remove its attention from Jacques and gather its resources. There was barely time to brace herself before an energy spike thrust up out of the depths, dragging both her will and Jacques back toward the center of the pit.

LET HIM GO. HE IS NOTHING TO YOU.

“That’s not what your recent temptation implied.”

WE’RE BIG ENOUGH TO ADMIT WHEN WE’RE WRONG.

Sock feet slid closer to the edge of the pentagram.

ON SECOND THOUGHT, DON’T LET HIM GO.

If she let him go, the odds were good she wouldn’t fasten onto him again before Hell tore through the bonds holding him to the world. If she didn’t let him go, she’d be dragged through the pentagram and his fate would be a minor footnote to the cataclysm as the seal broke. Her toes dug through her socks and into the imperfection in the rock floor, but that only slowed her.

Jacques or the world?

It was the sort of dilemma Hell delighted in. Claire could feel its pleasure in the certain knowledge that she’d have to sacrifice Jacques for the lives of millions.

Then strong arms wrapped around her from behind. Her toes stopped millimeters from disaster.

“Bring him in,” Dean told her, tightening his grip one arm at a time. “And let’s get out of here.”

Constrained by the pentagram, Hell stood no chance against the deeply ridged treads on a pair of winter work boots designed to get the wearer up and down the chutes of St. Johns.

Weight on his heels, Dean stepped back, once, twice, dragging Claire back with him, dragging Jacques with her. At the outside edge of the pentagram, the tension snapped and flung all three of them against the far wall of the furnace room; first Dean, then Claire, then Jacques, who slapped through them both like a cold fog to smash in turn against the rock.

Teeth gritted, Claire pried herself up off of Dean, used the wall to pull herself to her feet, and attempted to blink away the afterimages caused by impact with limestone closely followed by Jacques’ left knee passing between her eyes. “Is everyone all right?”

“I guess.” Dean braced himself against the floor, separated himself from Jacques’ right arm and shoulder, and stood.

“Jacques?”

“Non. I amnot all right. Where are we?”

“The furnace room,” Dean answered, before Claire had a chance.

“What? In the hotel?” The last syllable rose to a shriek.

“Yeah. The furnace room in the hotel.” Dean shot a look both wounded and disapproving at Claire. “But I don’t think we should stay.”

Jacques glanced wide-eyed toward the pentagram.“It is real?”

“It is,” Claire told him, holding her head in both hands. When they’d broken free, her will had retracted and she had the kind of headache that came with trying to fit approximately twelve feet of power in an eight-inch skull.

“Then we talk in the dining room.” Still flickering around the edges, he disappeared.

“The dining room,” Claire repeated. “Good plan.” Staggering slightly, she started up the stairs.

One hand out to catch her if she fell, Dean followed, still far, far too angry to give in to the faint gibbering he could hear coming from inner bits of his brain.“Why didn’t you tell me there was a hole to Hell in the furnace room?”

“I’m a Keeper, it’s my duty to protect you.”

“From what?”

“Living in terror.”

A LIE. A VERITABLE FALSEHOOD!

Claire sighed. She couldn’t believe a headache could pack so much mass; it felt as though she had the weight of the world on her shoulders. “From having to bear more than I thought you could.”

“Didn’t think much of me, did you? Do you?”

Heaving herself up another step, she waved more or less toward the pit.“Dean, it’s Hell!”

“We’ve a saying back home…”

“Please, spare me.”

“…some don’t be afraid of the sea, they goes down to the sea, and they be drowned. But I be afraid of the sea, and I goes down to the sea, and I only be drowned now and then.”

“What the h…”

SAY IT.

“…heck does that mean?” she snarled.

“Fear can keep you alive. You should’ve told me.”

KEEPERS, ALWAYS THINK THEY KNOW WHAT’S…

Claire slammed the door shut on the last word, spraying uncooked rice all over the basement.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

A single grain of those pushed inside the furnace room flew down the stairs and tumbled end over end across the stone floor. It stopped no more than its own width away from the outermost edge of the glyphs that sealed the pentagram.

DAMN.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“Look, Dean, you knew what you needed to know.” Claire kicked at a mound of rice, guilt making her sound petulant even to her own ears. “I told you there was a major accident site down here; I just didn’t name it.”

His back against the furnace room door, Dean stared at her, unable to believe what he was hearing.“You didn’t name it? It’s not like you forgot to tell me it was called Fred or George or Harold. It’s Hell!”

“Technically, it’s energy from the lower end of the possibilities manifesting itself in a format the person who called it up could understand.”

“And thatformat?”

“Is Hell; all right?” Sagging back against the washing machine, she threw up her hands. “You win.”

Dean jerked a hand back through his hair.“It’s not about winning.” He paused, trying to figure out what it was he’d won. “Okay. Maybe it is. You’re admitting you should have told me, right?”

“Right.”

“That you were wrong?”

She found enough energy to lift her head.“Don’t push it.” One fingernail traced the maker’s name stamped into the front of the washer. “So now you know, what are you going to do? Are you going to leave?”

“Leave?” Leave. He hadn’t actually thought it through that far.

“What’s the point?” his common sense wanted to know.“There’s nothing there that hasn’tbeen there for the last year.”

“Shouldn’t you be telling me to pack?”

“Too late.”

“Dean?”

He took a step away from the furnace room. He wanted to ask her if she really thought she could close upHell, but the sound of a hundred grains of rice being ground to powder drew his gaze to the floor.“What’s with all the rice?”

“Conservation of mass,” Claire explained wearily. “It used to be the chains.”

“You changed the chains into rice?”

“It had to be something I could get through even though it weighed the same as the chains.”

The area immediately in front of the furnace room door looked as though a small blizzard had wandered through on its way to Rochester. Crouching, Dean scooped up a handful of the tiny white grains and frowned as they spilled through his fingers.“Instant rice?”

“What’s wrong with instant?”

“Nothing. I mean, it’s not like you’re cooking with it.” He straightened, dusting his hand against his thigh. “Are you after changing it back?”

Claire shook her head and regretted the motion.“I can’t. I couldn’t change my mind right now.”

“Then should I replace the chains? Mr. Smythe kept a box of extras,” he added in response to her expression.

Claire glanced at the door. The chains, like the locks on room six, were wishful thinking. If Hell got loose, chains wouldn’t stop it. “Why not.”

Picking rice off her socks, she watched him walk to a storage cupboard at the far end of the basement return, and efficiently secure the door. When he turned to face her, she realized there was a reserve in his expression, a new wariness in his gaze, that made her feel as though, somehow, she’d failed him. She didn’t like the feeling.

Keepers weren’t in the habit of apologizing to bystanders. But then, Keepers didn’t usually have to look Dean McIssac in the eye, knowing they were wrong. “All right.” She tried to keep her nostrils from flaring and didn’t quite manage it. “I’msorry that I didn’t tell you.”

“I told you so.” Enjoying the startled reaction his unexpected declaration had evoked, Austin picked his way across the laundry room. “What’s with the rice?”

“It used to be the chains and locks,” Claire told him.

“I see. Well, the mice will certainly be pleased.”

“How many times do I have to tell you, I don’t think they’re mice!” The need to vent at something pushed the volume up until she was almost shouting.

Austin snorted.“Oh, that’s right; you’re the Keeper and I’m just a cat. What do I know about mice?”

She smiled tightly down at him.“You should know they don’t come in primary colors. Were you looking for us?”

“No. But I was wondering why Jacques is having hysterics in the dining room while you two are hiding out down here.” Fastidiously finding a clean bit of floor, he sat down, wrapping his tail around his toes. “After what I overheard, I’m not wondering any more, but I was.

“This is only a guess,” he continued as Claire raced for the stairs, “based on the really pissed-off ravings of a dead man, but did someone use the h-word out of context and almost condemn his soul to everlasting torment?”

Dean blanched as he realized that was exactly what had happened.“If you’d told me,” he called, hurrying to catch up, “I wouldn’t have done it!”

“Her mother wanted her to tell you.”

“Shut up, Austin.”

When they reached the dining room, a plastic salt shaker, a box of toothpicks, and six grapes flew out of the kitchen. Claire ducked and Dean took the full impact.

“J’ai presque ete a l’Enfer!”

Wiping crushed grape off his chin, Dean stepped forward. His French wasn’t up to an exact translation, but the infuriated shriek suggested a limited number of possibilities. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. It was…”

“It was an accident!” With a well-placed hip, Claire moved Dean out of her way. “Granted, he said the words, but he didn’t mean them as an instruction. He should be able to say what he wants with no effect.”

Austin snorted and whacked the salt shaker under the dining room table.“That thing’s been down there for over a century and the power seepage has permeated this whole building. I’m only surprised that he never told old Augustus where to go.”

“I couldn’t say that to my boss,” Dean protested.

“Not without a union,” the cat agreed.

Jacques surged through the table to stand face-to-face with Claire.“I don’t care what he should have been able to do! All I know is that he tried to throw me into Hell!”

“And then he pulled you out again.”

“You think that makes up for him putting me there?”

“Would you listen to me, Jacques!” Had she been able to get hold of him, she’d have shaken him until his teeth rattled. “He didn’tknow it would happen. He didn’t even know what was in the furnace room.”

“He did not know!” Jacques stepped back in disbelief, half in and half out of the table. “You did not tell him?” All at once, he frowned. “Come to think on it, you did not tell me!”

“You’ve been in the same building with it for seventy-two years!” Claire met indignation with equal indignation. “Knowing it’s there won’t change anything.”

His eyes darkened.“You are wrong, Claire. It changes what I know.”

She couldn’t argue with that, even if she’d wanted to. “Okay. Fine. I should’ve told you. I should’ve told you both. But I didn’t. I’m sorry.” And that, she decided was the last time she was apologizing for it. “You both know now. I’m going to have another shower even though it won’t doany good because the touch I can feel is inside my head, and then I’m going to get some breakfast because I’m starving. All right?” Her chin rose. “Is there anythingelse you’d like me to tell you?”

The two men, now side by side, exchanged interrogative glances.

“Non,” Jacques said after a moment.“I cannot think of anything.”

“No more secrets,” Dean added.

“God forbidI should have secrets.” Her ears were burning and she didn’t want to think about a probable cause. “My cat can’t keep his mouth shut, and suddenly my life is an open book.”

“Hey!” Austin stuck his head out from under the table. “You let the ghost out of the attic all on your own, andI said you should tell them about the furnace room.”

“You did not.”

He thought about that for a moment.“Well, I never told you not to.”

Claire swept a scathing glance over the three of them, suggested they watch their language, and stomped out of the dining room. It would’ve been a more effective exit had she not been in socks and had her heels hitting the floor not set up a painful reverberation in her head, but she made the most of it.

“There will be secrets,” Jacques observed, as the door to her suite slammed shut. “Women must have secrets.”

“Why?” Dean asked, going into the kitchen.

“Why? Because,espece d’idiot, between a man and a woman, there must be mystery. The worst of Hell is that there is no mystery.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

ROSEBUD IS HIS SLED. When silence was the only response, Hell sighed. GET IT? NO MYSTERY. ROSEBUD IS HIS SLED…. DOESN’T ANYONE CARE ABOUT THE CLASSICS ANYMORE?

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Dean turned to face the ghost, feeling slightly sick when he thought of what he’d nearly done. “I can only keep saying I’m sorry.”

“That is right,Anglais,” Jacques agreed.“You can keep saying you are sorry.”

“The way I see it,” Austin said, leaping from chair to countertop, “you’re even. You unjustly accused each other of wanting to wakeher. You, Dean, accidentally almost sent Jacques to Hell, but then you purposefully went in and rescued him.”

“Non. Not even.” Jacques glared over the cat’s head at Dean. “He also accuses me of hiding behind Claire.”

“Yeah, and you called him something pithy and insulting.”

“You speak French?”

“I’m a cat.”

