Summon The Keeper. The Second Summoning

How Austin had hissed a word containing no sibilants, Claire had no idea and no time to investigate.“Professor Jackson! They’re not playing cards, they’re having a seance and something’s gone wrong; come on!” She ran for the door, the cat close on her heels.

The buzzer sounded the end of the power play, releasing Dean’s attention. “Hey! Where are you going?”

“To save Jacques!”

He caught up in the office.“From what?” he asked as the four of them, Jacques nearly transparent, crossed the lobby.

“Professor Jackson is a medium,” Claire told him starting up the stairs at full speed. “A real medium. Not a fake. They’re rare—thank God. They have power over spirits.”

“Comme moi?” His voice had faded with him.

“Yeah, like you.” She missed a step, would’ve fallen except Dean grabbed her arm. “Thanks.” Charging out into the second floor hall, she banged on the door to room one with her fist “Mrs. Abrams! Professor Jackson! Stop what you’re doing and open the door! Now!”

“Cherie…” One hand stretched toward her, Jacques disappeared.

“No!” Whirling around she reached through the possibilities for power, but before she could blow the door off its hinges, Dean stepped back and slammed the sole of his work boot into the lock. The effect was much the same.

Professor Jackson stood in the midst of a blazing vortex of tiny lights dancing on a manic wind—although stood wasn’t entirely accurate as his feet dangled a good six inches off the floor. Sitting on the corner of the bed, the card table pulled up over her knees, Mrs. Abrams stared wide-eyed, one hand pressed up against her mouth, the other making shooing motions toward the lights.

“What’s happening?” Although the hall had been silent, one step over the threshold, Dean had to shout to make himself heard.

“It looks like Jacques is more than he can handle.”

Dean’s eyes widened. “Jacques is attacking him?”

“Jacques is not doing anything. The professor started something he couldn’t control.”

“Then where is he?”

“Who?”

“Jacques!”

Claire waved a hand toward Professor Jackson.“He’s in those lights. Bits of him may even be in the professor!”

“Connie!” Mrs. Abrams’ shriek cut through the ambient noise like a vegetarian through tofu. “You’ve got to do something!”

Which was true.

“Dean! Try and keep Mrs. Abrams calm.”

“While you do what?”

“While I rescue Jacques!”

“Be careful!” Body leaning almost forty-five degrees off vertical, he fought his way through the wind to the bed.

“It’s the residual power from whenshe made him flesh!” Ears flat against his head, Austin had tucked himself into the angle between floor and wall, claws hooked deeply into the carpet. He stared up at Claire through narrowed eyes. “Can you bring him back?”

“I think so!” Reaching for calm, Claire shuffled quickly forward, never breaking contact with the floor, at about half Dean’s weight, she couldn’t risk being blown away. A little better than an arm’s length from the professor, she marked her spot and started to spin. She moved slowly at first, barely managing to keep her balance; then the power lifted her and she began to pick up speed as she rose into the air. The room whirled by, faster, faster, until the walls began to blur and the tiny points of light were pulled from their orbits around Professor Jackson.Oh, dear; I really wish I hadn’t had that third slice of pizza….

“Catherine! What do you think you’re doing? You’ve got to save the professor!”

“She’s trying to, Mrs. Abrams!” Dean wasn’t entirely certain Mrs. Abrams had heard him. With Claire picking up speed, the winds had doubled in intensity. He ducked as the lamp from the bedside table flew by, cord dangling. The table followed close behind. On one knee beside the bed, he was horrified to feel it begin to shift. Throwing possible consequences, as it were, to the wind, he flung himself down beside the old woman, grabbed her around the waist with one arm, and blocked the professor’s flying suitcase with the other. Under him, the bed bucked and twisted, fighting to throw off the extra weight that kept it on the floor.

The card table never moved. The flame of the single candle never flickered.

Even behind the protection of his glasses, the wind whipped the moisture from his eyes. Lids barely cracked, Dean watched the little lights leave the professor and move to circle Claire. Sometimes singly, sometimes in clumps, they did one figure eight around both spinning figures, then settled down in their new orbit. When all the lights had shifted, including a few pulled painfully from under the professor’s skin, he breathed a sigh of relief and almost got beaned by a worn leather shaving kit sucked out of the bathroom and into the maelstrom.

It wasn’t over yet.

Now the lights began to orbit a new position equally distant from both spinners. The third point on the triangle. Once again they traced a single figure eight and then began to spin in place.

The bed lifted, four inches, five, six, then banged back down onto the floor.

A familiar form began to take shape in the center of the lights. And then the lights began to spiral inward.

Muscles straining, Dean somehow managed to keep a protesting Mrs. Abrams on the bed. At least he thought she was protesting—he couldn’t hear a thing she was shouting over the roaring of the wind, the pounding of his heart, and the cracking of her heels against his shins.

One by one, the drawers were sucked out of the bureau.

With every light that disappeared Jacques grew more defined.

Dean frowned. Too defined,“Claire! His clothes!”

She didn’t seem to hear him but maybe the clothes came last.

More and more lights were absorbed until only a few remained. Jacques seemed more solid than he ever had.

Dean’s gaze dropped. He almost let go of Mrs. Abrams in shock until he remembered the force of Jacques’ spin had to be distorting reality.

The last light slid in under Jacques’ left arm.

Nothing happened. All three bodies continued to spin. The wind continued to howl.

Although it was difficult to tell for certain with her face flicking in and out of sight, Dean thought that Claire frowned. The index finger of her right hand curved up to beckon imperiously.

One final light, almost too small to see, sucked free from the professor, circled Claire and smacked Jacques right between the eyes. Which opened.

The wind quit.

The candle flame went out.

“…member of the Daughters of the Parliamentary Committee and if you don’t stop this, this moment, I’ll be speaking to my MP!” Mrs. Abrams’ ultimatum echoed in the sudden silence. “Well.” She tossed her head, the lacquered surface of her hair crackling against Dean’s chin. “That’s better.”

In the confusion of three bodies and various pieces of furniture hitting the floor, Dean managed to get across the room to Claire’s side before Mrs. Abrams could react to his presence. One of the bureau drawers bounced off his left shoulder, but he considered bruising of minor importance compared to being caught with his arm, uninvited, around her waist Shemight thank him for keeping her out of the whirlwind, but the odds weren’t good.

“Claire! Are you okay?”

“I’ll be fine when the room stops whirling,” she muttered.

“The room isn’t moving.”

“Says you.” But she opened her eyes and lifted an arm. “Help me sit up.”

“Candice! I demand an immediate explanation!”

With his left arm supporting her back, Claire shifted her weight against Dean’s chest. “Mrs. Abrams,” she sighed “Go to sleep.” They winced in unison at the sound of another body hitting the floor. “Put her back on the bed, would you, Dean.”

The warmth of the sigh had spread through fabric to skin.

“Dean?”

He released her reluctantly.“But you…”

“I’m okay. Nothing wrong that a little vomiting couldn’t cure.” Dragging a dented wastebasket out from under the lamp and cradling it in her arms, she smiled wanly up at him. “No problem.”

“If I could help,cherie?”

This was not something Dean could face on his knees. He stood, then turned, to find Jacques shrugging into a red-and-gray-checked flannel bathrobe. Reality, he noticed as the robe closed, appeared to have returned to normal proportions.

“Help Dean,” Claire instructed from the floor. “I’ll crawl over and check the professor.”

“Butcherie…”

“I know. But not until we’ve got this mess cleared up.”

About to add his protest to Jacques’, Dean suddenly realized that if the ghost—or whatever he was now—was with him, he wouldn’t be with Claire. “Come on.” He jerked his head toward the bed. “You take her feet.”

“Cherie…”

“Not now.”

As Claire started crawling toward the professor, Jacques shrugged and, stroking both hands down the nap of the robe, followed Dean.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Austin had reached and done a preliminary diagnosis on the sprawled body of Professor Jackson by the time Claire arrived.“He’s having trouble breathing.”

“He’s got a ten-pound cat sitting on his chest.”

“I’m big-boned,” Austin amended, primly stepping off onto the floor. “I think he’s blown a fuse or two.”

“Serves him right.” Setting the wastebasket to one side, Claire bent over the professor and lifted his left eyelid between her thumb and forefinger.

“So giving Jacques flesh was the only solution?”

“If you had a better one…?”

“Me? Oh, no.”

Letting the eye close with an audible snap, Claire glared at the cat. Traces of the matrix Aunt Sara had created to give Jacques flesh had been causing the problem; it made logical sense, therefore, to use those traces to solve the problem. She couldn’t have come up with a faster or more efficient solution. That was her story and even in the relative privacy of her own mind, she was sticking to it. “What are you implying?”

“Me? Nothing.” As the professor’s head gently lolled toward him, Austin reached out a paw and pushed it back. “Hadn’t you better pay attention to what you’re doing?”

Teeth clenched, Claire carefully pulled power. After a moment Professor Jackson moaned and opened his eyes.“Where am I?” he asked breathily.

In ten years as an active Keeper only one person had asked a different question upon regaining consciousness and since,“Do it again,” was actually a statement Claire had always assumed it didn’t count. “Never mind,” she said, brushing his eyes closed. “Go to sleep.”

When he, too, had been laid out on the bed, at a respectable distance from Mrs. Abrams in spite of Dean’s protest and Jacques’ alternative suggestion, Claire told the two men to leave the room.

“Cherie, we have not so much time.”

“I know. But I gave you flesh to save you—and to save him,” she added nodding toward the bed. “Not to…um…” Very conscious of Dean’s presence, she couldn’t finish, but when Jacques took her arm and turned her slowly to face him, she didn’t resist. His fingers, lightly stroking her cheek, were cool. His mouth had twisted up in the smile she found so hard to resist. When his lips parted, she mirrored the motion.

“Ow! Austin!”

“May I remind you,” he said as she stumbled backward and would have fallen had not Jacques and Dean both grabbed an arm, “that the bodiesalready on the bed need tending; memories need changing.”

“I was going to…”

“Please, no details. Just take care of these two first.”

Lips pressed into a thin line, she jerked free and nodded toward the door.“Fine. Everyone out.”

Not even Jacques argued.

“You take this calmly,” he said thoughtfully to Dean, as the door closed behind them.

Dean shrugged. He didn’t feel calm. He didn’t know how he felt. “You don’t seem very affected either,” he pointed out as they followed Austin down the stairs. “Except that you’re walking kind of carefully…”

“I am not use to feeling the floor.”

“…and you keep touching yourself.”

Jacques drew himself up to his full height, which, with both feet on the ground was considerable shorter than it had been.“Do I make these personal comment about you,Anglais?”

“Sorry.” Ears red, Dean shoved his hands in the front pockets of his jeans. “So, uh, what do we do now?”

“I do not know.”

“I do.” Leaping down the last three stairs into the lobby, Austin turned and stared up at them. “Forgetting for the moment that one of you is dead and one isn’t and refusing to borrow trouble since none of us has any idea of how this is going to turn out I think you should feed the cat.”

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“Wasn’t there a half a slice of pizza left?” Claire asked, dropping onto the sofa almost two hours later. “I’m starved.”

On the other end of the sofa, Austin opened one eye.“I let the mice take it,” he said. “I didn’t think anyone wanted it.”

Pinching the bridge of her nose with one hand, Claire waved away the information with the other. Mice. Fine. Whatever.“Where are the guys?”

“Here I am.” Jacques emerged from the bedroom, fiddling with the belt of the professor’s robe. “I forget how many sensation in the world; old, new…”

Then the bathroom door opened and Dean came out glasses in his hand, the edges of his hair damp. Claire opened andclosed her mouth a time or two, but no sound emerged.

Dean’s ears turned scarlet as he hastily shoved his glasses on. “I’m sorry, Claire. I used your towel. It’s just it was getting late and the game just ended and I was after waiting up for you…”

“Game?”

“Oui. Hockey with ducks,” Jacques explained, lip curled.

“Hockey,” Claire repeated.

Austin snickered.“I know what new sensations you were thinking about.”

“Shut up.”

“Someone’s got a dir…”

Dragging him onto her lap, she cupped her hand over his mouth.“Someone also has opposable thumbs,” she reminded him.

The sound of voices in the lobby diverted attention.

“Mrs. Abrams leaving,” Claire explained, covering a yawn. “She remembers a lovely seance where Professor Jackson contacted the ghost of the young man she’d seen standing in the window of room two as a girl and then more recently in the dining room, and the lobby, and the office, and back inthe window of room two.”

Jacques winced as her voice picked up an edge toward the end of the list.“I am sorry,cherie. I thought she see me only once.”

“You thought she saw you and you didn’t tell me?”

“I did not think it important.”

“If I’d known, I could’ve prevented this whole incident from happening.”

“Oui, but then I would not have flesh.”

Claire decided to avoid that issue for a few moments longer and slid right on by without even pausing.“Well, now she believes that you’ve gone happily to your final rest, passed over into the light, so…” She managed energy enough to jab a finger at the ghost. “…stay away from windows!”

“I will.”

“And if she happens to accidentally see you…”

“I tell you,immediatement.”

“Good.” Yawning, Claire sagged back into the sofa. “The funny thing is, I’m not the first Keeper to mess with her head. There’s a whole section of early memories that’ve been dramatically changed.”

“Mr. Smythe told me that she lived in the house next door her whole life,” Dean offered. “He said it used to be Groseter’s Rooming House and Mr. Abrams was a roomer who didn’t move fast enough and got broadsided.” When Claire lifted her head to stare at him, he shrugged apologetically. “That’s whatMr. Smythe said. Anyway, she’s always saying things aren’t like they were when she was a girl. Maybe she was poking around and saw something she shouldn’t.”

“You meanbesides Jacques?”

Without an actual exhalation, Jacques’ sigh lost emphasis, but he made up for it with the peripherals. Bending over the back of the sofa, he tucked a curl behind Claire’s ear. “I am sorry the old woman cause you problems,cherie, but I am a long time dead and I am not surprise someone sees me.”

“Not surprised.” She started to move into his touch and when she realized, jerked her head away.

He smiled.“Oui.”

“I think…” Reaching up, she flicked the curl back where it had been. “I think she probably wandered into the furnace room, maybe followed the Keeper down.”

“Her?” Dean asked, jerking a thumb toward room six.

“Probably Uncle whoever. During the monthsshe was Keeper here, Mrs. Abrams was a teenager; too old to go poking around the neighbor’s…” Another yawn cut off the last word. “…basement.”

“Time for bed,cherie.”

Dean jerked up onto his feet“Yeah, I, uh, should get down, um, downstairs.” Unable to say what he wanted to say—and not entirely sure what that was—he couldn’t seem to put a coherent sentence together. “It’s, uh, been a long, you know, day.” Feeling the blood rise in his cheeks and wishing that the floor wouldjust open up and swallow him whole, he headed for the door.

“Dean, wait.”

With one foot in the office and one foot still in Claire’s sitting room, he waited. Because she asked him to. He wondered if she knew how much he’d do for her if she asked him to.

To his surprise, he felt her hand in the small of his back, moving him out into the office. She followed and closed the door.

“After everything we’ve been through this last month, I thought you should know that Jacques and I aren’t…that is, I’m not…I mean, we won’t…”

“Why not, then?”

Claire stared up at him in astonishment.“Why not?”

Overcoming the urge to grab her and shake her, Dean nodded.“Yeah, why not? You gave him the flesh he’s been bugging you for.”

“Only to save him and the professor and only until dawn.”

“Okay. But since you both want to…” He raised a hand to cut off her protest “I’m not blind. I can see the way you two are together. Why shouldn’t you take advantage of it?”

“He’s dead?”

“Are you asking me if that’s a reason?”

“No,” she said slowly. “I guess not. Even though Jacques’ body died, his passion, his personality, even his physical appearance, they stayed. And now they have substance.” Standing so close she could smell the faint scent of fabric softener that clung around him, Claire looked up and tried to see past her reflection in his glasses. “And you’re okay with this?”

Dean blinked. The way he’d played out this scene, he asked her, “Why not?” and she said, “Because it’s you I really want,” and things moved to a satisfactory if somewhat undefined conclusion from there. He hadn’t intended to talk her into it. Since that’s what he seemed to have done, although he wasn’t entirely certain where things had gone wrong, there seemed to be only one way out. “Sure. Go ahead.”

Claire expectedsure to mean,Would it matter to you if I wasn’t? It didn’t and she couldn’t seem to find an actual translation. “I’m not saying that I’ll rearrange my life to spare your feelings, but I don’t want you to be…” She’d intended to say hurt but the assumption that her actions would cause him pain just sounded too egotistical. Even for a Keeper. “…upset.”

“Not a problem.”

It was, actually, but every Keeper learned early in her career that sometimes a lie had to serve. People were entitled to emotional privacy.“Good night, Dean.”

“Good night, Boss.”

She watched him go down the hall, listened to him go down the stairs, until a furry weight against her shins distracted her.“What?”

“Sure meant I’m not so stupid that I can’t see you’ve made your choice, so if I get all bent out of shape about it I’ll look like some kind of a wuss moaning on and on about what I can’t have, so I’m just walking away and pretending it doesn’t matter.”

Claire blinked.“How do you know that?”

“It’s a guy thing.”

“Yeah. Right.” Stepping over Austin and purposefully closing the door in his face—not that a closed door ever stopped him— Claire went back into the sitting room to find Jacques sprawled in the armchair poking himself on the bridge of the nose with an old wooden ruler. “Why are you doing that?”

“I have never done it before.” He tossed the ruler aside and stood. “You have said what you have to say to our young friend?” When she nodded, he reached for her hands.“Bien. Now I will say something to you.”

“Jacques…”

“Non. My turn.” His grip tightened around her fingers, cool and still weirdly insubstantial. “I desire you. You know how I wish to use this flesh you have given me, but I will not make pressure on you.”

“Put pressure on you.”

“That also. If you decide we will not be together tonight, I have a bed still of my own in the attic. But know that you are to me more than a way to break a very long time without a woman.”

“Jacques.”

He winced.“Too much? I should not have said the last about the woman, I know. It is funny, I am, how do you say…nervous.”

“That’s how we say it.” This was the moment she had to decide. On the one hand, Jacques was sexy and funny and there’d been a frisson between them from the moment she’d forced him to materialize. On the other hand, he was dead. That would definitely be a problem for most people. “I don’t want to be likeher.”

“You are not anything likeher.” Releasing her hands, he cupped her face.

“I don’t want to just use you.”

“Use me,cherie. I can stand in.”

“Stand it.”

“We are both needing each other, Claire. Stop worrying about regrets you might have tomorrow. This is now.”

He was going to kiss her; it hadn’t been so long that she couldn’t recognize the preliminaries. She just didn’t know how she was going to respond. Fifty-three seconds later, she found out.

“Oh, my…”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

PERFECT. SHE’S DISTRACTED.

WE SHOULD BE UP THERE, the rest of Hell protested. WE’RE MISSING A TERRIFIC OPPORTUNITY TO SCREW WITH HER HEAD.

I’VE GOT BETTER OPPORTUNITIES DOWN HERE.

The power seepage had been gathered in one place, prevented from escaping into the shield.

ARE YOU GOING TO CREATE ANOTHER IMP?

YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR PROBLEM IS? YOU DON’T THINK BIG ENOUGH. THAT’S WHY YOU’RE GOING TO SPEND AN INFINITE AMOUNT OF TIME DOWN IN THAT PIT.

YOU CAN’T GET THE SEEPAGE THROUGH THE SHIELD.

OH, YES, I CAN.

NO, YOU CANT.

YES, I CAN.

N…

ARE YOU ARGUING WITHME? The silence seemed to indicate that, no, it wasn’t. GOOD. I CAN GET THE SEEPAGE THROUGH THE SHIELD USING THE CONDUIT THE KEEPERS HAVE PROVIDED.

The hoarded seepage began moving.

Low wattage lights went on in the rest of Hell as realization dawned. BUT THAT POWER GOES RIGHT UP TOHER!

YES.

SHE TRIED TO USE US.

