Summon The Keeper. The Second Summoning

After a moment, when the silence in the kitchen stopped ringing to the slam of a metaphorical door, Jacques sighed and said,“Would that be so bad,cherie?”

Claire paused on the verge of plunging into a good long wallow in self-pity, realizing he was actually asking,Would it be so bad to spend the rest of your life here with me?“You’re missing the point, Jacques. If I were needed to seal the hole, doomed to become an eccentric recluse years before my time, it’d be different, at least I’d be doing something useful. Here…” A toss of her head managed to take in the entire hotel. “…I’m a passive observer, watching a system I can’t affect, doing sweet dick all. It’s like, like having last year’s Cy Young winner sitting in the bullpen in case one of the starters blows a rotator cuff.”

The ghost stared at her in bewilderment“And that means…”

“It’s baseball,” Dean told him before Claire could explain. “It means she feels her abilities are wasted here.”

“Wasted?” Jacques repeated. “Here where there is a hole to Hell in the basement andune femme mauvaise asleep upstairs? If there is something that goes wrong here…”

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DEATH! DESTRUCTION!

A FIVE HUNDRED CHANNEL UNIVERSE!

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“…your, what you call, abilities will not be wasted,cherie.”

“But if nothing goes wrong…”

“We should all be so lucky,” Austin interrupted, jumping out of her arms. He checked the dry food in his bowl and sat, tail wrapped around his toes. “You know this place needs to be monitored.”

She waved a dismissive hand.“Well, yes, but…”

“And since you’ve been summoned here, this is where you need to be.”

“That’s the theory, but…”

“And since you can’t access the information you need to deal with this unique situation, it seems apparent that you’re the monitor needed for the site.” The catechism complete, he flicked an ear back for punctuation. “If it helps, think of yourself as the world’s last line of defense. Amissile in a silo, hopefully never to be used. A sub…”

“That’s enough,” Claire told him shortly, breathing heavily through her nose. She’d always believed that the one thing she hated most was being lectured to by the cat, but she’d just discovered she hated being lectured to in front of an audience even more. “It’s not helping. You want to know what will?” Whirling around, she yanked a large bag of chocolate chip cookies out of the cupboard. “This. This’ll help.” Tucking it under her arm, she pushed through Jacques, past Dean, and toward the dubious sanctuary of Augustus Smythe’s…no,her sitting room.

“Perhaps I can see her point,” Jacques mused as the distant door slammed. “Although, I am with her in this bull’s pen, so at least she is not alone.”

“And what am I?” Austin demanded. “Beef byproduct?”

“What is…”

“Never mind.” Paws against the cupboards, he stood up on his hind legs to watch Dean check the seal on the plastic container.

“I’d better dump the rest of those onions.”

“Why bother? You’ve been eating them for a week.” He snickered at Dean’s expression. “That which does not kill you makes you stronger.”

“Spider parts?” Slightly green, Dean clenched his teeth and tried not to think about it.

“Never ask me what’s in a hot dog.” The cat dropped back onto four feet. “And if you’re going to throw that out double bag it so it doesn’t leak. You’ll contaminate the whole dump.”

“Will the boss be all right?”

“Oh, sure. Just as soon as she comes to terms with spending the rest of her life standing guard in this hotel.”

“Those are not easy terms,” Jacques murmured reflectively. “To haunt this not very popular hotel is not how I myself thought to spend eternity. I will go to her.”

“Hey, hold it” Dean grabbed his arm, and stubbed his fingers against the wall as his hand passed right through the other man. “She wants to be alone.”

“And what do you know of it,Anglais! You can leave.”

“Yeah, but I won’t.”

“So that makes you better than me? That you stay but do not have to.” The ghost snorted. “I know why you stay,Anglais. It is not that it is so good a job,n’est ce pas?”

Dean’s ears burned. “Austin says I’m a part of this. And Claire’s mother says she needs me. And…”

“Oui?”

“And I don’t run out on my friends.”

The silence stretched and lengthened. Dean figured Jacques was taking his time to translate something particularly cutting but to his surprise, the ghost smiled and nodded.“D’accord. If she must guard the world, we three will guard her.”

We three.

It felt good being part of a team. It would’ve felt better standing back to back with Claire and taking on the world, just the two of them, but deep down, Dean was a realist.

He hadn’t ever really considered his future. He’d left Newfoundland looking for work, had fallen into this job, liked it well enough, and stayed. Because all his choices had been freely made, there seemed to be an infinite number still left to explore. He wasn’t really very happy to discover that when a person reached a certain age, choices started making themselves. “The world’s last line of defense—I wonder if the world knows how lucky it is,” he mused.

The cat and the ghost exchanged expressions as identical as differing physiognomy could make them.

“Still, I can see her point,” he continued in the same tone. “It’s an awesome responsibility, but it must be some boring being on guard. Ow!” He reached down and rubbed his calf. “Why did you scratch me?”

“Never, ever say it’s boring being a guard!”

“I didn’t,” Dean protested, checking for blood seeping through his jeans. “I said it must be some boring beingon guard.”

“Oh.” Austin sheathed his claws. “Sorry.”

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Stuffing a fourth cookie into her mouth, Claire sank back into the sofa cushions and looked for something to put her feet up on. The coffee table practically bowed under the weight of the crap it already held and the hassock was on the other side of the room. Twisting slightly sideways, she chewed and swallowed and dropped her heels down on the plaster bust of Elvis.

“Thang you. Thang you vera much.”

“You’re kidding, right?” She lifted her feet and let them drop again.

“Thang you. Thang you vera much.”

It seemed to have a limited vocabulary.“Why would Augustus Smythe waste power, even seepage, on something like you?” Unless. She chewed thoughtfully. “You don’t sing, do…”

Her last word got lost under the opening bars of“Jailhouse Rock.”

“Stop.”

“Thang you. Thang you vera much.”

“Sing.”

A few bars of“Blue Suede Shoes.”

“Stop.”

“Thang you. Thang you vera much.”

“Sing.”

“Heartbreak Hotel.” The opening bars of “Heartbreak Hotel.”

“That’s more like it” Claire had another cookie and preparedto wallow. From this point on, the future stretched out unchanging because to hope for change was to hope for disaster and to hope for disaster would strengthen Hell. She supposed she should call her mother, let her know how things had worked out—or rather how they hadn’t worked out—but she didn’t feel up to hearing even the most diplomatic version of “I told you so.”

And if Diana was home…

The ten-year difference in their ages and a childhood spent being rescued by Claire from toddler enthusiasm meant that Diana had always lumped Claire in with the rest of the old people. She wouldn’t be at all surprised to find Claire stuck running the hotel. It was what old Keepers did, after all.

Moving down to the second layer of cookies, Claire knew she couldn’t trust herself to listen to that. Better not to call until Friday evening when shealways called.

“You do know Elvis is running on seepage.”

Claire sighed, exhaling a fine mist of cookie crumbs.“He’s using a tiny fraction of what’s readily available. He’s not pulling from the pit.”

“I wonder if that was the first excuse Augustus Smythe made.” Austin jumped up onto the back of the sofa and gingerly stretched out along the top edge of the cushion.

“I doubt it.” The song ended and Elvis thanked his audience before she could actually do anything.

“There is a bright side, you know. If Augustus Smythe hadn’t been a sufficient monitor for all the years he was here, he would have been replaced. Since you’re here now, obviously there’s a better chance than there’s ever been that something will go wrong.”

Claire turned just enough to glare at the cat.“And I’m supposed to feel good about that?” But she reached out to see that the power loop remained secure.

YOU WERE DISAPPOINTED!

Get out of my head. She ate another three cookies so fast she almost took the end off a finger.

“You should cheer up,” Austin told her.

“I don’t want to cheer up.”

“Then you should answer the door.”

“There’s nobody…” A tentative knocking cut her off. She glared at the cat as she called out, “What?”

“It’s Dean. You haven’t eaten yet today, so I made you some breakfast.”

“It’s almost noon.”

“It’s an omelet.”

Names have power. Claire could smell it now: butter, eggs, mushrooms, cheese. All of a sudden she was ravenous. Half a bag of cookies hadn’t even blunted the edge. When she opened the door, she found he’d brought a thermal carafe of coffee and a glass of orange juice as well. She held out her hands, but he didn’t seem to want to relinquish the tray.

“You’ve, um, probably forgotten, but it’s Thanksgiving today.”

She hadn’t so much forgotten as hadn’t realized. A quick glance over at Miss October did indicate that it was, indeed the second Monday. And that she should replace Augustus Smythe’s calendars. “Thank you. I’ll call home.”

“Yeah. Well, it’s just that I was kind of invited to a friend’s house for dinner.”

“Kind of invited?”

“She’s from back home, too, and we all made plans to get together and…” His voice trailed off.

“Go. Be happy. Eat turkey. Watch football.” Claire reached over the omelet, grabbed the edge of the tray closest to his body and yanked it toward her, leaving him no choice but to let go or to go with it.

He let go.

“You’ve certainly earned a night off,” she said, smiling tightly up at him. “Thank you for the food. Now go away, I haven’t finished wallowing yet.” Stepping back, she closed the door in his face.

“That was rude,” Austin chided.

“Do you want some of this or not?”

It was enough, as she’d known it would be, for him to keep further opinions to himself.

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Out in the office, Dean shook his head, brow creased with concern.“I don’t know what I should do,” he confessed to Jacques.

“Do what she says,” the ghost told him. “Be with your friends. Eat the turkey, watch the football. There is nothing you can do here. She will come out when she is come to terms with this.”

“Has come to terms with this. You could go in.”

“I think not. What was it you said?” He started to fade and by the time he finished talking his words hung in the air by themselves. “I am pretty smart for a dead guy.”

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The interior of the refrigerator was as spotless as the rest of the kitchen. In Claire’s experience, most crispers held two moldy tomatoes and a head of mushy lettuce but not Dean’s. The vegetables were not only fresh, they’d been cleaned. She thought about making a salad and decided not to bother. Considered making a sandwich from the leftover pot roast and decided it was toomuch work. Reached for a plastic container of stroganoff to reheat and let her hand fall back by her side.

In the end, she stepped away from the fridge empty-handed.

The familiar clomp of work boots turned her around.

“You’re back early.”

“It’s almost nine. Not that early.” Dean set a bulging bag down on the table and began removing foil wrapped packages. “We ate, did the dishes, had a cuffer—swapped stories,” he explained as her brows went up. “And here I am, all chuffed out.” Carefully lifting out a small margarinetub, he shot her a tentative smile. “Are you feeling better?”

“I spent the afternoon watching tabloid talk shows.” She crossed the kitchen to stand by the table. “Now I feel slightly nauseated but better aboutmy life.”

“I think that’s the idea.”

Rubbing her temples with the heels of her hands, Claire snorted.“I certainly hope so. My mother send her regards, and my sister wants to know how you feel about European trawlers depleting the Grand Banks, but since she’s only trying to start a political argument, you don’t actually have to answer her.” She picked up a package that smelled unmistakably of turkey. “What’s this?”

“Thanksgiving dinner. I packed up some of the leftovers. The potatoes are cooked to a chuff, but you can’t tell under the gravy.”

When he got a plate and began arranging food on it, Claire folded her arms and shook her head. Only a young man could eat a full meal, then sit down and eat another.“I thought you were—How did it go—all chuffed out?”

“I am. This is for you.” The feel of the answering silence drew his attention up off the food. “That is, if you haven’t eaten. I mean, I don’t even know if you like turkey. It’s just that this was my first Thanksgiving away from home and I know how lonely I would’ve been without my friends and I thought that, well, that you should have some Thanksgiving dinner.” Flustered, unable to read her expression, he spilled the gravy.

The accident and the subsequent wiping and rewiping and polishing gave Claire a chance to swallow the lump in her throat. There were a number of things she wanted to say, but after the day’s emotional ups and downs, she didn’t think she could manage any of them without bursting into tears—and Keepers never cried in front of bystanders. With the table restored to a pristine state, she reached out and touched Dean lightly on the arm. “Thang you,” she said. “Thang you vera much.”

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THAT BOY IS SO NICE HE’S NAUSEATING. THERE MUST BE SOMETHING WE CAN TEMPT HIM WITH.

WE’VE TRIED. HE DOESN’T LISTEN.

ISN’TTHAT JUST LIKE A MAN.

NOT WHERE WE’RE CONCERNED, Hell told itself tartly.

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The next morning, Claire found a pair of Dean’s underwear hanging off the doorknob as she left her suite. The imp must’ve spent the entire night dragging them up from the laundry room in the basement.

“I hope you gave yourself a hernia,” Claire muttered, pulling them free.

Briefs, not boxers. Navy blue with white elastic.

“Boss?”

They wouldn’t mash down into a small enough ball to bide. Keeping her right hand and its contents behind her, Claire turned. “What?”

“We’ve got lots of eggs, and I have to use them. I wondered if you wanted me to make you some for breakfast.”

“Fine.”

“How do you want them?”

“I don’t care.” He was wearing one of his brilliant white Tshirts and jeans, totally unaware of how good he looked. Briefs not boxers. Given how tightly his jeans fit she should have been able to figure that out on her own.

“Scrambled?”

“Fine.”

“With garlic and mushrooms?”

“Whatever.”

Dean frowned.“You all right?”

“Fine.”

He leaned left.

She shuffled just enough to cut down his line of sight“Was there anything else?”

“Uh, no. I guess not.”

“Good. You go ahead.” Her right arm started forward to wave him away but she stopped it in time. “Go on. I’ll be there in a minute.”

Shaking his head, Dean disappeared down the hall.

Twenty years old, Claire reminded herself whacking the back of her skull against the door.

The hollow boom of the impact echoed throughout the first floor.

“Boss?”

“It’s nothing,” she called. Rubbing the rising bump, she contemplated doing it again. She’d had the perfect opportunity to prove the existence of the imp. There could be no other explanation for the underwear delivered to her door. So why, she wondered, had she acted like such an idiot?

“It’s this place; it’s messing with my head.” Opening the door, she tossed the underwear into the sitting room. She’d figure out a way to get them back into Dean’s laundry, later.

“Souvenir?” Austin asked as the briefs sailed by and landed on Elvis.

“Thang you, thang you vera much.”

“You can both just shut up.”

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“They put over the top, how do you say…plaster board?” Jacques announced, pulling his head back out of the wall. “But the works for the elevator, they are all here.”

“Should I start uncovering it?” Dean asked eagerly.

Claire shrugged.“Why not.”

“Great, I’ll go get my hammer.”

“And what will you be doing,cherie,” Jacques asked as Dean ran off, “while he bangs out his frustrations on the wall?”

“I don’t think Dean has frustrations.” She ducked under the counter flap, heading for the phone. “But to answer your question, I’m going to finish packing Augustus Smythe’s knickknacks away.”

“To make the place your own, yes?”

“Yes.”

“So you are reconciled to staying here?”

An empty cardboard box dangling from one hand, she paused on the threshold, unwilling to take the final, symbolic step into the sitting room.“I might as well be, I haven’t any other choice.”

“Youare needed here, Claire.”

When she turned, he was standing right behind her. A step forward would take her right through him. His eyes had gone very dark and he was wearing the smile that made her stomach feel like she’d swallowed a bug.

“I could reconcile you.” His hand caressed the air by her cheek. “It would take so little power.”

At first Claire thought that the bells she heard were the ringing of desire in her ears, but then, over Jacques shoulder, she saw the front door open.

“Yoohoo!”

She stepped forward, teeth gritted against the chill, Jacques dematerializing as she moved. There was no way Mrs. Abrams could’ve missed seeing him.

“Did you see that, Carlee, dear?”

“See what?” Claire asked.

“Nothing. Never mind. Of course you didn’t.”

Prepared for an argument, or possibly even hysterics, her satisfied chuckle confused Claire completely.

“I just came in to tell you that you’ve got guests. Two young men. I was on my way in from my Tuesday morning hair appointment—I like to get there early, you know, before poor dear Sandra gets tired—and I saw their car go up the driveway and I knew you’d want to know immediately. That’sfunny.” Head cocked, she swiveled it about like an orange bouffant radar dish. “I don’t hear Baby. He does so love to welcome your guests as they get out of their cars in the parking lot.”

“Does he welcome them the way he welcomes the postman?” Claire wondered.

“Don’t be silly, dear, there’s a fence in his way. I’d best go check on the poor thing.” Pausing on the threshold, she pointed back toward the gleaming oak counter. “You should put some paint on that dear. All that bare wood looks somewhat indecent don’t you think?”

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The two young men weren’t much taller than Claire, although they had a wiry build and self-confident grace that suggested their height had never been an issue. Both had sharply pointed features, an eyebrow lying across each forehead with no discernible break, and short dark hair that picked up the light as they moved so that it seemed the very end of each individual hair had been dipped in silver.

Claire relaxed as a quick dip into identical gray eyes showed not only a lack of evil intent but that they carried significantly less darkness than the general population.

“You guys twins?” Dean asked, wandering over to the counter, hammer in hand.

“Actually,” said one.

“We’re triplets,” said the other. “I’m Ron, never Ronald since that clown came on the scene, and this is my brother Reg. We’re in town for the sportsman’s show that’s at the Portsmouth Center this week.”

“Randy had a previous commitment,” Reg explained with a toothy grin. “Butwe’d like a room. Our grandfather stopped here some years ago, and he spoke very highly of the place.”

Must’ve been before Augustus Smythe took over, Claire thought When Dean glanced her way, she had to hide a grin. It was obvious he was thinking the same thing.“All of our rooms are doubles,” she told them making a mental note to have Jacques search the attic for a set of twin beds. “If you mind sharing, we could give you a deal on two rooms.” It wasn’t like the second room would be needed for other guests.

“Sharing’s fine.”

They were in constant motion and she’d lost track of which was which. “Breakfast is included in the price.”

“Great but all we really need you to do is…”

“…throw half a dozen raw eggs into a blender.”

“We’re in training.”

For what? Salmonella? But they were guests, so all she said aloud was,“Well, if you’ll give us a few minutes, we’ll get room one ready for you.”

“No hurry.”

“We’re going for a run down by the lake.”

“We’ve been on the road since dawn and…”

“…we don’t do so well sitting still that long.”

“We’ll be back in about an hour.”

Ron, or possibly Reg, grinned up, way up, at Dean.“See you later, big fella.”

Reg, or as it were, Ron, nodded at Claire.“Ma’am.”

They bounded out the door together. Claire had never seen anyone over the age of three actually bound before. Feeling a little out of breath, although she hadn’t moved from behind the counter during the entire exchange, she wondered just when exactly she’d become a ma’am.

“Cool guys,” Dean said. “Lots of energy. Should I go up and do the room?”

And wasBoss really any better?

“Boss?”

Not really.“Why not? Has to be done.”

She walked over to the desk as he went upstairs and dropped into the chair.Keep your distance, she reminded herself.The way things have turned out, he’ll be moving on long before you do.

When Austin came into the office a few minutes later, she was sulkily updating the day’s noninformation into the site journal. “What’s with you?” she asked, noticing the cat’s bottle brush tail, and half open mouth.

“Something stinks,” he growled. “I smell dog.”

“Two guests just registered.” She hadn’t noticed any particular odor, but if the twins were competing at the sportsman’s show perhaps that meant they worked with dogs.

“It’s coming from over here.”

Rolling her eyes, Claire got up to peer over the counter at him.

“And it’s not dog.”

He was sniffing the spot where Reg, or possibly Ron, had stood to sign the register.

“Then what is it?”

“Werewolf.”

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WEREWOLVES?

THERE WOLVES. THERE CASTLE.

The silence that fell in the furnace room was the sort of anticipatory silence that fell just before a smack. In this particular case, it wasn’t so much a smack as total, all encompassing destruction.