“Look, I overreacted,” Dean admitted. He paused while the hot water pipes banged out the rhythm of Claire’s shower. “It’s just you’ve been pretty obvious about how much you want a body.”

“I would take a body from the cat before I took a body fromher.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” Austin recommended.

Pulling the toaster from the appliance garage, Dean shook his head. He couldn’t help feeling he should be more upset about the reality of a hole to Hell in the furnace room except thatreality andhole to Hell in the same sentence just didn’t compute. “Why doesshe bother me more than Hell?”

“I could go into the deep psychological problems men experience when they come face-to-face with powerful women…”

“We do not!” both men exclaimed. Standing with their arms crossed, they regarded each other warily.

The cat snickered.“…but it’s simpler than that. Hell is too nasty for mortal minds to comprehend, so they trivialize it, knock it down to size. It’s a built-in defense mechanism.”

Brow furrowed, Dean stared down at the cat.“Soshe bothers me more than Hell because I don’t have any natural defenses againsther?”

“And because the original Keepers put a dampening field around the furnace room. Without it, business would be worse than it is, as difficult as that may be to imagine, and any sane person would run screaming once they found out what was in the basement.”

“And with it?”

“Unnerving but endurable. Kind of like opera.”

“A dampening field to dull the reactions.” Rubbing at the perpetual stubble along his jaw, Jacques nodded. “That does explain why I take this so well.”

“That,” Austin agreed, assaulting the lid on the butter dish, “and because you’re dead. The dead don’t get worked up about much.”

“Except getting their rocks off,” Dean muttered.

“You desire I should tell Claire why we were really fighting?” the ghost demanded.

“If you know, why didn’t you tell her upstairs?”

“Two reasons. If you do not know, me, I am not the one to tell you. And two…” He shrugged. “I remember in the neck of time…”

“Nick of time.”

“What?”

“Not neck,” Dean told him. “Nick.”

“D’accord. In the nick of time, I remember that women do not always appreciate being fought over the way those who fight might assume.”

“Oh.” Opening the fridge, Dean stared at the contents, ignored the little voice suggesting that, under the circumstances, it was all right to have a beer before noon, and closed the door again, saying, “That’s pretty smart for a dead guy.”

“I was, as you say, pretty smart for a live guy.”

“You’re bonding,” Austin observed sardonically. “I’m touched. Well, what would you call it?” he asked when both the living and the dead fixed him with an identical expression of horror.

“We’re not bonding,” Dean declared.

“Not even a little bit,” Jacques added. “We are…” He looked to the living for help.

“Not bonding,” Dean repeated.

“Oui.” Settling himself cross-legged an inch above the table, the ghost leaned back on nothing and studied the other man.“Me, I have no choice, but you, now you know, do you stay?”

“Claire asked me that, too.” He folded his arms. “I don’t run away from things.”

“Perhaps it is wiser to know when to run.”

“And leave you alone here?”

Jacques spread his hands, the pictures of wronged innocence, the gesture far more eloquent than words.

“Fat chance.” Shoving his glasses up on his nose, Dean headed for the basement stairs.

“Where are you going?”

He made the face of a man who once a month scrubbed the concrete floor with a stiff broom and an industrial cleanser.“I’m after sweeping up the rice.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“You’ve had a busy twenty-four hours, Claire. Are you sure you’re all right?”

“I have a vicious headache.” Cradling the old-fashioned receiver in the damp hollow between ear and shoulder, she fought with the childproof cap on a bottle of painkillers. Teeth clenched, she sat the pill bottle on the table and pulled power. The bottle exploded.

“Claire, what are you doing?”

There were two pills caught in the cuff of her bathrobe.“Just taking something for my headache.” She swallowed them dry.

On the other end of the phone, Martha Hansen sighed.“You aren’t the first Keeper who’s had to apologize to a bystander, you know.”

“It’s the first timeI’ve ever had to do it.”

“It’s the first time a bystander’s ever been involved in what you do.”

Claire opened her mouth to disagree, then realized that her previous involvements with bystanders were not something she wanted to discuss with her mother. Nor, she acknowledged with a small smile, were they something she had to apologize for.

“Claire?”

Pleasant memories fled as the current situation shoved its way back to the forefront of her thoughts.“At least I needn’t worry about it happening again. Dean’s too nice a guy to even think of doing it on purpose.”

“And Jacques?”

Her lip curled.“Jacques is dead, Mom. He can’t affect anything.”

“Ah. Yes.”

Claire decided she didn’t want to know what that meant. Had the phones been Touch-Tone, she’d have suspected Austin had been talking to her mother behind her back. Since there was no way the cat could use a rotary phone…All at once, this conversation was not making her feel any better. “I’d better get dressed and get back to work.”

“I hope it helped you to talk about it, Claire. You know you can call any time. Speaking of calling, you haven’t heard from your sister, have you?”

She could feel her jaw muscles tightening up.“No. Why?”

“We had a bit of a disagreement, and she stormed out of here last night. I’m not worried, I know where she is, I was just wondering if she’d spoken to you.”

“No.”

“If she does call, would you please explain to her that turning the sofa into a pygmy hippo for the afternoon might be very good transfiguration, but it’s rather hard on the carpets and it confuses the hippo.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

A dry, tearing sound, the sound of something large and ancient clearing its throat, pulled Dean up from the basement. Fighting against the natural inclination of his legs to get the rest of his body the hell out of there, so to speak, he made his way to the dining room where he found Claire on her hands and knees, surrounded by pieces of broken quarter-round, ripping up the linoleum.

“She’s venting frustrations on inanimate objects,” Austin explained from the safety of the countertop. “You should consider yourself lucky.”

“Boss?”

She shuffled backward and tore free another two feet of floor covering before the section detached from the main.“There’s hardwood under here. We’re going to refinish it.”

“But I thought…”

“Congratulations.”

“…that you were after working on closing the site.”

“To close the site, I need to study it. To study it, I need to get close. To get close, I need to be calm.” Claire ripped up another ragged section. “Do I look calm?”

“I guess not.” Amazed by the extent of the mess, Dean wasn’t entirely certain he wouldn’t rather have faced the demon he’d expected. “But what about the front counter, out in the lobby.”

“I know where the front counter is, Dean.” She tossed aside a crumbling piece of linoleum. “I’m not asking you if you want to refinish the floor, I’m telling you we’re going to.”

Dean glanced over at the cat who looked significantly unhelpful.“Where’s Jacques?”

“Staying out of my way.”

“Ah.” He cleaned his glasses on his shirttail and squinted unenthusiastically at the exposed wood. “Should I go rent an industrial sander?”

“Yes, you should.” Claire rolled up onto her feet and headed down the hall toward the office.

“Why should we be the ones who suffer?” Dean muttered at the cat as he turned to follow. “She was in the wrong.”

“And you’re just going to keep that thought to yourself, aren’t you,” Austin told him.

Dean knew the envelope Claire pulled the money from—Augustus Smythe had paid him out of it every Friday. He could’ve sworn it had been empty on Saturday when he’d unlocked the safe. “Where did you get the cash?”

“Lineage operating funds.” Claire tossed the envelope back in the safe and closed the door. “When people, or institutions, or pop machines lose money, it becomes ours, available to draw on when we need it.”

“This is where lost money goes?” Fanning the bills he counted four twenties, three tens, and a five with Mr. Spock’s haircut penciled onto the head of Sir Wilfred Laurier. It was a remarkable likeness. “What about socks?”

“Socks?”

“Where do lost socks go?”

Claire stared at him as though he’d suddenly sprouted a third head. “How the he…heck should I know?”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

When Dean returned just before noon, all the furniture in the dining room had been rearranged on the ceiling and the linoleum had been completely removed. It was still lying around in messy heaps, but it was no longer attached to the floor.

Tired and filthy, Claire watched appreciatively as he wrestled the heavy machine in through the back door. Having actually been able to accomplish something had put her in a significantly better mood.

They ate soup and sandwiches sitting on the counter, discussing renovations in perfect harmony. Two hours later, the debris bagged, Claire left to finish sorting through Augustus Smythe’s room while Dean used the sander.

As the layers of glue and old varnish began to disappear, he grew more confident. Finished with the edging, he began making long, smooth passes up and down the twenty-three-foot length of the room. After the third pass, he began to pick up speed. All at once, a body appeared too close to the drum to avoid.

Jacques screamed in mock agony as the sander split him in two.

Somehow, Dean managed to maintain enough control so he only gouged a three-foot, shallow, diagonal trench into the floorboards before he got the machine turned off. Ripping off his ear protectors with one hand and the dust mask with the other, he whirled around and yelled,“That’s not funny!”

Jacques waved a hand made weak by laughter.“You should see your face. If I am here another seventy years, I will never see anything so funny.” As Dean sputtered inarticulately, he started laughing harder.

“Why have you stopped? Have you finished?” Claire halted in the doorway, took in the tableau, and shook her head. “Jacques, pull yourself together!”

“For you,cherie, anything.” Continuing amusement kept his upper half vibrating and Jacques finally had to reach down, grab his jeans, and yank his legs back onto his torso.

“Was there an accident?”

“No, not an accident,” Dean growled. “The jerk suddenly showed up in front of me. Look at what he made me do to the floor! I should’ve run over his head.”

“Be my guest,” Jacques told him, still snickering.

“Jacques!”

The ghost set his head back on his shoulders.

“You know,” Claire told him pointedly, “just for the record, I don’t find that sort of thing attracti…” She jumped as an air raid siren began to sound. “Mrs. Abrams. I set up an alarm on the front steps to give us a little warning. Jacques, you’d better disappear.”

“Why can’t I meet this Mrs. Abrams?”

“Yeah, Boss, whycan’t he?” Dean asked with feeling. “Why should we have all the fun.”

The siren shut off as the front door opened.“Yoo hoo!”

Jacques flinched and disappeared.

Suddenly inspired, Dean switched the sander back on.

As clouds of dust billowed up around him, Claire dragged herself reluctantly out to the front hall.

“Oh, there you are, dear.” Her voice rose easily over the background noise roaring out of the dining room. “As I was letting Baby out into his little area I heard horrible sounds coming from the back of this building and I rushed right over in case the whole ancient firetrap had begun coming down around your ears.”

Claire crushed an impulse to ask her what she would have done had it been.“We’re refinishing the floor in the dining room, Mrs. Ab…”

“Of course you are. Didn’t I say this fine old building needed a woman’s touch? So nice you have a strong young man around to do the work for you.” She darted purposefully down the hall, caroling, “I’ll just go and have a little look-see,” as she went.

For a woman of her age and weight, Mrs. Abrams moved remarkably quickly. The defensive line of the Dallas Cowboys might have been able to stop her, but Claire didn’t stand a chance without using power. With no time for finesse, she reached out and slammed to her knees.

Five feet out in front, Mrs. Abrams didn’t even notice.

Blinking away afterimages, Claire dragged herself up the wall.It’s that damn sander, she decided, perfectly willing to condemn it to the flames.How’s anyone supposed to concentrate through all that noise?

Innate good manners forced Dean to turn the sander off when Mrs. Abrams charged into the room.

“Mercy.” She coughed vigorously into a handkerchief she pulled from her sleeve. “It is dusty, isn’t it? And this room looks so small and dreary with no furniture in…” Her voice trailed off as she noticed just where the furniture was. “Oh, my. How did you ever…?”

“Clamps,” Claire told her. The older woman looked so relieved she could almost hear the sound of possibilities being discarded. Meeting Dean’s incredulous gaze, she shrugged—the gesture saying clearly,people believe what they want to believe.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

A LIE!

A LIE IN KINDNESS. THEY CANCEL EACH OTHER OUT. NEITHER SIDE IS STRENGTHENED. NEITHER SIDE IS WEAKENED.

BUT…

INTENT COUNTS. Had anyone been there to overhear, they might have thought that Hell spoke through clenched teeth. IT’S IN THE RULES.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Suddenly inspired, Claire took hold of one polyester-covered elbow and turned the body attached to it back toward the front door.“You shouldn’t be in here without a dust mask, Mrs. Abrams. What would Baby do if you got sick?”