AND FAILED.

WE’D RATHER NOT RISK THAT AGAIN.

NO ONE ASKED YOU.SHE WILL TAKE CARE OF THIS YOUNG KEEPER FOR ME.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Up in room six, under dust-covered lids, Aunt Sara’s eyes began to move in her first dream in over fifty years.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“Jacques, wait I felt something…”

“This?”

“No…. Oh. Yes.”

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“Hey, Diana.” Phone cradled against her chin, Claire did up her cuff buttons and listened to the sounds of Dean moving about in the kitchen making breakfast “Is Mom home?”

“Hey, yourself,” her sister responded suspiciously. “What are you doing up so early in the mor…Oh my God! You did it, you slept with the dead guy!”

Recognizing that the move was completely illogical but needing to do it anyway, Claire held the receiver out in front of her and stared at it.

“Don’t bother denying it.” Diana’s voice came tinnily out through the tiny speaker. “I can hear it in your voice.”

“Hear what in my voice?” Claire demanded, the receiver back to her mouth.

“You know, that post-necrophilia guilt. How was he? I’d make a crack about him being a stiff, but you’d blow.”

“Diana!”

“Don’t get me wrong, I understand your choice. I mean, even ignoring the whole forbidden fruit thing, Keepers have responsibilities—busy, busy, busy—and after a night in the sack, a dead guy’s not going to expect you to settle down and play house. So did you give him back his actual flesh, or did you make some minor additions?”

Breathing heavily through her nose, Claire attempted to keep her voice level.“Is Mom home?”

“No. Lucky for you. What kind of an example are you setting here for your younger sister?”

“Tell her I called.”

“Should I…”

“No. Just tell her I called.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“…of course I landed on my feet, but the other guy…” Austin let his voice trail off as Claire came into the kitchen. Wrapping his tail around his toes, he sat and stared unblinkingly up at her.

Claire glanced over at Dean, who shrugged, then back at the cat.“What?” she sighed.

“Nothing. I just figured the first meeting between you and Dean the morning after would be awkward, and I wanted to start things off right I think you two can take it from here.” Looking smug, he leaped down to the floor and padded away.

The silence stretched.

Having made his decision to cut a net he had no hope of hauling, to save the boat so he could fish another day, to suddenly get caught up in regional metaphors he’d never previously considered using, Dean should have slept the sleep of the just, the sleep of the man who has recognized that he’d lost the battle but by no means lost the war. As it happened, he slept hardly at all, Claire’s bedroom being right over his. His imagination, deciding to make up for twenty years of benign neglect had kicked into overdrive the moment his head hit the pillow. He’d finally gotten a few hours’ sleep on the couch in the next room.

“So,” he said at last “you’re up early. Where’s Jacques?”

Before Claire could answer, he blushed and held up both hands.“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that to come out the way it sounded.”

“What way?”

“Like I had a right to know.” He took a deep breath, adjusted his glasses, and said, “Did you want some coffee, then?”

“Sure.” When Dean shot her a surprised glance before reaching for a mug, she hoped she’d got the nuance right. She’d intendedsure to mean,nothing’s changed between you and me. Dean could continue feeling how he felt about her—a little unrequited whatever it was he felt wouldn’t hurt him—and she’d continue thinking of him as an incredibly nice, gorgeous kid who just happened to do windows. She’d come to that conclusion while dressing, wondering why she was making such a big deal out of Dean’s reaction. “Jacques went back to the attic. He said he needed some time to think.”

“Ah.”

The silence fell again.

“Professor Jackson’s not down yet.”

Dean gratefully looked at his watch.“No, but then it’s just turned eight.”

“Ah.”

Before the silence extended far enough to elicit a conversation about the warmer than seasonal weather, the front door opened. And closed.

Dean frowned.“Stay where you’re at,” he muttered, untying his apron, “I’ll get it.”

Sighing, Claire started walking toward the lobby.“What have I told you about this kind of thing?”

“Specifically?”

“Generally.”

“You’re a Keeper and you can take care of yourself?”

“Bingo.”

Bent nearly double, stroking Austin as he wound around black leggings and chunky ankle boots, the young woman in the lobby seemed to be neither a threat nor a guest. When she straightened, one hand rising to try and brush disheveled blonde curls down over the purple-and-green swelling on her forehead, Claire got the impression of a person just barely hanging on to the end of her rope.

A quick glance at Dean showed him ready to pound whoever, or whatever, had brought such a fragile beauty to such a state.

The delicate jaw moved slowly up and down on a piece of gum. The weary motion seemed so involuntary it came as a bit of a shock when she stopped chewing to speak.“I’ve been walking all night” she offered tentatively, “and I need, um…”

“A room?” Claire asked.

She glanced back over her shoulder before answering.“I haven’t any money.”

“That’s all right” Keepers went where they were needed; sometimes, need came to them. Without turning, Claire lightly touched Dean’s arm. “Go make up room three.”

“Sure, Boss.”

No one spoke again until he’d disappeared up the stairs.

“This is a beautiful cat.” A trembling hand ran down the black fur from head to tail. “Is he yours.”

“Not exactly.”

“I had a cat once.” She closed shadowed eyes. When she opened them again, she stared around the lobby as if wondering where she was.

Austin nudged her.

“I saw your sign. I thought, if I could lie down for a few hours, I could figure out what to do. But I can’t pay you….”

“The room’s there and it’s empty,” Claire told her, stepping forward. “You might as well use it.”

Clearly too tired to think straight, she shook her head.“That’s not how it works.”

“That’s how it works here.”

“Oh.” She looked up the stairs and thin shoulders sagged. “I don’t think I can.”

“I’ll help.” By the third step, Claire had wrapped the girl’s weight in power. Reaching the first floor hall, hoping the professor wouldn’t chose this moment to head downstairs for breakfast, she led the way to room three, pausing outside the door to allow Dean to leave.

When he opened his mouth to speak, she shook her head and pushed past him. He couldn’t help until they knew what was going on.

Settling the girl on the edge of the bed, Claire stepped back and watched Austin make himself comfortable beside her.“Do you mind if he stays?”

“Oh, no.” Her hand reached out to stroke him again. “You and that big man, are you happy?”

Claire blinked, completely taken aback.“There’s nothing between me and Dean.”

The ugly bruise on the girl’s forehead darkened, surrounded by an embarrassed flush. “I’m so sorry. It’s just that you looked…”

“Postcoital,” Austin murmured when she paused.

“Ignore that,please,” Claire suggested, spitting the magic word through clenched teeth,“I’ll leave you now, get some sleep. We’ll talk later.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

HELLO….

NOT NOW. I DON’T WANT THE PISSANT LITTLE ENERGY WE CAN PUSH OUT OF HERE WASTED ON TRIFLES.

YOU DON’T WANT? WHAT ABOUT WHAT WE WANT?

Time passing suddenly became the loudest sound in the furnace room. After a moment, the rest of Hell answered their own question.

NEVERMIND.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

By the time Claire got back to the kitchen, Professor Jackson had descended for breakfast. He seemed extraordinarily pleased with himself as he ate his bacon and eggs. He hummed slightly as he spread jam on his toast, and he stirred his coffee with the air of a man who’d lived up to his own extraordinary expectations. Fortunately, he’d lifted himself to such exalted heights, he was far beyond making casual conversation with mere hotel staff.

Wiping his mouth, he rose from the table and graciously informed both Dean and Claire that he’d be leaving as soon as he packed.

“Well?” Dean demanded the moment the professor was out of earshot. “Who is she? What happened? Does she want us to call the police?”

“I have no idea, but Austin stayed with her so we’ll soon find out.”

“Austin?”

“Why not. She’s tired and vulnerable….”

Dean nodded, understanding.“He’ll be a nonjudgmental comfort to her.”

“No, he’ll take advantage of it. He’s a cat not Mother Theresa.” Claire poured herself a bowl of cereal and sat down. “It shouldn’t be much longer.”

On cue, Austin jumped up onto the counter.“All right; bacon.” Glancing over at Claire, he added, “Which I, of course, can’t eat even though I’ve been gathering vital information about the young woman in room three.”

Claire sighed.“One small piece.”

“Two.”

“One and the dregs of milk from my cereal.”

“Not if it’s bran; last time I was in the litter box all morning.”

“It’s not.”

“Deal.”

They waited more-or-less patiently while he ate and not at all patiently while he washed his whiskers.

“First of all,” he said, at last, “it’s not what you think. Her name is Faith Dunlop….”

“She told a cat her name?”

“Don’t be ridiculous; I hooked her ID out of her pocket when she fell asleep.” He snorted. “Who tells a cat their name?”

“Just get on with it.”

“Who hit her?” Dean demanded.

“No one. She walked into a door. Our little Faith was leaving in a hurry because she’d just helped her boyfriend rip off a convenience store out on North Montreal Street. When they split up to throw off pursuit, she had the bag of loot. Unfortunately, she left it on a bus and now she’s afraidto go home because this is the second time something like this has happened and the boyfriend is going to be very unhappy.”

Claire stared at Austin in astonishment.“This is the second time she’s left the loot on a bus?”

“If I understood her correctly—and between the sobbing and the gum she wasn’t very coherent—the last time she left it in the women’s washroom at a fast food restaurant but essentially the same scenario, yes.”

“She’s afraid of her boyfriend?” Dean growled. Behind his glasses, his eyes narrowed to a line of blazing blue. “Oh, I get it; first off, he forces her into a life of crime and then, when she can’t perform to his satisfaction, he beats her.”

“She walked into a door,” Austin protested.

“Sure. This time. But what’ll happen when she gets home? She’s terrified of him, or she wouldn’t have been out all night, forced to throw herself on the kindness of strangers.”

Claire sighed. She’d just discovered two things about Dean. The first, which was hardly unexpected considering the rest of his personality, involved taking the side of the weak against the strong. The second, that at some point in his scholastic career he’d been forced to readA Streetcar Named Desire.“You don’t know any of that for certain.”

He folded his arms across his chest.“I know what I see in front of my face.”

“I don’t know how you can see anything with your eyes slitted closed like that.”

“It’s obvious what happened!” His jaw thrust slightly forward.

“It’s never that obvious.” Pouring herself a cup of coffee, she asked Austin if he’d got a look at Faith’s home address when he snagged her ID. When he admitted that he had, she headed for the phone.

Hurriedly picking up the empty cereal bowl and putting it in the sink, Dean followed.“What are you doing?”

“Calling Faith’s apartment and telling the boyfriend where she is. Once he’s here, I can protect her, but until I hear the whole story, I can’t help her.”

“You’re after helping her right into the hospital!” Rushing forward, Dean put himself between Claire and the phone. “Look, you can put yourself into whatever weird relationships you want, but you can’t make those kind of choices for Faith.”

“Weird relationships?”

“Uh, oh.” Ears close to his head, Austin ducked under the desk.

Claire’s nostrils flared. “I thought you said you were okay with it?”

“Well, what else was I supposed to say? You’re the Keeper; you always know what you’re doing, and you never listen to me. I can’t even get you to put your dirty dishes in the sink!”

He was right about the dishes. Claire took a deep breath and forced it out through clenched teeth.“Move away from the phone, Dean. I know what I’m doing.”

“And I don’t?”

“I didn’t say that”

“But you’re always implying it. After all, I’m just the bystander and all this lineage stuff is way over my head. Okay. Maybe it is. But this,” he stabbed a finger toward room three, “this is people stuff, and I know people stuff better than you.”

“The moment Faith entered this hotel, shebecame lineage stuff.”

They locked eyes for a long moment. Finally, Dean jerked away from the phone.“Okay. Fine. If you’re not after listening to me, I’ll go and do the dishes. That seems to be all I’m good for around here.”

“Dean…”

“You know where to find me if you want something unimportant taken care of.” Heels denting the floor, he stomped back to the kitchen.

“I told you so,” Austin muttered, still safely hidden under the desk.

“Told me what?” Claire asked, fingers white around the receiver.

“That Dean’s all bent out of shape about you pounding the mattress with Jacques.”

“Jacques wasn’t even mentioned!”

He stuck his head out and stared up at her in disbelief.“You really aren’t any good at this people stuff, are you?”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Just after ten, Professor Jackson checked out. He paid in cash and, although a number of smaller things had been broken the night before, he made no mention of them. Since, technically, Claire had broken them, she let it slide.

“I’ll just go up and clean the room, then, shall I, Boss?”

Claire’d been trying to think of a way to apologize—although in spite of a nagging feeling that she was in the wrong, she wasn’t sure for what—but Dean’s emphasis on thatBoss changed her mind. She’d wait until he decided to stop being so childish.

At eleven, she tried Faith’s home number again. She’d left two previous messages on the answering machine, and when the same annoying little song came on telling her tonot make a peep till the sound of the beep, she decided not to leave a third.

When Dean came downstairs at eleven-forty carrying a wastebasket full of broken lamp, the office was empty, but a thin man in a Thousand Islands baseball cap and jean jacket that looked two sizes too large was limping across the lobby.“Can I help you?”

He jerked around to face the stairs. Pale lips, under a sparsely settled mustache, lifted in what could have been a smile but was probably a twitch.“Hi. Yeah. I’m here for Faith.”

“Faith?”

“Yeah. I’m Fred.” The tip of his nose was an abraded pink that vibrated slightly with every word. “She’s not gone?”

“No.” Dean descended the last three steps and was disappointed to see that he still towered over Faith’s boyfriend. He’d been hoping for a big man, one he could flatten without guilt. “What happened to your foot?”

“My foot?” Eyes wide, Fred stared down as though amazed to see a foot on the end of his leg. “Oh. That foot. I had an accident, eh.” He laughed nervously. “Dropped a cash register on it. Hurts like hell.”

NOT QUITE. BUT IT COULD.

Dean set down the wastebasket and jiggled his baby finger in his right ear, anger momentarily swamped by confusion.“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“Nothing.”

DON’T YOU JUST WISH YOU COULD WIPE THIS KIND OF SCUM RIGHT OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH?

“Well, yeah, but that wouldn’t solve anything.”

“What?” Fred backed up a step, looking like a small rodent suddenly face to face with a very large cat.

“Did I say that out loud?”

“What?”

If Fred was a monster, Dean decided, he hid it well. On the other hand, a man facing a much larger man was often a different person than a man facing a woman.“Look, you wait here. I’ll check if Faith wants to see you.”

“Is she all right? Is she hurt? The message said she was just tired.” What seemed like near panic jerked the words out in a staccato rush.

“She’s fine.”

“Then why wouldn’t she want to see me?”

Dean sighed.“Just wait here, okay?”

Fred’s gaze skittered around the office as though checking for traps. When it finally got back to Dean, he nodded. “Okay.”

Shaking his head, Dean started up the stairs.

THOSE KIND OF WEASELS ARE THE FIRST TO PICK ON SOMEONE WEAKER THAN THEMSELVES. YOU SHOULD SHOW HIM HOW IT FEELS.

Dean’s fingers curled up into fists.

VIOLENCE IS ONE OF OURS.

Down in the lobby, Fred shifted his weight off his bad foot and stared mournfully at the stairs. He didn’t want to wait, he wanted to see Faith.

Which was when he noticed the elevator. A fascination for all things mechanical drew him across to it, limp almost forgotten. He opened the door, peered past the gate, down into the shaft, and could just make out the top of the car. It seemed to be in the basement.

Brow furrowed under the brim of his cap, he opened the door immediately to his left.

The basement stairs.

It was easier going down the stairs than up. He could take the elevator to the top of the hotel and go down to Faith’s room, missing the big guy with the glasses entirely.

No one would mind. Elevators were there to be used.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Leaning outside the door to room three while Faith put on her face, Dean polished his glasses with the hem of his shirt and tried not to think about how much he’d enjoy flattening Fred’s quivering pink nose.

ONE, TWO, SPLAT. THAT’S THE TICKET.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Lost in memories of a childhood spent riding the old elevator at the S&R Department Store, Fred touched two fingers to his cap brim, murmured,“First floor, ladies lingerie,” and twisted the brass lever toUP.

Sitting in the bathroom, reading the Apothecary’s new catalog, Claire heard the unmistakable sound of an ancient elevator starting up.

By the time she reached the lobby, it was just passing the first floor. She didn’t know the man inside.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Dean frowned as he heard the elevator rise to meet the second floor, then he shrugged. Claire’d said she was through testing, but obviously she’d thought of something else to try.

Then he heard:

“Second floor, housewares and cosmetics.”

By the time he got across the hall, all he could see was the bottom third of a pair of grimy jeans and Fred’s worn and grubby running shoes.

He had to beat the elevator to the third floor. If Fred opened the door…

HE’LL GET WHAT HE DESERVES. FAITH’S TERRIFIED OF HIM. YOU SAW THAT YOURSELF. THERE’LL BE ONE LESS ABUSIVE WEASEL IN THE WORLD.

Dean hesitated.

Then Faith’s door opened. When she stepped out into the hall and saw only Dean, her smile dimmed. “Where’s my Pookie?”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Claire reached the second floor and saw Dean charging toward her. Then past her. The elevator had passed and was still moving up. Gasping for breath, she took the next flight of stairs two at a time, but had only reached the landing when Dean, who’d barely looked as though he were touching down at all, reached the top.

The growl of the motor stopped.

Unless he was a total klutz, it would only take seconds for the man inside to open the gate. The taste of old pennies in the back of her throat, Claire staggered into the third floor hall as the elevator door started to open. Before the latch cleared, Dean threw himself in front of it and slammed it shut.

“Hey!”

Chest heaving, Claire staggered up on rubbery legs as Dean stepped back and, after making sure that it had indeed closed completely, pulled the door open.

“It’s just I’ve got this sore foot,” Fred began hurriedly. “And you know, the stairs are steep, and…”

Dean cut off the rest of the excuse by reaching in, grabbing the smaller man by the front of his jacket, and pulling him out into the hall.

“Pookie?” Faith’s anxious voice drifted up from the second floor. “Is that you?”

“Yeah, Baby, it’s me.” Fred smiled, or twitched, nervously, eyes flicking from Dean to Claire and back to Dean. “She calls me Pookie.”

“You must be the boyfriend,” Claire hazarded.

“Yeah. I’m Fred.”

She jerked her head toward the stairs.“Go on.”

Fred sidled out of Dean’s reach and limped quickly away.

Dean hadn’t moved since he pulled Fred from the elevator. Worried, Claire took a step toward him. “Are you okay?”

He lifted horrified eyes to her face.“I hesitated.”

“When?”

“When I heard the elevator go by. I heard a little voice say, he’ll get what he deserves, and I…” He shook his head in disbelief “…I hesitated.”

About to reassure him that it was no big deal, Claire suddenly realized that for Dean, it was. For the first time in his life, he hadn’t automatically done the right thing. If she couldn’t convince him to let it go, irrational guilt would eat at him for the rest of his life.That’s it, Claire, no pressure.

Wrapping her fingers around his forearm, she gave him a little shake.“You saved him, Dean. I couldn’t have gotten here in time.”

“You don’t understand. I actually thought about letting Fred…” Unable to continue, he shook free of her grip and stumbled back away from her.

Claire sighed. How unfortunate that smacking some sense into him would probably scar his psyche forever.“Dean, listen to me. I know you think I’m lousy at people stuff but I’m older, I’m a Keeper, I know; people think unworthy thoughts all the time.”

LIKE THE ONE WHERE HE’S ON HIS KNEES AND…

Shut up.“It doesn’t count if you don’t act on it.”

“But I hesitated.”

“And then you made up for lost time. Trust me, they cancel each other out.”

Dean forced a smile.“I appreciate you trying to make me feel better, Boss, but nothing can cancel out what I’ve done.” The smile slipped. “I should go see if Faith needs my help.” Trailing misery behind him like streamers of smoke, he started for the stairs.

Which was when Claire realized…“Dean, did you say you actually heard a little voice?”

“Yeah.”

“How did it sound?”

Two steps down, he stopped and leaned back out into the hall.“Sound?”

“Can you describe it?”