The silence continued a moment longer, then a very small voice said, OW.

NINE

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“THE SEEPAGE IS BUILDING UP AGAIN.” Sitting on the edge of the bed, Claire pulled on a sock.“I can feel the buzz beginning.”

Austin yawned.“What’re you going to do about it.”

“I don’t know. I can stop the buzz by using it—which’ll make Hell happy—or I can endure it and go slowly nuts—which’ll also make Hell happy. There’s got to be an alternative.”

“I’ll let you know if I think of one.”

Claire rolled her eyes.“You do that”

“You going after the Historian this morning?”

Already halfway out the door, she threw an irritated,“What’s the point?” back over her shoulder.

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“Boss? You busy?”

Claire looked up from writingSmythe;junk on the outside of the sixth box of assorted odds and ends, mostly ends, she’d cleared from the sitting room. “Not exactly, no.”

“Can I talk to your?”

“I think I can spare a moment.” When he frowned, clearly considering the actual time he’d need, Claire sighed. “Figure of speech, Dean. What did you want to tell me?”

“Well, I was upstairs, wiping down the molding…”

She leaned slightly toward him, as though proximity would help the statement make more sense.“You were what?”

“Wiping down the molding. The trim around the doors,” he expanded with an indulgent smile when she continued to look confused. “It collects dust I didn’t get to it last week because of the renovations. Anyway, you know the two guys in room one; the twins?”

“The triplets.”

“Okay.”

Claire managed to rearrange her face into her most neutral expression.“What about them?”

“I don’t want to get them into trouble or anything, but they came in some late last night and I thought I heard it then, I just wasn’t sure.”

“Thought you heard what?”

“A dog.”

“A dog?” Moving quickly to the counter, Claire swept Austin up into her arms before he could say anything.

“Yeah. And just now, I’m pretty sure I saw half a muddy paw print. I mean, if they’re smuggling a dog into their room…”

Austin started to snicker.

“…we ought to say something when they come back tonight because it’s not necessary.”

“What isn’t necessary?” She shifted the cat’s weight. He was laughing so hard he was becoming difficult to hold.

“Hiding the dog. You don’t mind if they bring in a pet, do your?”

“No. I don’t.” Which was as much as she could manage with a straight face.

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“A dog?” The twins exchanged identical smiles. “No,” Ron continued, “we don’t have a dog.”

Dean frowned.“But I heard…” He faltered, caught and held by two pairs of frank gray eyes. They were telling the truth, he’d bet his life on it. “I guess maybe I didn’t.”

“You’re welcome to come up and search the room,” Reg offered.

“Any time,” Ron added suggestively, brows rising and falling.

“No, that’s okay.” Feeling a little like he’d missed the punch line of a joke everyone else found incredibly funny, Dean shrugged. “I, well, we, that is the hotel, wanted you to know we don’t mind animals in the rooms, that’s all.”

“Nice to hear. We’ll remember that…”

“…if we’re by this way again.”

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“What’s the lovely young man going to think of you when he finds out you’ve been lying to him?” Claire’s reflection asked.

“I haven’t been lying.” She’d switched to a clear lip gloss on those days she wasn’t able to use the mirror. It was faster than waiting to see what she was doing.

“You didn’t tell him about the vampire, you’re not telling him about the werewolves…” The reflection traced a dark red clown frown a quarter inch from her lips.

“But I’m not lying. If he asks…”

“And he’s so likely to ask, isn’t he? You promised, no more secrets.”

“These aren’t my secrets.”

“We think it’s sweet that you’re trying to protect him.”

Claire blinked, a little confused by the sudden change of topic.“What are you talking about?”

“You know. He’s just a kid. Let’s keep him safe. He’ll thank you for it later.”

No one did sarcasm quite like Hell.

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When the twins left later that morning, they took three trophies with them. Although he only saw them from a distance, all three seemed to have a figure of a dog as part of the design. Dean decided not to ask.

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“Boss, can I talk to you?”

Breathing heavily through her nose, Claire leaned out from behind her monitor.“What, again?”

“If this is a bad time…”

“A bad time? Would you like to see a bad time?” She waved him under the counter and around to her side of the desk. “Once, just once, I leave the wards off,” she continued as he approached, “…and this is what happens.”

“You spilled a cup of coffee on your keyboard?” Dean shook his head sympathetically. “That’s rough.”

“I didn’t spill it.”

“And don’t look at me,” Austin advised him from the top of the counter.

“It was the imp.” Claire made a valiant attempt to unclench her teeth and nearly succeeded.

“Where’d it get the coffee?”

“I left my mug sitting here, half full, when I went in to lunch.” It didn’t need a Keeper to work out the cause of the two vertical lines over the bridge of Dean’s glasses. He’d probably never left a half a cup of anything sitting around. He’d probably never even left a dirty cup sitting in the sink. “I forgot it was there, all right?”

“Sure.” Head bent, hands dwarfing the keyboard as he gently twisted it from side to side, he remained unaware that the full force of her mood had turned in his direction. “Can’t you drain it?”

“No.” She felt as though she’d slammed into an affable brick wall—and had about as much effect as if she’d run full tilt into a real one. “It’s already dry. Half a dozen of the keys aren’t working.” The wheels on the old chair shrieked a protest as she shoved it away from the desk. “I suppose I can write the stupid site journal out by hand, but it’s a little difficult to build a database without a…”

Something small, something crimson and cream, raced along the wall under the window.

Claire snatched up the empty mug and flung it with all her might.

She missed.

The mug smashed into a hundred pieces.

Austin went three feet straight up.

“What’re you trying to do to me?” he snarled as he landed, fur sticking out at right angles from his body. “I’m old!”

“It was the imp. You saw it, didn’t you, Dean?”

“I saw…” He paused and replayed the scene as his heart rate returned to normal. “I saw something.”

“A mouse,” Austin told him tersely.

“I don’t know, it was…”

“An imp.” Claire’s tone left no room for argument. “Somebody,” she shot a scathing look at the cat, “has moved the trap.”

“Probably the mice.”

“Oh, give me a break.”

Sitting down with his back toward her, Austin began washing his shoulder with long, deliberate strokes of his tongue.

Although Dean hoped it was his imagination, the air between cat and Keeper felt chilled.“I could take the keyboard apart,” he offered, flipping it and frowning at the half-dozen, tiny, inset screw heads. “Maybe I can clean the coffee out of it”

“Take it apart? As in pieces?” On the other hand, she couldn’t use it the way it was so how much worse could it get. “All right But be careful.”

“No problem.” His enthusiastic smile faded as a bit of broken ceramic crushed under one work boot. “First off, I’ll go get a broom and dustpan.”

“Dean?”

He stopped on the other side of the counter.

“What was it you wanted to talk to me about?”

What was it? The sudden, deliberate destruction of the coffee mug had driven it right out of his head.

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“Do you know what you are doing,Anglais?” Jacques leaned over Dean’s shoulder and poked an ethereal finger at the keyboard. “Can you put the pieces back together when they all fall out?”

“That’s not about to happen,” Dean told him, inserting a Phillips head screwdriver into the last tiny screw. “These day’s everything’s solid state.”

Leaning against the other side of the desk, Claire drummed bubblegum-colored fingernails on the CPU and bit her tongue. The buzz of the accumulated seepage had become a constant background noise as impossible to ignore as a dentist’s drill, and the smallest things set her off. She’d yelled at Dean for returning the wallpaper sample books before she’d finished with them after telling him that she’d definitely made up her mind, at Jacques for going through the dining room table rather than around, at Dean again for waiting until after lunch before opening up her keyboard, and at Austin, just because. It was like continual PMS only without the bloating.

“That’s got it.” Setting the screw in the saucer with the others, Dean slid a pair of slot screwdrivers into the crack between the front and back of the keyboard and twisted in opposite directions. The plastic began to creak as the tiny levers moved off the horizontal. When the crack widened to half an inch, he pried the back of the keyboard carefully free.

The sudden flurry of tiny white pieces of plastic exploding into the air strongly resembled a small, artificial blizzard.

“Score one for the dead guy,” Jacques observed when the last piece landed.

Dean scooped up one of the escapees. A tiny spring fell off one end, bounced on the desk, and rolled out of sight.“Sorry,” he said, shoulders up around his ears as he peered up over the top of his glasses at Claire. “But I’m sure I can fix it.”

It took an effort, but Claire managed to count all the way to ten before responding.“Just clean it up,” she snarled, “and move on.”

Dean’s eyes widened and a muscle jumped in his jaw.

“Now what’s your problem?”

“For a minute there you sounded…” He paused and shook his head. “It’s okay. I’ll just clean this up like you said.”

“I sounded like what?” Claire growled. “Tell me.Please.”

He didn’t want to tell her, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. “Like Augustus Smythe.”

She stared at him, saw that he was serious, and opened her mouth to call him several choice names. Snapping it closed on the first of them, she stomped into her sitting room and slammed the door.

Jacques snickered.“I must hand it over to youAnglais, you have the way with women.”

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“He said I sounded like Augustus Smythe!”

Austin rolled over and stared up at her.“No,” he said after a moment. “Too high-pitched.”

“It’s the seepage.” She rubbed at her temples where the buzz had lodged. “It’s barely been two weeks since I cleared it out, and it’s already making me cranky.”

“Got news for you, Claire, you’re way beyond cranky.”

“Smythe couldn’t have lived like this all the time.”

“Feeling sorry for him?”

“No.” Her lips pulled back off her teeth. “Wanting to wring his neck.”

“Maybe you’re more susceptible because you’re a Keeper and under normal circumstances, which these aren’t, you’re able to adjust the seepage.” The cat washed the black spot on his front leg thoughtfully. “Why not use it to close down the postcard?”

“Because the postcard is using seepage. If I close it down, in a few days I’ll have a worse problem than before. And besides, I don’t want to use it.”

“The postcard?”

“The seepage!” She dropped down onto the couch and emerged from the depths a few moments later to add another forty-three cents and a plain gold ring that smelled of fish to the half-filled bowl of retrieved flotsam on the coffee table. “I can’t go on like this.”

The distant sound of a ten-pound sledge slamming through plaster board jerked her forward, almost tipping her into the precarious area between the coach cushions.

Austin yawned.“Maybe you should cut back on the caffeine.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t say anything if you can’t say something helpful.” Tapping her nails against her thigh, Claire gritted her teeth. “There has to be a logical solution.”

“Why?”

“Shut up. Point: Power is seeping out around the edges of the seal two presumably dead Keepers created with another Keeper’s power. A further point: It’s not my power sealing the site, so I can’t make adjustments. Yet another point: I can’t just leave the seepage be because it’s drivingme nuts. And one final point: The only way to get rid of the seepage buildup is to use it, but using the power of Hell can’t help but corrupt the individual using it no matter her intentions. So.” She drew in a deep breath and exhaled noisily. “Where does that get us?”

“Absolutely nowhere,” Austin told her, climbing onto her lap.

Claire slumped back into the sofa.“It was a rhetorical question anyway. What we need is a way to use the seepage without strengthening Hell.”

“Can’t be done. Hell works only in its own best interests.”

Stroking the cat, Claire spent a moment wallowing in the innate unfairness of the universe, and then…

“Hey!” Austin fought his way out from between the two sofa cushions. “If you’re going to stand suddenly, warn a guy!”

“Hell can bemade to work against itself.” Claire whirled around to face the cat. “I’ll feed the seepage into the shield around the furnace room!”

The cat stepped over onto the coffee table and, with a solid surface below him, paused to smooth the ruffled fur along his side.“How?” he asked after a moment.

“Adhesion. The moment anything escapes from the pit. Slap!” She smacked her palms together. “Right into the shield but set up so that it’s distributed evenly, like oyster spit building a pearl. Hell sends more out, the shield gets stronger. Hell sends nothing at all, nothing happens becausethe original shield is still in place.”

After a moment, Austin nodded.“It’s brilliant”

Claire picked him up and kissed the top of his head.“It’s why I get the big bucks,” she agreed.

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Sledge over his shoulder, Dean bounded down the stairs into the lobby and rocked to a dead stop when he saw Claire’s door open. “I uh, piled all the bits of your keyboard on the desk,” he said as she emerged.

To his surprise, she smiled.“That’s great. When I get a minute, I’ll separate what’s recyclable and throw the rest out.”

He took a tentative step closer. When he realized he was holding the sledge across his body like a shield, he let it swing down until the head rested on the floor.“You’re not angry, then?” he asked tentatively.

Claire shrugged.“Accidents happen.”

“No, I meant about saying you sounded like…” Although she no longer seemed as crusty as she had, it didn’t seem polite to say it again. “You know.”

“I was angry because you were right.”

Coming out from behind the counter, Austin performed an exaggerated double take. Dean tried not to smile.

“But,” she continued, “I’ve come up with a way to solve the problem.” She nodded toward the sledge. “How’s the elevator coming?”

“We’ve got all four doors cleared. They didn’t take anything out when they closed the system up, so it just needs the trim back around the holes. Jacques is in the attic right now having a look at the works.”

“Jacques is?”

“It’s old,” Dean told her cheerfully, as though that explained everything. When it didn’t appear to, he added, “It’s the sort of machinery he’s familiar with.”

Walking over to the recessed doorway, Claire peered through the wrought iron scrollwork into the closet-sized space. She could just barely make out the cables.“Where’s the car?”

“In the basement.”

“Given what’s in the furnace room, is that entirely safe?”

“Given gravity, the basement seemed safest.”

Up on her toes, Claire sent a pale white light into the shaft. Everything she could see seemed in remarkably good shape, but she supposed there was no point in taking chances.“You’re probably right.”

Austin sat back on his haunches and stared up at her in astonishment.“That’s twice.”

She ignored him.“Do you think you can get it working?”

“Sure.” Dean’s grip slipped as he realized what he’d said. “I mean, yeah. No problem.”

“Don’t try it without me. I’d like to be in on the inaugural ride.”

“It might not be safe….”

“It’ll be safer with me in it.” Turning to go, she paused and took a deep breath. There was one more thing she’d resolved to do. “Oh, and, Dean? I’m sorry I snapped at you earlier.”

“That’s okay. It was nothing.”

“It was something if I’ve apologized for it.”

At that point he decided it would be safer if he just kept quiet.

“Two admissions that someone else might be rightand an apology. Circle this day on the calendar,” Austin muttered as he followed Claire toward the basement.

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“The boys seem to be getting along better,” Claire noted as she opened the padlocks.

“They’re not boys,” Austin snorted from the top of the washing machine.

“It’s a figure of speech.”

“Dean likes you.”

“Get real, he calls me Boss.”

“He called you Claire when you fell down the stairs.”

“He did?” Given the way her tailbone had impacted with the edge of the step, she wasn’t surprised she hadn’t noticed. “Means nothing.”

“Then what about the way he looks at you?”

“He’s twenty. The way he looks at women isn’t under his conscious control.”

“All right; what about the way you look at him?”

She twisted around enough to grin at the cat.“Like I said, he’s twenty. It’s an aesthetic appreciation.”

Austin’s tail beat out an audible rhythm against the enameled steel. “I know that babysitting a site at your age was the last thing you wanted, but it’s given you a chance few Keepers get and you’ll kick yourself if you blow it.”

“Blow what?”

“The chance for a relationship.”

“A relationship?” Claire sighed. “Have you been watching Oprah again?”

“No! Well, actually, yes,” he amended. “But that has nothing to do with this.”

“Forget it, Austin. Dean’s attractive, yes, but he’s too young.”

“Jacques isn’t.”

“Jacques is too dead.”

“Dean isn’t.”

She hung the chains on their hooks and turned to glare at her companion.“You’re not the only one concerned about my having or not having arelationship; Hell suggested Jacques and I settle down for the duration.”

“Just because something is an anthropomorphism of ultimate evil, that doesn’t mean it hasn’t your best interests at heart.”

“Yes, it does.”

“Fine. But your health is important tome.”

“My health?”

“It’s been nearly six months.”

“So?”

“If I remember correctly, the last incident wasn’t terribly successful.”

Her brows drew in.“What are you talking about?”

“I was under the bed.”

“You were under the bed!”

“Hey, it’s all just loud noises to me.” He stretched out a back leg and stared down at the spread toes. “Mind you, some loud noises are more believable than others.”

Claire counted to ten and let it go, reminding herself, once again, that no one ever won an argument with a cat.

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Young Keepers started out believing that accessing the possibilities required inner calm and outer silence. After their first couple of sites they realized calm and quiet were luxuries they’d seldom have. Claire’s first site had been in the sale bin at a discount department store. It hadn’t been pretty, but it had prepared her for eventually working through the catcalls and attempted interference of Hell.

Breathing shallowly through her mouth, she adjusted the possibilities on the inside of the shield until the seepage began to adhere. It was a simple, elegant solution and she left the furnace room three hours later stinking of brimstone and feeling inordinately pleased with herself.

PRIDE IS ONE OF OURS, Hell called after her. When the only response was the slamming of the furnace room door, it examined the addition to its binding. IS SHE ALLOWED TO DO THAT? it asked sulkily.

NOTHING SEEMS TO BE STOPPING HER.

WE SHOULD BE STOPPING HER.

WELL, DUH.

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As he heard Claire come into the lobby, Dean looked up from sorting the mail.“Good timing, Boss; you…you look like something they dragged off the bottom of the harbor.”

“Thank you, Dean, I’m touched by your concern. You forgot to mention that I smell like something from the sewage treatment plant.” She paused, took a deep breath, and ducked under the counter, swaying a little when she straightened on the other side.

Dean took a step toward her.“You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“You look exhausted.”

“I’m a bit tired, yes. I’ve been working.”

“On the pit?”

“By the pit.”

“Is that safe?”

“It is now.”

“I don’t understand.” He frowned. “Did you figure out how to seal it?”

“Wouldn’t that be good news?” Austin asked before Claire could respond.

“Well, sure…”

“Then shouldn’t you sound happier about it?”

“Stop being annoying just because you can,” Claire suggested. Turning back to Dean, she shook her head. “No, I haven’t figured out how to seal the pit, but I have solved a smaller problem. What did you mean when you said, good timing?”

It took him a moment to follow the path of the conversation.“The mail’s finally here. You got a postcard.”

Claire took the cardboard rectangle between thumb and forefinger, glanced at the photograph of a tropical paradise, then flipped the card over.

“Who’s it from?” Dean asked, leaning forward.

“My sister, Diana. Apparently, she’s in the Philippines.”

Austin’s ears went back. “Didn’t they just have a huge volcanic eruption in the Philippines?”

“We don’tknow that was her fault.” A tooth mark on the edge of the postcard had the distinct, punched hole appearance of Baby’s games with the mailman. “Speaking of natural disasters, we haven’t heard from Mrs. Abrams for a while.”

“Maybe the blinds discouraged her?” Dean offered.

“Maybe we should put the wagon train in a circle,” Austin muttered. “You should start to worry when the drums stop.”

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After a long hot shower, Claire spent the rest of the day sprawled in an armchair, watching aNational Geographic video about killer whales. It was one of only eleven tapes she’d salvaged from Augustus Smythe’s extensive collection. The pornography hadn’t been the worst of it; his video library had also included every episode of “Gunsmoke” plus a nearly complete collection of “The Beverly Hillbillies.”

Hell was not only murky, it filled out subscription forms.

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“You coming, Austin?”

“You’re kidding, right?” Tail lashing from side to side he backed up a step just in case Claire decided to force the issue. “You actually want me to get into that cross between a cage and a coffin, allow myself to be lifted three stories off the ground by an antique mechanism reinstalled bya cook under the direction of a dead sailor? I think not.”

“It’s perfectly safe.”

“That’s what you said about that cruise.”