“Oh, I mustn’t get sick, the poor darling would be devastated. He’s so attached to his mummy.” Craning her head around, she took one last look at the dining room ceiling. “Clamps, you say?”

“How else?”

“Of course, clamps. How else would you be holding furniture on the ceiling. How very clever of you, Karen, dear. Have you heard from that horrible Mr. Smythe?”

“No, and my name isn’t…”

“He’s going to be so surprised at all you’ve done when he comes back. Are you going to open up the elevator?”

“The what?”

“The elevator. There’s one in this hall somewhere. I remember it from when I was a girl.”

Claire opened the front door, but Mrs. Abrams made no move to go out it.

“You ought to open the elevator up, you know. It would lend the place such a historical…” Her eyes widened as the sound of frenzied barking echoed up and down the street. She darted out the door. “What can be wrong with Baby?”

“The mailman?” Claire asked, following from the same compulsion that stopped drivers to look at car accidents on the highway.

“No. No. He’s long been and gone.”

They were side by side as they crossed the driveway. Claire, on the inside track, looked toward the back in time to see a black-and-white blur leap from the fence to the enclosure around the garbage cans to the ground and streak toward the hotel.

When Claire stopped running, Mrs. Abrams never noticed.

The noise coming from Baby’s little area—after a few years of Baby, it could no longer be called a yard in any domestic sense of the word—never lessened.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

If the flames reflected on the copper hood were sullen before, they were downright sulky now.

IT ISN’T FAIR.

WHAT ISN’T?

THAT THE KEEPER SHOULD ALWAYS WIN. IF WE HAD ONLY PULLED HARDER. WE WERE SO CLOSE.

CLOSE! The repetition resounded in the heated air like a small explosion. CLOSE ONLY COUNTS IN HORSESHOES AND HAND GRENADES.

AND DANCING.

WHAT?

CLOSE DANCING.

SHUT UP.

SIX

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_4]

“IWOULD LIKE A ROOM.”

Kneeling behind the counter, attempting to send a probe down into the mouse hole and settle the imp question once and for all, Claire felt icy fingers run along her spine. Shivering slightly, she carefully backed out from under the shelf and stood, curious to see if it was the customer or the possibility of actually renting a room that had evoked the clich?d response.

The woman on the other side of the counter was a little shorter than her own five feet five, with a close cap of sable hair, pale skin, and eyes so black it was impossible to tell where the iris ended and the pupil began.

Claire felt the pull of that dark gaze, found herself sinking into the dangerous embrace of shadow, jerked back, and said,“Room four?”

“How perceptive.” The woman smiled, teeth gleaming between lips the deep burgundy of a good Spanish port. “Where is the Cousin?”

“Gone. This is my site now.” It was almost, but not quite, a warning.

“I see. And should I worry that things have changed enough to need the monitoring of a Keeper?”

“You are in no more danger here than you ever were.”

“How fortunate.” The woman sagged forward, planted her elbows on the counter, and rubbed her eyes. “’Cause I’m bagged. You have no idea how much I hate traveling. I just want to dump my gear in the room and find something to eat.”

Claire blinked.

“Oh, come on.” Smudged mascara created raccoonlike circles on the pale skin. “Surely you hadn’t planned on continuing that ponderous dialogue?”

“Uh, I guess not.”

“Good. ’Cause I’ll be staying the rest of the week, checking out Sunday evening if that’s cool with you. I’ve got a gig at the university.”

“Gig?”

“Engagement. Job. I’m a musician.” She stretched an arm across the counter, thin, ivory hand overwhelmed by half a dozen heavy silver bangles and the studded cuff of her black leather jacket. “Sasha Moore. It’s a stage name, of course. I do this kind of heavy metal folk thing that goes over big on most campuses.”

Her skin felt cool and dry and her handshake, while restrained, still put uncomfortable pressure on mere mortal knuckles.

There was power in a name and trust in the giving of it. Claire wasn’t certain how that applied in this case—while Keepers maintained a live-and-let-live attitude toward the vast bulk of humanity, they tended to avoid both actors and musicians; people who preferred to be in the public eye made them nervous—but she did know that her response would speak volumes to the woman maintaining an unbreakable grip on her hand. If the hotel was no longer a safe haven for her kind, Sasha Moore would want to know before dawn left her helpless.

“Claire Hansen.” Hand freed, she flipped open the registration book, and pulled a pen out of theSouvenir of Avalon mug on her desk.“Sign here, please.”

“Rates the same?”

Rates? Claire hoped she didn’t look as confused as she felt. Rates….

Sasha leaned against the counter, dark eyes gleaming.“Room rates?”

“Right. Of course.” She had no idea what the rates were, but it was important not to show weakness in front of a predator. “They’ve gone up a couple of dollars.”

“Couple of bucks, eh?” Her signature a familiar scrawl, the musician spun the register back around. Her smile held heat. “You’re not charging me for breakfast, are you?”

“Breakfast?” Unable to stop herself from imagining the possibilities, Claire’s voice rose a little more than was necessary for the interrogative.

“’Cause if you are, there’s nothing I like more than a big, juicy, hunk of…”

“Boss, there’s a red van parked out back. Do you know whose it is?”

As Dean stepped out into the entry hall, Sasha winked at Claire and turned gracefully to face him.“The van’s mine. I’m just checking in.”

About to apologize for interrupting, Dean found his gaze caught and held. For a moment, the world became a pair of dark eyes in a pale face. Then the moment passed.“I, I’m sorry,” he stammered, feeling his ears burn, “I didn’t mean to stare, but you’re Sasha…uh…”

“Moore.”

“Yeah, Moore, Sasha Moore, the musician. You were here last spring.”

“My, my, my. I must’ve made an impression.”

“You had a black van then. Late eighties, six cylinder, all season radials.”

“What a memory.”

Claire’s eyes narrowed. So this was the h…cute guest from room four. She slapped the keys down on the counter and tried not to feel pleased when Dean jumped at the sudden sound.

Sasha’s smile broadened as she swept her attention back around to Claire. “I’ll just go get my stuff out of the van while you make up the room.”

“Make up the room?”

Dark eyes crinkled at the corners.“You are new at this, aren’t you? Sheets. Towels. Soap. The usual.” Her gaze turned speculative. “Which one of you will be making up the bed?”

Dean stepped forward.“I always did it for Mr. Smythe…”

Claire cut him off.“You’re in the middle of staining the floor. I’ll do it.”

“Since it doesn’t matter to me…”

Glancing over at Dean, Claire wondered if he heard the blithe innuendo.

“…you two argue it out. I’ll be right back.” She disappeared into the night before the front door had quite closed behind her.

“Making up the rooms is part of my job,” Dean explained, walking over to the counter and reaching for the keys. “Renovations are no reason to slack off my regular work.”

“Refinishing the dining room floor is hardly slacking off.” Claire snatched the keys out from under his hand. Realizing he remained unconvinced, she added, “The sooner that urethane’s done and dry, the sooner you’ll be able to deal with the mess.”

His eyes lit up at the thought of restoring the kitchen to its usual pristine state.“If you’re sure.”

“Believe it or not, I’m fully capable of making a bed and hanging up towels. Keepers are trained to be self-sufficient in the field.”

“Living off the land?” When she nodded, he frowned at the image that conjured up. “Hunting and fishing?”

“No. But Ican locate a fast food restaurant within three minutes of arriving in a new area.”

He looked appalled.

“It’s a joke,” she pointed out curtly. “Although, ninety percent of all accident sites do occur in an urban environment. Some Keepers spend their entire lives in the same city, trying desperately to keep it from falling apart.”

“What about the other ten percent?”

“Big old houses in the middle of nowhere with at least one dead tree in the immediate area.”

“Why a dead tree?”

“Ambience.”

His smile was tentative and it disappeared entirely when she didn’t join in. “Not a joke?”

“Not a joke.” Closing the registration book, Claire came out from behind the counter. Dean was not going to be alone in that room when Sasha Moore returned and that was final—no matter what sorts of demanding tasks she had to perform. She was strong enough to resist the temptation the musician represented but he, however, was a man, and a young one, and expecting him to decline that kind of invitation on his own would be expecting too much. Whether or not he had succumbed during the previous visit was immaterial; this time, she was here to help. “Where do we keep the supplies?”

“In the supply cupboard.”

From anyone else, she’d have suspected sarcasm.

“I could wait here and help Ms. Moore carry her bags upstairs. She looked tired.”

Ms. Moore could carry you upstairs; one-handed. But that wasn’t Claire’s secret to reveal. “You know, the longer you leave that floor unattended the greater the odds are that Austin will take a walk and track dark oak stain all over the hotel.”

“He’d notice the floor was wet.”

“Of course he’d notice. He wouldn’t do it by accident.”

“But…”

“He’s a cat.” She waited until Dean started back toward the dining room then, jaw set for confrontation, headed upstairs.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“So she’s h…cute, is she?” Yanking out a set of single sheets, she piled them on top of the towels. “I don’t care if he’s been providing breakfast, dinner, and midnight snacks, it’s dangerous and it’s going to stop. I won’t have my staff snacked on.”

“Who is snacking on your staff?” Jacques floated down from the floor above and settled about an arm’s reach away. “And does that mean what it sounds like it means, or is it some prissyAnglais way to talk of what is more interesting?”

“It means what it sounds like it means.” Two small bars of soap were dropped on the pile. “Did I put one of your anchors in here?”

“Oui.”

“I wonder why I did that.”

“So we could have more time alone together?” He lifted a lecherous brow but at her protest pressed it back down onto his forehead. “Because you felt sorry for me?” His whole body got involved in looking mournful, shoulders slumped, gaze focused on the loose interlacing of his fingers.

Claire rolled her eyes at the dramatics but couldn’t help smiling.

Peering up through his hair, Jacques caught sight of the smile and flashed her an answering grin.“Ah. That is better, no? You should be in a happy mood. I am saved from the pit, and you…” He waved a hand at the gathered supplies. “…you have someone to stay at your hotel.”

“You seem to have recovered from this morning’s experience.” Claire struggled toward the door, decided she was being ridiculous, wrapped the whole unwieldy pile in power and floated it out into the hall. “I expected the trauma to have lasted a little longer.”

Jacques shrugged.“A man does not allow himself to be held captured by his fears. Besides, as Austin reminds me, I am dead. The dead exist in the now; this morning is as years away. Tomorrow may never happen. When I am with you, only then do I think of a future.”

Which said something, something unpleasant, about the lingering effect of Aunt Sara. Not to mention country music lyrics.

Inside room four. Claire brought the bedding and towels and sundries to rest on the bureau and picked a small shaving mirror and stand up off the floor.

“What are you doing?”

“You can’t have access to rooms that guests are in.”

“Why not?”

“Because they might not like it.”

“How can they not like me?”

“You’re dead.” She set the mirror out in the hall and carried the towels into the bathroom.

“Hey, who’s the dead guy?”

The sound of the hall door closing brought Claire back out into the dressing room.“He’s none of your concern.”

“Count on it” She grinned and shrugged out of her jacket. “I don’t ask for much from my dates, but they do have to be alive. Now that piece of prime rib in your basement…”

“Stay away from him.”

“Why?” She polished nails much the same length and color as Claire’s against her black sleeveless turtleneck. “You think I’m too hard an act to follow?”

“I have no intention of following you or anyone else. I don’t know and I don’t care…” Claire ignored a raised ebony brow, obviously intended to provoke. “…about what happened when Augustus Smythe ran the site, but while I’m responsible, Dean Mclssac is under my protection.”