“I guess.” He frowned, brows dipping down below the upper edge of his glasses. “It sort of sounded like it was talking in block caps.”

Should she tell him? Would it help? No. If Dean knew he was hearing the voice of Radio Free Hell, he’d be more convinced than ever that his hesitation had damned him. “Dean, do me a favor. If you hear the voice again,please ignore it.”

After a moment, he nodded.“Okay.”

A sudden shriek of laughter from below had them both clamping their hands over abused ears. Side by side, they hurried downstairs.

The second floor hall was empty so they kept going.

Inhaling his clean, fabric softener scent, Claire wasn’t thinking of either Fred or Faith. After nine months, she wondered, what had finally given Hell a way in?

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

In room six, directly across from the open elevator door, Aunt Sara licked her lips.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Baseball cap skewed, Fred pulled out of the clinch as Claire and Dean emerged from the stairwell.“You were so good to Faith, you oughta know; we’re giving up our life of crime.”

“Although it wasn’t really a life of crime,” Faith protested. “It was only two stores and we paid for them taco chips.”

“I think you’ve made a wise decision,” Claire told them, smiling. “What do you think, Dean.”

He shrugged and looked miserable.“I’m not one to say.”

Claire rolled her eyes. ThisI’m a horrible person stuff was going to get old, really fast.“But you’re glad they’ve decided to go straight, aren’t you?”

“Sure.”

That was good enough for Fred.“Thanks. Truth be told, we weren’t any good at it.”

Faith’s lower lip went out, making her look like a pouty angel. “We coulda practiced more, Pookie. Or got a gun.”

“No guns. People get hurt when you got a gun.” He patted her shoulder. “I’m takin’ that job with my cousin Rick.” Turning back to Claire and Dean, he added, “Rick’s got a truck, eh, and he hauls stuff.”

“You’re not gonna call the cops, are you?” Faith asked, leaning past him and twisting a curl around her finger.

“No.”

“See, Pookie, I told you they were good people.”

Dean winced.

Claire resisted the urge to stamp on his foot and give him something to wince about. Instead, she herded their modern Bonnie and Clyde to the front door and waved them out toward the waiting world.“Go home. Go straight. Be happy.”

At the bottom of the steps, Faith turned and smiled beatifically back in at Claire.“Thank you for letting me use the room and everything.”

“You’re welcome.”

“You figure their parents were cousins?” Austin asked when she closed the door.

“I have no idea.”

He yawned, stretched, and glanced over at Dean.“What’s with him? He looks like he just tried to kill somebody.”

Dean stared wide-eyed at the cat.“You can tell?”

Austin sighed and flicked an ear toward Claire.“What’s he talking about?”

“When he heard Fred going upstairs in the elevator, he hesitated before racing off to save him.”

“Not much point in removing only one of them,” Austin agreed.

“You’re not helping,” Claire snapped before Dean could react Crossing the lobby, she poked him in the chest. “Stop tearing yourself up over this. You aren’t a horrible person. You’ve got to be the nicest guy I’ve ever met.”

NICE GUYS FINISH LAST.

“Get out of my head.”

WE WEREN’T TALKING TO YOU.

Oh, Hell…

“Dean?”

“If you don t need me for anything, I’d like to go downstairs and do some serious thinking about my life.” He spun on one heel and hurried off before she could answer, which was probably a good thing since she couldn’t think of anything constructive to say.

Walking over to the counter, she scooped Austin up into her arms and stroked the top of his head with her cheek.“This is not good.”

“What? That after living unaffected next to Hell for almost a year, Dean spends a month and a half in your company and all of a sudden he’s willing to kill?”

“He hesitated! Then he saved the guy!”

“Face the facts, Claire, you’ve got him tied in knots. He’s not thinking, he’s reacting and that’s exactly the sort of situation Hell loves to exploit.”

THE CAT’S RIGHT.

“Of course I am; but who asked you?”

She set him back on the counter.“I’m not Dean’s problem.”

JEALOUSY IS ONE OF OURS.

“He said he was fine with me and Jacques.”

YOU’RE REALLY NOT A PEOPLE PERSON, ARE YOU?

“Take your own advice and stop listening to Hell.” Austin paused to lick at a bit of mussed fur. “Let Dean do his serious thinking, and maybe he’ll solve the problem on his own.”

“Cherie?”

“And speaking of problems.”

Shooting Austin a warning look, she turned to face Jacques. Translucent in the light from the office window, he looked exactly the way he had the first day she’d set eyes on him. She realized that she’d been expecting their night together to have changed him, but, unfortunately, it seemed to have changed only her perception of him—men were just so much more attractive when they were opaque.

“You are more beautiful this morning than I have ever seen you.” His eyes twinkled. It was a disconcerting effect since Claire could see the door through them. “I have been thinking. One night cannot balance so many years alone; perhaps this afternoon…”

“No.”

His grin faded.“Butcherie, was I not all I promise I would be?”

“Yes, but…”

The grin returned.“Give me flesh again, and we will drive away the but.”

“Look, Jacques, you’re dead, so you have nothing to do, but I’m alive and I have…”

STRANGE TASTE IN MEN.

Shut up.“…responsibilities.”

Jacques looked interested.“Like what?”

“Like feeding the cat,” Austin declared in a tone that suggested he shouldn’t have had to mention it.

“And?” Jacques wondered.

“And that’s not important right now. What’s important is that you’re dead and I’m alive…”

“Cherie, non.”

“…and no matter how many times I give you flesh, you’ll still bedead!” The words echoed in the empty lobby. From the look of pained betrayal on Jacques’ face as he dematerialized, he wouldn’t be back any time soon. “I didn’t mean to hurt him,” she sighed. “I just wanted him to…”

“Go away. And he did, congratulations.” Critically inspecting a front paw, Austin snorted. “I’m not sure this is as clean as it could be.”

Claire grabbed the edge of the counter, bent over, and rhythmically banged her head against the wood.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

THAT WAS FUN.

THIRTEEN

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_4]

FOR THE FIRST TIME IN WEEKS, as the pipes banged out the news that Claire was in the shower, Dean wasn’t lost in daydreams of soap and water. Kneeling by the bed, he pulled out his old hockey bag, the only luggage he’d brought from back home. It was pretty obvious that Claire thought they could just go on as though he hadn’t been willing to murder Faith Dunlop’s boyfriend for no greater crime than being a total moron. Maybe she could, but that sort of thing changed a guy.

Changed the way he looked at himself.

Maybe it was time he moved on.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“I see Dean’s truck is gone.”

Claire picked up her breakfast dishes, stared at them for a moment, and then carried them over to the sink.“He left about ten minutes ago.”

Austin sat by his empty dish and curled his tail around his front feet.“He left without feeding the cat.”

“You have such a rough life.” She picked up a can and a knife and froze, eyes locked on the empty parking lot.

After a moment, Austin sighed.“Get a grip! He went for groceries, like he does every Saturday morning.”

“I know.” Under blouse and sweater, she could feel goose bumps lifting. “I just had this incredible sense of foreboding.”

“Which is nothing compared to what you’re going to have if you don’t feed the cat.”

“Can’t you feel it?” she asked, scooping food into his dish. “When I think of Dean, I get the feeling that events are poised on the edge of a precipice.”

“A simple solution,cherie; do not think of Dean.”

Straightening, Claire drew in a deep breath. She hadn’t been looking forward to this, not after the way she’d smacked Jacques away from her yesterday.

When she turned, the ghost was sitting cross-legged on the dining room table—a position he favored because of how it irritated Dean. He grinned at her. “Why the long face,cherie? The day, she is sunny, Dean is gone, and me, I am here for company.”

Claire searched his face unsuccessfully for any lingering sign of hurt and betrayal.

“Ah.” The grin broadened. “You cannot see enough of me.”

“Yesterday…”

“I am dead since 1922,” he reminded her, with a matter-of-fact shrug. “I cannot carry all my yesterdays with me. Although,” he winked, “some I remember very well and am anxious to repeat.”

“Not now…”

“Oui, not now, not here. Although,” he glanced around and smiled broadly, “you and me on this table; it would give the old lady something to see, yes?”

“No.”

“Fraidy-cat.” He blew her a kiss and dematerialized.

“Some of us,” Austin muttered, jumping onto a chair and then up onto the counter, “don’t appreciate the word cat being used in a derogatory manner. If you’ve left the television on PBS, he’s going to be right back.”

“It’s probably still on TSN. I didn’t check.”

He rubbed his head against her elbow.“You okay?”

“I don’t know. Nothing’s changed with Jacques and everything seems changed with Dean. I can’t figure it out.”

“It’s simple. Jacques is dead, he can’t change. Dean’s alive, he can’t not change. Now me, I’m a cat. I don’t need to change.”

She reached down and scratched him gently between the ears.“What about me?”

“You need to move your fingers a little to the left. More. Ahhhhh. That’s got it.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

An hour later, perched precariously on top of the stepladder, eyes squinted nearly shut against the thin November sun, Claire razored masking tape off the windows. As expected, there’d been no change in the shields around Aunt Sara and Hell. She’d written as much in the site journal and now had the rest of the day to fill. Jacques was watching television, Dean was still out, and if the masking tape didn’t come off soon, it’d be there until Hell froze over.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

SHE’S THINKING OF US.

SO? KEEP WORKING.

WE’LL NEVER WAKEHER USING SEEPAGE. The rest of Hell sounded sulky.

I DON’T NEED TO WAKEHER. I MERELY NEED TO UNBALANCE THE BALANCE OF POWER.SHE’LL DO THE REST.

WHO?

HER.

HER?

NO!HER, YOU IDIOT!

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Picking bits of tape off the edge of the blade, Claire could just barely make out the unmistakable shapes of Mrs. Abrams and Baby by the driveway. Baby seemed to be sniffing the fresh concrete around the base of the railings.

“I don’t suppose you want to go chase that dog off our property?”

“You suppose correctly.” Sprawled in a patch of sunlight, Austin didn’t bother opening his eyes. “But I’ll pencil in a visit for later in the afternoon.”

“I can’t see the fun in bothering a dog that neurotic.”

“You can’t see the fun in shredding the furniture either. Don’t worry about it.”

When Baby’s head rose suddenly, ears flattened against his skull, Claire leaned forward to see what had caught his attention. The approaching pedestrian seemed to have no idea of the danger.

“Oh, no.” Although details had been washed out by the light, she knew that shape. Knew the way it moved. Watched it make a fuss over the big dog who, after a moment of visible confusion, actually wagged his stump of a tail.

Climbing down off the ladder, reluctantly deciding it might be safer if she wasn’t holding the razor blade, Claire walked to the door and opened it.

Mrs. Abrams turned as she came out onto the step.“Yoo hoo! Courtney! Look who’s here! It’s your sister, Diana. She’s come for a visit; isn’t that nice?”

“Swell.”

Diana looked up from murmuring endearments in under the points of Baby’s ears. “Isn’t this the sweetest doggie you’ve ever seen?”

“Oh, yeah, he’s a real cream puff.”

Giving the Doberman a final pat and telling Mrs. Abrams she hoped to see her again, Diana picked up her backpack, ran up the front steps, and paused to examine Claire critically.“You ought to let your hair grow out, I can’t believe you’re wearing mascara in the house, and didn’t I tell you that nail polish was bad for the environment?”

Claire stepped back and motioned her sister inside.“I don’t want to. I don’t care. And what are you talking about?”

“Nail polish remover is like, so toxic.” She turned on the threshold to wave at Mrs. Abrams and Baby, then bounded inside. “Nice paint job. Forest green. Very trendy. Hey, Austin.”

He lifted his head, sighed deeply, and let it fall back to the countertop.“Shoot me now.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

ANOTHER KEEPER!

IT’S A CHILD. KEEP YOUR MIND ON YOUR WORK.

BUT THERE’S TWO OF THEM!

AND THERE’S VERY NEARLY AN INFINITE AMOUNT OF ME.

The rest of Hell considered the implied threat. GOOD POINT.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“Diana, why are you here?”

“I’m needed.”

“For what?”

“I’m a Keeper.” She ducked under the flap into the office. “We go where we’re summoned, and I was summoned here.”

“Here?”

“Uh-huh. Right here. Are you still using this old computer? You must’ve bought it, what, two, three years ago?”

“Three and a half, and don’t touch it”

“Chill, I’m not going to hurt it.” She tapped lightly on the monitor. “Oops.” At Claire’s low growl, she grinned. “Kidding. It’s not even turned on.”

“Diana.”

“What?”

Claire took a deep breath and tried to remember where the conversation had diverged from the important questions.“Do Mom and Dad know you’re here?”

“No. I snuck out in the middle of the night.” Diana rolled her eyes. “Of course they know I’m here. They’re Cousins. I’m a Keeper. And, at the irritating risk of repeating myself, I was summoned.”

“All right. You were summoned. So?”

“So I guess I’m here to help you.”

“You want to help?” Austin muttered. “Take a man off her hands.”

“As if. Didn’t Mom tell you? I’m a lesbian.”

Claire sighed.“Isn’t everyone?”

“You know, Claire…” Arms folded over her black jean jacket, Diana’s eyes narrowed. “…I get the feeling you’re not happy to see me.”

“It’s just…”

“…that the thought of you and Hell in the same building is enough to give anyone with half a brain serious palpitations,” Austin finished.

“No problem.” Diana raised both hands to shoulder height, backpack sliding down her arm to swing in the crook of her elbow. “I solemnly swear to stay away from the furnace room. Now are you happy to see me?”

Claire’s better judgment suggested she send Diana home immediately, summons or no summons. She had no idea what part of her kept repeating,but she’s your kid sister, as though that had any relevance at all. Whatever part it turned out to be, it was doing a good job of drowning out her common sense.“All right I’m happy to see you. Now what?”

“Now, you give me the guided tour.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

There was a soccer game on in her sitting room; a dozen guys in green and white appeared to be running circles around a dozen guys in red and black. Claire wasn’t even certain that they’d played soccer in Canada when Jacques died, but he was interested enough in this particular match that he’d faded out until only a faint distortion remained in the air above the sofa.

“Imbecile!”

Claire’d been half hoping he wouldn’t be there at all, but since he was, and since she couldn’t come up with any kind of a believable reason for him not to meet her sister, she called his name.

“Do you see that? The ball goes right by him, but he does not move to kicks it!”

“Kick it.”

“Tabernac! Qui t’a dit que tu puissejouer a balle?”

“Jacques, there’s someone here who wants to meet you.”

He snorted.“Why not? These people, they are asleep!”

Reaching past him, Claire picked up the remote and muted the TV.“Could you focus?”

“Focus?” He looked down through himself. “Ah,d’accord.”

By the time Diana came into the room, his edges had firmed up. His eyes widened and he walked through the sofa toward her.“Another Keeper? And so young and beautiful.”

Recognizing the reaction, Claire sighed.“Jacques, this is my sister Diana.”

“Diana, fair huntress of the bow. Although,” he added thoughtfully, “given how the rest have fallen, no doubt she is now fat and old.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s a long story,” Claire answered before Jacques had a chance. “There, you’ve met him. Let’s leave, so he can get back to his game.”

Jacques glanced speculatively at her through his lashes.“Are you ashamed of me,cherie?”

“It’s not you,” Diana told him. “It’s me.”

“I’m going to the kitchen for a coffee, you kids have a blast working it out. Wait a minute!” Claire jabbed a finger in her sister’s direction. “You just forget I said the word blast.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

The coffee helped. Claire sank into her regular chair at the dining room table and took another long swallow. Showing Diana the hotel had been exhausting. When they ended up in front of room six for the second time, Claire had accused her sister of clouding her mind. The resultant denials had lasted down all three flights of stairs and had been no more believable in the lobby than they had originally.

She’d emptied the mug and begun worrying about what Jacques and Diana were discussing when Dean’s truck drove up. The feeling of impending doom returned. All the hair on her body standing uncomfortably on end, she hurried outside, ostensibly to help him carry in the groceries.

Reaching past him for a pair of canvas bags, she tried to sound nonchalant as she asked if he was all right.

“Sure.”

He sounded all right; depressed maybe, but not doomed. She checked for the taint of dark or eldritch powers and found only that frozen peas were on sale for a dollar thirty-nine.“No trouble at the grocery store?”

“No.”

“No trouble with the truck?”

“No.” Dean held open the back door and stood aside so Claire could enter the building first. “What’s the matter?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay. I understand now why you don’t trust me.”

Teeth gritted, she put the bags down and turned to face him.“No, really, I don’t know.”

“She doesn’t know why I’m here? Or she doesn’t know when I’m leaving? Which?”

Claire’s nostrils flared. She’d intended to tell Dean about her premonition butnot in front of her sister. Diana in the same room with impending doom practically guaranteed Armageddon.“She’ll be leaving on Sunday night because she’s got school on Monday morning and she’s already missed too much of it this year. Dean, this is my sister Diana.”

“Hey.” She waggled a hand in an exaggerated wave.

It was the first time Dean had felt like smiling all morning. Although the sisters looked superficially alike—dark hair and eyes, short and thin—energy popped and fizzed around Diana as though she’d been carbonated. “Hi.”

“So you’re from Newfoundland?”

“That’s right.” Picking up the bag with the produce, he began putting things away.

“I’ve never been there.”

“You’d have noticed,” Claire added, passing over a package of luncheon meat.

“So.” Diana picked up a loaf of bread and examined it critically. “Did you always want to work in a hotel?”

“No. I just needed a job.”

“I hear Augustus Smythe was a real tyrant.”

“He wasn’t so bad.”

“Worse than Claire?”

He stared down into a net bag of cooking onions.“Different.”

“Still, I guess you get to meet a lot of interesting people working here. Vampires and werewolves and…Ow! Claire!”

They were standing about ten feet apart but, obviously, that hadn’t been far enough. Dean had no idea of what was going on and no intention of getting between them. “Yeah,” he said, folding the bags and putting them away, “lots of interesting people.”

“How long are you planning on staying around?”

“Actually…” He took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and turned to face Claire. “Actually, I’ve been thinking of leaving.”

“Leaving?”

“Yeah. You know, getting on with my life.”

Silently congratulating herself for maintaining a neutral expression, Claire wondered why her reflection in his glasses looked as though she’d just been punched in the stomach. “When?”

“Soon. If you want, this can be my two week notice.” When Claire gave no indication of what she wanted, he shrugged. “Nice meeting you, Diana. I’ve got to go make some phone calls.”

“Well, thud,” Diana said, as he disappeared down the basement stairs.

Claire felt as though she were waking up from a bad dream, the kind where she was trying to cross the road but her feet kept sticking in the asphalt and there were two trucks and a red compact car bearing down on her.“What do you mean, thud?”

“Thud. The sound of the other shoe dropping.” Diana straight-armed herself up to sit on the edge of the counter. “A little more than a month ago, Mom said Dean was the most grounded guy she’d ever seen and now look at him. You’ve just cut the ground right out from under him, haven’t you?”

“I have not.”

“He must really dig your looks ’cause it can’t be your personality.”

“Diana!”

“I mean, Jacques is cuter than I expected and, okay, he makes me laugh with those corny pickup lines, but he’s dead. In spite of the glasses, Dean’s big-time beefcake. IfI can see that, you should be able to. You had the perfect opportunity here, and you blew it.”

“The perfect opportunity for what?” Claire demanded.

“For making the best of the situation and building a partnership with a really nice guy. Not my personal cup of tea, but a lot of people would jump at the chance.”

“Why can’t a man and a woman run a hotel together and just be friends?”

“Well, gee, I don’t know, Claire. You’re the one doing the horizontal mambo with the dead guy, you tell me?”

“We’re not talking about Jacques!”

“Sure we are. Enlighten me; if you needed to bed one of them, and obviously you felt a need, why Jacques and not Dean? Don’t answer, I’ll tell you. They’re both bystanders so that’s not it. Is it because Dean’s alive? No, from what I hear that’s never been a problem in the past. Oh wait, could it be because you’re an ageist?”

“A what?”