“Cruise?” Jacques asked by her ear.

“Bermuda Triangle. Long story,” Claire told him.

“I wouldn’t get into that thing,” Austin continued, ears flat, “if I still had all nine lives. Not even if I’d rescued Princess Toadstool and picked up another life. If anything goes wrong, somebody has to be around to say I told you so.”

“Suit yourself.” Unfortunately for any second thoughts she might have been having, Claire couldn’t back out now, not with the cat so vehemently opposed. He was quite smug enough without her giving him more ammunition. She closed the door, dropped the inner gate, and turned to the more corporeal of her two companions. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

“It’s simple.” Dean flashed her a confident grin. “All you do is turn this level from the off position to either the right or the left. Right takes us up, and left takes us down.”

Claire sighed.“That’s probably why they labeled it that way. I was asking on a more esoteric level, but never mind. Let’s get this ride over with, shall we?”

“Anything you say, Boss.” Feet braced, Dean wrapped both hands around the gleaming brass lever and swung it to the right.

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Up in the attic, ancient machinery gave a startled jerk and wheezed into life, sending wave after wave of vibration through the stored furniture. The small, multicolored creature removing the last of the most recent marshmallows from the imp traps whirled around and fell to what served it for knees. In all of its short existence, it had never heard such a sound. Extrapolating from limited experience, it created a wild and metaphysical explanation that changed its life forever.

But that’s another story.

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Claire pressed one hand flat against the wall as the elevator lurched upward.“It works.”

“I never doubted it.” Looking like the captain at the wheel of a very small ship, Dean kept his eyes locked on the edge of the floor joists moving down on the other side of the iron gate. When the top edge of the first floor was almost even with the floor of the elevator, he lifted the switch back up into the off position. In the few seconds it took for the machinery to stop, the floors came level.

“Good eye,Anglais,” Jacques muttered. “Such a pity you were born too late to make this a career.”

“Yeah?” Stepping left, Dean hooked up the gate and reached for the latch on the outer door. “Well, it’s a pity you died too early for me to…”

“To what,Angla…”

Careful not to step over the threshold, Claire leaned out of the elevator and peered up and down the beach, eyes squinted against the ruddy light of the setting sun.“This doesn’t look like the lobby.” The touch of the breeze on her cheek, the sound of the waves curling and slapping into pieces against the fine, white sand, the smell of the rotting fish they appeared to have cut in half worked together to convince her it wasn’t illusion either. “I’mbeginning to see why Augustus Smythe closed this thing up.”

“Because he does not like to take the vacation? Perhaps because he did not have a beautiful woman to walk with by the sea.” Wafting past her, Jacques turned and held out his hand.

Claire stared at him, horrified.“What are you doing out there? In fact, how can you be out there?” A quick glance showed that a doily taken from his old room remained crumpled in the back corner. “Your anchor’s in here!”

“As to how, I do not know. As to what, I am inviting you to go for the walk.”

“The walk? Jacques, I don’t think you quite realize where you are.” Had she been able to hold him, she’d have grabbed his hand and yanked him back into the relative safety of the elevator.

“And where am I,cherie! Where is this place that gives me such freedom?”

“I don’t know. And that’s my point!”

“Ah, you are frightened of the unexpected. I understand,cherie, you are a woman, after all.” Lit from behind by the sun, his eyes gleamed.

She folded her arms.“If you’re implying I’m not taking the same stupid chance you are because I’m only a woman, go ahead. I’m not going to fall for it.”

“You wound me,cherie. I said I understood whyyou are frightened.”

Dean moved out of the elevator too fast for Claire to grab him.“Are you saying I’m a coward?”

“Am I saying that?” Jacques drifted backward, toward the edge of the water.“Non. I would never think of such a thing.”

“You better not be,” Dean muttered. He drew in a deep lungful of air and smiled contentedly. “Man, this place smells just like home.”

The ghost snorted.“If your home smells like this,Anglais, it is no wonder you clean so much.”

The familiar salt air had put Dean in too good a mood to continue the argument. Shaking his head, he wandered down to meet the next wave coming in.

“Excuse me!”

Both men turned and, drawn by Claire’s expression, found themselves returning to the elevator considerably more quickly than they’d left it.

“If you two are quite through exposing yourselves, maybe we could think about getting…now what?”

Dean had disappeared around the doorframe.

“This is some weird.” His voice came from directly behind her. “There’s just this door in the sand. From this side, you can’t see the elevator at all.”

“Don’t step where it should be!” Claire shouted. She didn’t want to think about what could happen should three realities—elevator, beach, and Dean—suddenly find themselves sharing the same space. When Dean reappeared, she backed away from the door, leaving him room to get in. “Come on.”

Jacques stepped between them, his long face wearing the half rakish, half pleading expression she found so difficult to resist.“Cherie, how often is there the chance to enjoy such a sunset?”

“And how enjoyable will it be if I leave the elevator and it disappears?”

“So before you leave, we prop the door open with a rock. If only the door is real here, then the elevator will go nowhere.”

“You don’t know that,” Claire muttered, but she could feel her resolve weakening. It was a beautiful beach; brilliant white sand stretching down to turquoise water, the setting sun brushing the entire scene with red-gold light.

“If I cannot convince you,cherie…” His eyes twinkled under lowered lids. “…then I dare you.”

“You dare me?”

“Oui. I dare you to enjoy yourself, if onlypour un moment.”

“You think I’m incapable of enjoying myself?”

“I did not say that.”

“Well, I’m not Dean…”

Dean had already found a rock. He rolled it up against the open door and, telling herself that Jacques’ theory made a great deal of sense, Claire stepped over the threshold.

After a few moments of anticipatory silence, when neither the elevator nor the beach seemed affected, Jacques threw up his hands in triumph.“You see,” he said, catching them again. “I am right.”

Nearly body temperature, the water invited swimming, but both mortals contented themselves with tossing shoes and socks back into the elevator and wading through the shallow surf. Behind the open door, the beach rose up to become undulating dunes and finally a multihued green wall of jungle vegetation.

“Austin would love it here,” Claire laughed, digging her toes into the sand. “It’s the world’s biggest litter bo…oh, my God! He’ll be frantic!”

“I don’t think it works that way.”

Fighting to keep her balance in the loose footing, she whirled to glare at Dean.“What makes you such an expert?”

He held out his arm, watch crystal reflecting all the red and gold and orange in the sky.“The second hand hasn’t moved since we got here.”

“Oh, I see,” she snarled, “time has stopped. Did it ever occur to you that it might be your watch?”

Crestfallen, he shook his head.

“Excusez-moi.” Jacques’ tone laid urgency over the polite form of the interruption. “Something happens in the water.”

About twenty feet from shore, the waves had taken on a lumpy appearance. Bits of them seemed to be moving in ways contrary to the nature of water, rolling from side to side as they headed for the shore. Then the center hump of a wave kept rising past the crest, the mottled surface lifting up, up, until it became obvious, even staring into the sunset, that what they were watching wasn’t water.

“If I didn’t know better,” Dean murmured, one hand shading his eyes, “I’d swear that was an octopus.”

“Octopi do not come so big,” Jacques protested weakly.

“Well, it’s not a squid.”

A tentacle, as thick as Dean’s arm, broke through the surf no more than four feet from where they were standing.

“Octopi, regardless of size, don’t come up on the shore,” Claire announced as though daring the waving appendage to contradict her.

The twenty feet had become fifteen. Fourteen. Twelve. Ten.

“On the other hand,” she added as a suckered arm fell short and gouged a trench in the sand at her feet, “I don’t think this is an octopus either. RUN!”

Stumbling and falling in the loose sand, they raced for the elevator.

A tentacle slammed into Claire’s hip, throwing her sideways into Dean. He caught her and held on, dragging her forward with him, her feet barely touching down.

From the water’s edge came the sound of a large, wet, leather sack being smacked against the shore.

Unaffected by the footing, Jacques reached safety first, turned, and went nearly transparent.“Depeche toi!”

Gesture made his meaning plain.

Dean shoved Claire forward, over the threshold and bent to roll away the rock. A tentacle wrapped around his right leg but before it could tighten, he pulled free and stomped down hard. It might’ve been a more effective blow had he not been in bare feet, but it bought him enough time. He leaped inside, dragging the door closed with him.

Claire slammed the gate shut.

The deep blue/gray tip of a tentacle poked through the grillwork in the small window.

Wrapping sweaty hands around the lever, Dean yanked it right.

The floor joists nipped off an inch of rubbery flesh. When it dropped to the floor, Claire kicked it into the back corner and turned on Dean.“Why up?” she demanded, loudly enough to make herself heard over the pounding of her heart. “We came into this through the basement and that’s very likely the only way we’ll get out The basement is down!”

The floor of the elevator level with the second floor of the guest house, Dean locked the lever into its upright position.“I guess up just seemed more natural,” he said. Grinning broadly, he sank down and reached for his shoes and socks. “Besides, we haven’t seen what’s on two or three.”

Claire stared down at him in silence.

After a moment, one sock on, the other in his hand, he lifted his head.“What?”

“We haven’t seen what’s on two or three?”

The grin slipped.“Well, yeah.”

She could see her reflection in his glasses.“Are you out of your mind?”

His brow furrowed.“We have to see what’s on two and three. We can’t quit now.”

“Oh, yes, we can. We just got chased by a giant tentacled thing; that’s quite enough excitement for one day.”

After a moment, he shrugged.“You’re the boss.” Sighing, he pulled on his other sock.

“Do you believe him?” Claire asked Jacques, dusting the sand off her own feet. “He thought that was fun.”

“Not fun,” Dean protested. “Exciting.”

“Dangerous,” Claire corrected.

“But we all got away. We’re all safe.”

“We could have been eaten by something out of a bad Lovecraft pastiche!”

“But we weren’t.”

“Jacques.” She turned to the ghost. “Help me out.”

“He has a point,cherie. No one was hurt. And we are at the second floor. It would be a shame not to look.”

Arms folded, she sagged back against the elevator wall.“There’s just way too much testosterone in here.”

“My watch seems to be working again, Boss.”

“I’m thrilled.”

Standing, Dean shot Jacques a“now what” glance, and received a “how the hell should I know” shrug in return.

“All right.” Claire straightened. “A compromise. We’ll look through the grille, but we won’t actually open the door and we certainly won’t join in the fun.”

“Fun?”

“It’s a figure of speech, Dean. Together on three so that we all see the same thing…one, two, three.”

A familiar hallway stretched off in both directions, the doors to rooms one and two clearly visible.

“This is the second floor.” Shoving up the gate, Claire pushed the door open and barely managed to stop herself from stepping out onto a familiar starship bridge.

“Make it so, Number One.”

Slowly and quietly, she closed the door again.“And that wasn’t.”

“But what was it?” Jacques asked, peering out in some confusion at the second floor hall. “It was a military vessel?”

“It was an imaginary vessel, Jacques.”

“What is an imaginary vessel? It is not real?” He shook his head. “But it was as real as the beach. And the not-a-squid.”

“It was real here. And now. With the door open.” The scene through the door remained the second floor. “But everywhere else, except on those occasions when it’s a way of life, it’s a television show.”

Dean shook his head, as though trying to settle himself back into reality.“I could’ve walked out onto the real bridge of the starship….”

“No.” Claire reached out, intending to lock up, and found herself, instead, opening the door a crack. For one last look at the real bridge of the starship…

It looked like a balmy evening on top of Citadel Hill in downtown Halifax. Except for the two moons riding low in the sky and the woman in the distance with an agitated shrub on a leash.

Behind and above her right shoulder, Claire heard Dean murmur,“It changes every time you reopen the door.”

“So the not-squid, it is gone? We could return to the beach?”

“Sure. Except the beach is gone.”

Claire quietly eased the door shut, so as not to further agitate the shrub, and latched the gate.“All right,” she sighed, her head falling forward until it rested against the fifty-year-old paint. “We’re in this so far now we might as well see what’s on the third floor. But…” Straightening, she folded her arms, turned, and fixed each of her companions with her bestI’m a Keeper and you’re not stare.“…no one gets out. Understand?”

“But what if…”

“I don’t care. No one leaves the elevator.”

Through the grille, itwas the third floor. It even smelled like the third floor.

“Do you think thatshe might have an effect?” Jacques asked nervously as Claire locked back the gate.

“Do I think that proximity toher could affect the elevator’s destination? I don’t know, but I don’t think so. Those are strong shields.” A puff of noxious air wafted in as she opened the door and stared out at the piles of blasted rock and steaming lava pools. “And then again, I suppose it’s possible that…”

A terrified shriek cut her off.

Dean pushed forward, allowing himself to be stopped by the flimsy barricade of Claire’s arm only because he wasn’t certain of where the sound had originated.

A second scream helped.

Off to the right, close to one of the steaming red pools, two large lizardlike creatures held a struggling shape between them, snapping and snarling at each other over their captive’s head. While accumulated filth and long dreadlocks made guessing age difficult, they didnothing at all to hide the gender of what seemed to be a completely naked twelve-or thirteen-year-old boy.

Captured. About to be devoured. Pushing Claire aside, Dean leaped forward, the porous surface of the rock crunching under his work boots. He heard her yell his name, felt her grab at his shirt, and kept running, throwing,“Stay where you’re at!” back over his shoulder. With any luck she’d see that there was no sense them both going into danger. If he concentrated on speed rather than concealment, he’d could reach and rescue the kid before the two lizards finished quarreling over their catch.

The closer he got, the more the snarling began to seem like…

“Because it’s my nesting site and I don’t want the dirty little egg-sucker cooking right beside it. That’s why!”

“So I have to carry it out of the nursery, all the way to cool ground? Is that it?”

“You caught it!”

“Crawling into your nest!”

“So now it’s my nest, is it? And I suppose they’ll bemy hatchlings?My responsibility while you’re off hunting with your friends.”

…words.

And familiar words at that. Through a thick sibilant accent it sounded remarkably like an argument his Aunt Denise and Uncle Steve’d had about dispatching a rat caught live in the kitchen. Which didn’t actually change anything.

“Our nest sweetie. I meant to say,our nest.”

“You say that now. You don’t mean it.”

Through eyes beginning to water from the volcanic fumes, Dean noticed that the lizard with his aunt’s lines was the larger by a significant margin. Sucking warm air through the filter of his teeth, he altered his path slightly so that he’d enter the smaller lizard’s space.

The boy screamed again and lashed out with one filthy, callused heel. The smaller lizard howled and lost his grip. For a moment the boy twisted and kicked, dangling only a foot or so off the ground then, just as it seemed he might get free, the larger lizard grabbed his ankle with her other hand.

“Honestly. You can catch them, why can’t you hold onto them?”

“It kicked me!”

“Stop acting like such a hatchling and remember you’re about to be…” The lizard’s amber eyes widened. “Behind you, Jurz! It’s another one!”

Belatedly, Dean realized that the“other one” she was referring to was him. He realized it when Jurz, moving much faster on his bulky back legs than he’d expected, whirled around, pushed off with a thick tapering tail, and landed behind him, grabbing both his upper arms in a painful grip. He froze as talons pierced his shirt and punctured the skin. Even if he’d been able to turn, the lizard’s body would have blocked his view of the elevator.

“Good gorg, Coriz, this one’s huge!”

Coriz leaned forward and peered nearsightedly down at him, holding the boy tighter against her chest.“And it’s a funny color.”

Dean felt his hair being lifted by the force of Jurz’ inhalation.

“And it’s clean! Maybe,” he added thoughtfully, “we could eat it.”

“Eat it! Are you out of your mind?” Coriz sat back on her tail, shifting her hold on the boy. “It’s still a filthy egg-sucker no matter how clean it is. People get sick from eating those vermin!”

“Hey!” The insult broke through the terror. “Who’re you callin’ vermin?”

Both lizards stiffened. The boy continued struggling.

“Look, this whole thing is a major misunderstanding.” It took an effort to speak calmly with five small, painful holes in each arm, but Dean managed. Coriz stared at him—with no nose, nor eyebrows, nor lips to speak of, he couldn’t read her expression, but he could feel the weight of Jurz’ gaze on the top of his head. He obviously had their attention. All he had to do was stall until Claire arrived to save him. “Why don’t we just talk this over….”

“Talk?” Coriz squeaked and dropped the boy.

Who took off at a dead run, occasionally using his hands against the rock for better speed as he escaped.

“Talk?” she repeated, rearing back on her tail. “It TALKS?”

“Of course it doesn’t talk,” Jurz muttered nervously. “It’s just making sounds, imitating speech.”

Although he couldn’t be positive, Dean thought the female lizard looked relieved. “No! You’re wrong!” Struggling drove the talons in deeper. “I’m talking!”

They ignored him.

“Imitating speech, of course.” Coriz sighed, the tension leaving her narrow shoulders.

“I’m not imitating…”

“Still, it does seem somehow more evolved than the others we’ve caught.”

Jurz’ grip shifted, poking new holes into his left arm. Without the talons filling the punctures, the originals began to dribble blood. “Do I kill it?”

“Of course you kill it.”

“Hey!”

“Hopefully, it hasn’t bred. Just imagine if the egg-suckers started to think.” She shuddered. “They do enough damage to the nests now.”

On cue came the horrible sound of smashing shells.

“MY BABIES!”

Jurz dropped Dean, smacked him toward the lava pit with his tail, and raced after his howling mate. Fortunately, he misjudged either the distance or the weight of the object he was attempting to sink.

Legs out over the pit, bottoms of his jeans beginning to scorch and his feet inside the steel toes of his workboots uncomfortably hot, hands abraded by the hardened lava, Dean stopped himself at the last possible instant. Rolling forward, he collapsed as flat as the terrain allowed, trying to catch his breath.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“Come on!” Claire knew she didn’t have a hope of lifting Dean if he was actually injured, but that didn’t stop her from grabbing at his arm and hauling upward. “Jacques isn’t going to hold them for long.” The fabric compacted warm and damp under her hands.

Sucking in an unwelcome lungful of air, Dean shook her off and, coughing, heaved himself up onto his feet.“Jacques?”

“He’s dead. They can’t hurt him.” Claire gaped at the smear of red across her palms. “How bad is it?”

“Not bad.”

“Can you run?”

He shoved his glasses back into place.“Sure. No problem.”

Side by side they pounded back toward the elevator propelled by enraged howls and French Canadian invective.

Twenty feet from safety, Jacques caught up.“I have no smell,” he explained, effortlessly keeping pace.“Les lezards, they count the eggs but that should not take them…”

The howls changed timbre.

“…long.”

When Dean stopped to roll a hunk of obsidian away from the door, Claire hip-checked him over the threshold, grabbed the rock, and flung it toward their pursuers.

The howls changed again.

“OW! Coriz, they hit me with a rock!”

“Egg-suckers don’t use weapons.”

“But I’ve got a bump!”

The door cut off further diagnosis.

“What part,” Claire gasped, dropping the gate into place and turning to glare at Dean, “of no one leaves the elevator did you not understand?”

“They were about to kill the kid.”

“So? He was robbing their nest. Stealing their eggs. Making omelets.”

“I couldn’t just watch him die!”

“Then we should have closed the door.”

“You don’t mean that.”

She did. Or she thought she did until she met his eyes and discovered that he believed she’d have gone to the rescue herself had he not been there. “Forget it. Go straight to the basement. No arguments.”

Dean pushed the lever all the way to the left“No arguments,” he agreed. Passing the second floor, he glanced over at Jacques. “Did you really break one of their eggs?”

“And how do I do that?” the ghost asked, pushing his hand through the wall of the elevator. “I touch nothing.”

“I stomped on a bunch of shells that had already hatched,” Claire explained. “Jacques stayed behind to distract them.”