“Really? He seemed like a big…” A reflective moment later, she resumed. “…very big boy. And you’re not his guardian, Keeper, so chill. But, as it happens, I never feed in the crib unless things get desperate and, if that’s the case, your mother hen act will be the least of my problems. Besides, it’d be easier to throw myself on your mercy. After all, Keepers respond to need.” A startlingly pale tongue flicked over burgundy lips. “You’re what, O negative?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“It doesn’t. It’s just nice to know you’re one of my favorite flavors. Just in case.”

Busying herself with the bed, Claire pointedly did not respond.

Behind her, Sasha laughed, neither insulted nor discouraged.“From the way you spoke of him, I assume the little man isn’t dead. What did he do? Bugger off and leave you holding the stick?”

“That’s not how it works.”

Sasha laughed again.“Not generally, no, but Keepers don’t take over sites from Cousins who took over from Keepers, so clearly it ain’t working the way it should.”

“How do you know all that?”

“I’ve been around a while.”

Claire remembered the years of signatures in the registration book—not one of them, unfortunately, occurring in the few short months Sara held the site. “Do you know about…?” A jerk of the head to room six finished the question.

“Well, duh. It’s not like it’s possible to hide something like that from me. I mean, after four or five visits it got kind of hard to ignore this unchanging life just hanging around upstairs.” The musician shrugged into an oversized red sweater. “Gus said it was a woman the Keepers had done a Sleeping Beauty on and that was all I needed to know.”

“You called him Gus?”

“Sure. And I’d love to know how he stuck you with this place, but if you don’t want to spill, hey, that’s cool.” She ran her fingers through her hair and quickly changed her lipstick to match the sweater. “He never filled me in on his summoning either—the obnoxious little prick. But man, at your age, it must be driving you nuts hanging around here when you could be out saving the world.”

Before Claire could answer, Dean’s voice, calling her name, drifted up the stairwell.

Sasha tilted her head toward the sound.“And right on cue we have a reminder of the fringe benefits.”

“He’s not a benefit,” Claire protested.

Cool fingers cupped her chin for a heartbeat“Foolish girl, why not?” Then, with a jangle of silver bracelets and a careless, “Don’t wait up—” she was gone.

Her touch lingered.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Later that night, as Claire climbed into bed, Austin uncurled enough to mutter,“I understand you’re renting a room to a bloodsucking, undead, soulless creature.”

“Does that bother you,” Claire asked.

“Not in the least.” He yawned. “Anyone who can operate a can opener is okay by me.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“She came back into her room just before dawn. I think that she saw somebody in town last night.” Jacques’ hands traced euphemistic signals in the air. “If you know what I mean. She had a cat who has eaten canary look.”

Sprawled on top of the computer monitor, Austin snorted.“She looked like she was about to hawk up a mouthful of damp feathers?”

“That is not what I mean.”

“You shouldn’t spy on the guests,” Dean told him, tightening his grip on a handful of steel wool. “It’s rude.”

“I was not spying,” Jacques protested indignantly. “I was concerned.”

“Pull the other one.”

“You do not have to believe me.”

“Good.”

“Why do you suppose such a pretty girl stays in a room with no windows?”

Descending from an hour spent studying the power wrapped around Aunt Sara—as long as she could spend so close to such evil without wanting to rent movies just so she could return then un-rewound—Claire waited on the stairs for Dean’s answer.

“Ms. Moore’s a musician.” His tone suggested only an idiot couldn’t have figured it out on his own. “She works nights, she sleeps days, and she doesn’t want the sun to wake her.”

“Such a good thing there is the room, then,” Jacques mused.

Claire frowned. What would happen if Jacques put one and one together and actually made two? If the ghost found out about the vampire, who could he tell? Dean? Only if it would irritate or enrage him.

What if Dean found out? She was fairly certain he would neither start sharpening stakes nor looking up the phone numbers for the tabloids. The vampire’s safety would not be compromised.

Dean’s safety was another matter entirely. Many humans were drawn to the kind of danger Sasha Moore represented. While not necessarily life-threatening, it was a well known fact that the intimacy of vampiric feeding could become addictive and that wasn’t something she was going to allow to happen to Dean. He wasn’t going to end up wandering the country, a helpless groupie of the undead.

And I’d feel the same way about anyone made my responsibility, she insisted silently.Including guests while they’re in this hotel. Which, in a loopy way, made Sasha Moore her responsibility as well.

The sudden realization jerked her forward. Catching her heel on the stair, she stumbled, arms flailing for balance, down into the lobby. She’d have made it had the pommel on the end of the banister not come off in her hand.

Her landing made an impressive amount of noise. It would have made more had she been permitted the emotional release of profanity.

“Claire!” Dean tossed the steel wool aside, peeled off the rubber gloves, and started to rise. “Are you all right?”

“I’mfine.”

Moving toward her, he found Jacques suddenly in his way, hands raised in warning.

“I wouldn’t,” the ghost murmured by the other man’s ear. “When a woman says she is fine in that tone, she wishes you to leave her alone.”

Since he couldn’t push the ghost away. Dean went through him and dropped to his knees by Claire’s side. “What happened?”

“I slipped.”

“Are you hurt?” Without thinking, he reached for her arm but drew back at her expression.

“I said,I’m fine.”

“Told you so,” Jacques murmured, drifting up by the ceiling.

Claire pushed herself into a sitting position with one hand and gave Dean the banister pommel with the other.“If you’re looking for something to do…” A triple boom not only cut off Dean’s response but spun her around, hand over her heart as she futilely tried to keep it from beating in time. “What the…”

“Door knocker,” Dean explained, then clapped his hands over his ears as the sound echoed through the lobby again.

Except that Dean had no reason to lie, she’d never have believed that the brass knocker she’d seen on her first night could have made the noise.At least we know it’s not Mrs. Abrams; she never knocks. As Dean ran for the door before their caller knocked again and they all went deaf, Claire got to her feet, telling Jacques to disappear.

“Why?” he demanded, floating down to the floor.

“You’re translucent in natural light”

“What means translucent?”

“I can see through you.”

“That is because to you,cherie, I have nothing to hide.” He blew her a kiss and vanished as the door opened.

A graying man in his mid-forties peered over a huge bouquet of red chrysanthemums, his slightly protruding eyes flicking back and forth between Dean and Claire.“Flowers for Ms. Moore.”

“She’s sleeping,” Dean told him, adding helpfully, “if you leave them here, I’ll see that she gets them when she wakes up.”

The deliveryman shook his head and held out a clipboard.“I gotta have her sign for ’em.”

“But she’s asleep.”

“Look, all I know is that I gotta have her signature and room number on this or I can’t leave the flowers.” He looked suddenly hopeful “Maybe you could just fake it for me? Then I’d leave ’em with you. It’dreally help me out.”

“I don’t know…”

Claire did.“I’m sorry,” she said, crossing the lobby, “but we don’t give out the room numbers of our guests. If you can’t leave the flowers with us, you’ll have to come back.”

“Look, lady, it’s my last delivery. What difference would it make?”

“You’re missing the point.” Moving in front of Dean so she stood eye to eye with the deliveryman, who was no taller than her own five-feet-five, Claire folded her arms and smiled. “We don’t give out die room numbers of our guests.”

“But…”

“No.”

He looked up at Dean.“Come on, buddy, give me a break, eh.”

Claire snapped her fingers under his nose, drawing his attention back down to her.“What part of no don’t you understand?”

“Okay. Fine. You’re responsible for Ms. Moore not getting her flowers, then.”

“I can live with that.” It was nice to have a responsibility so well defined.

“Yeah, well, thanks for the help.” Lip curled, he spun around and missed his step on the uneven stairs. Flowers flailing, he began to fall.

“Boss!” Dean’s exclamation prodded at her conscience. “He could get hurt!”

Reminding herself of where temptations came from, Claire sighed, took her time reaching for power and, just as he began to pitch forward, set the deliveryman back on his feet.

He never noticed. Stomping down the remaining steps, he flung the flowers into his car and, tires squealing, drove away.

Claire watched until he turned onto King Street.“I wonder who the flowers were from?”

“A fan?”

“I guess.” She reached out and gave the small brass knocker an investigative flick. When the resulting boom faded, she followed Dean back inside. “But how did they know she was staying here?”

“Maybe she told them.”

“Maybe,” Jacques put in, rematerializing, “they were from the one last night. Flowers to say,Thanks for the memories.”

“I don’t think so; she wouldn’t have told anyone she was staying here.”

“Why not?”

“Because she told me she valued her privacy.”

LIAR, a triumphant little voice announced in her head.

A lie to protect another, Claire pointed out.Circumstances must be weighed. And get out of my head!

THE LIE INVITED US IN.

Fine. Now I’m telling you to leave.

“Claire?”

Her eyes refocused.“Sorry, what were we talking about?”

“Ms. Moore’s privacy.”

“Right. We’re going to respect it.” She looked pointedly at Jacques. “And that means all of us.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Later that afternoon, as the last flat bit of counter emerged from under the twenty-seventh layer of paint, Baby could be heard barking furiously in his area.

Dean glanced up to see Austin still sprawled out on top of Claire’s monitor. “Mailman must be late today.”

“Only if he’s out in the parking lot.”

“What?”

The cat leaped down onto the desk, knocking a pile of loose papers and a pen to the floor.“According to Baby, who functions remarkably well on only two brain cells, there’s a stranger in the parking lot.”

“My truck!” Springing to his feet he raced toward the back door, peeling off another pair of gloves as he went.

Claire, on her way up from testing the dampening field, stepped in his path.“Hold it! Remember the urethane!”

He spun on the spot retraced his steps, and flung himself out the front door.

By the time Claire reached the back of the building, having paused in the lobby for a brief explanation, Dean was disappearing over the waist-high board fence to the west. To the south, Baby continued barking. Dean’s truck, a huge white gas-guzzling monster named Moby, and Sasha Moore’s van both seemed untouched.

“Carole! Carole, dear!” Mrs. Abrams voice didn’t so much rise over Baby’s barking as cut through it. “What’s going on? What’s happening?”

Slowly, Claire turned.“We had a prowler, Mrs. Abrams.”

“What’s that? Speak up, dear, don’t mumble.”

“A prowler!”

“What, in the middle of the afternoon? What will they think of next? You don’t suppose it’s that same ruffian who was lurking about the other night?”

“No, I…”

“We’ll all be murdered in our beds! Or assaulted. Assaulted and robbed. That’ll show them!”

Just in time, Claire stopped herself from asking,Show who? She didn’t really want to know.

“Has that nice young man of yours gone after him?” Mrs. Abrams didn’t actually pause for. breath let alone an answer. “How I do miss having Mr. Abrams around, although to be honest with you, dear, he was never what I’d call a capable man; had an unfortunate tendency to wilt a bit in stressful situations. He passed away quite suddenly, you know, with such a queer little smile on his face. I’m sure he’s as lost without me as I am without him. Never mind, though, I get on. As a matter of fact, I can’t stand and chat, I have our local councilman on the phone. The dear man depends on my advice in neighborhood matters.” A beringed hand lightly patted lacquered waves of orange hair. “He simply couldn’t manage on his own. Baby, be quiet.”

Baby ignored her.

“That’s Mummy’s good boy.”

As Mrs. Abrams returned to her telephone, Dean vaulted back over the fence and dropped into the parking lot.“I’m sorry. I lost him. He had a car on Union Street. Got into it and away before I got around the corner.” Frowning like a concerned parent, he quickly checked over both vehicles. “Seems like Baby chased him away before he could do any damage. Good dog!”

To Claire’s surprise, the Doberman wuffled once and fell silent.

“I wonder if this is his?” Dean pointed to a handprint on the van’s driver side window.

Staring at the greasy print, Claire felt her own palms tingle and was suddenly certain she knew who the prowler had been.“It’s the deliveryman.”

“Pardon?”

“The guy with the flowers this morning.”

“I knew who you meant. Are you, uh…” He waggled his fingers in the air.

“Manipulating power? No. It’s just a hunch.”

“A hunch. Okay.” Pulling his sweatshirt sleeve down over his palm, he scrubbed the window clean.