“You heard me, an age-ist! You think I’m incompetent because I’m younger than you, and you ignore the evidence and think Dean’s a kid for the same reason.”

“I don’t have to stand here and listen to this.”

“True.”

“I have work to do.”

“Okay. Go do it.”

“Fine. I will.” About to leave the kitchen, Claire whirled back around to glare at her sister. “Don’t blow the place up while I’m not watching.”

“I came to help, remember.”

“Oh, you’ve been abig help.”

Leaning back and kicking her heels against the lower cabinets, Diana waited until she heard the door to Claire’s sitting room slam shut before she smiled triumphantly. “Made her think.”

“And I’m all for that,” Austin agreed, jumping up beside her. “As long as youdon’t blow the place up while she’s not watching.”

“I promised I’d stay out of the furnace room.”

“Good for you.”

“How come Claire screwed things up so badly?”

The cat shrugged.“She’s a Keeper. She’s trained to come in post-disaster and deal with the mess, so she has to make a mess of any potential relationships before she feels competent to deal with them.”

“I’m a Keeper and I don’t do that.”

“Yet,” Austin said, looking superior.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Golf had replaced the soccer game and Jacques was gone. Still steaming, Claire turned off the television and stomped through to the bedroom. In order to get far enough from her sister to keep from wringing her neck, she’d have to leave the hotel. Yanking open the wardrobe door, she stepped inside.

Right at the moment, she’d enjoy dealing with a troop of killer Girl Guides.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Still sitting on the counter, Diana searched the cupboards for cookies, found three-quarters of a bag of fudge creams, and sat happily eating them while she worked out a way to fix Claire’s life.

Obviously, Claire needed to leave the hotel.

Since no other Keeper had arrived to take over the site, the site had to be closed.

In order for the site to be closed, the exact parameters of the current seal had to be determined.

“And since there’s only one remaining witness…” Scattering cookie crumbs, Diana jumped down off the counter. “…the logical solution would be to ask her.” She snapped her fingers toward the kitchen and headed for the stairs.

Behind her, the crumbs cleaned themselves up and dropped into the garbage.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Paying only enough attention to keep from tripping over unexpected phenomena, Claire strode deeper into the wardrobe.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

There were, Diana realized, a couple of ways to get into room six. The first involved pulling enough power to melt the locks, but that kind of heat would probably also burn down the building.

She went looking for a set of keys.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

I should have told her flat out that it was none of her damn…darned business. Her mind on other things, Claire moved toward a soft gray light.I am notan ageist.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“Hey, Dean, sorry to bother you, but I wanted to go poke around in the attic ’cept the door’s locked and Claire’s gone off with her keys.”

“Claire’s gone? Where’s she at?”

“Oh, she stomped off into the wardrobe.” Rocking backward and forward, heel to toe, Diana grinned up at him. “We had a fight, and she took off to think about what I said. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Keepers have this tendency to think they’re always right.”

Dean’s brows rose. “Aren’t you a Keeper, then?”

“Well, sure, but that doesn’t make Claire any less of a pedagogue.”

“A what?”

“A know-it-all.” Her eyes gleamed. “Although I’m leaving off a few choice adjectives. The attic?”

“Okay, sure.” He pulled his key ring from his pocket dropped it in Diana’s outstretched palm. “It’s the big black one. You, uh, know about Jacques, then? The ghost? He might be in the attic.”

“Yeah, Claire told me all about him.” Closing her hand around the keys, she reached out and punched Dean lightly on the arm. “Don’t worry, you’re better off without her. She snores.”

Don’t worry?IfClaire told her sister all about Jacques, Dean thought, watching Diana bound back up the basement stairs,what did she tell her about you, boy?

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“Don’t stand around with your thumb up your butt. What do you want?”

Claire’s wandering attention snapped home. She was standing in a long room, lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Directly in front of her, sitting at a library table stacked with shoe boxes, was an older woman with soft white curls, wearing an inkstained flowered smock. “Historian!”

“I know who I am,” the Historian snapped. “Who the hell are you?”

“Claire, Claire Hansen. I’m a Keeper.”

“You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t. Wait a minute.” The Historian’s eyes narrowed, collapsing the pale skin around them into a network of grandmotherly wrinkles. “I remember now, you were here three years, twelve days, eleven hours and forty-two minutes ago looking up some political thing. Did you finish with it?”

“The site?”

“No, democracy.”

“Uh, not yet.”

“Crap. You wouldn’t believe the amount of paperwork it generates.” She sighed and pushed away from the desk, giving Claire her first good look at the computer system nearly buried in shoe boxes.

“Is that one of the new 200MHz processors?”

“New? It was obsolete months ago. History. That’s why it’s here. So, since I tend to discourage social visits, what can I do for you?”

It took Claire a moment to get past her anger at Diana and remember.“Kingston, Ontario, 1945; two Keepers stopped another Keeper from gaining control of Hell.”

“How nice for us all.”

“I need to know how they did it.”

“Damned if I know.” When Claire frowned, the Historian sighed. “Keepers, no sense of humor.” She pointed an inkstained finger along the bookshelves. “The forties are about a hundred yards that way. The year you’re looking for was bound in green.” Then, muttering, “Hansen,” over and over to herself, she opened up a shoe box that had once held a size nine-and-a-half cross trainer, and pulled out a digital tape. The plastic case appeared to be slightly charred. “When you get home, tell your sister I’d like to have a word.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

The padlock slid into her hand with a satisfactory plop. Diana slipped it into her pocket and returned her attention to the key ring. Dean had the master neatly labeled with a piece of adhesive tape.

All she had to do now was push.

Heart pounding, she gripped the doorknob.

I’ll just bring Aunt Sara up to partial consciousness, ask her a few questions, and take her back down again. Piece of cake.

What good was power if she never got to use it? Claire was going to be so pissed when she got home and found her younger sister had all the answers.

Sara, herself, turned out to be a bit of a disappointment.

While the old adage,the more human evil looks the more dangerous it is, was undeniably true, Diana had been expecting at least some outward indication of the heinous crime Sara had attempted—small horns, visible scars, overdue library books—but from the look of things, she hadn’t even been having a bad hair day. The only incongruous point about her whole body was that her very red lips glistened, dust free.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

…but had there not been problems with the sacrificial virgin, the Keepers would never have arrived in time. Not until Aunt Sara had Margaret Anne Groseter suspended over the pit and had made the first cut did she realize that the girl, although only fifteen was not suitable.

Feeling as though the big green binder of 1945, Kin to Kip, had just smacked her on the back of the head, Claire read that paragraph again.

Margaret Anne Groseter.

“Mr. Smythe told me that she lived in the house next door her whole life. He said it used to be Groseter’s Rooming House and Mr. Abrams was a roomer who didn’t move fast enough and got broadsided.”

“It’s not possible.”

For Mrs. Abrams to have been fifteen in 1945, she had to havebeen born in 1930. Which would put her in her late sixties. With a virtual thumb blocking the bouffant orange hair of a mind’s eye view, Claire supposed it was possible.

“Iused to be quite progressive in my younger days.”

It was, Claire reflected, occasionally terrifying knowing the exact measure of the fulcrum that Fate used to lever the world.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Stepping through the shield, Diana had a momentary qualm. The emanations rising from the sleeper were stronger than she’d expected. It wouldn’t be easy accessing power surrounded by such potent malevolence.

“On the other hand,” she cracked her fingers and moved up to the head of the bed, “if it were easy, everybody’d be doing it.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

…however, it took the combined strength of both Keepers to achieve the necessary balance of power between Sara and the pit, and even then she nearly broke free of their restraints.

Given the urgency of the situation, the Keepers on the scene felt it best to use a slam, bam, thank you, ma’am approach.

The Historian clearly believed in making history accessible to the masses.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Reaching carefully through the middle possibilities for power, Diana trickled a tiny amount into the matrix that held Sara asleep.

As the patterns in the dark emanations changed, a howling Austin raced into the room, trailing a cloud of shed fur.“Diana, stop! You don’t know what you’re doing!”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

I TOLD YOU NOT TO WORRY ABOUT THE SECOND KEEPER. SHE’S HELPING US!

DO WHAT?

SHUT UP AND BE READY.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

The cat gathered himself to leap just as Sara’s lips parted and drew a long breath in past the edges of yellowed teeth.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

NOW!

At the top of an infinite number of voices, Hell shouted Sara’s name up the conduit.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

With the seepage added to Diana’s power, the balance tipped.

Sara opened her eyes.

Her own eyes wide, Diana tried to block the power surge. One second. Two. A force too complicated for her shields to stop slammed into her, dropping her to her knees.

Yowling, Austin landed on the end of the bed.

Sara smiled and raised a finger.

The energy flare caught him full in the face, lifted him into the air, and smashed him against the wall between the two windows. The first bounce dropped him into the remains of the fern. The second dropped him unresisting to the floor.

“NO!” Unable to stand, Diana crawled toward the body. A warm hand clamped down on one shoulder stopped her cold.

“I don’t think so.”

As Sara’s grip dragged her around to face the bed, Diana put up no resistance. When Sara’s eyes met hers, she grabbed for all the power she could handle and smashed it down on the other Keeper like a club.

Sara didn’t even bother swatting it aside. She absorbed it, twisted it, and wrapped it around Diana like a shroud. “My mouth tastes like the inside of a sewer,” she muttered, running her tongue over her teeth. “Christ on churches, but I could use a cigarette.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

…unfortunately, as both Keepers were drawn from troops about to leave for the European theater, this temporary solution…

“Claire Hansen?”

“In a minute. I’ve almost got it”

“Suit yourself, Keeper, but I just got an e-mail telling me to reactivate that bit of history you’re reading.”

Claire looked up from the binder.“What do you mean reactivate?”

“Probably got a couple of loose ends tying themselves up.”

“Probably?” Claire scrambled to her feet. Any loose ends had come untied since she’d left. “What’s happening?”

“How should I know? I don’t mess with the present I do history. Put the book back on the shelf before you…” The Historian sighed and moved a black three onto a red four as Claire raced away through the ages. “And they wonder why I don’t like company.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“Would it have hurt them to have dusted me on occasion? I don’t think so.” Lifting a thrashing Diana about three feet off the floor, Sara tied the laces of the young Keeper’s black high-topstogether and used them as a handle to drag her through the air toward the door.

Chewing on the power gag that held her silent, Diana dug her fingers into the doorjamb.

“Let go or lose them, your choice.” It was clearly a literal offer. “I, personally, don’t care. I know what you’re thinking,” she continued as Diana reluctantly released the wood. “You’re thinking that all you have to do is delay me and sooner or later more Keepers will arrive. Well, they won’t. And do you know why? Of course not, you’re a child….”

Tiny wisps of steam rose up from Diana’s ears.

Sara smiled and ignored them.“…you couldn’t possibly comprehend how I work. Over fifty years ago, two interfering busybodies put a shield around me. Specifically, around me. It’s still there. No one will know I’m awake until it’s much too late.”

As the sound of Sara’s gloating receded down the hall, several small, multicolored figures came out from behind various pieces of furniture and moved purposefully toward the limp body of the cat.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Running full out, Claire still hadn’t reached the end of the bookshelves.

“Stop thinking about the past!”

Distorted by echoes, it could have been anyone’s voice. Claire didn’t waste time turning to check. She needed a door. She couldn’t get home without going through a door.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“Hello, handsome. Are there any more at home like you?”

Pressed up against the wall in the lobby. Dean had a sudden memory of a fish flopping about the gaff that pinned it to the bottom of the boat. It didn’t stop him from struggling, but it did give him a pretty good idea of how successful that struggle would be.

When he finally sagged, exhausted, he felt the sharp points of fingernails lift his chin off his chest.

“Very nice,” Sara cooed. “I’ve always been a big fan of flexing and sweating.” Slipping her fingers into the front pocket of his jeans, she pulled the denim away from his body and dropped the keys into the pouch. “Thanks so very much for your help. I don’t suppose you have a cigaretteon you?”

Dean shook his head and dragged himself out of the pale depths of her eyes. They were same gray/blue as the heart of an iceberg only less compassionate. He nodded toward Diana’s thrashing body. “She said she was going into the attic. I thought Keepers couldn’t lie.”

“Bystanders can’t lie to a Keeper, but we’re actually very good at lying to…” Sara ducked and the old leather-bound registration book whipped over her head and slammed corner first into the wall. As the ancient binding gave way and yellowed pages fluttered to the ground, she measured the dent between thumb and forefinger. “Nice try, Jacques. I’m amazed you managed that much ectoplasmic energy.” Leaning toward Dean, she whispered, “He must’ve gotten lucky in the last couple of days.”

Eyes watering, Dean turned his head away. Her breath would’ve peeled the paint off the gut cans at the processing plant.

“Hey!” A fingernail opened a small cut in his cheek. “You sleep for that long and see what kind of a morning mouthyou wake up with.”

The brass bell rose off the counter and smacked into her shoulder.

“This is getting tiresome, Jacques.” She turned to face the office. “Technically, I should have dust and ash for this, but we’ll just have to make do with an abundance of dust.” A gentle push sent Diana down the hall toward the basement stairs. With both hands free, Sara scraped a bit of fuzz off the front of her skirt and drew two symbols in the air.

Dean braced for bad poetry, but he needn’t have bothered.

Both symbols glowed red.

Jacques snapped into focus between the symbols. Eyes wide with terror, he twisted and fought, and when Sara smacked her palms together, he exploded into a thousand tiny lights that scattered in all directions.

Praying silently, Dean worked his left hand free and snagged two of the lights as they went by. They burned as they touched his skin, but he closed his fingers around them and faced Sara with both hands curled into fists.

“Well,” she said, “that takes care of him. You, however, I can use.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

SHE’S GOING TO TRY IT AGAIN!

WOULD YOU STOP WORRYING! A FEW DECADES AT HER BECK AND CALL AND THEN WE’RE FREE.

AND YOU THINK SHE’LL WANT HELL WAITING FOR HER WHEN SHE DIES?

After a long silence, Hell muttered, YOU MIGHT HAVE BROUGHT THAT UP BEFORE.

SHE’S SEALING THE PIT! WE CAN’T STOP HER!

NO. NOT FROM IN HERE….

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

First there were no doors, and then there was nothing but doors. Claire’d charged into three saunas, two walk-in freezers, something animated she couldn’t identify, and more hotel rooms than she wanted to count.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“Yoo hoo! Cornelia! Diana! I was taking Baby out for his walkies and I just popped by to see if you…” Mrs. Abrams froze on the threshold, her mouth opening and closing but no sound emerging. Finally she managed a strangled, “I remember you!”

“That was an oversight on somebody’s part,” Sara observed as she tied the laces of Dean’s work boots together.“Please, come in and close the door.”

One hand pressed against the polyester swell of her bosom, Mrs. Abrams shuffled forward.

“And the door,” Sara prodded. “Don’t forget to close it.”

Although her movements were pretty much limited to impotent thrashing, Diana managed to bring herself closer to the wall. Twisting left, she slammed her heels into the plaster.

Mrs. Abrams jerked at the sound and took a step backward, toward escape.

Sara raised a hand, and Diana found herself wrapped even more tightly in power. All her strength, all her attention, focused on drawing air through constricted passageways.

“Margaret Anne. Close the door.”

Margaret Anne Abrams, n?e Groseter, had been fifteen the last time Sara had commanded her. A lot of water had passed under the bridge since then, and little old ladies were not without power of their own. Taking a breath so deep it stood each orange hair on end, she rallied. “Don’t you talk to me in that tone of voice, young woman! I’ll have you know that I’m the head of the Women’s Auxiliary at our church and I’ve five times been volunteer of the year at the hospital. Look at you, you’re all covered in dust. If I were you I’d be ashamed to go out in that…” Her voice trailed off as Sara’s pale eyes narrowed and she expelled the last of the breath in a squeaky cry for help. “Baby!”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Secured by a leather leash to his own front porch. Baby lifted his wedge-shaped head off his paws.

He heard his master calling.

Lips pulled back off his teeth, the big Doberman surged up onto his feet and out to the end of his leash. The leather held.

The porch, on the other hand, surrendered to the inevitable.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Claire knew she was close. She could feel the hotel, but a dozen doors remained between her and the end of the hall, and she couldn’t shake the fear that time, usually so fluid outside reality, had decided to march to a linear drummer. In other words, it was passing. Quickly.

Behind the first door to her right, sat a tiger. Fortunately, judging from the debris around its cell, it had just eaten.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“You’re only delaying the inevitable,” Sara muttered, as with a crooked finger she drew Mrs. Abrams farther into the lobby. “There’s nothing you can summon, old woman, that can hurt…” Her eyes widened.

Baby had lived his whole life for this moment. Years of frustration propelled him over the threshold in one mighty leap.

The remains of the porch swept Mrs. Abrams off her feet, tangling her in the twisted wreckage.

Baby’s front paws slammed into Sara’s chest.

She hit the floor, bounced once in a cloud of dust and lost the collar of her jacket as the extra weight on the end of Baby’s leash stopped him a mere fraction of an inch short.

Breathing heavily, the Keeper scrambled to her feet careful to stay clear of the snapping mouthful of too-long, too-pointed, and too-many teeth.

Fixated on her throat Baby missed his chance at a number of other body parts as they passed.

A wave of Sara’s hand closed the door. The sound it made, the sort of sound that put a final period on both rescue and escape, was almost a clich?.

“Margaret Anne, as much as I’d love to finish what we started so long ago, I’ve got all the sacrificial bodies I need.” She raised her voice to be heard over Baby’s frantic snarling. “This time, there’s no mistake about the qualifications.”

Dean hung limp in the air, but Diana took a moment out from breathing to glare.

Sara ignored them both.“Please, go to sleep, Margaret Anne.” As Mrs. Abrams slumped forward, Sara glanced down at the Doberman, still desperately trying to rip her to pieces. “You,” she said, “have got a single-minded way of going after a goal I rather like.”

Nearly throttling himself, Baby made an unsuccessful lunge for her ankle.

“In fact you remind me of me. Good dog.”

The words meant nothing. The tone sent Baby into a frenzy of barking.

Dragging Dean and Diana behind her, Sara started down the basement stairs.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

With seven doors to go, Claire paused in the center of the hall.

She could hear barking.

The distinctive, just barely sane barking of a big dog forced to live a lapdog’s life. Who, with the fraction of brain that hadn’t been bred out of it, intended to get even.

Laying her ear against each door only long enough to check for a rise in volume, Claire moved quickly down the hall.

Three doors. Four.

She opened the fifth door and flung herself out of the wardrobe. The volume of the barking didn’t so much rise as expand to fill every available space with sound.

Baby was in the hotel.

Under normal circumstances, that would have been a problem, but being torn apart by a psychotic Doberman would be significantly preferable to life with Sara controlling Hell. Claire leaped over a pile of laundry, raced through the sitting room, and slid to a halt in the office.

Baby ignored her. Toenails scrabbling against the lobby floor, he dragged the ruin of the porch and the snoring Mrs. Abrams another inch closer to the basement.

Unwilling to scan the hotel lest she give her presence away, Claire decided to follow Baby’s lead. Adding up the dog, the porch, and Mrs. Abrams, the odds were good Austin hadn’t been responsible; not one hundred percent, but good.

Her back against the wall, she slid past, losing nothing more significant than a percentage of her hearing, and sped down the basement stairs, grateful that Baby’s barking would cover any possible noise she might make.

The door to the furnace room was open.

Her heart beating so loudly she could hardly hear herself think, Claire paused by the washing machine and reached for calm.

A Keeper without self-control could control neither the power accessed nor where in the possibilities that power was accessed from.

Evil favored the chaotic mind.

Whites and colors should be sorted before washing.

Claire blinked, breaking contact with the box of laundry detergent. This was as calm as she was going to get.

Wiping damp palms against her thighs, she slipped behind the masking angle of the furnace room door and peered inside.

Still wearing the dusty clothes she’d been put to sleep in so many years before, Sara stood on air over the pit, back to the door, both hands raised, head bowed. Her fingertips were red where the blood had dripped down from her nails.