“Why didn’t you…”

“Use magic? Because the possibilities were different there and, since you decided to play hero, I didn’t have time to work out a way through. Look at me, I’m filthy. I had to lie down on that black stuff with my feet still in the elevator to reach a rock for the door, and if you ever pull such a stupid, boneheaded stunt again, I’m leaving you to cook in the lava pit! Do I make myself clear?”

Ears burning, Dean ducked his head.“Yes, Boss.”

“When we reach bottom, I want a look at those arms.”

“It’s nothing.” A drop of blood traced a trail over the back of his hand, down his index finger, and dripped onto the floor.

She glared at him through slitted eyes.“I’ll be the judge of that.”

“A glass of rum in the belly and one on the wounds. He will be fine, Claire.”

“I have antibiotic cream in my bathroom,” Dean offered hurriedly. “I can take care of it.”

“Bring the cream to the dining room.” As the bottom of the elevator settled into its concrete basin, Claire tossed up the gate, picked up the doily, and stomped out into the basement.

“You stink like an active volcano,” Austin complained, jumping down off a shelf. “Have a nice time?”

All three brushed by him without answering. Dean went into his apartment. Jacques followed Claire up the basement stairs.

“Guess not.” He stuck his head over the threshold and sniffed at the bit of tentacle lying on the floor. His ears went back. “Who let the sushi out of the fridge?”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“So stoic,” Jacques murmured sarcastically as Dean, sitting on the dining room table, tried not to jerk his arm out from under Claire’s ministrations. “So much a man.”

“Stuff a sock in it,” Dean grunted.

“So articulate.”

“Stop it. Both of you.” Shirtless, Dean had pretty much lived up to Claire’s expectations. Eyes locked on the wounds instead of the rippling expanse of bare chest, she dabbed antibiotic cream on the punctures and fought to keep her mind on the job. “None of these are deep. You were lucky. He could’ve ripped your whole arm off. Both arms.” She was babbling. She knew it, but she couldn’t seem to stop. “Ripped both your stupid arms off and thrown them on the ground.” He not only looked great, he smelled terrific. Which had nothing to do with the matter at hand. Nothing at all. “You’d have bled to death before I could get to you. You could have been killed.”

Jacques snickered.“Such amagnifique manner beside the bed,cherie.”

“I’m just saying,” she began, and stopped. “I’m just saying,” she repeated, “that I need him to run this hotel and…” If she hadn’t looked up and seen Dean watching her, his expression teetering halfway between hope and disappointment, she could’ve left it at that. “…I’vegotten used to having him around and I don’t…” The end of one finger covered in cream, she poked at the last three punctures. “…want him dead.”

“Ow.”

“Sorry.”

“About what?” Austin asked, jumping up onto the table beside Dean. “And what happened to your arms? And, just out of curiosity, why don’t you have any chest hair?”

While a blushing Dean shrugged into his shirt, Claire answered the first two questions.

“And the chest hair?” the cat prodded when she finished.

She picked him up and dropped him on the floor.

“You’re just mad because I was right,” he muttered as he jumped back up again. “I can see the sign now. This elevator holds a maximum of…How many dimensions?”

“That’s not important.”

“It will be to the elevator certification guys.”

“I’ll get some drywall and reseal the doors tomorrow,” Dean offered.

“No.” When three pairs of eyes locked on her, she shrugged. “I’d like to study it for a while, maybe I can fix it. It’s perfectly safe if you all stay off it.”

“And ifyou stay off itcherie.”

“I know enough to stay in it.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“Penny for your thoughts?” Austin asked from the other pillow.

Claire rolled onto her side and stroked his head.“That only works if you hand me the penny,” she reminded him.

“If I had hands…”

She smiled.“I was thinking about…”How Jacques and I make a good team. How I felt when I saw Dean lying on the rocks. How one of them’s too young and the other’s too dead. How a Keeper should be able to keep her mind on the job even if it has been six months which is a bit of personal information relevant to absolutely nothing.“…the elevator.”

“Really?”

Why doesn’tDean have any chest hair?“Uh-huh.”

“Liar.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

ISN’T THAT OUR LINE?

TEN

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_4]

BY THE LAST SATURDAY IN OCTOBER, it was obvious that the seepage had been successfully contained. Hell had tried directing it, spreading it, and cutting it off completely; nothing worked. When a sudden cold snap drove Claire into the furnace room to adjust the heat, she found Hell hunkered down and sulking.

It continued to make personal appearances, however. As long as evil existed, Hell explained wearing Dean’s face in Claire’s mirror, personal temptation would be its stock in trade.

Cautious experimentation with the elevator determined that if the door was opened by someone outside in the hall, passengers could actually exit onto the desired floor. Seepage, or lack of it, affected neither the mechanical functioning nor the variety of destinations. As far as Claire could determine, the elevator had no actual connection to Hell and only a tenuous connection to reality.

But therewas one unfortunate casualty of the seepage slowdown.

“I guess this’ll be the next thing you’ll get rid of,” Austin sighed, perched on the silent bust of the king of rock and roll.

The sitting room, emptied to essentials, had a lobotomized look, as though all personality had been surgically removed. Stripped of their accessories, Augustus Smythe’s florid, oversized furniture seemed self-consciously large.

Although she’d had every intention of removing the plaster head, Claire surrendered to the pale green stare making unsubtle demands from the top of the high-gloss pompadour. “If it means that much to you, it can stay.”

“Will you start it up again?”

“No.”

“You could adapt it to run off the middle of the possibilities.”

“No.”

“But…”

“I said, no. It’d be easier to go out and buy a complete set of CDs and a stereo.” Either Augustus Smythe had taken his stereo with him when he’d abandoned the site, or, unlike most men, who tended to buy stereo equipment before unimportant things like groceries or clothing, he’d never owned one.

“If you’re afraid of a bit of hard work….”

“Don’t start with me, Austin. Elvis has left the building.” Before the cat could claw his way through her resolve, Claire turned on a heel and headed for the bedroom. The bust hadn’t been the only amusement in Augustus Smythe’s rooms to run on seepage. Grabbing the fringed curtain hangingover the postcard, she flung it open and barely managed to bite back a startled scream.

“What?” Diana twisted far enough to see that nothing particularly startling had slipped into the space behind her. When she saw that nothing had, she shrugged and directed her attention back out of the postcard. “You don’t look so good, Claire. Maybe you ought to sit down.”

Not really hearing her sister’s suggestion, Claire staggered backward until she hit the edge of the bed and sat. “What are youdoing in there?”

“Practicing postcards. Mom said you had one running so I thought I’d see if I could tap into it…”

Claire began breathing again. Diana’s room had not been part of Augustus Smythe’s dirty little picture gallery.

“…that way you could see me, too, and I couldn’t be accused of spying on you.”

Theoretically, that wouldn’t be possible; as a Keeper, Claire would know if she were under observation even by another Keeper. However, since Diana had just tapped into a powerless postcard with no apparent difficulty, something that Claire doubted she could have managed even with nearly ten extra years of experience, shewasn’t about to declare it couldn’t be done. So she did the next best thing: “You postcard me, and I’ll rip your liver out and feed it to you.”

Diana grinned.“As if. You think I’m stupid enough to get that close?”

“Speaking of close, when did you get back from the Philippines?”

“Last week. I landed in San Francisco, stuck my two cents into a site Michelle was dealing with by Berkeley, took Amtrak to Chicago, helped One Bruce seal two small sites—both of them in the middle of major intersections, can you believe it—and flew home from there. I can’t wait until I getto do this stuff on my own.”

Claire couldn’t remember hearing about any earthquakes or train derailments, and since Chicago seemed to be functioning at least as well as it ever did, she breathed a sigh of relief. “What about school?”

“I’ll catch up.” Dropping into an ancient beanbag chair that she’d long outgrown but refused to get rid of, Diana leaned left until she had to brace herself against the floor, then repeated the movement to the right.

“What are you doing?”

The younger woman straightened.“I was trying to get a better angle on your room. Mom says Dean’s a major babe, so I was looking for him.”

“Mom said Dean was a major babe?”

“Not exactly; she said he was ‘quite an attractive young man’ and I translated.”

“This is mybedroom.”

Diana snorted.“So that’s why you have a bed in it.”

“I don’t even want to know why you think Dean might be in here.”

“Well, jeez, Claire, I hope I don’t have to explain it to you. At your age.” After a self-appreciative snicker, she crossed her legs and settled back until it looked as though she’d perched on the crushed remains of a red vinyl flower. “Go and get him,please.”

Even through the postcard, Claire felt the pull of power her younger sister laid on the magic word.“No,” she said, folding her arms. “I am not putting Dean on display to fulfill your prurient interests.”

“Ooo, prurient. Big word. So are you guys getting it on?”

“Diana!” Righteous indignation propelled her onto her feet “Dean’s a nice guy who does most…” Diana’s left eyebrow rose. There was as little point in lying to her as there would have been in her lying. “…almost all…okay, all of the work around here. A nice guy. Do you even know what that means?”

“Sure, I know. It means he’s not getting any.”

“Diana!”

“Relax, I’m just yanking your chain.” Lips pursed, she made a disgusted face. “Man I hope I’m not as big a prude when I’m almost thirty. I told One Bruce and Michelle about you getting stuck on an unsealable site and they both said that Keepers are sent where they’re needed. Not very helpful, I thought Anyway, since you’re settled, I gave them both the phone number. They seemed to think that with you in one place and me still in training and us in contact because we’re family, we have a chance to actually lay some lines of communication between Keepers. Which reminds me, theApothecary is thinking of setting up as an online server so we can start using e-mail to stay in touch. Here we are, joining the twentieth century in time for the twenty-first.”

Carrying on a conversation with Diana was often like shopping in a discount store: piles of topics crowded the aisles, stacked ceiling high in barely discernible order. The trick was pulling one single thing out to respond to.“The Apothecary doesn’t even have electricity.”

“I know. He says he can work around it. So what about you and this Jacques guy Mom mentioned?”

Claire sighed.“Jacques is dead.”

“I know. But if the Apothecary can run e-mail without electricity…” She let her voice trail off but her eyebrows waggled suggestively up and down. “It sounds like what you really need is Jacques possessing Dean’s body.”

HELLO.

“That is never going to happen.” Although Claire directed her response as much at Hell as at her sister, only her sister acknowledged it.

“I know.”

“You know, you know, you know; you’re beginning to sound like Austin.”

Diana fixed Claire with an exasperated stare.“Keeping the peace, fulfilling destiny, that doesn’t mean we can’t be happy.”

“I am as happy as I can be under the circumstances.”

“Now who’s sounding like Austin. What makes you think I’m talking about you?”

Claire winced. That had been incredibly insensitive of her.“I’m sorry, Diana. Did you have a problem you want me to help with?”

She grinned and shook her head.“No. But if you want, I’ll come by and figure out how to deal with Sara, seal the pit, and get your butt on the road again.”

“Diana!”

“Oh, chill, Claire.” Dark brows dipped into a disdainful frown. “I’m five hundred and forty-one kilometers away,she’s not going to hear me.”

“Your butt is in a sling if she has!” Claire could feel nothing through the shield. Unfortunately, that only meantshe hadn’t yet gone through the shield. “If you’ll excuse me, and even if you won’t, I’m going to go check and see if you’ve started Armageddon.” Ignoring protests, she closed the curtain with one hand and pulled at the neck of her cotton turtleneck with the other, telling herself that the room hadn’t suddenly gotten warmer. She wasn’t quite running as she crossed the sitting room.

“Can I assume you’re not hurrying out to feed me?” Austin asked. “Who were you talking to?”

“Diana.”

“Subverting a powerless postcard? Typical. What did she have to say for herself?”

“Nothing much.Her name. Out loud. Through a power link. If she’s wokenher up…”

Austin caught up to Claire at the door.“What are you going to do.”

“Beats me. You know any good lullabies?”

Out in the lobby, Dean looked up from prying open a new gallon of paint as Keeper and cat raced for the stairs.“Problem, Boss?”

“I don’t know.”

“Need my help?”

Five weeks ago, even three weeks ago, she’d have snapped off an impatient “No.” What good would a bystander be against a Keeper who’d attempted to control Hell? Today she paused and actually considered the possibilities before answering. “There’s nothing you can do.”

“Is ither?” Jacques asked, materializing as they started up the second flight of stairs.

“It could be,” Claire panted, silently cursing the circumstances that made the elevator inoperative. It seemed to take forever to open the padlock, and the lack of noise from inside room six was surprisingly uncomforting.

The shield was intact. Aunt Sara lay, as she had, on the bed. The only footprints in the dust were Claire’s, laid over her mother’s, laid over her own and Dean’s. She stepped forward, following the path, and studied the sleeping woman’s face with narrowed eyes.

No change.

Sighing deeply, she took what felt like her first unconstricted breath since Diana had called Aunt Sara’s name.

And sneezed.

Nose running, eyeballs beginning to itch, she backed out of the room and relocked the door.

“We are safe?” Jacques demanded from the top of the stairs. “She sleeps?”

“She sleeps,” Claire reassured him, wiping her nose on a bit of old wadded-up tissue she’d found in the front pocket of her jeans.

“Admit it,” Austin prodded as they started back downstairs, the ghost having gone on ahead to fill Dean in on the details, “you’re a little disappointed.”

Claire stopped dead and stared at the cat After a moment, she closed her mouth and hurried to catch up.“All right, that settles it. We’re taking a break in the renovations. You’ve been sucking up too many paint fumes.”

“You’re not willing to wake her yourself,” Austin continued. “But you’d love to know who’d win if you went head-to-head. Keeper to Keeper.”

“You’re out of your furry little mind.”

“One final battle to settle this whole thing. Winner takes all.”

“Get real.”

“I can’t help but notice that you’re not making an actual statement of denial.”

PRIDE IS ONE OF…

“Yours. So you’ve said.”

HAS ANYONE EVER POINTED OUT THAT IT’S VERY RUDE TO INTERRUPT LIKE THAT?

“Sorry.”

USELESS APOLOGY. SINCERITY COUNTS.

“Get out of my head.”

“Jacques told me what happened; is everything okay?” Dean asked as they descended into the lobby.

“Austin’s senile,” Claire told him tightly. “But other than that things seem to be fine.”

He watched her walk down the hall toward the kitchen and shook his head.“Once again,” he sighed, “I’m left muddled.” Stepping back, he put his right foot squarely down in the paint tray.

Two things occurred to him as he watched the dark green pigment soak into his work boot.

He hadn’t left the paint tray there.

And he couldn’t possibly have seen a five-inch-tall, lavender something diving behind the counter.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

For the first Saturday since Claire’d begun handing out the money for groceries, there was considerably more than seventy dollars in the envelope. Dean whistled softly as she pulled out the wad and began counting the bills.

“One hundred and forty, one hundred and sixty, one hundred and eight-five dollars.” Tossed back into the safe, the envelope landed with non-paperlike clunk. “One hundred and eighty-six dollars,” Claire corrected as she pulled a loonie out of the bottom corner.

“Premium cat food all around,” Austin suggested from the top of the computer monitor.

“You’re getting a premium cat food.”

“I’m not, it’s geriatric. I don’t care how much it costs, it’s not the same thing as that individual serving stuff they show on TV.”

“And would you like it served in a crystal parfait dish, too?”

He sat up and looked interested.“It wouldn’t hurt.”

“Dream on.”

“You’re just mean, that’s what you are.” Lying down again, he pillowed his chin on his front paws. “Tempt me, taunt me, then feed me the same old beef byproducts.”

“If it isn’t for Austin, what’s it for?” Dean wondered. “We’ve got lots of food.”

“Frozen and canned,” Claire reminded him, handing over the money. “Maybe you’re supposed to stock upon fresh.”

He fanned the stack with his thumb.“This is gonna buy a lot of lettuce.”

In the end, unable to shake the feeling that she needed to be involved, Claire decided to go with him. It would be strange to leave the hotel so soon after going out to buy the new keyboard—something most site-bound Keepers would not be able to do—but with Hell itself reinforcing the shield, what could go wrong?

Austin, when applied to for his opinion, yawned and said,“The future is unclear to me. I’m probably faint from a lack of decent food.”

“What if I promise to bring you some shrimp snacks?”

He snorted.“Too little, too late.”

“He’d tell me if he saw a problem,” Claire assured Dean a few minutes later as she climbed into the passenger side of the truck. “He’s too fond of being proven right not to.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Baby heralded their return two-and-a-half hours later with a deafening volley of barks and a potent bit of flatulence.

“Couldn’t have a wind from the north,” Claire muttered, staggering slightly under the weight of the grocery bags she carried. “Oh, no. Has to come up off the lake and right over the canine trumpet section. Whathas that dog been eating?”

“Well, we haven’t seen Mrs. Abrams for a while,” Dean pointed out, unlocking the back door.

“Yoo hoo! Colleen dear. Have you got a moment?”

Silently accusing Dean of invoking demons, Claire took a step back and smiled over the fence.“Not right now, Mrs. Abrams. I’d like to get all these groceries inside.”

“Oh, my, you have bought out the stores, haven’t you. Are you having a party?”

Since she asked in the tone of someone who expected to be invited should said party materialize, Claire was quite happy to answer in the negative.

One hand clutching closed her heavy sweater—a disturbing shade of orange a tone or two lighter than her hair—Mrs. Abrams eyed the bags with disapproval. “Well you surely can’t be planning on eating all of that yourself. It’s extremely important for a young woman to watch her weight, you know. I don’t like to brag, but when I wasyoung I had a twenty-two inch waist.”

“I’ve really got to go put these things away, Mrs. Abra…”

“I only need a moment, dear. The groceries will keep. After all, this is business. A very close, personal friend of mine, Professor Robert Joseph Jackson—Maybe you’ve heard of him? No? I can’t understand why not, he’s very big in his field. Anyway, Professor Jackson is coming to Kingston on November third. He’s so busy over Halloween, you know. I’d love to have him stay here, of course, but Baby has taken such a strange dislike to him.” She beamed down at the big dog. “I told him that I knew the nicest little hotel and that it was right next door to me, and he said he’d bethrilled to stay with you.”

Claire could feel the bag holding the glass bottle of extra virgin olive oil beginning to slip.“I’ll be expecting him, Mrs. Abrams. Thank you for recommending us.” Rude or not, she began moving toward the door.

“Oh, it was no trouble at all, Colleen dear. I’m just so happy to see that you’ve taken my advice and have begun fixing the old place up. It has such potential you know. I see that young man is still with you. So nice to see a young man willing to work.”

“Isn’t it,” Claire agreed as Dean rescued two of her four bags. “Good day, Mrs. Abrams.”

“Professor Jackson will need a quiet room, remember.” The last word rose to near stratospheric volume as her audience stepped over the threshold and into the hotel. Dogs blocks away began to bark.

“I wonder if we’re asking for trouble, renting a room to a friend of Mrs. Abrams.”

Dean turned from putting the vacuum pack of feta cheese in the fridge as Claire set her bags down on the counter beside the others.“More trouble than a hole to Hell in the basement?”

“You may have a point.”

“He may,” Austin agreed, leaping from chair to countertop. “But fortunately his hair hides it. While you were out, a guy named Hermes Gruidae called. He’s bringing a seniors’ tour group through tonight, retired Olympians, and needs four double rooms and a single. I said there’d be no problem.”

“Retired Olympians?” Dean fished a black olive out of a deli container and popped it in his mouth. “What sports?”

“He didn’t say. He did mention that they’re not very fond of restaurants and wondered if you could provide supper as well as tomorrow’s breakfast. You being Dean in this case since I doubt they’d want beans and wieners on toast. I told him that would be fine. They’ll be here about seven. Dinner at eight.” He blinked. “What?”

Arms folded, Claire stared down at him suspiciously.“You took the message?”