Since she couldn’t point out that he’d just ruined any chance Sasha Moore might’ve had of picking up the intruder’s scent, Claire shrugged and went back inside to find Austin waiting by his dish.

“Catch him?”

“No. I didn’t know you understood dogs.”

“What’s the point of insulting them if they can’t understand what you’re saying?”

“You speak dog?”

In answer, Austin lifted his head and made a noise that could possibly be considered a bark had the listener never actually heard a dog larger than a Pekingese.

“And what does that mean?” Claire asked, trying to keep from laughing.

“Roughly translated…” Austin stared pointedly down at his dish. “…it means, feed me.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

That evening, Claire was waiting at the desk when Sasha Moore came downstairs.“Can I speak to you for a moment?”

“Is it going to take long?”

“Not long, no.”

“Good, ’cause I really need to eat before I go onstage or the audience is one major distraction; kind of like performing in front of a buffet table.”

Since there didn’t seem to be anything she could safely reply, Claire stood and silently led the way into her sitting room.

“I see old Gus didn’t take much with him.”

She didn’t want to know the circumstances under which Sasha had been in these rooms before. It was none of her business.

“You still got his dirty pictures up in the bedroom?”

“I’m removing them as soon as I have time.”

“Uh-huh.” The musician dropped onto the couch and draped one crimson-spandex-covered leg over the broad arm. “So what did you want to talk to me about?”

Claire perched on the edge of the hassock, it being the only piece of furniture in the room that was neither overstuffed nor covered in knickknacks.“I think you’re being stalked.”

Long lashes, heavy with mascara, blinked twice.“Say what?”

Editing for time, Claire recited the day’s events and her interpretation of them.

“Look, I appreciate your concern, but the flowers were probably sent by a fan, and you never actually saw the guy in the lot. It could’ve been one of the local kids taking a shortcut”

“To his car?”

Sasha snorted.“Trust me, parking sucks in this neighborhood.”

“All right, then, if it was a fan who sent the flowers, how did he know you were here? I can’t believe you’d tell anyone where you spend the day.”

“He must’ve seen me last night at one of the bars and followed the van.”

“Doesn’t that worry you?”

She reached out and slapped Claire on the knee. They were close enough that Claire could smell the mint toothpaste on her breath.“Why should I worry? You seem to be worrying enough for both of us.” Standing, she bared her teeth. Exposed, they were too long and far, far too white. “I can take care of myself, Keeper. If a fan gets too close, I’ll see that he gets just a little closer still.” She paused at the door. “Oh, by the way, did you know you have mice?”

Feeling her lips press into a thin line, Claire pried them apart enough to say,“I don’t think they’re mice.”

The musician shrugged.“They sure smell like mice.”

“Told you so,” Austin muttered as the door closed behind her.

Claire jumped. She hadn’t noticed him tucked up like a tea cozy under the television. “If they’re mice,” she snapped, “why don’t you catch one.”

He snorted.“Please, and do what with it?”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Friday morning started badly for Claire. First Hell, by way of her mirror, suggested she invite Sasha Moore to dinner and twisted her reaction to such an extent that when she finally regained her reflection, she was edgy and irritable and had no idea of who’d won the round. Then she got completely lost looking for the Historian, was gone almost nine hours’ wardrobe time, and returned absolutely famished to discover Dean had just laid down the last coat of urethane and she couldn’t get to the kitchen.

“Go…1 darn it!”

Thanks to the two huge, plate glass windows in the back wall, any solution had to take the possibility of Mrs. Abrams into account. Making a mental note to buy blinds as soon as possible, she grabbed power and shot into the air so quickly she cracked her head on the hall ceiling.

“Scooped up the seepage,” Austin said with a snicker.

Both hands holding her head, Claire glared down at him.“I didn’tmean to.”

“You wanted it quick and dirty, didn’t you?”

“Well, yes, but…”

“That’s what you got. Still, I doubt you’ve permanently warped your character.”

“This wasn’t the first time. When I tried to stop Mrs. Abrams yesterday, I got knocked to my knees.”

“Once, twice; what’s the harm?”

“That’s probably what Augustus Smythe used to think.” The faint buzz of building seepage seemed to have disappeared; it was hard to be certain given the ringing in her ears from the impact. Drawing power carefully from the middle of the possibilities, she sank down until she was about two inches off the floor and then skated slowly forward. Another time, she might’ve been hesitant about continuing buoyancy initiated by seepage from Hell but right now she was too hungry to care.

Breathingeau de sealant shallowly through her mouth, she sat down by the sink, poured a bowl of cereal, and began to eat. She’d started a second bowl when Jacques appeared beside her.

“I think you should know,” he said, “that the man who deliver the flowers yesterday, he is just come in the front door.”

“What?”

“The man, who deliver the flowers yesterday…”

“I heard you.” Dropping her cereal in the sink, she flung herself off the counter and raced for the front of the hotel…

…unfortunately forgetting the section of tacky polyurethane she had to cross.

“Fruitcake!”

The emotional force behind the substitute expletive transfigured the toaster and the smell of candied fruit soaked in rum rose briefly over the prevailing chemicals.

Jacques studied the cake thoughtfully.“What would have happened, I wonder, had you actually used that old Anglo-Saxon expletive with you and I here together?”

“Do you have to!” Claire snapped, loosened her laces, pulled power, and floated to the hall, leaving her shoes where they were stuck.

“Not exactly have to,” Jacques murmured.

As Claire ran for the lobby, the deliveryman ducked out from behind the counter, holding what seemed to be the same bouquet of red mums.“I was just lookin’ for a piece of paper,” he said hurriedly. “The boss said I could leave the flowers, and I was gonna leave you a note.”

He was lying. Unfortunately, unless she knew for certain he was a threat to the site, Claire couldn’t force him to tell the truth.

“OH, WHY NOT?” asked the little voice in her head.“WHO’S GOING TO KNOW? YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO.”

“Shut. Up.” Claire held her hand out for the flowers.“I’ll see that Ms. Moore gets these,” she said aloud.

“Sure.” Watching her warily, he backed along the edge of the counter toward the door, reaching behind him for the handle. He slipped out, still without turning, and paused, peering through the crack just before the door closed. Yellowing teeth showed for an instant in an unpleasant smile. “Give Ms. Moore my regards.”

Setting the flowers down, Claire glanced into the office, but nothing seemed to have been disturbed.“Yeah, well, we’ll see about that.” Ducking under the counter, she lifted her backpack off a hook and rummaged around in the outer pocket. A few moments later, she pulled out the tattered remains of what had once been a large package of grape flavored crystals and poured what was left of the contents onto the palm of one hand.

“Sorry your shoes got stuck to the floor, Boss. I figured you’d notice it was still…” Dean’s voice faded out in shocked disbelief as he watched Claire fling a fistful of purple powder into the air.

The powder hung for a heartbeat, a swirling purple cloud with added vitamin C, then it settled into a confused jumble of foot and handprints leading from the front door into the office and back to the door again. A fair bit of the powder settled around the flower stems.

“What a mess,” Claire sighed. “This tells me nothing except that he was in here and I knew that already.”

“Who?”

“The flower deliveryman. I was trying to find out what he was up to.”

“With…” Dean rubbed a bit of the residue onto the end of a finger and sniffed it. “…grape Koolaid?”

“Actually, it’s generic. Why waste name brands if you’re just going to throw it around?”

“Okay.” He pulled a folded tissue from his pocket and carefully wiped his finger. “I’ll start cleaning this up.”

“Great. I need coffee.”

“The floor…”

“I know.” A careful two inches above the purple, she floated down the hall.

Unfortunately, the flavor crystals had been presweetened. It took Dean the rest of the morning to clean up the mess, and when he finished, he still wasn’t certain he’d got it all.

He was right. Although he glanced inside when he cleaned the purple prints off the key cabinet, he didn’t notice the small smudge that marked the end of the one empty hook.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“Look, why don’t you guys come over to the pub tonight and if this bozo’s there, you can point him out to me. I’m always eager to meet my fans.”

Dean looked doubtful.“What if he’s dangerous?”

“If he is, you’ll be there to help.” The musician smiled languorously up at him. “Won’t you?”

“Sure.” Ears red, Dean stepped sideways until he stood behind the masking foliage of a fake rubber plant that filled the southeast corner of Augustus Smythe’s sitting room. Until this moment he’d thought he’d gotten past those awkward, mortifying years of spontaneous reaction.

“What do you mean when you saysure?” Claire demanded from the other side of the room.

As far as he could tell, she had no idea why he’d moved. He glanced down at Sasha Moore, and his ears grew so hot they itched.

“Dean!”

Twisting one of the plastic leaves right off the plant, he dragged himself out of the warm, dark, inviting depths of the musician’s eyes. “I mean, uh, that is…uh, Ms. Moore, could you please look somewhere else. Thank you.” He took a deep breath and slowly released it. “I mean, that since we’ll be there, if anything happens, we’ll help.”

“You’ve decided we’re going to be there?”

“Sure. I mean, no.” He shot a helpless look at Claire. “I mean, you don’thave to go. I could always go without you.”

“He’s right, Claire, you don’thave to go. He could stay late and help load the van.” A pink tongue flicked out to moisten crimson lips. “I could give him a ride home.”

“I’ll go.”

“Good, then, it’s settled.” Twisting lithely in the chair, Sasha stood and made her way through the bric-a-brac to the door. “I’m going out for a bite. I’ll see you both at the pub.”

As the door closed behind her, Jacques materialized, eyebrows lifted toward Dean.“Showing off?” He laughed at the panicked embarrassment in Dean’s eyes, turned to face Claire, and said with patently false dismay, “He is so strong, no? He tore a leaf off your rubber plant.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she snorted dismissively. “It’s plastic. I’m more concerned about this pub thing.”

“What pub thing?” Austin asked, coming out of the bedroom and stretching. When Claire explained, he jumped up onto her lap. “Go,” he told her, butting his head against the bottom of her chin. “Take advantage of the fact you’re not actually sealing the site. If anything comes up, I’ll contact you.”

“What would happen if you were actually sealing the site,” Jacques wondered.

“I wouldn’t be able to leave the building.”

“Just like me.”

“Except he’s dead,” Austin pointed out. “Since you’re not, why don’t you prove it.”

“By going out?”

The cat sighed.“Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner. Go out. Have fun. Aren’t you the one who keeps saying you’re not planning to be stuck here?”

“I didn’t mean I should be going out to pubs,” Claire protested indignantly.

“Why not?”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“I never get to go anywhere,” Jacques said mournfully an hour later as he and Austin stood in the front window watching Claire and Dean walk toward King Street.

“Look at the bright side,” Austin observed as Mrs. Abrams hurried down her front path too late to corner them. “It can be a dangerous world out there.”

“What does she look at?”

One hand shading eyes squinted nearly shut, Mrs. Abrams stared up toward the window.

The cat stretched.“She’s probably wondering if I’m the same cat who got Baby to hog-tie himself with his own chain.”

“Are you?”

“Of course.” He jumped down off the windowsill. “Come on, it’s Friday night, let’s go watch TV.”

With a last curious look at Mrs. Abrams, Jacques turned and followed.“TV? Is it like radio?”

“You know radio?”

“Oui. Augustus Smythe,le petit salaud, he leaves in the attic a radio. I have energy enough to turn it on and off, but I cannot make different channels. Over many years, I have learned English from the CBC.”

Austin snorted.“Well, that explains a lot.”

“A lot?”

“You don’t talk like a French Canadian sailor who died in 1922.”

“So I have lost my identity to the English.”

“Although you still sound French Canadian…”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

THE CAT IS ALONE!

YEAH. SO?

A gust of heated air wafted up from the pit. GOOD POINT.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“Why is it so dark in here?” Claire demanded, stopping just inside the door of the Beer Pit.

Feeling the pressure building behind them, Dean cleared his throat.“Uh, Boss, we’re blocking the entrance.”