Suspended horizontally over the pit in front of her, shirtless, blood dripping from a number of shallow cuts on his chest, Dean appeared to be unconscious but still alive. It took a moment to spot Diana wrapped in overlapping bands of power and propped, mummylike, against the wall.

Wait a minute…Dean was over the pit and Diana was up against the wall?

Claire took a closer look at the power holding her sister. Most of it held her in place and kept her quiet but threaded throughout it, head to toe, was a conduit set up to pour Diana’s considerable power into Sara—already in place because there’d be no opportunity to stop the invocation and set it up later.

Which meant that Dean was over the pit because…

No wonder he was always blushing.

But at twenty? Looking like a young, albeit myopic, god?

Hey! she told herself sternly,now is not the time. The problem was, it was easier, much, much easier to think about Dean than to come up with a plan to save the world.

It had taken two Keepers to stop Sara the first time she’d tried this. How could she possibly do it alone?

Not alone—if I can reach Diana without attracting Sara’s attention, I can use the conduit myself. With Diana’s power joined to mine, Sara’s extra twenty years of experience shouldn’t count for much.

As the evil Keeper began a new chant, Claire realized that were two small problems with her plan. The first was that Sara sealed Hell. With Sara removed, Hell would surge free. Claire would have to sign herself onto the site so that her power would become the seal when Sara’s power was removed. Which meant, if there wasn’t power enough left to close the hole, she’d be stuck here. In the hotel. For the rest of her life.

And Dean was leaving.

She didn’t even know where he kept the toaster.

The second problem was that Sara also held Dean. Literally. Attacked from behind, Sara would let go and Dean would fall into the pit.

When she hooked up with Diana, Sara would know. She’d have to strike immediately. If she saved Dean first, Sara would have time to marshal a defense.

If she let Dean fall…

What point in saving the world if she let Dean fall?

She’d just have to find a way to save him, and that was that. Timing her footsteps to Baby’s frenzied barking, she crept down the stairs toward Diana.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Down in the pit. Hell gloried in the strength it gained from each drop of sacrificial blood.

THERE ON THE STAIRS, the rest of Hell pointed out to itself, IT’S THE OTHER KEEPER.

SO?

SO SHOULD WE TELLHER?

Another drop of blood evaporated in the heat. Hell breathed it metaphorically in and laughed. YOU MEAN, SHOULD WE HELPHER? WE DON’T HELP. ANYONE.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Baby had managed to drag the whole mess another three inches toward the basement stairs. Tongue hanging out, collar cutting into the thick muscles of his neck, he kept barking and pulling in the certain belief that he had his enemy on the run.

And then, in the fraction of a second between one bark and the next, a familiar voice told him to be quiet.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

The barking stopped. Claire froze.

Sara drew her fingernails along Dean’s side. As blood welled up from four parallel lines, she began a new chant.

Claire recognized the guttural Latin. There wasn’t much time left. Lower lip caught between her teeth, she started moving again.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

A sterile dressing wrapped around his head and over his left eye, Austin had the rakish look of a wounded pirate. Breathing heavily, slightly scorched, he lay on his side on a litter made of an old silk scarf carried by twelve mice wearing multicolored frock coats, breeches, and tricorn hats.

This was so far outside Baby’s experience, he sat panting and stared.

Still a safe distance away, the mice stopped and Austin opened his one good eye.“Somebody,” he said without lifting his head, “is going to have to undo that collar.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Dean didn’t so much regain consciousness as hijack it; consciousness wanted nothing to do with the whole situation.

HOW YA DOIN’ GORGEOUS?

He’d have jerked back at the sound of the voice, but he couldn’t figure out how to operate his body. Which scared him a lot more than Hell. He had a friend, Paul Malan, who’d gone into the boards at the wrong angle and now Paul played ball hockey from a wheelchair.

HE’S IGNORING US!

CAN HE DO THAT?

HEY, BUDDY! IN CASE YOU HAVEN’T NOTICED, THIS IS A LOT WORSE THAN BALL HOCKEY!

Thankful that somewhere along the way he’d lost his glasses, Dean ignored the voices because Claire had asked him to. She’d even said, “please.”

He blinked, hit by a sudden realization. The voice he’d heard yesterday in the hall had been the voice of the pit.

BINGO.

And he’d listened. He’d hesitated.

OH, FOR…SIX SECONDS OUT OF TWENTY SQUEAKY CLEAN YEARS!

He deserved to go to Hell.

YOU’RE KIDDING, RIGHT?

Except he didn’t want to die.

Over, or maybe under, the voices in his head, he could hear the drone of words chanted in a language he didn’t understand. Slowly, working within the invisible bands that held him, he turned until he could see along his left arm. Gazing past his clenched fist, out over the edge of the pentagram, he could see Diana Hansen. She was just a kid, he realized, she’d never have believed that she’d set this whole mess in motion. If by some miracle he got out of this, he was after kicking her right in the butt.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Her back against the wall, barely daring to breathe, Claire crept the last few feet to her sister’s side. Once she took Diana’s hand, she’d control both their power.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Dean’s eyes widened as Claire slid into his field of vision.

Rescue!

Claire saw the word in Dean’s eyes and flinched.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Dean saw her flinch.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Sara chanted louder, spitting out consonants. The pentagram began to glow.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Maybe because he was suspended over a hole to Hell. Maybe because he’d been breathing the fumes of his own evaporating blood. Maybe because he’d spent almost a year next to a metaphysical accident site.

Maybe just because he could read it on Claire’s face.

Dean knew.

She couldn’t save him and the world.

He’d hesitated.

He was being given a chance to make up for that.

Hell could have him, but it couldn’t have the world.

Do it, he told Claire silently.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Claire shook her head. There had to be another way.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

The pentagram began to dissolve.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

It was almost worth it to know she was willing to risk the world for him.

Do it.

Because she had no other choice, she did.

Claire grabbed Diana’s hand and opened the conduit Quickly retracing the pentagram, she etched her own name into the pattern.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Sara turned.

Dean fell.

Claire hit the other Keeper with everything both she and Diana had.

Suddenly finding herself in a sphere of blinding white light, Sara flung up a bloodstained hand to cover her eyes. Lips too red parted…

…and she laughed.

Designed to prevent any sort of metaphysical power from waking a Keeper bent on cataclysmic evil, the shield Sara had worn for more than fifty years held.

Stepping down to the floor, Sara straightened her jacket and nodded toward Diana.“I thought our friend here too young for this site. Not,” she added after a critical inspection of Claire, “that you’re so much older.” Her smile was frankly patronizing. “You killed him for nothing, you know. Power can’t pass into this shield.”

Claire dragged Diana aside as a bolt of red light blew chunks of rock out of the wall.

Sara’s smile broadened. “How nice for me that it passes out of it just fine.”

Teeth clenched against rising nausea, Claire stepped forward, but before she could speak, Sara raised her hand again.

“Oh, yes, you can enter the shield physically, pummel me if you like, but don’t expect me to stand here and allow…”

Which was when Baby launched himself from the top of the stairs.

Sara had time to scream as she fell back but only just.

Clinging to each other for support, Claire and Diana walked to the edge of the pentagram and cautiously leaned forward.

GOT HER!

OW! BE CAREFUL, SHE KICKS!

Claire felt her power fill the pentagram, holding Hell off from the world. That was it, then. A lifetime in the Elysian Fields Guest House.

Diana swallowed and found her voice.“Poor Ba…”

THAT’S OUR PUPPY! IS HE GLAD HE’S HOME?

WHO’S A GOOD DOGGIE-WOGGIE, THEN? WHO’S A GOOD BOY!

“Doggie-woggie?” Claire repeated.

Before Hell could answer, Diana dug her nails into Claire’s arm. “Look!She’s still part of the pattern. If you tie the pentagram to her before it fades, she’ll pull the hole in after her!”

Still buzzing from the power she’d passed, it took Claire a heartbeat to understand. “I can close the site?”

“Yes!”

“Forever?”

“Yes!”

Sara’s name had begun to fray. “No.”

“Are you out of your mind? This may be your only chance!”

“No!” Claire yanked her arm free. “Dean’s in there and I’m not closing that hole until he finds his way out.” When Diana began another protest, she cut her off. “Hell can’t hold a willing sacrifice. They have to let him go.”

“They do?”

“If you paid more attention to what was going on and less to what you just happen to be powerful enough to do…” She bit it off. Now was not the time. “Yes. They do.”

“Okay, fine, but they’re not going to help him find his way or give him a boost out, and Sara’s name is already fading! You haven’t got time to wait. Don’t let his sacrifice be in vain.”

Claire reached for more power and poured it into the pentagram. From where she was standing, it was a long reach to the middle of the possibilities. Her vision was starting to blur, and she wasn’t entirely certain she could feel her toes. “I can hold it,” she snarled through clenched teeth. “I can hold it for as long as it takes.”

“All right.” Diana shrugged out of her jean jacket. “Then I’m going in after him.”

“Oh, no, you’re not!” Claire had a strong suspicion she sounded like their mother. At the moment, she didn’t much care. “This isn’t like going across the border for cheap electronics! You want to help, reactivate the conduit and start feeding me…” The “S” tried to straighten out. She forced it back into a curve. “…power.”

“That’d make me part of the seal and we could be stuck here together indefinitely. You want him out, someone has to go and get him.”

“Not you!” A subliminal growl snapped the second “a” back into line. “You’d never survive.”

“But Dean…”

“Dean has the strength of ten because his heart is pure.” Which was when Claire drew a second conclusion from Sara’s choice of sacrifice. Fortunately for Diana, she had other things to deal with at the moment. “The rules protect him.”

“What rules?”

“I know this is hard to believe at seventeen, but there are always rules.” She definitely couldn’t feel her toes and was starting to have doubts about her entire left foot. “It takes extraordinary conditions for the living to pass over and then come…The living!” Eyes locked on the pentagram, Claire grabbed her sister’s arm. “Find Jacques!”

“Jacques’ gone.She blew him into ectoplasmic particles.”

“Then gather him!”

“Me?”

“You’re always complaining how no one ever lets you do anything. Just be careful where you’re pulling power from this close to the pit.”

“You had to ruin it with advice,” Diana complained as she started to spin. “Couldn’t just assume I’d do it right.”

All things considered, Claire felt she had precedent for that assumption, but she let it go as the wind began to swirl around the furnace room. A moment later, a stream of tiny lights poured down from the basement.

“There’s two missing,” Diana panted as the lights refused to coalesce. “I don’t know where they are.”

Vaguely Jacques-shaped, the lights dove into the pit.

“NO!” Claire reached out but caught only a single light.

Teetering as the room continued to spin, Diana stared at her sister in astonishment.“I thought that’s what you wanted him to do?”

“He doesn’t know that! He doesn’t know Dean’s down there. Jacques has still got connections toher, she could’ve dragged him down.”

“So what do we do now?”

Claire gritted her teeth, clenched her fist around the single piece of Jacques she’d managed to save, and dug in. “We wait.”

“Wait?” Diana’s voice rose nearly an octave. “For how long?”

“Until we can’t wait any…” All of a sudden, Claire could feel a familiar twisted touch groping up toward the pentagram.“She’s using her name to pull herself free. Link with me!”

“No! I’ll be stuck with you, holding that thing, and there’ll be two Keepers lost because you can’t let Dean go. Because you feel guilty about how he felt about you when you didn’t feel the same for him and turned to Jacques, who you can’t possibly have a future with instead.”

“Diana! This is no time for relationship therapy!”

“You’ve lost them both. Let them go beforeshe starts this whole thing all over again.”

Her connection to her name had strengthened. The sound of triumphant laughter boiled up over the edges of the pit.

“I’m not leaving them there!”

Diana laid her hand on her sister’s arm and to Claire’s surprise her voice was gentle as she said, “You’re a Keeper. Seal the s…son of a bitch.”

Down in the pit something that had once been Mrs. Abrams’ Baby barked as Dean rose up into the furnace room surrounded by a cloud of tiny lights. When both his feet were on the ground, and before either Claire or Diana could get their mouths shut to say anything, he opened his left hand.

Two lights few out.

Claire peeled her fingers back off her palm. The final light spun up into the air.

Jacques rematerialized.

Dean coughed once and stumbled forward. Together, Claire and Diana eased him down onto the bottom step, then Claire turned back toward the pit.

She could feel Sara clawing her way up her name, closer and closer to the edge of the possibilities. Holding tightly to the seal, Claire broke all the remaining links but Sara’s.

The building shook as the pentagram, etched into solid rock, slid toward the center of itself. The inner edges disappeared. Flickering through the visible spectrum and one or two colors beyond, hundred-year-old words of summoning poured into the hole.

“Claire!” Stretched out like smoke in a wind, Jacques streamed toward Hell, caught in the binding.

Even if there was time, unraveling the binding would free Sara’s name.

“I don’t think so…” Wielding power like a sword, Diana slashed through the pattern where Jacques was caught.

Not subtle, but effective.

As the points flipped up and over, Claire broke her name free.

CURSES, FOILED AGAI…

The unmarked bedrock of the furnace room floor steamed gently.

Diana let out a breath she couldn’t remember holding. “Wow.”

Dean jerked to his feet as Claire swayed.“You okay?”

Actually, she had no idea how she was, but okay would do for the moment.“Sure. What about you?”

He frowned. Until Jacques had appeared out of the darkness, he’d stood on the slope leading upward toward the glow of what were probably the fires of the damned and had known he’d been forgotten. Sure, Hell was busy with Sara, but still…“I hesitated,” he said.

Claire felt her lip curl.“Get over it. You were willing to die to save the world. You’re a terrific person!”

“You mean that?”

She cupped his face between her palms and moved close enough that he could see her clearly without his glasses.“Yes. I have never meant anything more in my life.”

Keepers lied quite easily to bystanders; but he believed her. The load of guilt lifted off his shoulders.“Thanks.” Pulling free, he took a step back. “There’s something I need to do.”

“Ow!” Diana rubbed the spot where Dean had applied the side of his work boot. “What did you kick me for?”

His silence said it all.

“Oh. Never mind.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“You’ve done a wonderful job, Claire, but are you certain you don’t want me to come to Kingston and check things out?”

“Quite certain, Mom. The site is closed.” Claire had put the furnace room through every test she could think of, and she’d even allowed Diana to come up with a few. To all intents and purposes, there’d never been a hole to Hell. Or an Aunt Sara. “Dean drove Diana to the train station. She’ll stay with friends in Toronto tonight and head home first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Well, I’m sure that’s the plan.” Martha Hansen sounded doubtful.

“Don’t worry, she gave me her word she’d go straight home.”

“Claire Beth Hansen! Did you put a geas on your sister?”

Claire grinned.“Yes.”

“Good. But how on earth did you manage it?”

“I agreed with her when she opened her defense with ‘all’s well that ends well,’ and while she was still reeling in disbelief I slipped it by.”

“Youagreed with her?”

Her grin broadening, Claire explained.“I had every intention of tearing a strip off her for being so adolescently arrogant, thinking she could wake Sara without consequences, but then I realized that she was right. Keepers go where they’re needed. The two of us in combination were needed to close down the site, so it’s entirely possible that everything that happened was intended to happen. Diana, me, Dean, Jacques; even Hell had a hand in its own demise by squeezing a Hell Hound through the tiny window of opportunity between Sara’s original capture and her power being used to temporarily seal the site.”

The phone remained silent.

“Mom?”

“If Diana’s reckless disregard for consequence was necessary to help save the world, she’s going to be impossible to live with.” Claire very nearly felt her mother’s sigh. “Still, I expect your father and I can come up with a few things to say to her when she gets home.” Sara’s choice of sacrifice had not been elaborated on, but parents were perfectly capable of drawing their own conclusions. “You said that Dean was driving her to the station; how is he? Is it safe for him to drive?”

“He’s fine, Mom. Really. He was a willing sacrifice, completely ignorant of what that meant, and he believed that in falling he’d burn in Hell forever. With that kind of karma, he could’ve just walked through the possibilities to the light. If Jacques hadn’t found him so quickly and brought him back to the basement, I expect he’d have started tidying the place up.”

“What do you mean, he had no doubt he’d burn in Hell forever? He’s been living next to the site for almost a year completely unaffected.”

She’d been hoping she’d slipped that by. “There was an incident.” Leaving out the bits that Diana would be sure to embellish on later, Claire explained about the elevator and Faith’s boyfriend. “He hesitated.”

On the other end of the phone, Martha snorted.“Oh, for…”

“That’s what I said. But this whole sacrifice thing grounded him again. He’s as good as new.”

“I see.” The pause spoke volumes. “What happens now?”

Claire chose to misunderstand.“Now, I expect I’ll be summoned somewhere else. Austin says I’ll be able to leave by tomorrow, that help is on the way.”

“Claire…”

“He’s down to his last life, you know. But he says he’s not worried.”

“Very well. If that’s the way you want it. Give Austin our love.”

An uncomfortable moment later, Claire hung up and sighed.

What happens now?

Jacques was waiting in her sitting room. He had to know she’d be leaving—that she couldn’t stay and he couldn’t come with her.

This wasn’t going to be a pleasant interview.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“Jacques?”

He stopped pacing and turned to face her.“V?tre m?re, your mama, is she good?”

“She’s fine.”

“Bon.” Drifting out through the coffee table, he waved a hand at the sofa.“Please,cherie, I have things to say.”

Since she wasn’t looking forward to saying the things she had to, Claire sat. If listening was all that she could do for him, she would at least do that.

“You are ready?D’accord.” He rubbed his hands against his thighs, a living gesture Claire’d never seen him make before. “I am decided, it is time I move on.”

You’releaving me? Somehow, Claire managed not to voice her initial reaction.

His expression grew serious.“I have seen Hell and I do not belong there, or they would not have allow me to leave. There is not enough evil in me for them to hold.” The corners of his mouth twitched up. “It helped that you held my heart.”

When he smiled, Claire had to smile with him.“That wasn’t your heart.”

“Non? Ah, well, close enough.” He took a step back and held out his hand. “Will you help me?”

So much for her speech about change being constant. Claire ripped up her mental notes, stood, and laid her palm against Jacques’, his fingers wrapping around hers like cool smoke. “Of course. When?”

“Now. I have found the courage to faceher. I have found the courage to descend into Hell forl’?me, the soul, of Dean, who I do not even entirely like. I think while I have found my courage, I should use him, it, to face what is on the other side.”

“Did you want to wait and say goodbye to Dean?”

“No. You tell him I sayau revoir, adieu, bonne chance, and that if he does not use it, it will fall off.”

“Maybe you’d better stay a few more minutes and tell him yourself.”

Jacques shook his head, a strand of translucent hair falling into his eyes.“No,cherie. Now. There has always been—will always be—an excuse to stay. Dean, he will understand. It is a guy thing.”

“A guy thing?”

He shrugged.“I hear it on Morningside.” One hand still wrapped about hers, he laid the other against her cheek. “Thank you for the night we shared. I think I saw heaven a little bit in your arms.”

“You think?”

“I am fairly certain.” He grinned. “When you talk of me, could you perhaps exaggerate a little?” When she nodded, her cheek moving up and down through his hand, he squared his shoulders under the heavy sweater. “D’accord. Then I am ready.”

Claire reached through the possibilities and opened the way. Squinting a little, she stepped back to give him room.“Just follow the light.”

His features almost dissolving in the brilliance, he took a step away from the world, and then he paused.

“Au revoir, cherie.”

“Goodbye, Jacques.”

“Si j’etais en vie, je t’aurais aime.”

And then he was gone.

“If were alive, I would have loved you?”

Blinking away the spots in front of her eyes, Claire tried to focus on the cat.

Austin carefully climbed onto the hassock and sat down.“Not a bad exit line.”

“You’re supposed to be resting?”

“I am resting, I’m sitting.”

“You should go to the vet.”

“No, thank you.” He twitched his tail around his toes and his lip curled under the lower edge of the bandage. “It’s been taken care of.”

“By the mice?”

“Are you calling me a liar?”