“Please, I’ve been knocking receivers off hooks since I was a kitten.”

“And you took Mr. Gruidae’s reservation?”

“Well, I didn’t write anything down if that’s what you’re asking although I did claw his name into the front counter.”

“You what!”

“I’m kidding.” Whiskers twitching, he climbed into one of the grocery bags. “Hey, where’s my shrimp snacks?”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

By six-forty-five the rooms had been prepared, the paint trays and drop cloths had been packed away, and Dean was in the kitchen taking the salmon steaks out of the marinade. Assuming that ex-Olympic athletes would be watching their weight, he’d also made a large Greek salad, and a kiwi flan for desert.

Wondering why she was so nervous, Claire checked the newly hunter green walls above the wainscoting in the stairwell and was relieved to discover that although they still smelled like fresh paint, they were dry.“Lucky for us that when Dean says he’ll get to it first thing in the morning, he means predawn.” Crossing over to the counter, she watched Austin race through a fast circuit of the office. “What’s with you? Storm coming?”

“I don’t know.” He flung himself from the top of the desk to the top of the counter and skidded to a stop in front of Claire. “Something’s coming.” After three vigorous swipes of his tail, he added, “It feels sort of like a storm. Almost.”

At six-fifty-two, a wide-bodied van of the type often used to shuttle travelers from airports to car rental lots parked in front of the hotel.

“Looks like they’re here,” Claire announced, moving toward the door.

Austin bounded to the floor and raced halfway up the first flight of stairs.“So’s the storm.”

“What are you talking about?”

His ears flattened against his skull.“Old…”

“Of course they’re old, it’s a seniors’ tour.” Adjusting her body temperature to counteract the evening chill, Claire went out to meet the driver as he emerged. He was a youngish man, late thirties maybe, wearing a brown corduroy jacket over a pair of khakis, one of those round white canvas hats that were so popular among the sort of people willing to pay forty-five dollars for a canvas hat, and a pair of brown leather loafers. With wings.

“I have them taken off the sandals every fall,” he told her, noticing the direction of her gaze. “I don’t know what I hate more, cold feet or sandals and socks.” He held out a tanned hand. “Hermes Gruidae; the second bit was assumed for the sake of a driver’s license. You must be Claire Hansen. I believe I spoke to your cat about our reservations.”

“He’s notmy cat,” was the only thing Claire could manage to say.

“No. Of course not.” Hermes looked appalled. “I wasn’t implying ownership, merely that it was a cat I spoke to.”

“Uh, right I just came out to tell you that there aren’t any stairs around back if you want to let your people off in the parking lot instead of out here.”

“Not a bad idea, but I don’t think you could get them to use a back door.” He winced as an imperious voice demanded to know the reason for the delay. “They’re a rather difficult bunch actually.”

The voice had been speaking flawless Classical Greek—although Claire spoke only English and bad grade school French, Keepers were language receptive, it being more important in their job to understand than to be understood. “Retired Olympians,” she muttered, examining the words from a new angle. “Oh, God.”

“Gods, actually,” Hermes corrected, sounding resigned. He hustled back out of the way as an elderly man in a plaid blazer stomped down onto the sidewalk.

“You listen to me, Hermes, I’m not spending another moment sitting in that…Hel-lo.” Smiling broadly, he stepped toward Claire, arms held out. “And who is this fair maiden?” he asked in equally flawless English, capturing her hand. “Surely not Helen back again to destroy us with her beauty.”

“Not fair and not a maiden!” snapped a woman’s voice from inside the van. “Keep your hands to yourself, you old goat. Get back here and help me out of this thing.”

Belatedly Claire realized that her fingers were being thoroughly kissed and an arm had slipped around her waist, one liver-spotted hand damply clutching her hip.

“Zeus! I’m warning you…!”

Silently mouthing,“Later,” Zeus gave her one final squeeze and returned to the van.

Objectively, the Lord of Olympus was shorter than Claire would have expected him to be, had she actually spent any time thinking about it, and someone should have mentioned that the white belt and shoe ensemble wasn’t worn north of the Carolinas after Labor Day. He’d been handsome once, but over two millennia of rich food and carnal exercise had left the square jaw jowly under the short curly beard, the dark eyes deep-set and rimmed with pink over purple pouches, and his Grecian Formula hair artfully combed to hide as much scalp as possible. An expensive camera bounced just above the broad curve of his belly, the strap hidden in the folds of his neck.

And if that was Zeus…

Hera, clawlike hand clutching her husband’s arm, reminded Claire of an ex-First Lady from the American side of the border. Her skin stretched tight over the bones of her face, her makeup applied with more artifice than art, she looked as though a solid blow would shatter her into a million irritated pieces. “The Elysian Fields Guest House? Honestly, Hermes, is this the best you could do?”

“It’s the best for our needs,” Hermes told her soothingly.

Claire found herself being examined by bright, birdlike eyes behind a raised lorgnette.

“Oh, a Keeper,” Hera sniffed. “I see.”

The second man out of the van paused to stretch, both hands in the small of his back. Incredibly thin and still tall in spite of stooped shoulders, he was dressed all in black—jacket, shirt, pants, shoes—with a crimson ascot at his throat. A hawklike hook of a nose made even more prominent by the cadaverous cheeks completely overwhelmed his face although a neatly trimmed silver goatee and full head of silver hair did what they could to balance things out.

A tiny white-haired woman in a lavender pantsuit draped in a multitude of pastel scarves followed him out“Oh, look. Hades!” Wide-eyed, she pointed gracefully toward the eaves of the hotel. “A white pigeon! It’s an omen.”

Hades obligingly looked.

The pigeon plummeted earthward, hitting the ground with a distinct splat.

“Did I do that?” Hades asked. “I didn’t mean to.”

“Senile old fool,” Hera muttered, pushing past him.

“Never mind, dear.” On her toes, Persephone rubbed her cheek against his shoulder. “Next time, just don’t look so hard.” Capturing a scarf as it slid out from under a heavy gold brooch, she fluttered ring-covered fingers around her body. “Oh, dear. I’ve forgotten my knitting.”

“Never mind, Sephe. I’ve brought it out for you.”

Claire had no idea who the woman handing Persephone her knitting bag might be. Running over the remaining goddesses in her head offered no clues. Pleasant looking, in the sensible clothes favored by elderly English birdwatchers, she reminded Claire of a retired teacher pulled back into duty and near the end of her rope.

As though aware of Claire’s dilemma, she walked over and held out her hand. “Hello. You must be our host. I’m Amphitrite.”

Her palm was damp and felt slightly scaly.“Pleased to meet you.”

“She’s Poseidon’s wife,” Persephone caroled. “Unless you’re into those boring old classics, you’ve probably never heard of her.”

“Shape-shifter’s daughter,” Hera sniffed in classical Greek.

“Hera.” Persephone danced toward her, diamond earrings catching the light from the street lamp. “The eerperkay nunderstandsay reekgay.”

Hera stared at the Queen of the Dead.“You are pathetic,” she said after a moment.

“Who’s pathetic?” Poseidon’s gray hair and beard flowed in soft ripples over his greenish-gray tweed suit. He blinked owlishly around at the gathered company through green-tinted glasses, waiting for an answer. “Well?” he said after a moment.

Amphitrite took his hand and led him away from the van, murmuring into his ear.

“Well, of course she is,” Poseidon snorted. “Inbreeding, don’t you know.”

“Excuse me?” Knees up around his ears, Hades squatted by the pigeon’s body. “This bird is dead.”

Claire saw acute embarrassment in Hermes’ eyes as he sagged back against the van’s side and she hastily hid a smile, remembering that these relics weren’t only his responsibility—they were also his relatives.

Next in the open door was a man with a short buzz of steel-gray hair over his ears, a broad, tanned face with an old scar puckering one cheek, and the stocky rectangular build of someone who’d spent a lifetime doing hard physical labor. He swung forward on a pair of canes—Claire assumed they were aluminum until she heard the sound they made as they hit the concrete sidewalk. Steel. Uncapped—and swung himself out after them. “Dytie,” he bellowed over a broad shoulder, “are you coming?”

“No darlin’, just breathing hard,” laughed a voice from the dark interior of the van.

The assembled company sighed, unified in resignation.

Aphrodite? Claire mouthed at Hermes. He nodded. Which made the man with the canes Hephaestus.

The goddess of love had filled out a bit since the old days. The hair was still a mass of ebony curls, piled high, and the eyes were still violet under lashes so long they cast shadows on the curve of pale cheeks although the cheeks had more curves than they once did and the tiny point of the goddess’ chin nestled in a soft bed of rounded flesh. Although tightly bound into an approximation of her old shape, it was obvious that within the reinforced Lycra Aphrodite’s body had returned to its fertility goddess roots.

Men could get lost in that cleavage, Claire thought.Come to think of it, men have.

“Hermes, darling, it’s a lovely little hotel I can’t wait to see the inside.”

“You can’t wait to see the inside of a hotel?” Hera rolled her eyes. “What a surprise.”

“Bitch.”

“Slut.”

Sighing deeply, Hermes indicated that Claire should lead the way. Feeling a little like the pied piper, she started up the stairs.

The retired Olympians followed.

“Hades dear, do leave the pigeon where it is.”

Claire had no idea how Hermes did it, but he managed to get them all into their rooms by seven-twenty with the promise that their luggage would follow immediately. Since Dean was still cooking, Claire went back outside to help.

“Small pocket in the space-time continuum,” Hermes explained as her jaw dropped at the growing pile of suitcases, trunks, and garment bags covering the sidewalk. “Aphrodite travels with more clothing than Ginger took on that threehour cruise, Hera uses her own bed linens, Persephone has morejewelry than the British royal family, and Poseidon always packs a couple dozen extra towels.”

“It’ll take forever to get all this stuff upstairs.”

“Not hardly.” He grinned. “After all, quick delivery is my middle name. If you’d be so kind as to keep an eye open for the neighbors…”

Since the only neighbor likely to be watching seemed to have deserted her post, Claire gave the all clear. Hair lifted off her forearms as Hermes twisted the possibilities and the luggage disappeared.

“Still a few perks left,” he said with quiet satisfaction. “Thanks for your help. I’ll just run the van around to the parking lot.”

Wondering how much help she could’ve been, Claire went back inside.

“So,” Austin asked from the countertop. “What are you going to tell Dean?”

“About what?”

“The ex-athletes he’s expecting.”

“Do you think he can handle the truth?”

The cat paused to wash a back leg.“Better that you tell him than he finds out the hard way. And if that lot’s staying here so they can be themselves, he will find out.” Peering at the floor, one paw braced against the side of the counter, he glanced up at Claire. “You know, a really nice person would lift me off here and keep me from straining old bones.”

Claire scooped him into her arms and headed for the kitchen.“Hades killed a pigeon just by looking at it. I suppose Dean should be warned.”

“You suppose? He should?” Austin snorted. “If you’re tired of having him around, wouldn’t it be easier just to fire him?”

“I amnot tired of having him around. I’m just not looking forward to explaining something he has no frame of reference for. You have to admit that not many kids get a classical education these days.”

“You want him to get a classical education? Wait’ll Aphrodite gets a look at him.”

When they got to the dining room, they found Hermes leaning over the counter inhaling appreciatively.“I hope you don’t mind,” he said as they approached, “but I’ve introduced myself to Dean and explained a bit of the situation.”

“Really?” The counter was covered in food, so Claire set the cat down on the floor. He shot her an indignant look and stalked away. “Which bits?”

Recognizing her tone, Dean hurriedly turned from the stove.“Mr. Gruidae…”

“Please; Hermes.”

“…explained that the guests aren’t actually ex-athletes but from a place called Mount Olympus. In Greece.”

“And this means to you?” Claire asked.

Dean sighed, clearly disappointed.“That none of them knew Fred Hayward. He was an old buddy of my granddad’s who was on the Canadian hockey team at the Olympics in 1952. Great guy. He died in 1988 and I just, well, you know, wondered.”

Claire exchanged a speaking glance with the messenger of the gods, picked up a stack of plates and began setting the table.“Dean, do the names Zeus and Hera mean anything to you?”

“Sure. I watch TV. I mean, they’re kids’ shows, but they’re fun.”

Hermes looked so distraught, Claire pushed him into a chair and attempted to convince Dean that there were distinct differences between television gods and real ones—even after retirement—and that if he didn’t keep those differences in mind, it was going to be an interesting meal.

“So retired Olympians meant a bunch of old Greek Gods? The real ones?”

“Some of them, yes.” She grabbed a handful of cutlery.

“Like in myths and stuff?”

“Post-myth but essentially, yes.”

“Forks go on the left.”

“I know that.”

Holding a baking sheet of potato wedges roasted with lemon and dill, Dean turned and looked thoughtfully down at Hermes.“You’re the guy on the flower delivery vans and stuff? The real guy?”

Hermes smiled and spread his hands.“Guilty.”

“How come you’re taking these retired gods on this road trip, then? Aren’t you retired, too?”

“To answer your second question first: not as long as I remain on those flower delivery vans. As for the first bit, they were bored and I’m also responsible for treaties, commerce, and travelers. In the interest of keeping peace in the family, I try to get some of them out every year. This year, we’ve just finished a color tour of Northern Ontario. Zeus took a million pictures, most of them overexposed, and any leaves that weren’t dead when we arrived were as soon as Hades finished admiring them. Now, if you’ll excuse me…” He stood and twitched at the creases in the front of his khakis. “…I’d best wash the road dirt off before supper.”

“Hermes.”

One step from the door, his name stopped him cold.

Claire stepped in front of him and held out her hand.“Before you go, maybe you’d like to return the butter knife you slipped up your sleeve.”

“That I slipped up my sleeve?” He drew himself up to his full height, the picture of affronted dignity. “Do you know who you’re talking to, Keeper?”

“Yes.” The missing knife flew out of his cuff and landed on her palm. “The God of Thieves.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Hades and Persephone were first down for dinner. Trailing half a dozen multicolored gossamer scarves, white hair swept up and held by golden combs, Persephone appeared in the dining room as though she were entering, stage right, and announced,“It feels so nice and homey to have an attendant spirit, doesn’t it, dear?”

Murmuring a vaguely affirmative reply, Hades came in behind her, brushing the ends of scarves out of his way.

Behind the Lord of the Dead, looking perturbed, came Jacques. As god and goddess took their seats, he wafted over to the kitchen.“I am not a servant,” he muttered as Claire folded napkins down over the baskets of fresh garlic buns. “Pick this up, put that there…. Who does she think she is?”

“The Queen of the Dead,” Claire told him. “Not that it matters, you’re noncorporeal, you can’t touch anything.”

“The things they have, I can touch. And also, I cannot leave them. I come when she calls. Like a dog.”

“Jacques, get that scarf for me.”

“What do I say? I am to fetch, like a dog.”

“Jacques, do hurry, it’s on the floor.”

He paused, halfway through the counter and turned a petulant expression on Claire.“For this, I deserve a night of flesh.”

Claire shook her head in sympathy as the goddess called for him a third time.“Perhaps you’re right.”

“I am?”

“Jacques, my scarf!”

“Is he?” Dean asked, glancing up from the salmon steaks and watching Jacques fly across the room with narrowed eyes.

Claire shrugged.“I said perhaps. He’s stuck working for them, I just wanted to make him feel better about it.”

He waved the spatula.“I’m working for them.”

“Yes, but you get paid.”

With his face toward the stove, she almost missed him saying,“I could be made to feel better about it”

All at once she understood.“This is the night you go out drinking with your friends from home, isn’t it? And I never even thought to ask you if you’d mind staying here, I just assumed.” This dinner had nothing to do with lineage business, and she had no right to commandeer a bystander’s support. “I’m sorry. There’ll be a little extra in your pay this week.”

He looked up, turned toward her, flushed slightly, and after a moment said,“That wasn’t what I meant.”

Afraid she’d missed something, Claire never got the chance to ask.

“Sexual tensions,” Aphrodite caroled from the doorway. “How I do love sexual tensions.”

“Not at the dinner table,” Hera snarled, pushing past.

“Fish.” Dripping slightly, Poseidon wandered into the kitchen and peered nearsightedly down at the platter of salmon. “Finally, an edible meal.” He straightened and blinked rheumy eyes in Claire’s general direction. Fingers of both hands making pincer movements he moved closer. “Wanna do the lobster dance? Pinchy, pinchy.”

“No. She doesn’t.” Still holding the spatula, Dean moved to intercept. He didn’t care who the old geezer was, a couple of his granddad’s friends had been dirty old men and the only defense was a strong offense. The God of the Oceans bumped up against his chest.

“Ow.”

“Serves you right.” Aphrodite pulled her husband from the kitchen and steered him toward his chair. “You promised you’d behave.”

“My nose hurts.”

“Good.”

When all the gods but Zeus had assembled, Hermes cleared his throat and gestured toward the entry into the dining room, announcing,“The Lord of Olympus!”

“Where’d the trumpet fanfare come from?” Dean murmured into Claire’s ear.

Claire shrugged, an answer to both the question and the gentle lapping of warm breath against her neck.

Striding into the room like a small-town politician, Zeus clapped shoulders and paid effusive compliments as he circled the table. The recipients looked sulky, senile, or indifferent, depending on temperament and number of functioning brain cells. Finally settling into his seat at the head of the table, he lifted his sherry glass of prune nectar and tossed it back.

With the meal officially begun, everyone began buttering buns and helping themselves to salad.

“Stupid, irritating ritual,” Hephaestus muttered as Claire set his plate in front of him.

“If it makes him happy,” Hermes cautioned.

“What’s he going to do to me if he’s unhappy, run over me with that domestic hunk of junk you’re driving?” The God of the Forge smiled tightly and answered himself. “Not unless he wants to trust to secular mechanics the next time it breaks down.”

“It’s so pleasant to be ourselves,” Amphitrite said quickly as Zeus frowned down the table. “But shouldn’t you be eating with us, Keeper?”

Claire had already been over this with Dean.“As guests of the hotel, you’re my responsibility. Besides, Dean did all the cooking.”

“And it looks like a lovely meal. I find men who cook so…” Aphrodite’s pause dripped with innuendo. “…intriguing.”

“You find men who breathe intriguing,” Hera muttered.

“Harpy.”.

“Flotsam.”

“More nectar?” Claire asked.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“I thought dinner went well,” Austin observed, climbing onto Claire’s lap. “Everyone survived.”

“You have salmon on your breath.”

He licked his whiskers.“And your point is?”

“Pick it up. Put it down. She drops a stitch in that infernal knitting and I must pick it up for her. If I were not already dead, that woman would drive me to chop off my own head.” Jacques collapsed weightlessly down on the sofa beside Claire. “I thought that you should know, His Majesty, the Lord of the Dead, is downstairs talking to Hell and Her majesty wants him to come to bed. She is getting—How do you say?—impatient?”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“…them to sit down and they did, but what they didn’t know was that I’d shown them to the Chair of Forgetfulness and they couldn’t get up again because uh, they, uh…Who was I talking about?”

THESEUS AND PIRITHOUS.

“I was?”

YES.

“Oh. They weren’t the ones with the pomegranate seeds?”

NO.

“Are you sure? There was something about pomegranate seeds.”

THE LADY PERSEPHONE ATE SEVEN POMEGRANATE SEEDS AND HAD TO REMAIN WITH YOU IN TARTARUS FOR PART OF THE YEAR.

“No, that wasn’t it.”

YES, IT WAS.

Hades’ voice brightened. “Do you know my wife?”

Listening at the top of the stairs, Claire was tempted to leave Hades right where he was. Another hour or two of conversation and Hell would seal itself. Unfortunately, there was an impatient goddess in room two. Fortunately, it took very little to convince Hades, who’d forgotten where he was, to return to her.