“Technically, you’re blocking the entrance, they could get around me.” But she moved across the painted concrete floor toward one of the few empty tables. “Why is the ceiling so low?” Before Dean could point out that the pub was in a basement, she added, “And look at the size of these things. Why are the tables so small?”

“More tables, more people, more money.”

Claire shot him a look as she sat down.“I knew that. The floor’s sticky. You’ll notice, I’m not asking why. Do you see. the deliveryman?”

“It’s pretty crowded…”

“I’d suggest you wander around and search for him, but you can’t move in here. I guess we wait until he tries something. Why is it so smoky?”

Dean nodded toward the other side of the room.“There’s a smoking section.”

“And it’s got one of those invisible barriers to keep the smoke away from the rest of us.”

“It does?” After the events of the last week, he wouldn’t have been surprised.

“No. I was being sarcastic. I could create a barrier, we do it all the time when we have to contain some of the more noxious site emissions, but it would be fairly…” The spatial demands of a beefy young man in a Queen’s football jacket caused an involuntary pause. “…obvious by the end of the evening when the smokers started suffocating in their own toxic exhalations,” she finished, shoving her chair back out from the table.

The arrival of the waitress stopped conversation until the arrival of the drinks.

“Three seventy-five for a glass of ginger ale?” Claire tossed a ten onto the girl’s tray. “I could buy a liter for ninety-nine cents!”

“Not here,” the waitress said tartly, handing back her change.

“You don’t go to pubs much, do you?” Dean asked, putting his own change back in his wallet and his wallet in his front pocket.

“What was your first clue?” She took a mouthful of the tepid liquid just as Sasha Moore stepped up onto the small stage at the other end of the room.

Dean pounded her on the back as she choked and coughed ginger ale out onto the table.“Are you okay?”

“Except for a few crushed vertebrae, I’m fine.” Eyes wide, Claire stared at the woman in the spotlight. All masks were off. She was danger. She was desire. She was mystery. And no one else in the room realized why. Claire couldn’t believe it. Sasha Moore had done everything but sit under a big neon sign that said, “vampire,” and no one made the connection although everyone responded. Brows drawn down she watched Dean shift in his seat. Everyone. “There are none so blind…” she muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Claire half expected Sasha to rely on the “rabbits caught in the headlight” effect that predators had on prey, but she played it straight At the end of the first set after a heavily synthesized version of “Greensleeves,” she acknowledged the applause and cut her way easily through an adoring audience to the table.

“A soft drink?” An ebony brow rose as her dark glance slid from Dean’s beer to the glass in front of Claire. “If you don’t drink beer, the house wine isn’t bad.”

“I don’t drink wine,” Claire told her.

Sasha smiled, her teeth a ribbon of white in the darkness.“Me either. So, is he here?”

“We haven’t seen him.”

“Then I guess you’ll have to stay until the end.”

Although she’d been about to say that they might as well leave, Claire found herself responding to the challenge. “So it seems.”

Dean glanced from one to the other and realized there were undertows here strong enough to suck an unwary swimmer in deep over his head. He didn’t understand what was happening, so he let instinct take over and did what generations of men had done before him in similar circumstances; he opened his mouth only far enough to drink his beer.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“So how was she?” Austin asked, his eyes squinted shut against the light.

“Pretty good, I guess.” Claire lifted the cat off her pillow and got into bed. “They made her do two encores.”

“Ah, yes.” He climbed onto her stomach and sat down. “The creatures of the night, what music they make.”

“Go to sleep, Austin.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“The boss not back yet?”

“No, not yet.” Austin sprang up onto the coffee table and shoved aside a shallow bowl carved from alternating colors of wood and filled with a dusty collection of old birthday cards. “She got a late start this morning.”

“You know she doesn’t want me in here before she gets back.”

“I wanted my head scratched.”

“She’s likely to be angry.”

“It’s a worthy cause.”

Although he knew he should just turn around and leave, Dean sighed and scratched where indicated, unable to resist the weight of the cat’s stare.

“Hey, go easy, big fella. I’m not a dog.”

“Sorry.”

“Of course you are,” Claire said stepping out of the wardrobe. “The question is, why are you here?”

“It’s Saturday.”

“I knew that.” Setting a pair of plastic shopping bags—one stamped with a caduceus and the other with an ankh—down beside the cat, she began pulling out small packages tied up with string.

“On Saturdays, I do the grocery shopping.”

Understanding dawned.“And you need money?”

Dean was quite certain he saw one of the packages move. Just to be on the safe side, he stepped back from the table.“Unless you’ve already done it?”

“Not quite.” Leading the way to the office, she unwrapped half a dozen pieces of six-inch-high iron grillwork as she walked. “I’m making imp traps this morning so instead of searching for the Historian, I went to the Apothecary for supplies.” The envelope had seventy dollars in it Handingover the money, she said, “Get what you usually get, but add a dozen bagels, ten kilograms of plain clay kitty litter, and a bag of miniature marshmallows— the plain white ones. The Apothecary only had four left, and that won’t be enough if I have to reset the traps.”

“Four bags?”

“Four marshmallows.”

“You trap imps with marshmallows?” Dean asked, folding the money into his wallet.

“We’ve discovered they work as well as newt tongues and get you into a lot less trouble with Greenpeace.”

“What are the bagels and the kitty litter for?”

Claire snorted.“The bagels are for breakfast, and the kitty litter is for Austin to…”

Dean raised a hand and smiled weakly.“Never mind.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“I thought we were going up to the attic?”

“We are.” Claire took several deep, calming breaths and picked up a bread stick from the counter. “But first, I’m going to ward the door.”

Austin rubbed against her shins.“Why don’t you just lock it?”

“Lock it?”

“Yeah, you know, that thing you turn that keeps the door from opening without a key. Remember what your mother always said.”

“Ripped underwear attracts careless drivers?”

“I was thinking more of ‘try a simple solution before looking toward more exotic possibilities.’”

“Warding the door is hardly exotic.”

“Locking it’s simpler.”

“True enough.” The tumblers fell into place with a satisfying clunk. Picking up a pair of imp traps, she followed the cat upstairs.

“A question, she occurs to me.” Floating just below the ceiling, Jacques watched Claire set the second trap beside the pink-and-gray-striped hatbox. “What will you do with an imp if you catch one?”

“I’ll neutralize it.”

“What does that mean, neutralize?”

“Imps are little pieces of evil; what do you think it means?” Precariously balanced on a pile of old furniture, Claire extended her right leg and probed for the first step down.

“A little more to your left,” Jacques told her.

She moved her foot.

“Your other left,” he pointed out as she fell. “Are you hurt,cherie?” he called when the noise had stopped but a rising cloud of dust still obscured the landing site.

Shoving a zippered canvas bag filled with musty fabric off her face, Claire sucked a shallow, dust-laden breath through her teeth, then took inventory. Her left elbow hurt a lot, and she seemed to have landed on something that squashed.“Where’s Austin?”

“Right here.” He leaped up into her line of sight, balancing effortlessly on a teetering commode. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re just saying that, aren’t you?” Jacques drifted toward her, wearing an expression of poignant concern. “I wish I had hands to help you up, arms to carry you, to comfort, lips to kiss away the hurt.”

His eyes were dark, and Claire found herself thinking of Sasha Moore.“I wish you did, too.”

“You could make it so.”

Austin snorted.“Does she look like Jean Luc Picard?”

“Who?”

The cat sighed.“I have so much to teach you, Grasshopper.”

“What?”

Reflecting how nothing could spoil the moment like a cat, Claire got her legs free, rolled onto her side, and noticed, right at eye level, a stack of ten-inch baseboards. As far as she could tell, given her position, they’d been taken from the wall in ten-or twelve-foot lengths. “This is great!”

“Falling?”

“Baseboards.” Scrambling to her feet, she retrieved her flashlight from a pile of oldReader’s Digest Condensed Books—part of the obligatory attic door—and headed for the stairs. “They were probably taken off when they replaced the plaster and lathe with drywall. Come on. I’ve got to measure the walls in the dining room because I think baseboards go on before the wallpaper.”

Happily working out a renovation schedule that would keep Dean busy for the next six or seven lifetimes, Claire raced down the attic stairs, along the third floor hall, and down to the second floor where she stopped cold. There was a man at the other end of the hall; at the door to room four.

Instinct overwhelmed cognitive function and she ran toward him.“Hey!”

When he spun around, she saw it was the deliveryman—no big surprise—and that he was picking the lock.

So much for the simple solutions.“Get away from there!”

“Don’t try and stop me.” The clich?d warning made his voice sound harsher than it had, the voice of a man barely clinging to sanity.

One hand searching her clothing for a thread, Claire reached for power, touched seepage, and hesitated.

The intruder dove toward her, grabbed her upper arms, and threw her against the wall. He was stronger, much stronger than he looked; madness lending strength.

“Why?” he demanded, smashing her head against the wall on every other word. “Why are you protecting that undead, bloodsucking, soulless creature?”

Limp in his grasp, unable to concentrate enough to use even the seepage, Claire was only vaguely aware of being dragged toward the storage cupboard. Through a gray haze and strangely shifting world view, she saw Jacques swoop down from the ceiling, shrieking and howling and having no effect at all.

Oh, swell, she thought, as the cupboard door swung open.He believes in vampires but not in ghosts. A heartbeat later, the implications of that sank in and she began to struggle weakly.

She hit the floor beside the mop bucket, barely managing to keep her head from bouncing, and collapsed entirely when a heart-stopping screech set the bottles of cleanser vibrating.

A deeper howl of pain rose over the noise the cat was making; then, just as Claire attempted to sit up again, the door slammed shut and Austin landed on the one thing guaranteed to break his fall.

For a moment, the need to breathe outweighed other considerations; then, lying in the dark listening to Austin hiss and spit, she grabbed for the first power she could reach and used it to clear her head. Sucking up seepage had just become a minor problem.“I understand how you feel, Austin, but shut up. We haven’t time for this.”

A whiskered face pressed into her cheek.“Are you all right?”

“No. But I’m fixing it.” Anger burned away the damage, power riding in on her rage to replace what she spent. At the moment, it didn’t matter where that power came from. With all body parts more-or-less back under her control, she stood and flung herself at the door. The impact hurt—a lot—and bounced her onto her butt. The door didn’t budge.

He’d done something to hold it in place.

“Calm down!” the cat snarled. “You nearly landed on top of me!”

“Calm?” Claire struggled back onto her feet. “What do you think a murder in this building will do to the pentagram’s seals?” Breathing deeply, once, twice, she placed her hands on the wood and blew the door off its hinges.

Staggering slightly, she raced down the hall, through Jacques, and into room four.

He was standing over the bed, a sharpened stake in an upraised hand.

There was no seepage left, blowing the door had wiped it clean. Sagging against the wall, Claire reached into the possibilities, knowing she wouldn’t be in time.

A black-and-white streak landed on his back as the stake came down.

Pulling Austin clear with one hand, Claire tossed her bit of thread with the other. As the deliveryman stiffened, she shoved him behind her to fall, shrieking, wrapped in invisible bonds, onto the floor of the outer room.

The stake protruded from Sasha Moore’s chest just below the collarbone. At first, in the forty-watt glow of the bedside lamp, Claire thought it was all over, then she realized that he’d missed the heart by three full inches. Either he had a poor understanding of biology or Austin’s leap had misdirected the blow.

“She is Nosferatu! She must die!” The crazed voice echoed in the closed room. “Those who protect her have made a covenant with evil!”

“Hey! Don’t tell me about evil,” Claire snapped at him over her shoulder.“I’m a trained professional.” She spread her fingers and one of the bonds expanded to cover his mouth.

His tail still twice its normal size, Austin panted as he looked from the stake to Claire.“Now what?”

“Now we pull it out.” There was a pop of displaced air as the first-aid kit from the kitchen appeared on the bedside table. “And we bandage the wound and see what happens when she wakes up.”