Locked in the gaze from his remaining eye, Claire shook her head.“No. Not as such. But if I may point out, I haven’t seen any mice.”

“You haven’t seen Elvis either.”

Claire glanced over at the silent bust.“So?”

“So that doesn’t mean he’s not working in a 7-11 somewhere. Did you take care of Mrs. Abrams?”

“She thinks Baby died a natural death about six months ago, and now that she’s done mourning, she’s going to get a poodle. But while we’re on the subject; how long did you know Baby was a Hell Hound?”

“I knew it from the beginning.”

“Well, why didn’t you tell me?”

Austin snorted.“I’m a cat.” Before Claire could demand a further explanation, he cocked his head. “There’s Dean’s truck. Maybe you’d better go take care of that last loose end.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“The hotel is yours if you want it.”

Dean paused, one hand on the basement door, and turned to face Claire.“No, thank you. I don’t want it. You’ll be leaving?”

She nodded.“Soon. Tomorrow, probably. Austin says that someone’ll be along.”

“So you pretty much knew my answer before you asked?”

“Pretty much. But I still had to ask. How long…”

“I guess I’ll wait until that someone shows up and play it by ear.”

“Okay. Good. Um, Jacques is gone. He said to tell you goodbye and that you’d understand why he didn’t wait.”

“Sure.”

When the silence stretched beyond the allotted time for a response, Dean nodded, once, and went downstairs.

As the sound of his work boots faded into the distance, Claire pounded her forehead against the wall. That hadn’t gone well. There were a hundred things she wanted to say to Dean, starting with,Thanks for driving Diana to the train station, and moving on up to:Thanks for sacrificing yourself to save the world. Somewhere in the middle she’d try to fit inMaybe you and I…

“Maybe he and I what?” she asked herself walking back to the office and jerking her backpack down off the hook. “Could be friends? Could be more than friends?” Yanking the cables from her printer, she shoved them into the pack. “He’s an extraordinary guy. Not brilliant maybe, but good, kind, gorgeous, accepting…” The printer followed the cables. “…not to mention alive.”

Maybe she’d had that rare chance that few Keepers ever got and for whatever reason, pride or blatant stupidity, she’d blown it.

What happens now?

The site was sealed.

She was leaving.

He was leaving.

It was over.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Folding a pair of jeans neatly along the crease, Dean set them into his hockey bag. He wanted to be ready to go as soon as possible after that someone arrived.

“Austin says that someone’ll be along.”

He’d never be able to look at a cat without wondering. As for the rest of it, well, he knew who he was again, so the rest of it didn’t matter.

A stack of white briefs, also neatly folded, tucked in beside the jeans.

There’d been a lot left unsaid upstairs in the hall. Claire’d been looking sort of aloof and unapproachable, but also twisting a lock of hair around one finger. Dean had to smile at the combination as he added all but one pair of socks to the bag.

Diana had given him continual advice on the way to the station. About half of it, he hadn’t understood.

It didn’t much matter.

Claire was leaving.

He was leaving.

At least she hadn’t offered to rearrange his memories. He’d have fought to remember the last eight weeks.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“What in tarnation have you done to my hotel?”

Claire, who’d been waiting in the office, stared down at Augustus Smythe, opened and closed her mouth, and finally managed a stunned, “You?”

“Who else would be willing to run this rattrap?”

“But…”

“Used to be a hole to Hell in the basement. That sort of thing has to be monitored.” He shrugged out of his overcoat and tossed it up on the counter. “They say I’m retired, with full pension for years of service rendered, but I know better.” Bushy brows drawn in, he glared around at the renovations. “So you opened up the elevator; lose anyone?”

“No.”

“Tried it since the hole closed?”

“No, but…”

“Never mind. I’ll convince that harpy next door to go for a ride.” To Claire’s astonishment, he smoothed back his hair and grinned. After a moment, the grin rearranged itself into the customary scowl. “Well? Haven’t you got somewhere else to go?”

Now that he mentioned it, she had.

The summons grew stronger as she shrugged into her backpack and held open the cat carrier for Austin to climb in. Reaching for her suitcase, she stopped, straightened, and decided Jacques was right. There’d always be a reason to delay.

She reached for the suitcase again, shifted it to her left hand, and picked up the cat carrier with her right.“Tell Dean I said goodbye.”

And then she left, ignoring the muttered,“Idiot,” that could have come from either the Cousin or the cat.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

The summons drew her west. She passed the park, and the hospital, and the turnoff to a house Sir John A. MacDonald, Canada’s first Prime Minister had lived in briefly before he entered politics.

The definitive November wind, cold and damp, blew in off the lake, stiffening her fingers around the handles of her luggage. By the time she reached the lights at Sir John A. MacDonald Boulevard, she decided that the summons was taking her farther than she wanted to walk. Even in a bad mood and feeling vaguely guilty about pretty much everything.

“You need a lift?”

He wasn’t entirely unexpected.

Frowning, Claire turned to face the truck.“You don’t know where I’m going.”

Leaning across the front seat, braced against the edge of the open window, Dean shrugged.“So?”

“Just get in!” The cat carrier rocked in Claire’s grip as Austin shifted his weight. “I’m freezing my tail off out here.”

“You told him which way we’d be heading.”

“What part ofget in don’t you understand?” he snarled, poking a paw out through the wider weave in the front of the carrier.

There were people crossing the street toward her. Another few feet and they’d be close enough to hear.

Claire got in the truck.

Fastened her seat belt.

As Dean shifted into drive and started across the intersection, she held the top of the cat carrier open just far enough for Austin to climb out.

“What happens next?” Dean asked.

Claire shrugged and squirmed around to set the carrier behind the seat with her suitcase.“I don’t know.”

There was still a lot that had to be said.

“You did know the speed limit on this street is 40k?”

And a lot that didn’t.

Dean nodded.“Okay. We’ll play it by ear.”

“You’ve been to Hell,” Austin snorted, stretching out on Claire’s lap, “you should be up to it.”

2. THE SECOND SUMMONING

ONE

FOR ALL INTENTS AND PURPOSES, the motel room was dark and quiet. The only light came intermittently through a crack in the curtains as the revolving sign by the road spun around so fast it caught up to its afterimages and appeared to read Motel 666. The only sound came from the rectangular bulk of the heating unit under the window that roared out warmth at a decibel level somewhere between a DC9 at takeoff and a Nirvana concert—although it was considerably more melodic than either. The smell emanating from the pizza box—crushed to fit neatly into a too-small wastebasket—blended with the lingering smell of the previous inhabitants, some of whom hadn’t been particularly attentive to personal hygiene.

The radio alarm clock between the beds read eleven forty squiggle where the squiggle would have been a five had the entire number been illuminated.

Both of the double beds were occupied.

The bed closest to the bathroom held the shape of two bodies—one large, one small—stretched out beneath the covers.

The bed closest to the window held one long, lean, black-and-white shape that seemed to be taking up more room than was physically possible.

The light flickered. The heater roared. The long, lean shape contracted and became a cat. It walked to the edge of the mattress and crouched, tail lashing.

“This is pathetic,” it announced, leaping upon the smaller of the two figures in the other bed. “Even for you.”

Claire Hansen stretched out her arm, turned on the bedside lamp, and found herself face-to-face with an indignant one-eyed cat.“Austin, if you don’t mind, we’re waiting for a manifestation.”

He lay down on her chest, assuming a sphinxlike position that suggested he wasn’t planning on moving any time soon. “It’s been a week.”

Twisting her head around, Claire peered at the clock radio. The squiggle changed shape.“It’s been forty-six minutes.”

“It’s been a week,” Austin repeated, “since we left the Elysian Fields Guest House. A week since you and young Mr. McIssac here started keeping company.”

The other figure stirred, but the cat continued.

“For the first time in that week, you two are actually in the same bed and what are you doing? You’re waiting for a manifestation!”

Claire blinked.“Keeping company?” she repeated.

“For lack of a more descriptive phrase, which, I might add, is my point—there’s a distinct lack of more descriptive phrases being applied here. You could cut the unresolved sexual tension between you two with a knife, and I, personally,” he declared, whiskers bristling, “am tired of it.”

“Just pretending for a moment that this is any of your business,” Claire told him tightly, “a week isn’t that long…”

“You knew each other for almost two months before that.”

“…we’re in one bed now because the site requires a male and a female component…”

“You’re saying you had no control over the last seven days?”

“…and did it ever occur to you that things haven’t progressed because there’s been an audience perpetually in attendance?”

“Oh, sure. Blame me.”

“Could I say something here?” Rolling toward the center of the bed, Dean McIssac rose up on one elbow, blue eyes squinting a little behind wire-frame glasses as he came into the light from the bedside table. “I’m thinking this isn’t the time or the place to talk about, you know, stuff.”

“Talk?” Austin snorted. “You’re missing my point.”

The young man’s cheeks flushed slightly. “Well, it sure as scrod isn’t the time or the place todo anything.”

“Why not?”

“Because there’s a dead…lady standing at the foot of the bed.”

Claire craned her neck to see around the cat.

Arms folded over a turquoise sweater, her weight on one spandex-covered hip, the ghost raised an artificially arched ectoplasmic eyebrow.“Boo,” she suggested.

“Boo yourself,” Claire sighed.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Cheryl Poropat, or rather the ghost of Cheryl Poropat, hovered above the X marked on the carpet with ashes and dust, the scuffed heels of her ankle boots about two inches from the floor.“So, you’re here to send me on?”

“That’s right.” Claire sat down in one of the room’s two chairs. Like most motel chairs they weren’t designed to be actually sat in, but she felt that remaining in bed with Dean, even if they were both fully clothed, undermined her authority.

“You some kind of an exorcist?”

“No, I’m a Keeper.”

Cheryl folded her arms. Half a dozen cheap bracelets jangled against the curve of one wrist.“And what’s that when it’s home?”

“Keepers maintain the structural integrity of the barrier between the world as most people know it and the metaphysical energy all around it.”

The ghost blinked.“Say what?”

“We mend the holes in the fabric of the universe so bad things don’t get through.”

“Well, why the hell didn’t you say so the first time? If I wasn’t dead,” she continued thoughtfully before Claire could answer, “I’d think you were full of it, but since I’m not only dead, I’m here, my view of stuff has been, you know, broadened.” Penciled brows drew in…“Beingdead makes you look at things differently.”…and centered themselves again. “So, how do you do it?”

“Do what?” Claire asked, having been distracted by the movement of the dead woman’s eyebrows.

“Fix the holes.”

“We reach beyond the barrier and manipulate the possibilities. We use magic,” she simplified as Cheryl looked blank.

Understanding dawned with returning facial features.“You’re a witch. Like on television.”

“No.”

“What’s the difference?”

“She’s got a better looking cat,” Austin announced from the top of the dresser in a tone that suggested it should have been obvious.

Claire ignored him.“I’m a Keeper.”

“Well, jeepers keepers.” Cheryl snickered and bounced her fingertips off a bit of bouffant hair, her hair spray having held into the afterlife. “Bet you wish you had a nickel for every time someone said that.”

“Not really, no.”

“They’ve got a better sense of humor on television, too,” the ghost muttered.

“That’s only because Keepers have no sense of humor at all,” Austin told her, studying his reflection in the mirror. “If it wasn’t for me, she’d be so smugly sanctimonious no one could live with her.”

“And thank you for your input, Austin.” Shooting him a look that clearly promised“later,” Claire stood.“Shall we begin?”

Cheryl waved off the suggestion.“What’s your hurry? Introduce me to the piece of beefcake the cat thinks you should do the big nasty with.”

“The what?”

“You know; the horizontal mambo, the beast with two backs.” Her pelvic motions—barely masked by the red stretch pants—cleared up any lingering confusions. “He a Keeper, too?”

Claire glanced over at Dean who was staring at the ghost with an expression of horrified fascination. Or fascinated horror, she wasn’t entirely certain which. “He’s a friend. And that was a private conversation.”

“Ask me if I care?” Translucent hands patted ephemeral pockets. “I’d kill for a freaking smoke. Couldn’t hurt me much now, could they? You oughta go for it, Keeper.”

“I don’t smoke.”

A ghostly, dismissive glance raked her up and down.“Not surprised—you’ve got that tobacco-free, alcohol-free, cholesterol-free—is that your natural hair color?”

“Yes.” Claire tucked a strand of dark brown hair behind her ear.

“Hair-color free sort of look. Take my advice, hon, try a henna.”

“I ought to go for a henna?”

“Yeah, in your hair. But that wasn’t what I meant. You oughta go forhim.” She nodded toward Dean. “Live a little. I mean, men take their pleasure where they find it, right? Why not women? Your husband screws around, you know, and everyone thinks he’s such a freaking stallion and all you get’s a ‘sorry, sweetie’ that you’re supposed to take ’cause he’sout of work and feeling unsure of his manhood—like it’s your freaking fault he got LAID OFF.…”

Claire and Austin, who’d been watching the energy build, dropped to the floor. Dean, whose generations of Newfoundland ancestors trapped between a barren rock and an angry sea had turned adaptability into a genetic survival trait, followed less than a heartbeat behind.

In the sudden flare of yellow-white light, the clock radio and the garbage pail flew through the air and slammed into opposite walls.

“…but ifyou do it, just once, then BAM…”

The bureau drawers whipped open, then slammed shut.

“…brain aneurysm, and you’re stuck haunting this freaking DUMP!”

Both beds rose six inches into the air, then crashed back to the floor.

Breathing heavily—which was just a little redundant since she wasn’t breathing at all, but some old habits died very hard indeed—the ghost stared around the room. “What just happened?”

“Usually, when you manifest, your anger rips open one of those holes in the fabric of the universe,” Claire explained, one knee of her jeans separating from a sticky spot on the orange carpet with a sound like tearing Velcro. “I’m keeping you from doing that, so the energy had to go somewhere else, creating a poltergeist phenomenon.”

Cheryl actually looked intrigued.“Like in the movie?”

“I didn’t see the movie.”

“Again, not surprised.”

“Why? Don’t tell me I’ve got that movie-free look, too.”

“All right.”

“All right what?”

“All right, she won’t tell you,” Austin snickered.

Eyes narrowed, Claire glared down at him.“You are supposed to be on my side. And as for you…” She turned her attention back to the smirking ghost. “…get ready to move on.” She wasn’t supposed to make it sound like a threat, but she’d had just about as much of Cheryl Poropat as she could handle.I’ve got a life, lady. Which is more than I can say for you.

The ghost’s smirk disappeared. “Now?”

“Why not now?”

“Well, I’m still hanging here because I’ve got unfinished business, right?”

Claire sighed. She should have known it wasn’t going to be that easy. “If that’s what you think.”

“And just what’s THAT supposed to mean?”

There was another small flare of energy. In the bathroom, the toilet flushed.

“With metaphysical phenomena, belief is very important. If you believe you’re here because you have unfinished business, then that’s why you’re here.”

“Yeah? What if I believe I’m alive again?”

“Doesn’t work that way.”

“Figures.” She looked from Claire to Dean and back to Claire again. “Okay. Unfinished business—I want to talk to my husband. You bring him here, you let me have my say, and I’ll go.”

“Bring your husband here?”

“Can I can go to him?”

Claire shook her head.“No, you’re tied to this room.”

“Doomed to appear to couples and give them unwanted advice,” Dean added from where he was kneeling in the narrow space between the bed and the bathroom wall.

“No oneever wants relationship advice, sweet-cheeks.” For the first time since she’d appeared, Cheryl looked at him like he was more than pretty meat. “But how did you know?”

He sighed and tried not to think about what he was kneeling in.“We spoke to Steve and Debbie.”

“Nice kids.”

“They’re some scared.”

“Yeah, well, death’s a bitch.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“Can you believe that she died right after a nooner with my best friend?” Howard Poropat sounded more resigned than upset by the revelation, his light tenor voice releasing the words in a reluctant monotone that lifted slightly at the end of each sentence, creating a tentative question. “Did she tell you that?”

“No, she didn’t mention it.” Claire braced herself as the car turned into the motel parking lot, sliding a little in the accumulated slush. When she thought it was safe to release her grip on the dashboard, she pointed. “There. Number 42.”

Jaw moving against a wad of nicotine gum, he steered the station wagon where indicated.“Let’s just go over this again, can we? Cheryl’s ghost is haunting the room she died in?”

“Yes.”

“And she can’t move on until she says something to me?”

“Apparently.” It hadn’t taken much effort to persuade him that it was possible. For all that he reminded her of processed cheese slices, he had a weirdly egocentric view of his place in the world.

“You think she wants to apologize?” The car slid to a stop, more-or-less in front of the right room.

“I honestly don’t know,” Claire told him, slamming her shoulder against the passenger side door and forcing it open. “Why don’t we go inside and find out?”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

While Claire’d been gone, the room had been redecorated in early playing cards. Most of them were just lying around, but several had been driven into the ceiling’s acoustic tiles.

“What happened?”

Dean nodded toward the ghost and mouthed the word,“Boom!”

Brows drawn in, Cheryl folded her arms.“We were playing a little rummy to pass the time, but he cheats!”

“Dean? I doubt that. He spent six months living next to a hole to Hell, and the ultimate force of evil couldn’t even convince him to drop his underwear on the floor.”

“Not him, the cat!”

Austin continued washing a spotless white paw, ignoring both the conversation and the seven of spades only partially hidden by a fringe of stomach fur.

Claire snorted.“What did you expect? He’s a cat.” She had no idea how a cat, a ghost, and Dean had managed to play rummy when only one of them could actually manipulate the cards, nor did she want to know. Shrugging off her jacket, she moved farther into the room, pulling a suddenly reluctant Howard Poropatalong with her by the pocket on his beige duffle coat.

The ghost’s eyes widened. “I don’t believe it! How’d you convince him?”

“I asked him nicely.” She dropped down onto the edge of the bed, out of the reconciliation’s direct line of fire.

“Cheryl?”

“Howard.”

The bed dipped as Dean joined her. Claire leaned back and, when her weight pressed into his shoulder, turned her head to murmur,“You okay?”

“I got clipped by the six of clubs, but my sweater deflected it.”

Dean’s sweater was a traditional fisherman’s cable knit. Handmade by his aunt from wool so raw it had barely paused between sheep and needles, Claire suspected it could, if not deflect bullets, certainly discourage them. “Thanks for staying with her.”

His arm slipped around her waist.“No problem, Boss, always willing to help.”

Austin’s right, Claire thought as they turned their attention back to the couple staring into each other’s eyes in the center of the room.It’s been implied for a week, what are we waiting for?

There’d been contact—touching, kissing, more touching, gentle explorations all crammed into those rare moments when they were actually alone and not likely to hear a speculative comment just as things got interesting—but somehow they hadn’t moved on to that next step.

Maybe I should lock Austin in the bathroom.

The next level of intimacy.

Not that he’d stay there.

The horizontal mambo…

Stop it.

“Howard.”

“Cheryl?” Pulling off his glove with his teeth, he held out his hand and stroked the air by her cheek. “The, uh, Keeper, says you got something to say to me?”

“That’s right.” She leaned into his touch. His baby finger sank into her eye socket. She didn’t even notice, but Howard shuddered and snatched his hand away. “It’s about me and Tony.”

“Tony? My best friend who you betrayed me with?”

“Yeah. Tony. I got something I need to say.”

Howard spread his hands, the picture of forgiving magnanimity.“What is it, babe?”

Cheryl smiled.“I just wanted to say—had to say—before I left this world forever…” All four of her listeners leaned into the pause. “…that Tony was a better lover than you ever were. Bigger, better, and he knew how to use it! We did it twice,twice, during his lunch hour, and he bought me a hoagie! He made me forget every miserable time you ever TOUCHED ME!”

In the silence that followed the sound of Howard slamming up against the inside of the door, the queen of hearts fell from the ceiling and Austin murmured,“I gotta admit, that wasn’t totally unexpected.”

Calm and triumphant, Cheryl turned toward the bed.“All right, Keeper. I’m ready.”

“Dean…”

“I’ll see that he’s okay.”