KEEPER?

Almost to the door, herding the Lord of the Dead up the stairs in front of her, Claire paused.“What?”

IF WE WERE CAPABLE OF GRATITUDE…

“I didn’t do it for you.”

NEVERTHELESS.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Backed up against the dishwasher, the goddess of love so close he could see her image in the reflection of his glasses in her eyes, Dean had no easy out. The room started to spin, beads of sweat formed along his spine, and he knew that in a moment he’d do something he’d be embarrassed about for the rest of his life. He wasn’t entirely sure what that was likely to be, but it certainly appeared that Aphrodite had a very good idea. Taking a deep breath, he dropped his shoulder, faked right, and moved left.

Fortunately, Aphrodite’s corseting insured that her reach impeded her grasp.

Distance helped. With the length of the kitchen between them, he began to regain his equilibrium although his jeans were still uncomfortably tight“The decaf’s in the pot on the counter there, ma’am. Help yourself.”

Tipping her cleavage forward, the goddess smiled.“You going to sweeten it for me, sugar?”

He pushed the sugar bowl toward her.

Her fingers lingered on his as she picked it up, and her expression segued from seductive to delighted.“Why, you’re just a big old…”

“Dytie!” Even from the second floor landing, Hephaestus’ voice carried. “Are you bothering that boy?”

“Why, yes, I do believe I am.”

“Well, stop it and come to bed!”

To Dean’s relief, she picked up her cup and turned to go, tossing a provocative, “Pleasant dreams, honeycake,” in his general direction. He had an uncomfortable feeling it wasn’t merely a suggestion.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Coming back downstairs from returning Hades to his wife, Claire stepped aside to let Aphrodite pass.

“You know, Keeper,” the goddess said, leaning close, “that boy of yours is a treasure.”

“Dean’s not mine.”

“Sure he is. Or he could be if you gave him a little bitsy bit of encouragement.”

“Encouragement?”

“You’re right.” She patted Claire on the shoulder with one plump hand. “He won’t understand subtle. Kick his feet out from under him and beat him to the floor.”

“Dytie! You coming?”

“Not yet darlin’, and don’t you start without me.” Adding a quiet “You remember what I said,” she sashayed on past and Claire descended the rest of the way to the lobby.

Hearing noises in the kitchen, she hurried down the hall. It could be a god getting a late night snack, but on the other hand, it could also be a god attempting a senile manifestation of ancient eldritch powers with catastrophic results. The odds were about equal.

“Oh. It’s you.”

Dean closed the dishwasher and straightened.“I couldn’t sleep without putting the dishes away.”

“Kick his feet out from under him and beat him to the floor.”

“Boss? You okay?”

She blinked and started breathing again.“Sorry. Just thinking of something Aphrodite said.”

His ears turned scarlet.

“That boy of yours is a treasure.”

“Areyou okay? She didn’t…well, you know.”

To her surprise, his blush faded.“Would you care?” he asked, meeting her gaze.

“Of course I’d care. While you’re under this roof, you’re my responsibility and she’s…well, she’s a little overpowering. You wouldn’t have much choice. Any choice.”

“I’m not a kid,” he said quietly, squaring his shoulders.

“I know that.”

“Okay.” Eyes on his shoes, Dean moved toward the basement stairs. “I’m done here.”

“Lock your door.”

He paused and stared back at her, his expression unreadable.“Sure.”

Confused, Claire went to her own rooms, hoping that Jacques had been released from his attendance on Persephone. The way she was feeling, if he pushed her tonight…

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately since she knew she’d regret it in the morning, Jacques’ nightly petition had been preempted by a goddess.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Dean had a suspicion that a locked door would stop no one in the hotel except him. He locked his anyway.

Right about now, down at the Portsmouth, Bobby would be attempting to wrest control of the jukebox away from the inevitable crowd of country-western types. He’d be unsuccessful, and Karen would have to go over. They’d have finished talking about the news from home and begun making plans to go back. Mike would be suggesting Colin’d had enough to drink and Colin’d be telling Mike to mind his own business.

The same thing happened every Saturday night.

Lying on his bed and staring up at the ceiling, Dean realized Claire hadn’t actually asked him to stay and cook dinner. They’d both simply assumed he would because it needed to be done.

That seemed to make him more than a mere employee.

What would Aphrodite have done if he hadn’t moved?

As more than a mere employee, did that give him…

Would she have done it right there in the kitchen?

…a chance to talk with Claire as an equal or would that whole Keeper thing…

So she was a bit older, but she was a goddess. She was probably a lot more flexible than she looked.

Claire was a bit older, too….

“Okay. That’s it.” That was as far as those trains of thought were merging. Closing his eyes, he resolutely counted sheep until sleep claimed him.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Next door, in the furnace room, Hell sighed.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“Claire. Claire, wake up.”

Pushing Austin’s paw away from her face, Claire grunted, “What is it?” without actually opening her eyes.

“I just thought you ought to know there’s a swan in your bathroom.”

“A swan?”

“A really old swan.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“I am not going to sleep with you for a multitude of reasons, but for now, let’s just deal with the first two.” She flicked a finger into the air. “One, I am not even slightly attracted to poultry.” A second finger rose. “And two, you’re married.”

“Hera’s sound asleep.” Shaking off his feathers, Zeus stepped out of the bathtub; chest out, stomach sucked in over skinny legs. “We’re perfectly safe if no one wakes her up, and no one’s going to wake her up.”

Eyes closed, Claire missed seeing an orange something with yellow highlights speed out from under the sink and disappear through the open bathroom door. She groped for a towel and held a terry cloth bath sheet out in Zeus’ general direction. “Here. Cover up.”

When she felt him take it, she opened her eyes. Wrapped around his waist, the towel was a small improvement.

Leaning toward her, Zeus leered.“Would you prefer a shower of gold?”

“No.”

“An eagle?”

“No.”

“A satyr?”

“No.”

“A white bull?”

“I said no.”

“An ant?”

“You’re kidding.”

“Eurymedusa, daughter of Cleitus, bore me a son named Myrmidon when I seduced her in the form of an ant.”

“Must’ve been some ant.”

“Ant it is, then.” Before Claire could stop him, his features twisted, his eyes briefly faceted, and a hair from each eyebrow grew about three feet. Panting, he collapsed against the vanity. “On second thought…” His right clutching his chest, he flung out his left arm, the flesh between elbow and armpit swaying gently. “…take me as I am.”

Claire sighed.“Out of respect for your age and your mythology, I don’t want to hurt you, but if you don’t get out of my bathroom and go back to your own bed, you’re going to be very sorry.”

“I could call down the lightning for you,” Zeus offered, continuing to support his weight on the sink. “And with any luck it’ll strike more than once. Wink, wink, nudge…” The second nudge remained unvoiced as a violent banging on the door to Claire’s suite cut him off.

“Open this door right now, you tramp! I know you’ve got my husband in there!”

Zeus paled.“It’s Hera.”

“What was your first clue?” Claire snapped, furious that the Lord of Olympus had involved her in such a humiliating situation. “I’ll stall her, you get back to your own room.”

“How? She’s right outside the door.”

“How did you get into my tub?”

His face brightened.“The tub. Right.” Staggering back to it, he stepped inside and pulled the shower curtain closed. “I’ll hide in here. You get rid of her.”

Claire yanked the shower curtain open.“I meant that you should disappear the same way you appeared.”

“I can’t.”

“You can’t?”

“I’m old. Do you have any idea how much effort that took?” His lower lip went out in a classic pout. “Not that you appreciated it.”

“Keeper, I’m warning you!” Mere wood and plaster did little to hinder Hera’s volume. “Open this door, or I’ll blow it off its hinges!”

“Can she?” Claire demanded.

Zeus shrugged.“Probably not.”

“All right. I’ve had enough. Get out of there.”

“But…”

“Now.”

Muttering under his breath, the god obeyed.

Once he stood squarely on the bath mat, Claire grabbed his wrist and dragged him, mat and all, toward her sitting room.

“Where are we going?”

“We’re going to explain this whole mess to your wife.” Working one-handed, she released the wards around the sitting-room door. “This is your problem, not mine.”

Zeus winced.“Actually, Keeper, if you’ve studied the classics, you’ll know that’s not how it usually…”

The door crashed open.

Framed in the doorway, her eyes blazing, Hera shook her hands free of the feathers trimming the sleeves of her peignoir and pointed a trembling finger at Claire.“I knew it, another one who can’t keep her hands off him!”

“That’s not…”

“Well, I know how to deal with you, you hussy, don’t for a moment think that I don’t!”

“Hera, I was asleep. I found him in my bathroom.”

The goddess’ lips thinned to invisibility. “That’s what they all say.”

“It’s the truth.”

“Ha!”

Claire could feel the possibilities expanding in unfamiliar ways. Yanking Zeus another couple of feet forward, she thrust him toward his wife.“Tell her!”

“I’m so sorry, my little myrtle leaf.” Clutching the towel, he scuttled to Hera’s side. “I was lured!”

“Shut up, you old goat I’ll deal with you later. But for now…” The finger still pointing at Claire began to tremble. “…we’ll see how many husbands you seduce as a linden tree!”

The world twisted sideways.

When Claire could see again, everything seemed strangely two-dimensional. And green. By concentrating on where her neck should be, she lowered her head and took a look at her body. She wasn’t a linden tree. She rather thought she was a dieffenbachia. And pot-bound at that.

“Isn’t that a house plant, ray love?”

“Shut up,” Hera snarled. “I know what it is.”

How dare she! Claire thought, leaves rustling.How dare she assume that I would ever have anything to do with that dirty old man!

A number of white flies with glowing red eyes, settled down on her stem. ANGER IS ONE OF OURS.

I knowthat. Carefully reaching toward the middle of the possibilities, Claire began to pull power. When she regained her own body, she was going to…

REVENGE IS ALSO ONE OF OURS.

Who asked you? Vaguely aware of a vibration in her fake terra-cotta pot, Claire swiveled her stem toward the doorway as Austin and Hermes pounded into the sitting room.Oh, great. An audience. How much more embarrassing can this get?

Hermes took one look at Claire and whirled to face Zeus.“Dad! What have you done?”

“It wasn’t me.”

“It’s always you!”

More vibration. Heavier, mortal footprints.Well, I guess that answers my previous question. She needed watering and that made it difficult to concentrate but she tried to pull power faster before anyone else showed up to see her like this.

“Boss? I heard shouting. Are you all right?” Wearing his jeans, his glasses, and not much else, Dean looked around at the assembled company, eyes widening when he took in Zeus’ equivalent state of undress. “Where’s Claire?”

“Down here.” Austin rubbed against her pot.

“She’s shrunk, then?”

“She’s a plant.”

What are you looking at me for? Claire wondered. When he tried to touch a leaf, she snatched it away from his fingers.

He straightened.“Why?”

“Because my father,” Hermes answered, “can’t keep his withered old pecker in his pants.”

“Here now, a little respect,” Zeus began, but when he saw the expression on Dean’s face, his voice trailed off and he sidled over behind Hera.

Weight forward on the balls of his feet, Dean brought his hands up, fingers not quite fists.“Change her back.”

Hermes sighed.“As attractive as all that flexing is, it’s not going to get you anywhere. At least not right now,” he amended, glancing over at his father and Hera. “Let me deal with this.” Adjusting the belt of his bathrobe, he fixed the Goddess of Marriage with a steely glare. “Try to remember this isn’t some mortal or nymph you’re unjustly accusing here. Even in a vegetative state, this is a Keeper. Eventually, she’ll change herself back.”

Hera sniffed.“I don’t believe you.”

“Then believe the cat. Would he be so calm if Claire’s form were dependent on your whim?”

Austin yawned.

“Dean.” Hermes turned around, came face to muscle with Dean’s chest and took a moment to reengage cognitive faculties. “You know Claire better than I do. How do you think she feels about all this?”

“About being a plant?”

“Yes. Do you think she’ll be angry when she’s herself again.”

“Oh, yeah.”

Hermes shifted his attention to the goddess.“Change her back, Hera. Or you’re going to have to deal with an angry Keeper.”

“What can she do?”

“She can confine everyone to Olympus. For all the years of her life, it’ll be nothing but shuffleboard, listening to Ares screw up the plots of old war movies, and actually looking forward to the night the Valkyrie come by for choral singing.”

The goddess folded her arms.“So what.”

Austin stretched and stood.“She can also cancel your cable.”

Round circles of rouge stood out against suddenly pale skin.

“She didn’t know what she was doing, lambie-kins.” Zeus reached out a tentative hand and patted his wife’s arm. “Change her back. For me.”

“For you?” Penciled brows drew in, wrinkles falling into their accustomed place. “All right. Since you got her into this, I’ll change her back foryou.”

He started for the door.

Hera grabbed the two, three-foot eyebrow hairs and yanked him back to her side, her other hand gesturing toward Claire.

The world didn’t so much twist as flicker.

Fortunately, Claire had already pulled nearly enough power to effect the change on her own. Using the path Hera had opened, she stretched, straightened, and felt her lips draw back off her teeth. She couldn’t remember ever being so angry.

Hell’s silence stopped her after a single step. She could feel how much it was enjoying itself at her expense. Breathing heavily, she smoothed her pajamas and forced a smile. “Thank you for your intervention, Hermes. Now go to bed. All of you.”

YOU STILL WANT TO SMASH THEM.

“Extra points for overcoming temptation,” Claire told it. When the ex-Olympians hesitated, she added,“I’m going to try to forget this ever happened.”

“Not very convincing,” Hera muttered.

“Best you’re going to get,” Claire told her through clenched teeth.

The goddess nodded and, still holding Zeus’ eyebrow hairs, headed for the stairs.

“Ow! Honeybunch, that hurts….”

Hermes bowed slightly and followed.

Only Dean remained.

She had her hand raised to remove the humiliating memory from his mind when he asked,“Are you okay, Boss?” and she realized that was all that mattered to him. He didn’t care that she’d been a plant as long as she was all right now.

But there were one or two things they still had to be clear on.

“Ididn’t invite Zeus in.”

“Okay.”

“He just appeared in my bathtub. As a swan.”

Dean looked appalled.“I’ll scour the tub tomorrow.”

“I could have gotten rid of him on my own if Hera hadn’t shown up.”

“I don’t doubt it for a moment.”

And he didn’t “Good night, Dean.”

“Good night, Boss.”

“You know,” Austin said as the door closed behind him, “thatBoss is beginning to sound rather like an endearment.”

This was not the time, nor the mood, to deal with that.“At least the others didn’t show up.”

“I suspect they keep a low profile when Hera’s on the rampage.”

Claire slapped the wards back up and staggered to the bathroom.“I need a drink.”

“May I suggest a little compost tea?”

“No.”

“So you’d as leaf not?”

“Oh, shut up.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Back in his own apartment Dean pulled Claire’s business card from his pocket expecting that it would give him some indication if she really wasn’t all right.

Aunt Claire, Keeper

your Accident is my Opportunity

(100% organically grown)

Reassured, he went back to bed.

The Olympians left directly after breakfast. Claire watched them climb into the van, fighting over who was sitting by what window, and raised a neutral hand in response to Hermes’ wave. The moment the van pulled away, she raced upstairs.

“Where are you going?” Austin demanded.

“Something woke Hera last night. I’m going to find out what it was.”

“With grape flavor crystals?”

“You’ll see.”

Standing by the bed in room one, she flung the crystals into the air. When they settled, there were tiny purple three-toed footprints on the bedside table.

“Go get Dean and Jacques,” Claire said.

Unusually quiet, Austin left the room.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“When Hermes said Poseidon leaves a room damp, he wasn’t kidding.”

“You think you have problems? I work like a dog for that Persephone and she does not even tip.”

“You’re dead. What would you do with money?”

“So I am dead.” Jacques sniffed disdainfully. “It is, how do you say, the principle of the thing.”

As they rounded the bed and saw Claire’s expression, they fell silent. She pointed toward the bedside table. “I want that imp caught,” she said.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

It wasn’t as easy as all that. Both men, the living and dead, were unsuccessful. The traps remained empty. Claire’s mood grew worse.

“If anything’s going to get done,” Austin sighed, leaping down off the bed as the bathroom door slammed the next morning, “I’ve clearly got to do it myself.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“Uh, Boss? I can finish the wallpapering myself if you’d rather be somewhere else.”

Fighting the urge to photosynthesize, Claire stepped out of the shaft of sunlight.“No. I said I’d help.”

Wondering how much trouble he’d be in if he mentioned she was being more of a hindrance, Dean rolled the next sheet through the tray and laid it against the wall. “Could you please hand me the smoother.”

“The what?”

Hands still holding the paper to the wall, he turned to point and froze.

Claire frowned and followed his line of sight.

Picking his way over the folds in the drop cloth, Austin crossed the dining-room table with something small and squirming in his mouth. Its legs were froglike and ended in three toes. Its arms, nearly as long as its legs, ended in two fingers and a thumb. Its eyes were small and black and it appeared to have no teeth. Covered in something between fur and scale, it changed color constantly.

As Austin drew even with Claire, he spit the imp out.“Yuck, those things taste awful.”

The imp leaped off the table, scrambled up the wall, and dove under the wet wallpaper.

As the bulge headed for the ceiling, Claire snatched up the last full roll and, swinging it like a club bat, smacked it down again and again. And again.

When her arm dropped to her side, Dean pulled the roll from limp fingers.

Breathing heavily, she looked up at the barely noticeable lump.“I’m feeling much better now.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

In the furnace room the silence filled all available space and pushed against the shield. After a moment, it found a voice.

SHE DESTROYED MY IMP!

YOUR IMP?

MY IMP. NOW, IT’S PERSONAL.

ELEVEN

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_4]

CLAIRE WOKE FROM UNEASY DREAMS where images of Hell unfolded like overdone special effects, realized the date, and gave serious consideration to remaining in bed. Although the origins of Halloween were far older than the beliefs that had defined the pit in the furnace room, greeting card companies had seen to it that pointy-hatted hags and men in red long Johns with pitchforks had risen to dominance over history.

If Hell intended to try anything big, it would make the attempt on October 31.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

WELL?

NO. TOO OBVIOUS. SHE’LL BE EXPECTING SOMETHING TO HAPPEN TONIGHT.

BUT IF NOTHING HAPPENS, WON’T THAT MAKE HER SUSPICIOUS?

Hell considered it a moment. YOU’RE RIGHT. It sounded surprised. I WILL BIDE MY TIME. YOU MAY DO AS YOU PLEASE.

BUT WITHOUT YOU…

TRY HARDER.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“Diana’s more likely to be a catalyst than a help, Mom.”

“I don’t like the thought of you there alone, tonight of all nights.”

Which was the truth as far as it went. On the other hand, Claire couldn’t really blame her mother for trying to get Diana out of the house on Halloween, not after the incident with the gob stoppers. “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. Thanks to the seepage, the shield’s never been as strong.”

Claire felt as much as heard her mother’s sigh. “Just be careful.”

“I will.”

“Doublecheckher shielding.”

“I will.”

“Your father says that you should try to convince Jacques to pass over. He says it isn’t healthy for a spirit to be hanging about on the physical plane and that the links between worlds are weak over the next twenty-four hours. He says…” She paused and turned her mouth from the receiver. “Do you want to talk to her, Norman?” This second sigh held a different timbre. “Your father, who seems to think I have nothing better to do than pass on his commentary, says Jacques’ presence could call other spirits and that you’d best ward against it unless you want to house a whole company of ghosts.”

“Tell Dad that Jacques has been haunting this place for over seventy years and that hasn’t happened yet. Tell him it’s probably because of the nature of the site—ghosts don’t want to be near it.”

“Do you want to talk to him?”