“I’m guessing she’ll be hungry.”

Claire glanced toward the man thrashing impotently about and grunting in. inarticulate rage.“I think we can find her a bite of something.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

AT THIS RATE, THE DAMPENING FIELD WILL NEVER GO DOWN. SHE BARELY CLEARED THE WAY FOR FURTHER SEEPAGE. THE COUSIN DID MUCH MORE DAMAGE WITH HIS TOYS AND DIVERSIONS.

PATIENCE.

PATIENCE…The word sounded as though it had been ground out through shards of broken glass…. IS A VIRTUE!

The ruddy light reflected in the copper hood grew brighter, as though Hell itself blushed. SORRY.

SEVEN

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_4]

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.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“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 morepeople 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 fromthe 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 waycats 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 anus 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.”

“Justone 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. “Donot 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.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

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.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

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.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

A LIE!

IN KINDNESS.

BUT…

OH, GIVE IT UP.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

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.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

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.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

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 shereally 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.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

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.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

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.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

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 rosethrough 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 tothink 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.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

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.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

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 niceafter 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.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“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 cansee 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?”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

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 itbecame 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.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“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.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

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.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“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.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

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.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“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.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“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 notmy 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!”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

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.

EIGHT

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_4]

JACQUES SLAMMED INTO AN INVISIBLE BARRIER at the door to Claire’s room. The impact flung him backward into the sitting room, past Dean, past Austin, right through the bust of Elvis.

“Thang you, thang you vera much.”

“Nobody asked you,” he snarled at the plaster head.“Anglais! I cannot follow you without an anchor.”

Just on the far side of the threshold, Dean rocked to a halt and spun around.“An anchor?”

“Oui. Come and getla coussin, the cushion.” His fingers swept through the horsehair stuffing. “Take it with you to Claire’s room.”

“You don’t have an anchor in here?”

“Did I not just say that? And wipe thatstupide grin off your face! You think I would not allow Claire her privacy?”

Actually, he did. But he was too nice a guy to say so. And the stupid grin seemed to want to stay where it was. Three long strides and he snatched up the cushion. Three more and he was back in Claire’s room, Jacques by his side.

“About time you goons got here,” Austin growled, pacing back and forth in front of the wardrobe.

Except for the cat and the furniture, the room was empty.

“Where’s the boss?” Dean demanded, throwing the cushion down on the bed.

“Where do you think?”

Three heads, one living, one dead, one feline, turned toward the wardrobe.

“How do you know she is in trouble?” Jacques asked. “She goes every morning to search for the Historian. Why is this morning different?”

“She’s been gone too long,” Austin told them. “No matter how long she’s in there, she’s never gone more than half an hour out here.”

Dean checked his watch. It was almost nine-fifteen. Which didn’t tell him anything except the time. “Maybe she’s taking longer because she found something.”

“Sure, look on the bright side.” He shoved a paw under the bottom of the wardrobe door and hooked it open an inch or two. “Listen.”

“Oui? I hear nothing.”

“That,” growled the cat, “is because you’re talking.”

A moment later, the ghost shrugged.“I still hear nothing.”

Then faintly, very faintly, just barely audible over the sound of Austin’s tail hitting the floor, came the roar of a large and very angry animal.

The two men exchanged an identical glance.

“You are sure that is not Claire?” Jacques asked.

“Yes! Mostly,” Austin amended after a moment’s thought. “Either way, it can’t be good. Dean has to go in and get her.”

“Okay.” Dean settled his glasses more firmly on his face and took a step forward.

“Un moment. You do not go alone,Anglais.”

“Yes, he does.” Austin interrupted. “You have to weigh more than forty kilos to go on this ride; it’s one of those stupid child safety features. Unfortunately, it also bars cats and ghosts, so I’m afraid Dean’s it.”

Jacques drew himself up to his full height, plus about four inches of air space.“If he carries the cushion, I go through with him.”

“It doesn’t work that way!” Austin directed a couple of angry licks in the direction of his shoulder. “And if it did,I’d be going through with him.”

Dean reached past the cat and opened the wardrobe door. It was dark inside, much darker than it should have been. Another distant roar drifted out into the room. He squared his shoulders, flexing the muscles across his back, and bounced a time or two on the balls of his feet. Claire needed his help. Cool.“What do I do?”

“Step up inside and pull the door closed behind you, but don’t latch it.”

“Why not?”

“Only idiots lock themselves in wardrobes.” His tone suggested any idiot ought to know that. “Once you’re in there, think about Claire. Holding an image of her in your mind, walk toward the back wall. When you get to where you’re going, keep thinking of her.”

“Where am I going?”

“I have no idea. Once you arrive, look and listen for anything out of the ordinary. She’ll be in the middle of it. Oh, and don’t eat or drink while you’re in there. Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada.”

About ready to step inside, Dean paused.“Why not?” he asked again.

“Did you not read when you were a kid?”

“I, uh, played a lot of hockey.”

Austin snorted.“I guessed. If you eat or drink inside the wardrobe, it holds you there.”

The door half closed, he stuck his head out into the room.“How do I come back?”

“Think of this room and go through any opaque door.”

“But do not return here without Claire,” Jacques told him, “or I will make of your life a misery.”

Dean accepted the warning in the spirit it had been given.“Don’t worry. I’ll save her.”

As the wardrobe door swung shut, Austin leaped up onto the bed.“I hate waiting.”

“You know,” Jacques said thoughtfully, drifting over to join him. “If you are wrong and she does not need saving, she is going to be not happy with you.”

“Excuse me? If I amwrong?”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

The inside of the wardrobe smelled faintly of mothballs. Dean found it a comforting smell as he turned away from the door and the argument gaining volume on the other side. It reminded him of the closet in the spare room at his grandfather’s house. Unable to see, he took a tentative step forward, expecting, in spite of everything to whack his face on the back wall. Another step, and another. Still no wall.

A new odor began drifting in over the mothballs.

His grandfather’s pipe tobacco?

He stopped and closed his eyes, suddenly remembering that he was supposed to be thinking of Claire, not of home.

“Holding an image of her in your mind…”

It was hard to hold a single image, so he cycled through the highlights of their short association as he took another step. Claire walking into the kitchen that first morning; Claire explaining how magic worked; Claire going up the spiral stairs to the attic. The smell of the pipe tobacco began to fade. She was his boss; she was a Keeper; she had a really irritating way of assuming she knew best or, more precisely, that he knew nothing at all. When he opened his eyes, he could see a gray light in the distance.

Approximately thirty-seven steps later—he wasn’t sure how many he’d taken before he’d started counting—he stood on Princess Street looking down the hill toward the water. Prepared for the strangest possible environment, he was a little disappointed to find himself in a bad copy of the city he’d just left. Everything was vaguely out of proportion, the street had been paved with cobblestones, and, although there were a few parked cars, there was no traffic. The half dozen or so people in sight paid no attention to him.

He could hear church bells in the distance and the cry of gulls circling high overhead.

There was no sign of Claire.

Hoping for a clue, he pulled out the card.

Aunt Claire, Keeper

Your Accident is my Opportunity

(could be worse, could be raining)

The skies opened up, and it began to pour. Dean stuffed the card back into his wallet, noting that magic had a very basic sense of humor.

Fortunately, he seemed to have passed from October into August. The air was warm, and the rain was almost tepid. Pushing wet hair back off his face, he drew in a deep lungful of air and frowned at yet another familiar smell. Hoping he hadn’t screwed everything up by thinking of home, he started running downhill toward the harbor.Look and listen for anything out of the ordinary, Austin had told him. Well, as far as he knew, there were no saltwater harbors on the Great Lakes.

It wasn’t just a saltwater harbor. Signal Hill rose across the narrows where the Royal Military College should have been. Massive docks butted up against a broad thoroughfare and along the far side of it were the historic properties that should’ve been clustered around the Dartmouth ferry dock in Halifax.

“Okay. This is weird.” But so far it didn’t seem dangerous. Even the rain was letting up.

There were ships at nearly all the docks, most of them clippers and brigantines, but he saw at least two modern vessels as well. So which were out of the ordinary? While he stood there, undecided, someone bumped him from behind, muttered an apology, and kept moving.

Dean turned to see a heavily muscled man in an old-fashioned naval uniform, carrying a human leg over one massive shoulder, weave his way through the crowd on the thoroughfare and enter a windowless green building on the other side. The sign on the building read“Man-made Sausages.”

No one else, from the little girl selling matches to the one-eyed, peg-legged street artist with a hook, seemed to think anything of it.

“Don’t eat or drink while you’re in there.…”

“Not much danger of that,” he muttered. “I’ll just find the boss….”

From somewhere in town came the enraged roar of an Industrial Light and Magic special effect followed closely by a woman’s scream.

“Claire!”

His work boots slipping on the wet cobblestones, Dean raced away from the harbor through a rabbit warren of narrow streets, all of them steeply angled regardless of the direction he was running.

The roar sounded again. Closer.

Just when he thought he was hopelessly lost, he pounded out from between two empty storefronts and into the intersection at Brock and King, across from the old city library.

In the center of the intersection, stomping jerkily about like one of the old stop-motion models, was a dinosaur. A T-Rex. Off to one side, were the squashed and nearly unidentifiable remains…

Dean clutched at his chest.

…of a 1957 Corvette.

“Oh, God, no!” Eyes wide behind his glasses, he staggered forward, hands outstretched. He was almost at the wreck when he felt the ground move, felt hot breath on the back of his neck, and had the sudden uncomfortable feeling he was a secondary character in a Saturday morning movie matinee.

He dove out of the way just in time. Rolled immediately thereafter to avoid being smacked by the massive tail. Leaped over a crumpled fender…

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Sitting in the library, surrounded by reference material and a few of the more pungent if less literate clientele, Claire heard someone call her name. Loudly. One could almost say desperately.

The voice, evenin extremis, sounded very familiar.

She’d been inside since the Historian’s new pet had shown up, figuring sooner or later it would get bored and wander off and, if it didn’t, she’d just go back out through the library door and home. Then, looking for a map, she’d gotten engrossed in the books. She had no idea how long she’dbeen in there.

“CLAIRE!”

“Dean?” Running her tongue over dry lips, she walked over to the window, wondering how the Historian had been able to copy Dean’s voice so exactly. She felt her jaw actually drop when she realized she was hearing the original. “Dean!”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Had the T-Rex been animated better, Dean knew he’d have been dead and partially digested by now. Dodging a grotesque, chickenlike peck of the huge head, he found himself at the foot of the library steps.

The massive tail whipped around.

He jumped, cleared the tail, made a bad landing, stumbled back, and fell.

About a dozen stairs behind and above him, he heard the library door open and, at the same time, a small herd of pigs appeared on the other side of the intersection squealing loud enough to wake the dead.

Or attract the attention of the dinosaur.

As T-Rex lumbered toward the pork, something grabbed Dean by the shirt and tried to haul him backward up the stairs with no notable success. Before the pressure of the seams across his armpits cut off all circulation in his arms, he managed to get his feet under him and stand.

Claire released both handfuls of fabric as he turned to face her. Two steps apart, they were eye to eye. She went up one more step.“What are youdoing here?”

Struggling to catch his breath, Dean gasped,“I came in to save you.”

“To save me? Oh, for…Whose bright idea was that?”

Since she was obviously not thrilled by the thought of a rescue attempt, he squared his shoulders.“Mine.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Claire snorted. “It was Austin, wasn’t it? That cat is fussier than…”

A roar from the T-Rex jerked their attention back into the intersection. Ludicrously small arms raked the air, then it charged.

“Come on!” Grabbing another handful of Dean’s shirt, Claire ran for the library door.

“It didn’t take long with the pigs.”

“That’s because they weren’t real. Only the Historian can do substance in here, all I can manage is illusion.”

“Oh, great, so you’ve pissed it off?”

“Try to remember who’s saving whose ass.”

The solid stone steps shuddered as the dinosaur started up after them.