It only took a moment for Claire to send Cheryl on. Thinned by a distinct sense of closure, the possibilities practically opened themselves.

“Remember what I said, hon.” Scarlet lips made a suggestive kissing motion. “You oughta go for it.”

Keepers were always careful not to respond emotionally to provocation from metaphysical accidents. Unfortunately, Claire remembered that after she shoved Cheryl through to the Otherside just a little harder than necessary. A lot harder than necessary.

Howard seemed essentially unaffected by both his dead wife’s parting words and the impact with the door. As Claire resealed the barrier and turned, blinking away afterimages of the beyond and of a translucent figure bouncing twice, Dean was helping him onto the end of the nearer bed.

“Is she gone?” he asked, searching through thinning hair for a bump.

“Yes.”

“Is she in Hell?”

“Not my department.” Grasping the soft lines of his chin lightly with one hand, Claire tilted his head up. “It’s time you went home, Howard.”

Pale blue eyes widened.

“You were thinking about your late wife and you couldn’t sleep, so you went out for a drive.”

“For a drive…?”

“You found yourself outside the motel room where she died, and you got out of the car.”

“Out of the car…?”

“You stared at the door to the room for a long moment.”

“Long moment…?”

“Then you got back into the car and you went home.”

“Went home…?”

“You don’t know why, but you feel better about her death and the way things were left between you. You’re glad it’s over.”

“Glad to be rid of her.”

“Close enough.” It was the first definitive statement he’d made. She carefully used the new, more probable version of events to wipe out his actual memories. Then, still holding his chin, she walked him out to his car where she released him.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“Is he gone?” Dean asked as Claire came back into the room and sagged against the door.

“Oh, yeah. I demanded to know what he was doing staring at my room and he, after telling me his wife had died there, asked me if I wanted to comfort him.”

“He was sad?”

“Not that kind of comfort, Dean.”

“What…oh.”

“Lovely couple, weren’t they?” Rubbing her temples, she walked to the end of the bed and scuffed out the X with the edge of her shoe. “Makes you want to swear off relationships for the rest of your life.”

It took her a moment to figure out why the answering silence resonated like the inside of a crowded elevator after an unexpected emission. Then she realized what she’d said.

And who to.

“Open mouth, insert other foot,” Austin advised.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“But theywere nasty.”

“No one’s arguing. Although I can’t understand why you’re afraid that you and Dean will someday morph into them.”

Claire had a sudden vision of herself in red stretch pants and a turquoise sweater and shuddered.“I’m not.”

“You’re not?”

“No.”

Austin snorted.“My mistake.”

“You’re not getting a…afeeling about it, are you?” No one had ever determined if cats were actually clairvoyant or if they just enjoyed being furry little shit disturbers. Claire usually leaned toward the latter, but tonight…

“It won’t happen, Claire.”

“You’re sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. I’m a cat.”

Claire used a finger to smooth down the soft fringe of hair behind Austin’s ear. “Do you think I should wake him up and apologize?”

“You already apologized. He already accepted.”

“Then why is he over there by himself and I’m over here with you?”

The cat sighed and shifted position on the pillow.“You know, maybe you should have hit the unpleasantly departed up for some relationship advice. You couldn’t possibly do any worse.”

“I’m not doinganything.”

“Well, duh. I can’t decide if you’re more afraid that being his first time he’ll expect all sorts of commitment that you’re not ready for, or if you’re afraid that being all of seven years older and practically decrepit you can’t live up to his expectations.”

“As if. I just…”

The silence stretched, broken only by the steady rhythm of Dean’s breathing.

“You just?”

“Never mind. Let’s just go to sleep.”

“And the cat scores another point.”

“Austin, what part ofgo to sleep didn’t you understand?”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Hundreds of miles away, Diana Hansen woke up with a feeling in her gut that meant one of two things. Either she now had a hormonal defense should she waste her calculus teacher, or that dream hadn’t actually been a dream.

The question now became: should she interfere?

There were rules about Keepers using knowledge of the future to influence that future. Specifically, there were rulesagainst Keepers using knowledge of the future to influence that future. Which was a load as far as Diana was concerned. What was the point of having the ability and not using it? Seeing a disaster and not preventing it?

No point.

And Diana refused to live a pointless life.

But this particular future disaster involved her older sister, and that muddied the waters. Although she no longer adored Claire with the uncritical love of a child for a sibling fully ten years older and had become quite capable of seeing every uptight, rule-following, more-Keeper-than-thou flaw, she still loved her and didn’t want her to get hurt. On the other hand, she still owed her for telling their mother exactly what had happened and to whom in the basement of the Elysian Fields Guest House. Oncewhat andwho were known, it was only a small step towhy.

Oh, yeah. She owed Claire big time for that.

One more understanding, hip to the millennium, talk from the’rents and she was going to misuse her abilities in ways previous Keepers had never dreamed. She had a notebook full of possibilities. Just in case.

But she really didn’t want Claire to be hurt.

Much.

Scratching the back of one bare leg with the toenails on the opposite foot, Diana sighed, decided to worry about it in the morning, and went back to sleep.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

When Claire woke up in the morning, Dean was gone.

“Relax. He went out to get breakfast.”

She threw back the covers with enough force to practically strip the bed, dropped her legs over the side, and shoved her feet into waiting slippers.“I wasn’t worried.”

“Of course not,” Austin snickered from the dresser. “That’s why you were wearing your kicked puppy face.”

“I don’t have a kicked puppy face!”

“If you say so.”

“And stop patronizing me!”

“Where would be the fun in that?” he asked the bathroom door as it closed.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

She felt better after her shower. As soon as Dean came back, they’d talk about what had happened or not happened, and move forward. She’d explain that this whole having someone without fur and an attitude as a part of her life, was still new. He’d understand because he always understood. She’d reassure him she wanted their relationship to continue. He’d be pleased.

Then maybe they’d lock the cat in the bathroom. Checkout time wasn’t until noon, after all.

She was packing her white silk pajamas—in a reluctant acknowledgment of the information age, Keepers were instructed to wear something that could appear on the six o’clock news in front of those unavoidable live camera shots of rubble—when the phone rang.

“Hello?” Expecting it to be Dean, she was more than a little surprised to hear her younger sister’s voice.

“Whatever it is you’re about to do, don’t do it.”

Claire sighed.“Good morning, Diana. Why aren’t you in school? Stop calling me at work. And stop thinking you know how to run my life better than I do.”

“I’m at school.” A sudden rise in background noise suggested the phone had been held out for aural emphasis. “You’re probably just packing. And I don’tthink I know how to run your life better than you do, I’m sure of it.” She moved the phone not quite far enough from her mouth and yelled, “Gimme a minute!” before continuing. “Look, I had a major precognitive thing going on last night and you’re about to make a huge mistake.”

Claire sighed again. In the best metaphysical tradition, Diana, as the younger sibling, was the more powerful Keeper—unfortunately, Diana was well aware of that. Fortunately, she hadn’t discovered that, as all the other Keepers had been only children, she was theonly younger sibling any Keeper had. It gave her the wiggins. The very last thing Diana needed to know was that she, at an obnoxious seventeen, was the most powerful Keeper on Earth.“What kind of a huge mistake?”

“Beats me.”

“Can you give me some idea of scale?”

“Nope. Only that it’s huge.”

“That’s not very helpful.”

“I do what I can. Gotta blow, calculus beckons.”

“Diana…”

“Kisses for kitty. And you might want to help Dean with those packages.”

Deleting a few expletives, Claire hung up and hurried across the room as Dean returned with breakfast, his entrance turning into an extended production bordering on farce as he attempted to deal with two bags of takeout, the room key, and a cold wind from across the parking lot that kept dragging the door from his grip.

“It’d be easier if you’d come farther into the room,” Claire pointed out, taking the bags.

Flashing her a grateful smile, he gained control of the door.“I’m trying not to track slush on the carpet.”

Claire glanced down. All things considered, she doubted that a little slush would hurt, but then she wasn’t the person who’d borrowed cleaning supplies from the housekeeping staff at every cheap motel they’d stayed in. The strange thing was, given how paranoid many of them were about releasing an extra sliver of soap, he almost always succeeded.

By the time she returned her attention to Dean, he had his coat off and was bending over his boot laces. And that was always worth watching. Perhaps his success with various housekeeping staffs wasn’t so strange after all.

“Are you okay?” she asked, wondering if he’d recently found a way to iron his jeans or if they’d been ironed so often the creases had become a structural component of the denim. “You’re moving a bit tentatively.”

“My glasses fogged,” he explained straightening. With one hand he pushed dark hair back from blue eyes and with the other he removed his glasses for cleaning.

Austin muttered something under his breath that sounded very much like,“Superman!”

Claire ignored him and began unpacking the food, fully conscious of Dean walking past her into the bathroom. He smelled like fresh air and fabric softener. She’d never considered fabric softener erotic before.

“Sausages?” Whiskers twitched. “I wanted bacon.”

“You’re having geriatric cat food.”

“We’re out.”

“Nice try. There’s four cans left.”

He looked disgusted.“I’m not eating that. Those cans came out of the garbage.”

“Interesting you should know that since you were in the bathroom when I found them.”

Drawing himself up to his full height, he shot her an indignant green-gold glare with his one remaining eye.“Are you accusing me of something?”

Claire looked at him for a moment, then turned to Dean as he returned to the main room.“Dean, did you put Austin’s cat food in the garbage?”

He had the grace to look sheepish as he took both plates of food from her and put them on the table.“Not this time.”

“Then, yes, I’m accusing you of something.” She popped the top of one of the cans, scooped out some brown puree onto a saucer with a plastic spoon and pushed it along the dresser toward the cat. “You’re seventeen and a half years old; youknow what the vet said.”

“Turn your head and cough?”

“Austin…”

“All right. All right. I’ll eat it.” He sniffed the saucer and sighed. “I hope you realize that I plan on living long enough to see them feeding you stewed prunes at the nursing home.”

Claire bent down and kissed the top of his head.“It wouldn’t be the same without you.”

They ate in silence for a few moments. It wasn’t exactly a comfortable silence. Finally, Claire stopped eating and watched Dean clean his plate with the efficiency of a young man who hadn’t eaten for over six hours. She usually liked watching him eat.

He paused, the last bite of toast halfway to his mouth.“Something wrong?”

Aren’t we supposed to be talking about last night?“Diana called.”

“Here?” The last of his toast disappeared.

“Well, duh.”Why aren’t we talking about last night?

“Is she in trouble?”

“No, she just passed on a warning.”I have an explanation; don’t you want to hear it?

“About what?”

“She didn’t know.”Why are we talking about my sister?

“Helpful.” Plate cleaned, Dean picked up his coffee and leaned back in his chair, carefully peeling back the plastic lid.

Things seemed to be going nowhere. Claire picked up her own cup and took a long swallow. She could read nothing from his expression, couldn’t tell if he was just being polite—and Dean wasalways polite—or if he honestly wasn’t bothered—and Dean was so absolutely certain of his place in the world that not a whole lot bothered him. This was one of the things Claire liked best about him although it did make him a little passive, secure in the knowledge that if he just waited patiently the world would fix itself. As one of the people who fixed the world, Claire found this extremely irritating.And does everyone hold mutually opposing views about the people they’re in… Shying away from the“L” word, she settled for…a hotel room with, or is it just me?

She suspected she needed to watch more Oprah.

Althoughwomen who save the world and the men who confuse them sounded more like a visit to Jerry Springer—provided she gained a hundred and fifty pounds and lost half of her vocabulary.

Look, if he’s not questioning, why should you? With that settled, she took another drink.

“So, where do we go from here?”

“Why do we have to go anywhere?” she demanded when the choking and coughing had subsided and all of the remaining napkins had been used to deal with the mess. “What’s wrong with the way things are?”

“I just wondered where you were being Summoned to,” Dean explained, somewhat taken aback by the sight of Claire snorting coffee out her nose. “But if you don’t want to talk about it…”

“About what?” She dabbed at the damp spots on her sleeve, trying and failing miserably to sound anything but near panic.Definitely more Oprah.

“About the Summoning.”

“Right.” Of course, the Summoning. Deep calming breath. “North.”

“Back across the border, then?”

“Probably.”

“Is it another metaphysical remnant causing localized fluxes in the barrier between actuality and possibility.”

That made her smile.“Another ghost kicking holes in the fabric of the universe? I don’t know.” When he smiled back, she covered an embarrassing reaction with a brusque, “You’re getting good at this.”

“Two this week,” he reminded her.

Claire was fairly certain that her current attraction to the restless dead was merely leftover sensitivity from spending so much time with Jacques, the FrenchCanadian sailor who’d been haunting the Elysian Fields Guest House. But, because that previous attraction had gone farther than…well, than things were going now, she wasn’t going to mention it to Dean. With any luck the residual effects would wear off soon.

What she’d had with Jacques had been simple. He’d been dead. The possibilities between them had been finite. The possibilities with Dean, however, were…

She saw them suddenly, stretching out in front of her.

Driving together from site to site, squabbling over what radio station to listen to and/or listening in perfect accord to a group they both liked. And if anything was possible, therehad to be a group they both liked. Somewhere.

Sharing endless hotel rooms like this one, same burnt-orange bedspreads in a vaguely floral pattern, same mid-brown stain camouflaging indoor/outdoor carpeting, same lame attempt to modernize the decor by pasting a wallpaper border just under the ceiling, same innocuous prints screwed to the wall over both beds.

Sharing one of those beds.

They’d work together. They’d laugh together. They’d clean up after Austin together—although the possibility of Dean doing the actual cleaning all by himself was significantly greater than them doing it together.

And one day, she’d forget he wasn’t a Keeper, or even one of the less powerful Cousins, and something would come through the barrier, and she’d forget to protect him from it. Or it would try to get to her through him. Or he’d try to protect her and get squashed like a bug. Okay, a six-foot-tall, muscular, blue-eyed, glasses-wearing bug from Newfoundland, but the result would be the same.

All of a sudden, the future with Dean seemed frighteningly finite.

I might as well just paint a target on him now and get it over with.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“Claire? Boss?” It took an effort, but Dean resisted the urge to wave a hand in front of her face. If she was in some sort of Keeper trance, he didn’t want to disturb it.

He’d seen a number of amazing things during the three months he’d worked for her at the Elysian Fields Guest House—up to and including Hell itself—but nothing had prepared him for time spent on the road in Claire Hansen’s company. He’d expected her to be a backseat driver, but that had turned out to be Austin’s job. She didn’t eat properly unless he placed food in front of her—he was beginning to understand both why Austin was so insistent about being fed and why Claire was so thin. And she actually preferred watching hockey with that stupid blue light the American television stations were using to help their viewers locate the puck. Trust the Americans not to realize that knowing the position of the puck was the whole point of the game.

He liked the way she felt in his arms, and he liked the way her face lit up when she looked at him. He liked looking at her just generally, and he liked being with her. And he was becoming fairly certain that liked wasn’t quite the right word. When he thought about his future, she was a part of it.

“We can’t travel together anymore.”

Or not. Dean looked around for help, but the sounds of vigorous excavation from the bathroom suggested Austin was in the litter box.“What did you say?” He felt as though he’d just been cross-checked into the boards and should be staring through Plexiglas at a row of screaming faces instead of across the remains of a takeout breakfast into a pair of worried brown eyes.

“We can’t travel together anymore.”

“But I though we were…? I mean, aren’t we…?” he shook his head, trying to find a question he could actually articulate. “Why not, then?”

“Someday I’ll run into something I won’t be able to keep from hurting you.”

He was about to tell her that he was willing to risk it in order to be with her when she continued, and the conversation headed off in a new, or rather an old, direction.

“It’s why Keepers don’t travel with Bystanders.”

“Ithought we’d moved past that Keeper/Bystander thing?”

“Wecan’t move past that Keeper/Bystander thing.”

The sudden quiet resonated with the sound of clay particles being flung all over the bathroom floor.

“Dean? Do you understand?”

“Sure.”

She’d been working on the various meanings men gave tosure for some time now. This one escaped her.Sure, I understand, but I don’t agree with you was way too obvious as was,I’ve stopped listening, but since you’re waiting for me to say something, sure.

“Dean?”

When he looked up, it didn’t help. For some strange reason he looked angry.

“What about us, then?”

“Anus will end with you dead because of something I didn’t do, and I won’t allow that to happen.”

“You won’t allow?”

“That’s right.”

He folded his arms.“So there’s no us, and we know where you stand. What about me, then?”

“You?”

“Or do I have no say in this?”

“I’m the Keeper…”

“And I’m not. I know.”

“I’m doing this for you!”

“And because you know best, I’m supposed to just walk away?”

“Ido know best!” Claire shoved her chair away from the table. “And it might be nice if you realized I just don’t want you to get hurt.” The scene should have played out as sad and tragically inevitable, but Dean continued to just not get it.

“You know what I realize?” He mirrored her motion. “I realize, and I’m amazed it took me so long, that it’s always about you. You’ve got no idea of how to…to compromise!”

“A Keeper can’t compromise!”

“And I suppose a Keeper can’t wipe her feet either?”

“Unlike you, I have more important things to worry about than that, and,” she added with icy emphasis, “I have more important things to worry about than you!”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

Silence descended like a slammed door.

“Well, that doesn’t get any easier as I get older.” Austin jumped up onto the end of the bed nearest the bathroom and turned to face the table, swiveling his head around so he could look first at Claire and then at Dean. “So, what did I miss?”

TWO

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_4]

“BUT I BROUGHT YOU INTO AMERICA, I should take you out.”

“It’s not necessary.” Claire shoved her makeup bag into the backpack—she used to carry a suitcase as well until Dean had asked her why. If she could fit a desktop computer, a printer, two boxes of disks, and the obligatory stale cough drop in the backpack, why couldn’t it hold everything else? She owed him for that as well as for a thousand other things her brain insisted on listing. For doing the driving. For giving her all the red Smarties. For cleaning the litter box. For patiently explaining the difference between offside and icing yet again. For being a warm and solid support at her back. For…

“This is upper New York State, not Cambodia,” she continued, almost shouting to drown out the list. “Canadians come here daily to buy toaster ovens.”

“Fine.” Dean jerked the zipper shut on his hockey bag, suddenly tired of being shouted at for no apparent reason. “You can catch a ride with one of them, then.” He swung the bag up onto his shoulder, but Austin stepped in front of him before he could make it to the door.

“I don’t want to ride with a toaster oven,” the cat declared. “I want to ride with Dean.”

“Austin.” Claire growled his name through clenched teeth.

He leaned around Dean’s legs to glare at her. “Is the site you’re Summoned to on this side of the border?”

“No, but…”

“Then he won’t be in any danger giving us a lift. And thatis why you don’t want him around, isn’t it? To keep him out of danger?”

“Yes, but…”

“And we’re going to need a ride.”

“I know, but…”

“So say thank you and go settle the bill while we load the truck.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“Whilewe load the truck?” Dean asked a moment later, settling the cat carrier on the seat beside him and opening the top.

“Please.” Austin poured out and arranged himself in the shaft of sunlight slanting through the windshield. “Like you didn’t know I wanted to talk to you.”

“You need to talk to Claire, not me.” He started the engine, checked that it was in neutral and the parking brake was on, took his foot off the clutch, then began polishing fingerprints off the steering wheel with the sleeve of his jacket. “I sure didn’t expect to break collar so soon.”

“Break what?”

“Lose the job.”

“Job? You weren’t doing a job, you were just living your life. If it was ajob,” the cat snorted disdainfully, “she’d have been paying you.”

“Then I didn’t expect this part of my life to be over so soon.”

“It doesn’t have to be.”

“Yeah, it does.”

“You’re just going to let her tell you what to do?”

“No. But I’m not staying if she thinks she has the right to make decisions about my life as though I wasn’t a part of it.”

“Of your life?”

“Or the decision.”

“So you’re leaving not because she told you to but because she thinks she has the right to tell you to?”

“Yeah.”

Austin sighed.“Would it make a difference if I told you she’s honestly afraid of you having your intestines sucked out your nose because she was thinking about your shoulders and misjudged an accident site?”