“No, you can tell him. I’d better go now, Mom.” Leaning out over the counter, she peered down the hall toward the dining room but couldn’t see anything. “Dean and Austin are alone together in the kitchen.”

“Is that a problem?”

“It could be. The geriatric kibble has been disappearing, but I don’t think Austin’s been eating it. I want to catch them in the act.”

“Do you think they’re destroying it?”

“No. Dean would never waste food.”

“Surely you don’t thinkhe’s eating it.”

“No, but he does do all the cooking…” After final goodbyes, Claire ducked under the counter and headed for the back of the building. Rounding the corner into the kitchen, she stopped short. “What are you doing?”

Dropping a handful of pumpkin innards into a colander, Dean looked up and smiled.“We forgot to get one on Saturday so I went to the market this morning.”

“You’re carving a jack-o’-lantern? Have you forgotten what’s in the basement?”

“No, but…”

“Do you really think that, under the circumstances, it’s a good idea to attract children to the door?”

His face fell. His shoulders slumped.“I guess not. But what’ll we do with all the candy?”

“What candy?”

“All those bags of little chocolate bars and stuff we bought on Saturday.”

“There’s two bags less than there were,” Austin pointed out from his sunny spot on the dining room table.

“Two bags?” Dean stared aghast at Claire who glared at the cat.

“Tattletale.” Assuming there’d be no little visitors to the door, she’d also assumed the candy was for home consumption and acted accordingly. All right; perhaps a bit more than accordingly.

Sighing deeply, Dean stroked his hands down the sides of the pumpkin, fingers lingering over the dark orange curves.“I suppose I could do some baking. If I want to see the kids’ costumes, I guess I can go to Karen’s place tonight.”

It was honest disappointment in his voice. He wasn’t trying to manipulate her—regardless of how she might be responding. Claire couldn’t decide if that was part of his charm or really, really irritating. “All right I guess one jack-o’-lantern and a few candies can’t hurt.”

“Depends on how they’re inserted,” Austin observed.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“So you’re what they call a Keeper these days.” Her mother’s image in the mirror folded her arms over her chest. “Put the boy in danger just because you can’t bear to say no to him.” Red eyes narrowed. “I certainly hope you’re not feeling guilty for continually saying no to him onother fronts.”

Claire finished brushing her teeth and spit“What other fronts?”

“Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed his raging desires? His burning passion that only you can quench.”

“Did you just acquire another romance writer?”

“Go ahead, scoff. It’s no skin off my nose…” Skin disappeared off the entire face. “…if you break his heart.”

“Oh, give it up, I amnot breaking his heart.” Dropping her toothbrush on the counter, Claire stomped from the bathroom.

The image lingered.“A mother knows,” it said with a lipless smile.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“Is it that you want me to be gone?” Jacques demanded, his edges flickering in and out of focus. “I thought you were happy to have me here, with you.”

Claire hadn’t intended to hurt the ghost’s feelings, but since feelings were pretty much all he was, she supposed it was inevitable. “All I said was that if you want to cross over, tonight would be a good night to go. The barriers between the physical world and the spiritual will be thin and…Austin!”

He looked up and drew his front leg back out of the rubber plant’s green plastic pot. “What?”

“You know what.”

“You’d think,” he muttered, stalking from the sitting room, his tail a defiant flag flicking back and forth, “that after seventeen years she’d trust me. Use a flowerpot just once and you’re branded for all nine lives.”

When the cat’s monologue of ill-usage faded, Claire turned her attention back to Jacques. “You’re stalled here,” she reminded him, “halfway between two worlds and, someday, you’ll have to move on.”

“Someday,” he repeated, his fingers tracing the curve of her cheek. “If I, as you say, move on, will you miss me,cherie?”

“You know I will.”

“Pour quoi?”

“Because I enjoy your company.”

“Not as you could.”

“What you seem to need is Jacques possessing Dean’s body.”

She shook the memory out of her head before Hell could comment but Jacques seemed to see something in her face that made him smile.

“Perhaps you desire me to leave because you are afraid of the feeling I make in you. Of the feeling I have for you.”

“Jacques, you’re dead. Only a Keeper can give you flesh, and I’m the only Keeper in your…” About to say, life, she paused and reconsidered. “…in your existence.”

“Then it is fate.”

“What is?”

“You and I.”

“Look, I just wanted to ask you if you wanted to move on; since you don’t I have things to do.” Pulling enough power to brush him out of the way if he didn’t move, she headed for the door.

He drifted aside to let her pass.

Fingers wrapped around the doorknob, she paused, expecting Jacques to put in one final plea for flesh. When he didn’t, she left the room feeling vaguely cheated.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“What’re you doing. Boss?”

Claire set the silver marking pen on the desk and worked the cramp out of her right hand.“I’m justifying tonight’s potential danger. Trying to be a Keeper in spite of the situation.” She nodded toward the huge wooden salad bowl half full of miniature chocolate bars, eyeball gum, and spider suckers. “Every piece of that candy has a rune written on the wrapper that’ll nullifyanything bad the kids might pick up.”

“Like fruit and nuts instead of candy? Kidding,” he added hastily as Claire’s brows drew in. “I mean, I know there’s sickos out there and I think it’s great you’re doing something about it.”

“Thank you. Every time one of those sickos slips a doctored treat past street-proofing and parents, there’s another hole ripped in the fabric of the universe and, given the metaphysical baggage carried by this time of the year, anything could slip through. Early November is a busy season for the lineage.”

The chocolate bar he picked up looked ludicrously tiny as he tossed it from hand to hand.“Can I ask you something? Why don’t you stop them before the kids get hurt?”

“You mean why don’t we make everybody behave themselves instead of just cleaning up the mess once it’s over? My sister used to ask that all the time.” She’d stopped, but Claire suspected Diana still believed the world would be a better place if she were in charge. So did most teenagers; trouble was, Diana had power enough to take a shot at it “It’s that whole free-will thing; we’re no more allowed to make choices for people than you are. We’re just here to deal with the metaphysical consequences.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“You can stand in the doorway and hand this stuff out.”

“I meant…”

“I know.” There were times, Claire reflected, when a facetious comment just wasn’t enough. “You’re good people, Dean. That helps strengthen the universe all by itself.”

“Kind of like moral Scotchgarding,” Austin told him, unfolding on one of the upper bookshelves. “Now could one of you, preferably the taller one, help me down.”

After the cat had settled on the monitor and Dean had returned to the kitchen to fetch the pumpkin, Claire tossed another chocolate bar into the bowl and said,“Thanks.”

“No problem. You were having an honest in-depth conversation, so I figured you’d soon run out of things to say.”

“You know…” She poked him with a sucker stick. “…you can be really irritating.”

“Only because I’m right.”

The candy hit the bowl with more force than necessary.

“I’m right again, aren’t I?”

“Shut up.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Dusk settled over the city, the streetlights came on, and clumps of children, many with bored adults in tow, began moving from door to door.

In the furnace room, the bits of Hell left off the newly formed personality, sent out invitations.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

As the first group of kids climbed the stairs, the wards incised into the threshold with a salad fork…

“Why a salad fork?”

Claire shrugged.“It was the first thing I grabbed.”

…remained dark.

Only two of the four wore anything recognizable as a costume. One of the others had rubbed a bit of dirt on his face although it might not have been intentional. They stood silently holding out pillowcases as Dean offered the bowl.

“Do you want to take a handful or should I do it?” he asked enthusiastically.

After a silent consultation, the largest of the four jerked her head toward the bowl.“You do it. You got bigger hands.”

“Aren’t you guys supposed to say ‘trick or treat’?” Claire wondered as Dean dropped the runed candy into the bags.

A little boy, dressed vaguely like Luke Skywalker, giggled.

“What’s so funny?”

Their spokesman rolled her eyes.“Trick or treat is way uncool.” Clutching their pillowcases, they turned as one, pounded back to the sidewalk, and raced away.

“When I was a kid, I’m sure we worked harder at this,” Claire muttered as she closed the door.

Cross-legged on the countertop, Jacques rematerialized.“When me, I was a kid, we knock over Monsieur Bouchard’s…How do you say, outside house?”

“Outhouse. Privy.”

“Oui. We knock it over, but we do not know Monsieur Bouchard is inside.”

They turned to look at Dean.

He shrugged.“I don’t really notice any difference.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

One princess, one pirate, and four sets of street clothes later, the wards on the threshold blazed red.

Claire opened the door.

The Bogart grinned, showing broken stubs of yellow teeth.“Trick or treat.”

She dropped a handful of unruned candy on its outstretched hand.“Treat.”

“You sure?” It looked disappointed at her choice. “I gots some good tricks me.”

“I’m sure.”

Without bothering to rip off the wrappers, it popped a pair of chocolate bars into its mouth.“Good treat,” it announced after a moment of vigorous masticating and an audible swallow. “Same times next year?”

“No promises.”

The Bogart nodded.“Smart Keeper.” A backward leap took it to the sidewalk where it paused, almost invisible in the increasing dark. “Biggers coming,” it called and vanished.

“That wasn’t a kid in a really good costume, was it?” Dean asked as Claire stepped back and closed the door.

She checked the wards.“No. And on any other night you probably wouldn’t have seen it.”

“What was it, then?”

“Do you remember those sparks off the energy that I told you about the first day I was here?”

He frowned thoughtfully and scratched at the back of his neck.“The ones you see that keep you from driving?”

“Essentially. There are places where the fabric of the universe is practically cheesecloth tonight so a lot of sparks are going to get through. Once through, it seems some of them are being called here. That was a Bogart.”

“Humphrey?”

“I doubt it.”

“Was it dangerous?”

“No.” Dropping down onto the stairs, she stretched her legs out into the lobby. “But it could’ve gotten destructive if I hadn’t bought it off.”

He glanced down at the salad bowl.“With chocolate bars?”

“Why not?”

“Okay. What did it mean by biggers?”

“Bigger than it. More powerful, more dangerous.”

“Will they be coming all night?”

“I don’t know. They might stop coming if we blow out the jack-o’-lantern and turn off the front lights, but they might not.”

“So we should blow out the candle and turn off the lights and see what happens.”

Her eyes narrowed.“No.”

“No?”

“I’m not cowering in the dark.”

“But you didn’t even want to do this.” He was wearing what Claire had begun to recognize as his responsible face. “It was my idea and…”

“So?” She cut him off and stood as Austin announced more children approaching. “Since we’ve started it, we’re going to finish it. And you might as well enjoy it.”

The gypsy and the ghostbuster—although they might’ve been a pirate and a sewer worker, Claire wasn’t entirely sure—looked startled when she opened the door before they knocked.

“How did you know we was coming?” the gypsy/pirate demanded.

Claire nodded toward the window where Austin could be seen silhouetted beside the pumpkin.“The cat told me.”

The ghostbuster/sewer worker snorted.“Did not.”

“My dad says this place is haunted,” the gypsy/pirate announced.

“Your dad’s right.”

“Cool. Can we see the ghost?”

“No.”

They accepted her refusal with the resigned grace of children used to being denied access to the adult world.

“The cat told me?” Austin asked as she closed the door.

“Hey, it’s Halloween.”

“Then you should have shown them the ghost,” Jacques pointed out with a toss of his head.

“Jacques!”

Catching it one-handed, he set it back on his shoulders at a rakish angle.“If you give me flesh, I could not do that.”

Suppressing a shudder, Claire glared at him.“If I gave you flesh right now, I’d smack it.”

His grin broadened.“D’accord.”

“No.”

“Tease.”

The wards blazed red.

“Well…” Claire glanced around at the man, the cat, and the ghost as she reached for the door. “…let’s check out thenext contestant.”

A young woman stood on the step. She had short brown hair, brown eyes, and matching Satin Claret lipstick and nail polish.

Claire tapped her own Satin Claret nails impatiently against the doorjamb.“You’ve got to be kidding.”

The young woman shrugged.“Trick or treat?”

Behind her, Claire heard Dean gasp.“Boss. It’s you.”

“Not quite. It’s a Waff, a kind of Co-walker. Technically, it’s a death token.”

“A what?”

“Don’t worry about it.” Folding her arms, Claire looked the Waff in the eye and said in her best primary schoolteacher voice, “You’ve no business being here. Go on, then. Off with you! Scram!”

Looking embarrassed about the entire incident, the Waff slunk down the steps and out of sight.

“Honestly,” Claire sighed as she closed the door. “They used to get chased off by mortals, you’d think they’d know better than to even try against a Keeper.”

“I doubt it had a choice,” Austin pointed out, scratching vigorously behind one ear. “Once it was called, it had to come. Things are going to get a lot worse before they get better.”

“Do you know that, or are you pontificating?”

He licked his nose and refused to answer.

Three sets of street clothes, a couple of Disney characters and a Gwyllion later, Dean headed for the kitchen under the pretext of getting coffee. Hewas going to get coffee, but that wasn’t his only reason for going to the kitchen.

The Gwyllion had looked rather like one of the city’s more colorful bag ladies and had been mumbling what sounded like directions to the bus station when Claire’d banished it with an iron cross she’d pulled out of her backpack. Without a backpack of his own, Dean opened the bread box for the next best thing.

A fairy bun.

Technically, it was a leftover brown’n’serve from supper, but in a pinch it’d have to do. As an Anglican minister, his granddad had fought a continual battle against the superstitions that rose up in isolated communities and had told him how even in the sixties many of the more traditional men would carry fairy buns into the woods to protect them from being led astray by the small spirits. Dean had never thought to ask what exactly his granddad had meant by small spirits but reasoned that anything that could make it up the steps to the door had to count.

He wrapped the bun in a paper towel and carefully squashed it down into the front right-hand pocket of his jeans. Turning to go, a movement in the parking lot caught his eye.

His truck was the only vehicle out there. If some of the older kids were about to do any damage, it would have to be tohis truck.

Over his dead body. That truck had brought him from Newfoundland to Kingston in February and, in one of the worst winters on record, had gone through everything he’d asked it to. And one thing he hadn’t asked it to, but the gas pumps hadn’t actually exploded and the police had determined that the large patch of black ice had been at fault rather than his driving, so technically it had been an uneventful trip. Anyway, he loved that truck.

Moving quietly to the window, he pushed aside enough of the vertical blinds to allow him to scout the enemy; no point in rushing out like an idiot if his truck was safe.

The most beautiful woman he’d ever seen looked in at him, smiled, and gracefully beckoned him closer.

Dean swallowed, hard. He could feel his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down like a buoy on high seas.

Her smile sharpened.

Moving from space to space between the vertical slats so that he wouldn’t have to take his eyes off her, Dean shuffled toward the door.

“Dean?” Austin brushed up against his shins. “What are you looking at?”

His tongue felt thick. He had to force it to make words.“Irresistibly beautiful woman.”

“Out there? In the parking lot?”

“Needs me. Needs me to go to her.”

“Uh-huh. Look again.”

A sudden sharp pain in Dean’s calf jerked the world back into focus. Out in the parking lot, the beauty was no longer quite so irresistible. Her eyes held dark shadows, her teeth were far too white and there didn’t seem to be much in the way of boundary between where she ended and the night began. Feeling as though he were standing on the edge of a fog-shrouded cliff, Dean stuffed trembling fingers into his pocket and grabbed one end of the fairy bun.

Belief is everything when dealing with baked goods.

A misty figure, vaguely woman-shaped directed her burning gaze down toward the cat and hissed angrily.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Nice try, now get lost Come on,” he added as the spirit disappeared, “let’s get me a piece of that pork left from dinner, then get you back to the lobby before something else shows up.”

Conscious of the blood slowly soaking into his jeans, Dean fed and followed without an argument.

“Well?” Claire asked impatiently as they came out into the light.

“I was right He was in trouble. Judging from his reaction and the noise it made before it disappeared, I’m guessing it was a Lhiannan-Shee.”

“A fairy sweetheart?”

“Not a sweetheart,” Dean protested remembering its final appearance.

“We all have our bad days.” Claire grabbed him by the elbow and spun him around. “Are you all right?”

“Sure.” He felt a little light-headed and his skin prickled where the hair had risen all over his body, but he still had his soul, so the rest seemed too minor to mention.

“What happened to your leg?”

“Austin.”

“Hey, I had to get his attention, didn’t I?” Austin demanded as Claire turned a raised eyebrow in his direction.

“By attempting an amputation?”

Industriously washing a front paw, he ignored her.

“I know a man who die from a cat scratch,” Jacques announced rematerializing halfway up the stairs. “The scratch, it went…How do you say,septique?”

“Septic.”

“Oui. Had to cut it off and he dies.”

“Died.”

“Oui.” He smiled at Dean.“Should we cut off your leg now or later?”

“I’m fine.”

“I’m insulted,” Austin snorted. “My claws are clean.”

“Maybe you’d better go wash your leg,” Claire suggested, nodding toward her suite. “Use my bathroom. There’s some antibiotic cream in the medicine chest.”

At the sight of the roughly circular stain, Dean sucked in air through his teeth. About three inches in diameter, it was an ugly red-brown, darker in the center of the top curve.“Oh, man. I’ll be right back.”

“Where are you going?”

“To change. I don’t get these jeans into cold water soon, I’ll never get the blood out.”

“Don’t look out any windows!” Claire yelled as he ran for the basement “I don’t believe him,” she muttered over the sound of his work boots clumping down the stairs. “One minute he’s terrified, the next, a laundry problem drives the whole experience from his mind.”

“He is right about the bloodstain and cold water,” Jacques pointed out. “You see these?” He slapped his thighs. “Cover with blood when I fall in the lake and now, for eternity, clean.”

Claire helped herself to a chocolate bar.“Don’t you start.”

A few moments later. Dean reentered the lobby in jeans so clean the creases were a lighter shade of blue.

“Well?”

He smiled.“I’ve been hurt worse while still on the bench.”

“Next time I’ll dig a little deeper,” Austin muttered as another group of kids arrived.

For about half an hour, a steady procession of the neighborhood children climbed up the steps to claim their loot. Claire kept a wary eye on the wards while Dean stood in the open doorway, happily handing out the candy. By the time the crowd thinned and the stairs emptied, it was full dark.

“Uh, Boss? There’s a real evil-looking cow down on the street.”

“A cow?”

“Yeah. It’s got barbed horns and glowing red eyes.”

“Considering how the rest of the stuffs been manifesting, it’s probably a Guytrash.”

“What should I do?”

“Shut the door; it’ll go away.”

Brow creased, he did as he was told.“These things can’t hurt the kids, can they?”

“Have you ever heard of a kid being hurt by a cow on Halloween?”

“Well, no, but…”

“This kind of manifestation can’t hurt you if you don’t believe it can hurt you, and frankly, not many people believe in the traditional ghoulies anymore.” The wards blazed red and Claire reached for the door. “There’s probably enough race memory left to give them a bit of a scare, but isn’t that what tonight’s abo…oh, my.” She stared up at the very large man wearing what looked to be black plastic armor and shivered a little at the menace in the black plastic eyes.

“Truth or dare?” His voice was darker; deeper even, if that was possible.

It was essentially the same question. The trick was, never for an instant to show uncertainty.“Truth.”

“You think you can do it alone, but you can’t.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’ve had your truth.” She could hear amusement in the dark tone. “Now, it’smy turn.”

“Hey, Nicho! Look who it is!”

A pair of six-or seven-year-olds charged up the stairs and grabbed onto the trailing black cloak.

“You are so cool, man.”

“You’re our favorite.”

“It’sreally you, isn’t it?”

He turned enough to look ominously down at them.“Yes.Really.”

“Cool.”

“Way cool.”

“Can we have your autograph?”

“Will you come home with me and meet our mom?”

“No, no! Better! Come to school with us tomorrow.”

“Yeah, you could slice and dice those guys who won’t let us on the swings.”