“Think about the bedroom!” Claire yelled as they reached the top step. Still clutching his shirt, she thumbed the latch and dragged him through the door after her.

The wardrobe shuddered to a mighty impact as they flung themselves out into the worried presence of Austin and Jacques.

Breathing heavily, Claire lay where she’d fallen, staring under the bed at a pair of fuzzy bunny slippers that weren’t hers. Four paws, propelled by a ten-pound cat, landed on her kidneys and a moment later Austin’s face peered into hers from over her right shoulder.

“Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine. I’m just a little thirsty.” She rolled over, cradled him in her arms, and sat up. Dean had gotten to his feet and was busy trying to pull his T-shirt back into shape. “What,” she asked the cat, “was the idea of sendinghim in after me? If I hadn’t shown up in time, he’d have been killed.”

“I heard roaring.”

“You’ve heard worse.”

“You’d been gone for over an hour.”

“I lost track of time. I was reading.”

“Reading?” Austin repeated, squirming free and jumping up onto the bed. “You were reading!”

About to mention the dinosaur, Dean’s vision suddenly filled with an extreme close-up of a ghost. “Get my cushion,” Jacques whispered, “quickly, and we will leave.”

“But Claire…” Dean whispered back, trying to see around Jacques’ translucent body.

“This you cannot rescue Claire from. And as much as I would like my cushion to remain, pick it up. We are leaving.”

“I was worried sick and you werereading?” Austin repeated.

Something in the cat’s tone suddenly got through. Eyes wide, Dean stared at Jacques who nodded frantically toward the cushion.

“It wasn’t like that, Austin.”

“It wasn’t like what? It wasn’t like you never even considered my feelings? Is that what it wasn’t like?”

Careful not to break into the line of sight between cat and Keeper, Dean scooped up Jacques’ anchor and the two of them raced into the sitting room.

“So what was it Claire save you from?” Jacques asked as they slowed.

Dean shrugged, the material stretched by Claire’s hands riding on his shoulders like tiny wings. “A dinosaur.”

“A what?”

“A very big carnivorous lizard.”

“Ha! If I can go through the wardrobe, she would not have to rescueme from a big lizard. She would not have to rescue a real man.”

“Real men admit it when they need help.”

“Since when?”

“I think it started around the mid-eighties.”

“Ah. Well, it did not start with me. I would have did what I went into the wardrobe to do.”

“You would havedone what you went into the wardrobe to do.”

“That,” said Jacques, staring down his nose at the living man, “is what I said.”

“Okay.” Dean half-turned toward the bedroom, gesturing with the hand holding the cushion. “If you’re so brave, go back in there.”

Austin’s voice drifted out through the open bedroom door. “…consider more important than…”

Jacques looked thoughtful.“How big did you say was that lizard?”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Later, after tempers had cooled and apologies had been offered and accepted, Austin rested his head on Claire’s shoulder and murmured thoughtfully, “Maybe it had nothing to do with either of us. Maybe it only had to do with Dean.”

Claire stopped halfway across the sitting room and shifted her hold on the cat so she could see his face.“What are you saying?”

“Maybe heneeded to go into the wardrobe; to begin tempering.”

“Tempering?” Her eyes widened as the implication hit her. “Oh, no. Forget it. We don’t need another Hero. They’re nothing but trouble.”

“Granted, but he fits the parameters. No parents, raised by a stern but ethical authority figure, big, strong, naturally athletic, not real bright, modest, good looking…”

“Myopic.”

“What?”

“He’s nearsighted,” Claire said, feeling almost light-headed with relief. “Who ever heard of a hero in glasses?”

Austin thought about it for a moment“Clark Kent?”

“Fake prescription.”

“Woody Allen?”

“Get serious.”

“Still…”

“No.” She stepped out into the lobby, closing the door to her suite behind her. Patting the gleaming oak counter with her free hand, she headed for the kitchen. Since the unsuccessful search for the Historian had taken most of her energy, she had no memory of Dean actually finishing the work, but it sure looked good. Granted it would look better if they refinished the lobby floor, painted and recarpeted the stairs…

“No. I’m a Keeper, not an interior decorator, I have a job. If I can’t find the Historian,” she muttered, stepping into the kitchen, “there’s more than one way to skin a cat.”

Austin jumped out of her arms, landing by the sink and whirling around to face her.“I beg your pardon.”

“Sorry.”

He washed a shoulder.“I should hope so.”

Hardly daring to breathe, Claire pulled the plastic container holding the site journal out of the fridge. Faint fumes could be detected seeping through the seal.

“Do you have to do that now?” Austin demanded. “It’s twenty-five to ten. I thought we could have breakfast first.”

“I have no intention of opening this when I have food in my stomach.”

“That’s probably wise, but factoring in wardrobe time, you haven’t eaten for nearly twenty-four hours and, more importantly,I haven’t eaten for two. After you deal with that you’re not going to want to eat for a while.” He sneezed. “If ever. It’s worse than the last time!”

“But the lid’s still on.”

“My point exactly.” His first leap took him nearly to the dining room. Ears back, he headed for the hall. “If you want me, I’ll be doing canine therapy next door. Out of my way, junior.”

“Junior?” Dean repeated, flattening against the wall to avoid being run over by the cat. Still shaking his head, he turned the corner into the dining room and coughed. “What in…”

“If you want to do something useful,” Claire told him a little breathlessly, setting the lid to one side, “you can find me a lifting thingie.”

“A what?” he asked, noting with dismay that she was reaching for another fork.

“Something to lift the journal out of the liquid with.”

Reminding himself that it was her hotel and she could therefore destroy as much of the cutlery as she wanted, Dean took his least favorite spatula from the spatula section of the second drawer and handed it over.“Did you and Austin work out, well, you know…”

“Yes. We did. Just so you don’t worry in the future, we always do.”

“You guys, you have a interesting relationship.”

“Of course we do.” She wiped one watering eye on the back of her hand. “He’s a cat.” Carefully, she slid the spatula under the journal.

Once again, the onions had turned indigo but, this time, there was still about an inch of brine sloshing around in the bottom of the container.

“Boss, I, uh, just wanted to say…”

“Not now, Dean.”

“Okay.” Left hand cupped over his mouth and nose, he walked over to the dining room side of the service counter. “How can you stand over it like that?”

“I do what I have to.”

“And what do you have to do,cherie?” Jacques asked, appearing by her side.

“Watch.” Holding the journal just up out of the brine so that none of the solution splashed out of the container as it drained, Claire carefully used the fork and flicked it open to the first of Augustus Smythe’s entries. Although the paper remained a blue barely lighter than the letters, thewriting was finally readable.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

August 18th, 1942. I find myself summoned to a place called Brewster’s Hotel. The most incredible thing has just taken place here. The Keeper who was, and who indeed continues to seal the site, attempted to gain control of the evil for her own uses.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Smiling broadly, Claire glanced up at Dean.“Isn’t this wonderful!”

“Wonderful,” he agreed, but he was referring to the little crinkle the smile folded into the end of her nose.

Jacques followed his line of sight, and snorted.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

I cannot name the Keeper because she remains in the building, continuing to seal the site with her power—which is considerably more than considerable according to the arrogant s.o.b. of an Uncle John who helped defeat her. I hate how some of those guys get off on being “more lineage than thou,” as if the universe shines out his ass.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“I guess that answers the Augustus Smythe personality question.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

The other Keeper, Uncle Bob, isn’t so bad. Is it because Bob’s your Uncle?

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“And that raises a few more.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Two of them wouldn’t have been enough to defeat her if she hadn’t…

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Slipping the fork carefully under the damp paper, trying, in spite of her excitement, to keep breathing shallowly, Claire turned the page.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

…had trouble wi th th e vir g i…

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“Oh, no!” One by one, faster and faster, the letters slid off the paper and into the brine. For a moment, Claire stared aghast at a journal of blank pages, then the paper turned into a gelatinous mass and shimmied off the spatula. The resultant splash sprayed a couple of dozen letters up over Claire’s hand and sweater.

She staggered back until she hit the edge of the sink, too stunned to speak.

Jumping forward, holding his breath, Dean slapped the lid onto the container. When the seal caught, he hurried around into the kitchen, plucked the spatula from Claire’s hand and tipped it almost immediately into the garbage.

“You must wash your hand,cherie,” Jacques told her.“There is em’s upon it. And other letters there upon your sweater.”

“I don’t think it’ll wash out,” Dean offered.

Jacques sniffed.“It does not amaze me you also do laundry.”

Slowly Claire lifted her hand to her mouth and touched her tongue to one of the letters.

The two men exchanged a horrified glance.

Her lips drew back off her teeth.

“I do not think she is smiling,” Jacques murmured.

“Spider parts,” Claire snarled. “That rotten, little piece of Hell!”

Both men flinched but nothing happened.

“Don’t you see?” Claire’s glare jerked from one to the other and back again. “The imp introduced spider parts into the solution. It couldn’t have opened the fridge, so it had to have dusted the onions in the bin under the counter just before I started the second batch. It ruined everything!”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

OH, VERY WELL DONE.

DO WEGIVE COMPLIMENTS?

WE GIVE CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE.

Hell was silent for a moment. NO, WE DON’T, it said at last.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“Mrs. Abrams is up to something; she’s humming. It’s an intensely scary sound. Why the long faces?” Austin asked, jumping up on the counter. He sneezed and turned a disgusted glare on the container. “Haven’t you finished with that yet?”

“Oh, yes, I’ve finished with it.” Claire pulled off her sweater and handed it to Dean who held it much the same way he’d have held a dead jellyfish. “It’s all over. I’m not going to be able to undo what was done because I’ll never find out what they did. I can’t fix it I might as well call the locksmith’s cousin.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Never mind.” Moving mechanically, she turned, squirted a little dish detergent into her palm and washed her hands.

When Dean explained what had happened, the cat jumped down to rub against her legs.

“Spider parts can get onto onions a number of different ways; you don’tknow it was an imp. Or even that there is an imp.”

“Don’t start with me, Austin.”

Wisely, he let it drop.“There’s still the Historian,” he reminded her.

“No, there isn’t.” She scrubbed her hands dry on a dish towel—which Dean retrieved to hold, two-fingered, with the sweater—and scooped Austin up into her arms. “I can’t get out of that town she’s built.”

“The wardrobe Kingston?” Dean asked.

“Not quite Kingston,” Claire told him bitterly. “There’s a camp of killer girl guides to the north. When I take the bridge over the narrows and go east, I get hit with a snowstorm I can’t get through. To the west there’s a military academy. And south…”

“Un moment,” Jacques interrupted.“Why can you not get by a military academy?”

“It’s the men in uni…”

Claire put her hand over the cat’s muzzle. “They think I’m one of their teachers and I’m AWOL. Attempting that route’ll only get me stuffed into an ugly uniform and thrown in the brig until I agree to teach two classes in military history.”

“The sea’s to the south,” Dean said. “What about one of the ships?”

“Get on a ship crewed by the Historian’s people?” Claire shook her head. “I don’t think so. It’d be faster just to drown myself and save them the trouble.”

“Austin thinks you’re trying too hard.”

“Does he? Interesting he should know so much about a place he’s never been.” The cat in her arms became very intent on cleaning between the pads of a front paw. “No, it’s obvious. I can’t get to the Historian, and this…” She stared down at the jumble of letters and the sludge of thejournal. Her shoulders slumped. “…this is less than useless.”

“But what about studying the actual, you know, spell?”

“What about it?” She’d been spending an hour with Sara every morning and, so far, she’d developed an allergy to dust. Her ten minutes every other afternoon, the longest she could spend so close to Hell and a running monologue she couldn’t shut off, had taught her a number of things she’d have rather not known about the Spanish Inquisition, World War II, and the people who program prime time TV but nothing about how to deal with the unique situation surrounding the site. “It’s time I faced it; I’m going to be stuck here for the rest of my life.”