“Well, I don’t want my intestines sucked out my nose either,” Dean allowed. Then he paused and blushed slightly, buffing an already spotless bit of dashboard. “She thinks about my shoulders?”

“Shoulders, thighs…as near as I can tell, she spends far too much time thinking about most of your body parts—sequentially and simultaneously—when she should be thinking about other things.”

“Like accident sites?”

“Like me.”

“Oh.” And then because the cat’s tone demanded an apology, he added, “Sorry.”

“And accident sites,” Austin allowed graciously, having been given his due. “Look, Claire tends to see things in terms of what she has to do to keep the world from falling apart. Close an accident site here, prevent the movie remake of ‘Gilligan’s Island’ there, keep you from being hurt, feed the cat—everything’s an absolute. She doesn’t compromise well, it’s an occupational hazard. Stay and teach her to see your side of things.”

“Only if she asks me to.” The steering wheel creaked a protest as Dean closed his hands around it and tightened his grip. “And since I know for a fact that Hell hasn’t frozen over, I’m not after holding my breath.”

Austin sighed and turned so he could see Claire picking her way across the slush covered parking lot from the office.“She’s getting her own way, you’d think she’d be happier about it, wouldn’t you? She looks miserable. Doesn’t she? You don’t want her to be miserable? Do you?”

“She started this,” Dean muttered, eyes locked on the oil gauge. “If she wants me to stay, she has to convince me.”

“All right. Fine.” He put a paw on Dean’s thigh and stared beseechingly up into his face. “What about me? I’m old. It wasn’t that long ago that I lost an eye.”

“I thought it had mostly healed?”

“That’s not the point. It’s November, it’s cold. I don’t want to go back to using any old thing that happens by. Ilike being driven about in a heated truck! Okay, I would’ve liked a heated Lincoln Town Car with leather upholstery more, but the point is, what about me?”

“I’m sorry, Austin.”

“Not as sorry as she’s going to be,” Austin muttered as the Keeper opened the passenger door.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“The booth on the right has a longer line.”

“Alonger line?” Dean had been avoiding conversation by maintaining the speed of the pickup at exactly fifty-five miles per hour regardless of the gestures other drivers flashed at him as they passed. He glanced down at the cat and tried not to notice the various bits of Claire that surrounded him. “Why do you want me to use the longer line, then?”

“It’ll take more time. And the more time we’re all together, the greater the odds are that you two will make up and I won’t be tossed out into the cold with nothing but a cat carrier between me and November.”

“There’s nothing to make up,” Claire told him impatiently. “We didn’t have a fight.”

“We didn’t?”

“No.” She threw the word across the cat to Dean. “I, as a Keeper, made a decision.”

“Aboutmy future without talking to me.”

“Sounds like a fight,” Austin observed.

Claire wriggled back in the seat and crossed her arms.“This doesn’t concern you.”

“Oh, no? I’m the one who’ll be riding in the overhead luggage rack…”

“You’ve never ridden in the overhead luggage rack!”

“…or the baggage compartment.”

“Or the baggage compartment!” she added, voice rising.

He ignored her.“Once again, I’ll be at the mercy of strangers. Forced to live from paw to mouth, dark corners as my litter box, cardboard boxes as my bed.”

“You like to sleep in cardboard boxes.”

“That’s not the point.”

“You have no point. And stop whining; you’re beginning to sound like a dog.”

“A dog!” He twisted around to fry her with a pale green glare from his remaining eye. “I havenever been so insulted in my life. You’re just lucky I can’t operate a can opener.” Moving slowly and deliberately, he stepped down off her lap, onto the center of the bench seat, and turned his back on her.

The smile his companions shared over his head was completely involuntary.

Suddenly aware of her reflection grinning out from Dean’s glasses, Claire dropped her gaze so quickly it bounced.

Teeth clenched with enough applied pressure to make his lone filling creak, Dean steered the truck carefully into the shorter line. The sooner this was over, the better.

Only two of the five Canada Customs booths were open. Only two of the five booths wereever open. On a busy day, when the line of cars waiting to cross the border stretched almost all the way back to Watertown, this guaranteed short tempers and a more spontaneous response to official questioning by Canadian Customs officials. Occasionally, on really hot summer days, responses were spontaneous enough to get the RCMP involved.

The constant low levels of sharp-edged irritation would have poked multiple holes through the fabric of the universe had government officiousness not canceled it out by denying that anything was possible outside their own very narrow parameters. As a result, most border crossings between the U.S. and Canada were so metaphysically stable, unnatural phenomenon had to cross them just like everyone else—although it wasn’t always easy for them to find photo ID.

Later, they’d swap stories about how custom officials had no sense of humor, about how someone—or possibly something—they knew had been strip-searched for no good reason, and how they’d triumphantly smuggled in half a dozen toaster ovens, duty-free.

As Dean pulled up beside the booth’s open window and turned to smile politely at the young guard, Claire reached into the possibilities. When the guard looked into the truck, her gaze slid over Austin like he’d been buttered, over Claire almost as quickly, and locked itself on Dean’s face.

“Nationality?”

“Canadian.”

“Canadian,” Claire repeated although she suspected she needn’t have bothered as the guard’s rapt attention never left Dean.

“How long were you in the States?”

“Four days.”

“What is the total value of the purchases you’re bringing into Canada?”

“Six dollars and eighty-seven cents. I bought a couple of maps and a liter of oil for the truck,” he added apologetically.

“You’re from back East.” When he nodded, she continued, startling Claire who’d never seen anyone who worked for Canada Customs look so happy. “I’m from Cornerbrook. When’s the last time you were back?”

“I’m heading back now.”

Their discussion slid into shared memories of places and people. Newfoundlanders, chance met a thousand miles from home, were never strangers. Occasionally, they were mortal enemies, but never strangers. After it had been determined that Dean had played junior hockey against a buddy the guard’s second cousin had gone to school with, she waved them on.

“You never toldme you were going back to Newfoundland,” Claire pointed out as they pulled away from the border.

“You never asked.”

“Oh, that’s mature,” she muttered. Now they were both ignoring her, Dean and the cat. It was the sort of thing she expected from Austin, but Dean usually had better manners.Fine. Be that way. I know I’m right. A sideways glance at his profile showed a muscle moving along the line of his jaw. A sudden urge to reach out and touch him surprised her into lowering her gaze.

That didn’t help.

Two spots of heat burning high on each cheek, she turned to stare out at the pink granite rising in mighty slabs up into the sky.

Neither did that.

Think of something else, Claire. Anything else. Three times nine is twenty-seven. Fried liver. Brussels sprouts. Homer Simpson…

The insistent under-tug of the Summoning suddenly rose to a crescendo. Claire’s hand jerked up and pointed toward a parking lot entrance for the Thousand Islands Sky Deck and Fantasy Land. “Pull in there.”

Responding to her tone, Dean managed to make the turn, back end of the truck fishtailing slightly in the light dusting of wet snow.“It’s closed,” he said, coming to a stop by the entrance to the gift shop that anchored the Sky Deck.

“Not to me.” This was it. The end of the line. Claire felt strangely unwilling to get out of the truck. And not only because it was beginning to snow again.You’re doing this for him, she reminded herself.He’s only a Bystander, and you have no business putting him in danger.

When he moved to turn off the engine, she steeled herself and stopped him, restraining herself from keeping a lingering grip around his wrist.“There’s no point, you won’t be here long enough.” She undid her seat belt, pulled her toque over her ears, and grabbed the cat carrier from its place behind the seat. “Come on, Austin.”

His back remained toward her, rigid and unyielding.

“Austin!”

He ignored her so completely she had a moment’s doubt about her own existence.

“What’s the matter with…” And then she remembered. “Oh, for…Austin, I’m sorry I said you were beginning to sound like a dog. It was rude.”

One ear swiveled toward her.

“You have never sounded like anything but a cat. Cats are clearly superior to dogs, and I don’t know what I was thinking. Please accept my abject apologies and forgive me.”

He snorted without turning.“You call that groveling?”

“Yes, and I’m sorry if it falls short of your high standards. Unless you’re planning to walk, I also call it the last thing I’m going to say before picking you up and stuffing you into the carrier.”

Her hands were actually touching his fur before he realized she was serious.“Oh, sure,” he muttered, tail scribing short, jerky arcs as he climbed into the case, “give a species opposable thumbs, and they evolve into bullies.”

Dean watched without speaking as she opened the door, set the cat carrier carefully down on a dry bit of pavement up near the building, and finally lifted her backpack out from under the tarp. She paused as if she was trying to think of something to say. She was wearing some kind of lip stuff that made her mouth look full and soft and…He leaned over and rolled down the window. “Do you need any help, then?”

He hadn’t intended to say it, but he just couldn’t stop himself; his grandfather’s training was stronger than justified anger, emotional betrayal, and the uncomfortable way the seat belt was cutting into his…lap.

An emphatic“Yes!” came out of the cat carrier, but Claire ignored it. “No, thank you.” She swallowed around the kind of lump in her throat that Keepers were not supposed to get. “You’d better get going if you’re driving all the way to Newfoundland.”

“It’s an island, Claire. I won’t be driving all the way.”

“You knew what I meant.” Her gloves suddenly took all her attention. “This is for your own good, Dean.”

“If you say so.”

It was as close to a snide comment as she’d ever heard him make.

For a moment Claire thought he wasn’t going to go, but the moment passed.

“Goodbye, Claire.” He wanted to say something wry and debonair so she’d know what she was losing, but the only thing that came to mind was a line from an old black-and-white movie, and he suspected that “You’ll never take me alive, copper!” didn’t exactly fit the situation. This was clearly the day his aunt had been referring to when she’d said,“Some day, you guys are going to wish you’d watched a couple of movies with more talking than hitting.” He settled for raising his hand in the classicwhatever wave.

He left the window rolled down until he reached the highway. Just in case she called him back.

Claire stood and watched Dean back up and drive away, realizing she should have wiped his memory with something more possible—although at the moment, she couldn’t think of anything more possible than the two of them spending their lives together.

I did it for his own good.

It was colder than it should be, and the chill had nothing to do with standing in an empty parking lot beside a closed second-rate summer attraction while an early November wind stuffed icy fingers under her collar and threatened snow. She stared at the single set of tire tracks until she couldn’t feel her feet.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

In the summer, Fantasy Land consisted of mazes and slides built into child-sized castles scattered along a path that twisted through the woods and paused every now and then at a fairy-tale tableau constructed of poured concrete and paint. In the summer, the fact it was a convenient place for the children to run off some excess energy before they were stuffed back in the car to fidget and complain for another hundred kilometers, lent the place a certain charm. In the winter, when nothing hid the damage caused by the same children who could disassemble an eight-hundred-dollar DVD player armed with nothing more than a sucker stick and a cheese sandwich, it was just depressing.

The Summons rose from the center of the Sleeping Beauty display.

Five concrete dwarfs, their paint peeling, stood around the bier that held the sleeping princess—or at least Claire assumed that’s what the bierhad held. The princess and two of the dwarfs had been thoroughly gone over with a piece of pipe. Bits of broken concrete lay scattered around the clearing, and Sleeping Beauty’s head had been propped into a decidedly compromising position with one of the dwarfs.

“I’m guessing these guys are all named Grumpy,” Claire muttered, as she approached the bier. “None of them are smiling.”

Austin sat down in the shelter of a giant concrete mushroom and wrapped his tail around his toes. And ignored her.

Which was pretty much the response Claire expected. That dog comparison would likely haunt her for a while.

The hole itself was centered on the bier—no surprise since the vandalism had probably opened it. It was larger than mere vandalism could account for, though, and it had been seeping for some time. Unfortunately, the seepage wasn’t dissipating.

Which meant that something in the immediate area was absorbing it.

A quick search showed no wildlife, not even so much as a single pigeon although evidence of pigeons had been liberally splattered on all five dwarfs.

“I hope this isn’t going to be another one of those possessed squirrel sites. They’re always nuts.” She glanced over at the cat and, when he didn’t rise to the provocation, sighed.Great, my cat’s not even responding to bad jokes, Dean’s gone… Her attention elsewhere, she tripped over a piece of broken princess, barely catching herself on the shoulder of a stone dwarf.…and now I’ve twisted my ankle. How could this day possibly get any worse?

A small stone hand closed painfully around her wrist.

I had to ask.

Fortunately, the hands were more or less in proportion to the body, so although the grip pinched, it wasn’t difficult to break. Jerking free, Claire stepped away from the dwarf and felt something poke her in the back of the upper thigh.

It turned out to be a nose.

Her anatomical relief was short lived as this second dwarf made a grab for her knee, muttering,“Write on me, will you!”

He was pretty fast for concrete.

They all were.

“…rotten kids…”

“…ice cream on my hat…”

“…you want Happy, I’ll tell you what’ll make me happy, you little…”

“…gonna pay for those malt balls…”

“…I’ll hi your ho right up your…”

“Hey!” Claire danced away from the last dwarf and glared down at him. “Watch it, buster, you’re supposed to be a children’s display.”

Stone eyes narrowed.“Grind your bones to make my bread.”

“Oh, great…” She leaped off the concrete pad and onto scuffed grass. “…now they’re free-associating.”

The dwarfs came to the edge of the concrete but no farther.

Claire would have been a lot happier about that had they not been between her and the accident site. A quick jog around the perimeter proved she couldn’t outrun them and, as long as the site was open, they wouldn’t run down.

Secure in the knowledge that the Keeper couldn’t get past them, four of the dwarfs started a soccer game with Sleeping Beauty’s head while the fifth kept watch.

Two feints, a dodge, and an argument over whether it was entirely ethical to use chunks of dwarfs six and seven for goalposts, Claire realized she wasn’t going to get by without a plan. Or a distraction.

“Austin?”

“No.”

“I just wanted…”

“Tough. I’m not doing it.”

“Fine. Then what’ll distract five of the seven dwarfs?”

“A trademarked theme song?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You could sing the short version.”

“No.”

“You don’t think they’d be up to it?”

She sighed down at the cat.“Are you done?”

“I will be shortly.”

“Austin…”

“Okay. I’m done.” He took a quick lick at a flawless shoulder. “How about five concrete lady dwarfs?”

“Why not? I’ll just put an ad in the personals.” Claire shoved her hands into her pockets and glanced around at the broken bottles, the scattered garbage, the senseless vandalism. She didn’t even want to think about what the inside of Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater’s wife’s house looked like—give some people a dark corner, and they’d do one of two things in it.

Well, maybe three things.

Or four.

“Ow!” Kicked a little too hard, Sleeping Beauty’s head rolled off the concrete and clipped Claire’s ankle. “Yuck it up,” she snarled, scooping up the head and taking aim at the clump of snickering dwarfs. “It’s about to be game over!” As she released her makeshift bowling ball, she had visions of a five/two split, an easy spare, and a quick end to the stalemate.

“You missed,” Austin pointed out, his tone mildly helpful.

“I know!” She had to shout to be heard above the laughter. Two of the dwarfs were propping each other up as they howled, one had fallen to the ground and was kicking little concrete heels in the air, and the last two were staggering around in increasingly smaller circles as they mocked her athletic ability.

It wasn’t what she’d intended, but it had the same effect.

A quick dash, a fast sidestep over a pile of stained feathers that suggested at least one of the pigeons had been slow to get away, and a graceless but adequate leap put her up on the bier.

Keepers learned early on that the repair didn’t have to be pretty as long as it did the job. Claire had personally learned it while closing a site at a book launch for a writer who very nearly acquired a life as interesting as his fiction—although it wouldn’t have gone on as long. In the end, she’d been forced to evoke the paranormal properties of a crab cake, two stuffed mushroom caps, and a miniature quiche. The caterer had been furious.

Though not as furious as the dwarfs.

Who were too short to climb up on the bier themselves. The stream of profanity this evoked made up in volume what they lacked in size. Claire assumed they’d learned the words from the vandals and not the children—but she wouldn’t have bet on it. Fortunately, concrete dwarfs were not fast thinkers. She had the parameters of the site almost determined when one of them yelled, “Pile up the broken bits. Build a ramp!”

As the first of the little men rose into view, Claire pulled a stub of sidewalk chalk from her pocket and scrawled the site definition across Sleeping Beauty’s one remaining smooth surface. Reaching into the possibilities, she closed the hole, turned, and came hip to face with the advancing dwarf.

“Before the energy fades,” he growled, “we’ll rip you limb from limb.”

Had they not been fighting each other to get up the ramp, they might have. As it was, Claire jumped off the other side of the bier and sprinted to the safety of the grass unopposed. The first dwarf to leap off after her, stumbled and smashed.

They were visibly slowing.

“Gentlemen!”

Four heads ground around to face her.

“You’ve got less than thirty seconds left. If I were you, I’d arrange myself so that I was making a statement when I solidified.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“Who’d have thought those concrete breeches would even come down?” Austin murmured as Claire carried him back toward the parking lot.

She half expected Dean to be there waiting for them.

He wasn’t.

Of course he isn’t, you moron. You sent him away.

She could barely feel the beginning of the new Summons over the incredible sense of loss.“I feel like I’m missing an arm or a leg,” she sighed as she set Austin down beside the cat carrier and turned up the collar of her coat.

He snorted.“How would you know?”

“What?”

“The only thing you’re missing is a sense of perspective. Some of us are missing actual body parts.”

“I’m sorry, Austin. I keep forgetting about your eye.”

“My eye?” His remaining eye narrowed. “Oh, yeah, that too. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go behind this building where I believe I saw a litter box shaped like a giant plastic turtle.”

“That’s a sandbox.”

“Whatever. While I’m gone, why don’t you answer the phone?”

“What phone?”

The pay phone on the other side of the parking lot began to ring.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Weight on one hip, Diana cradled the receiver between shoulder and ear and rummaged in her backpack for a pen. The odds were extremely good that Claire had paid no attention to her warning, but—having given it—she was curious about the outcome.

“Hello?”

“So, did you do it?”

On the other end of the phone, she heard Claire sigh.“Did I do what?”

“Make the huge mistake.” Moistening the tip of one finger, she erased the phone number at the end of the ubiquitousfor a good time call and replaced it with the number of the original graffiti artist. Erasing it entirely would only leave a clear space for some moron to refill and it was balance, after all, that Keepers were attempting to maintain.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Diana. I’ve just closed a small site and I’m about to move on to the next one.”

“I’m talking about my precog. This morning’s phone call. My timely warning.” Brow furrowed, she tapped the pen against her lip, then rubbed out the punctuation and addedforest fires in the same handwriting asRachel puts out changing it from nasty to inane and thus maintaining the high school status quo. If there was a place more inane, Diana didn’t want to know about it. “I bet you didn’t even take precautions.”

“That is none of your business.”

Diana shook her head. No one did self-righteous indignation at the mere possibility of a double-entendre as well as Claire. And no one gave away so much doing it.“You ditched Dean, didn’t you?”

“I did not ditch him. We’re just not traveling together any longer.”

“Dork.”

“A Keeper has no business involving a Bystander in dangerous work.”

“Think highly of yourself, don’t you? You didn’t involve him, he got involved all on his little lonesome. And, as I recall, his lonesome ain’t so little.”

“Diana!”

“Claire!” Suddenly depressed, she hung up. In her not even remotely humble opinion, Dean had been the best thing that had ever happened to her older sister. Just by existing, he’d managed to shake up that whole lone Keeper only-I-can-save-the-world crap that Claire believed. Apparently, he hadn’t shaken it hard enough.

Sighing, she filled in the last blank space on the wall by the phone with a quickJohn loves Terri in a somewhat lopsided heart. It wasn’t her best work, but at least it would keep something harmful out of the spot.

“A word, Ms. Hansen.”

Pushing a strand of dark hair out of her eyes, Diana turned and forced a fake smile.“Yes, Ms. Neal?”

The vice-principal’s answering smile had a certain sharklike quality about it. “If you think the school needs adornment, why not put your talents to use on the decorating committee for the Christmas dance.”