“Slice and dice!”

The features of the mask were, of course, immobile, but Claire thought she could detect a faint hint of building panic as the question and comments continued at machine-gun speed.

“You looked a lot taller in the movie.”

“Where’d you get those cool boots?”

“We loved the way you iced that guy without even touching him.”

“You gonna be in the prequel?”

“I got the micro machine play set that looks just like you.”

“I drew a picture of you on the inside cover of my reader. It was pretty good, but I got in trouble.”

“Can I hold your light sa…”

“No.” He yanked his cape from their hands.

“Oh, come on, just once.”

“Me, too.”

“I said, no.”

“We wouldn’t break it”

“Yeah, don’t be such a jerk.”

Breathing labored, he rushed down the steps, strode out onto the sidewalk, and disappeared.

“Cool.”

“Yeah. Way cool.”

The taller of the two looked speculatively up at Claire.“You got any gummy bears?”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“I’m melting, I’m melting…”

Swinging the empty bucket, Claire closed the door on the dissolving manifestation.“At least she stuck to the script.”

“I always thought the CBC was overreacting about the effects of the American media,” Dean said thoughtfully, “but now I’m not so sure.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“Aren’t you a little young to be out so late.”

The tiny girl watched the candy drop safely into her bag before answering.“My daddy just got home.”

The shadowy figure at the bottom of the stairs raised an arm in a sheepish wave.

“I see. Well, what are you supposed to be?”

She tossed her head, setting a pair of realistic looking paper horse ears waggling, and spun around so Claire could see the tail pinned to the back of her jacket.“I’m apony.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“You’ve got a cat in the window,” she continued. “I want a cat, but my stepmom’s allergic. Can I come in and pet your cat? Just for a minute.” Head to one side, she smiled engagingly. “Please.”

“What about your father?”

She spun around again.“Daddy! Can I go pet the cat?”

The arm lifted in what could have been a wave of assent.

Like most cats, Austin was not fond of small children. Claire grinned and was about to step out of the way when she noticed the threshold seemed to be a darker color than the surrounding wood. Reaching into her pocket she pulled out a paper packet of salt and, as the child’s eyes widened, ripped it in half and threw it in her face.

The glamour faded.

The runes blazed red.

The little girl stretched six, seven feet tall, costume vanishing although the horse ears remained, curved fangs protruding from her lower jaw, oversized hands scraping at the bricks on either side of the door.

Daddy breathed fire.

Claire and Dean together slammed the door.

“That was close,” Claire said with feeling as the latch finally caught.

Shoulders against the wood, Dean let out a breath he couldn’t remember taking. “Do you always keep salt in your pocket?”

“Strange question from a man carrying a brown’n’serve.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“Aren’t you guys a little old to be out tonight?”

One of the three identical junior skinheads scowled, differentiating himself momentarily from the other two.“Aren’t you a little ugly to be passin’ judgment?”

“Yeah. Just give over the fuckin’ candy.”

The teenager in the middle elbowed them both hard in the ribs.“What we meant to say,ma’am, was trick or treat.”

Claire thought about it a moment as the boys postured.“Trick,” she said at last and closed the door.

The boy with his boot thrust in on the threshold got a nasty surprise. They could hear his shriek even through the heavy wood.

“I think the bitch broke my fuckin’ foot, man.”

“They were going to egg us anyway,” Claire explained. “I figured, why waste the candy.”

“Egg us?” Dean repeated.

She grabbed his arm, stopping his charge.“Don’t worry about it.”

“These guys won’t stop with eggs!”

“I think they will.” A few minutes later, watching out the window as the last of the thrown eggs paused inches from the hotel and swept back, like all the rest to smash on the now dripping and furious thrower, she sighed. “I guess I was wrong.”

The hunk of broken concrete followed the same path as the eggs.

“Tricky downdrafts. That had to hurt.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Claire put herself bodily between Dean and the door as he tried to follow the will-o’-the-wisp dancing up and down the stairs. She allowed herself one small thought about the firm resilience of his stomach, then dug her shoulder in and shoved him far enough into the lobby to be able to close the door.

“That’s it,” she said when he was safely behind the counter. “It’s ten o’clock. There won’t be any more kids. I think we can blow out the candle and turn off the outside lights, honor intact.”

The pumpkin lid refused to lift and all the air blown in through the carved face wouldn’t put out the candle.

“Oh, nuts.”

Two of the remaining four chocolate bars acquired almonds. Two didn’t.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“Granddad?”

“No tricks, Dean, I promise. Come on out we have a lot to say to each other.”

“But you’re dead.”

“Never said I wasn’t, but this is the night the dead walk.”

“The restless dead.”

“You think I’m not restless after what you did? Think again!”

“But Aunt Carol loves the house.”

“I left it to you, you ungrateful whelp.”

“Granddad, let me explain.” One foot lifted to clear the threshold, Dean felt something crunch in his pocket and shoved a hand in to feel what it was.

The fairy bun.

The steps were empty.

“I thought I told you not to open that while I was gone.” Claire stepped out of her sitting room as he jerked back and closed the door. “What was out there?”

“The ghost of my granddad.”

“He’s dead? Sorry, stupid question.” She went out into the lobby and searched his face. “It wasn’t actually him, you know.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“You don’t look so good. Maybe you should go to bed.”

“Will they keep coming?”

“Yes. Probably until dawn.”

He lifted his chin and squared his shoulders.“Then I’ll stay.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“What wasthat?”

“Fachan. They’ve gone back to the classics.”

“That roast was for tomorrow’s supper.”

“Trust me, he wouldn’t have been happy with candy.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Dawn seemed a long time coming.

“Any candy left?”

Claire tipped the bowl up on its side and tried to focus on the contents. Half a dozen empty wrappers fell out.“Looks like I’ve finished it.”

“What were those last two things again.”

“An ogre and a Duergar. Why?” She blew a weary bubble.

Dean pulled off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.“Did you really spin straw into gold?”

“It was going around in a circle, so technically it was spinning.” The Duergar hadn’t been entirely happy, but since it had the treat, it couldn’t trick. The ogre, on the other hand, had ripped the railing out around the area and tossed it and the hotel sign out into the street. Treating anogre meant feeding it dinner.

Ogres were man-eaters. The trick was knowing that.

Austin lifted his head off his paws and yawned.“Sun’s up. And the candle just went out.” He leaped off the windowsill as the pumpkin collapsed in on itself, smoking slightly.

Shoving his glasses back on approximately where they belonged, Dean stood and headed for the door.“I think I’ll get that stuff off the road before there’s an accident.”

Dragging herself up onto her feet Claire waited a moment until the world stopped spinning.“I think I’ll go throw up.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

THAT’S IT? YOU SCARED THEM A TIME OR TWO AND YOU DID A LITTLE DAMAGE AND YOU TIRED THEM OUT, BIG DEAL. THE KEEPER FIELDED EVERYTHING YOU THREW AT HER AND NEVER ONCE DREW POWER FROM LOWER THAN THE MIDDLE OF THE POSSIBILITIES.

SO LET’S SEE YOU DO BETTER. The rest of Hell sounded miffed.

BETTER?

OKAY. FINE.WORSE.

WAIT FOR IT….

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Down on one knee, the police constable poked at the hole torn in the concrete setting and shook his head.“When exactly did this happen?”

“About four A.M.”

“Four-twelve,” Mrs. Abrams corrected.“I know because when I heard the noise, and it was a terrible noise, I looked at my alarm clock and even though I bought it before Mr. Abrams died, God bless the man, it still keeps perfect time.”

“Four-twelve,” the constable repeated. “Did you happen to see who did it?”

“Oh, no! I wasn’t going to expose myself to that kind of destructive hooliganism. That’s what the police are paid for and that’s why I called them.”

“I was actually asking Ms. Hansen.”

Since there’d been a chance of flying glass, Claire had stayed away from the window and so could truthfully answer, “Sorry, I didn’t see anything.”

“It was probably a gang of students from the university. They get a few too many drinks in them and go crazy.”

“That sounds reasonable,” Claire agreed as he stood. It wasn’t what had happened, but it sounded reasonable. Most of the vandalism in Kingston conveniently got blamed on wandering gangs of students from the university who’d had a few too many drinks. Occasionally they were spotted in the distance, but no one ever managed to identify individuals since, like other legendary creatures, they vanished when too closely approached.

“When you arrest them,” Mrs. Abrams said, so determined to do her civic duty that she clutched at the constable’s sleeve, “you let me know. I’m the one who called. Mrs. Abrams. Onebe and aness.”

“You’re the lady with the dog, aren’t you?”

“You’ve heard of my Baby?” she beamed up at him.

The constable sighed.“Oh, yeah.”

Another call dragged the grateful police officer back into his car and away. Mrs. Abrams transferred her attention to Claire.

“You haven’t forgotten that Professor Jackson is coming to stay the day after tomorrow, have you, Kimberly, dear?”

“We’re looking forward to it, Mrs. Abrams.”

“I’m sure you’ll take wonderful care of him. I’ll likely be over to visit him while he’s there. Only because Baby dislikes him so, you know. We wouldn’t ever do anything compromising. Although,” she simpered, “I used to be quite progressive in my younger days.”

The worst of it was, she was telling the truth. Shuddering slightly, Claire went inside and spent the rest of the day trying to catch up on her sleep without dreaming of Mrs. Abrams and the professor in progressive positions. Had she not checked to insure all shields were holding, she’d have assumed the dreams, in graphic detail with full sound and color, had risen up out of the pit.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“You Claire Hansen?”

Claire checked, but the courier had not been called by Hell. Which made sense after she thought about it a moment; if something absolutely had to be delivered the next business day, Hell’d prefer it to be late. “Yes, I’m Claire Hansen.”

“Sign here.”

“Why?”

Although the young woman’s expression made a rude comment, she kept her tone professional. “I got a package for you.”

“You want me to sign for it, then. Boss?”

“You Claire Hansen?” the courier demanded.

“No, but…”

“Thenshe’s got to sign it.”

In return for her signature, Claire was handed a large, bulging manila envelope and an illegible receipt.

“Who’s it from?” Dean asked as the courier carried her bike back down the front steps and rode away.

“More important,” Jacques murmured appreciatively, rematerializing by the window, “what does she wear? Her legs, they look like they are painted black.”

“They’re tights.”

“Oui, they are tight. Me, I do not complain, but they are allowed?”

“Sure.”

He heaved a heavy if ethereal sigh.“I died too soon.”

“The package is from Hermes,” Claire interrupted with heavy emphasis.

Austin snickered.“Someone doesn’t like not being the center of attention.”

Ignoring him, she pulled a folded towel from the envelope and frowned.“Why would Hermes send us a towel?”

“It’s one of ours,” Dean declared, fingering the fabric. “It must’ve gotten accidentally mixed in with his stuff.”

“He’s the God of Thieves, Dean. I doubt it was an accident, and since I also doubt his conscience got the better of him, I wonder why he sent it back.” A piece of paper, both sides filled with line after line of script, fell from a fold. “Maybe this explains it.Dear Keeper,” she read.“Three days ago, I left your establishment with one of the items traditionally liberated from hotel rooms. Since that time, two ferries have attempted to sink out from under us and would have sunk had Poseidon not been on board to command the waves to carry us to shore. Our vehicle has broken down seven times—Hephaestus is happy, no one else is. For the first time since we began traveling, the border guards asked to see identification and then, when I informed them we were heading to Rochester, searched the van. The pocket in the space-time continuum didn’t bother them as much as the cameras Zeus bought in Toronto but lost the receipts for. When we were finally allowed into the United States but warned by the most officious person it has ever been my displeasure to meet that we wouldn’t be able to return to Canada—and, I might add, your admirable system of socialized medicine—Aphrodite had a flare up of an old complaint, and the clinic visit maxed out her credit card. While we were waiting for her, someone stole our travelers’ checks. They were not American Express.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

The list continued for the rest of the front and onto the back of the paper and ended with:

“So I return to you the item divination has determined is the cause of our recent difficulties. Please excuse the small scorch mark. Your security system is admirable if excessive.

—Yours in mythology,

Hermes.”

“What security system?” Dean asked.

“I suspect that after all these years with an active accident site, the hotel’s capable of providing its own security.” Claire patted the terry cloth fondly. “Offhand, I’d say it’s areally bad idea to steal our towels.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

STOPPING THE SEEPAGE WON’T WEAKEN THE SHIELD, Hell told itself sulkily.

I’M NOT STOPPING THE SEEPAGE. I’M GATHERING IT.

TWELVE

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_4]

PROFESSOR JACKSON WAS A MAN of medium height trying to be tall. Under a hat last fashionable in the forties, he carried his chin high and his weight forward on the balls of his feet. Something about him suggested carpetbags to Claire although a quick glance over the counter showed only a perfectly normal, gray nylon suitcase.

“Am I your only guest?” he asked, signing the register with a precise flourish.

“At the moment.” Claire dropped the key to room one into his outstretched hand. “Next floor up, turn left at the top of the stairs.”

An expectant gaze drifted down to his luggage and then around the lobby, slid over Austin but rested for a moment on Claire. When she made no response, he sighed dramatically, picked up the suitcase, and started up the stairs.

At the sound of the professor’s door closing, Austin opened his eyes. “Why don’t you like him?”

“I don’t know. Maybe because Baby’s taken a strange dislike to him.”

“That would only be strange if Baby actuallyliked anyone.”

“Good point.” Staring down at Professor Jackson’s signature, Claire traced the loop of the “J” with one finger. Unless he was one of those rare nonpoliticians who believed their own lies, it was his real name and occupation. “I can’t help thinking he’s dangerous.”

“How?”

“You’re the cat you tell me.”

Austin thoughtfully washed his shoulder.“He looks like he’s in his late fifties.”

“So?”

“Ten years younger than Mrs. Abrams.”

“Your point?”

“Do I have to spell it out? He’s ten years younger than she is. He’s younger. She’s older. They’re…”

Claire’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t care.”

“Do youwant to be a lonely old recluse?” Austin demanded, tail tip flipping back and forth.

“All right. Let’s just get this settled once and for all.” She drummed her fingernails against the counter. “I like Dean. He’s a nice man and he’s very attractive. Under normal circumstances, where I’d be moving in then moving out when the job was done, I might consider, were he willing, a short physical dalliance.”

“Dalliance?”

Ignoring feline amusement, Claire went on.“However, I’m not going anywhere, and he’s barely twenty. He’s not going to be content staying here as chief cook and bottle washer forever.”

“So you’re going to give up now because you can’t have forever?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“So you’d be willing to sleep with him and then move on, but you’re not willing to extend the same courtesy to him?”

“Ireally didn’t say that.”

“So the problem is, you really want the one you can’t have.”

Claire stared at the cat for a long moment. Twice, she opened her mouth to say something, anything, but the words wouldn’t come. Finally, she turned and walked away.

As the door to her sitting room closed behind her, Austin stretched out on the counter.“What would she do without me?”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“We lock the front door at ten-thirty.”

“Why?”

“Pardon?”

Professor Jackson fixed Claire with an interrogative stare.“Why do you lock the front door at ten-thirty? Why not at ten? Or at eleven? Or at ten-forty-five? You don’t know, do you? You’ve just always done it that way. Most people go through life without noticing what’s going on around them. If I could show you the world beyond your pitiful little daily routines, well, you’d be amazed.”

“Would I?”

“Amazed,” he repeated. “I’ll be back before ten-thirty.”

“I can’t help wondering,” Claire said as the front door closed behind him, “just what exactly he’s a professor of.”

“Some kind of philosophy,” Dean answered, coming into the lobby as she finished speaking. “He holds an appointment from an eminent Swiss university.”

“That explains the accent.”

Dean looked confused.“What accent?”

“Exactly. He’s probably never been closer to Switzerland than a box of instant hot chocolate. I’m curious; how did you find this out?”

No closer to understanding than he had been, Dean shrugged and moved on.“Mrs. Abrams stopped me on my way up the driveway to make sure the professor got in okay.”

“On your way up the driveway?”

He nodded.“She leaned out her window. I had to stop or the cab of the truck would’ve taken her head off. She was, um…” He paused, uncertain of how to describe the bouffant vision, her hair oranger and higher than he’d ever seen it.

“She was what?” Claire demanded. “Irritating?”

“No. Well, yes. But also, dressed up.”

“Isthat all.”

Dean nodded. It was a weak description, but it would have to do. If she’d been dressed any more up, she could’ve rested her chin on them. Shuddering slightly, he tried his best to forget.

Conscious of Austin apparently asleep on the other end of the counter and Jacques watching bull riding in her sitting room, she tried not to sound stilted as she asked,“Did you have a good afternoon?”

“Sure.” When she seemed to be waiting for further information, he added. “I went over to my friend Ted’s. We gapped the plugs and points and changed to a winter-grade oil.”

Since she had no idea what that meant it seemed safest to make a noncommittal kind of sound.

“Did you want me for anything, then?”

“No.” When he turned to go, she jumped into the pause. “That is, unless, if you like, we could maybe order a pizza and all three of us could watch a movie together this evening?”

“All three of us?”

“Four if you count Austin, but he’ll lose interest if no one feeds him.”

“Pizza and a movie?”

“Well, Jacques won’t be eating. It’s just I saw this ad, in the paper, and there’s a pizza place on Johnson that rents videos, too, so you can have them both delivered. Together.” She knew she was overexplaining, but she couldn’t seem to stop. “I just thought that instead of cooking you might want to, uh, join us.”

Chaperone us, decoded the little voice in her head. It wasn’t coming from Hell, but then, it didn’t have to.

“Sure.”

Except this timesure meant,if I have to. Claire had begun to learn the dialect.“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. It’s just, there’s a game on…”

“No problem.” Briefly, she wondered what sport, then dismissed the question as one of little importance. “We can watch the game.”

His smiled blazed.“Great. Double cheese, pepperoni, mushrooms, and tomatoes?”

“That would be fine.”

“I’ll just go hang my jacket up and then I’ll call.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

On the way down the stairs, he checked the business card.

Aunt Claire, Keeper

Your Accident is my Opportunity

(and your guess is as good as mine)

Stretched out on his back, all four paws in the air, Austin opened one eye as Claire drummed her nails against the countertop.“You’re not fooling anyone, you know.”

“Get stuffed.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

As the first period careened toward the end of its allotted twenty minutes, Claire gnawed on a length of pizza crust and wondered just exactly what she thought she was doing. While Jacques had originally resented Dean’s intrusion into their evening, an involved discussion of how hockey had changed since his death had considerably mollified him. After an unsuccessful attempt to understand the fundamentals of icing, Claire gave up and tuned out.

If she didn’t want to be alone with Jacques, all she had to do was remove his anchor from her sitting room; a simple solution that hadn’t even occurred to her. Why not?

“Why not, what,cherie?”

“Did I say that out loud?”

“Oui.”

She glanced over at Dean, who nodded. This was not good. In a working Keeper, the line between the conscious and subconscious had to be kept clearly defined. Fortunately, Montreal chose that moment to score, and by the end of the period the conversation had been forgotten by everyone but Claire. And Austin.

“Looks like things are coming to a head,” he muttered under the cover of yet another beer commercial. “Going to have to be resolved sooner or later.”

“They’ve been resolved. Too young and too nice, and too dead.”

“Dead’s relative.”

“It isnot.”

“Then can I have some pizza?”

“No.”

“No, what, Boss?”

Before she could answer, they heard the front door open. Austin reached out and pressed the mute on the TV remote.“What?” he demanded, tucking the paw back under his ruff. “You trying to tell me that you guys don’t want to know if he’s alone?”

He wasn’t.

“Mind the legs now, Professor. They’re good quality, I only have good quality things, but they’re not as young as they once were, you know, and I don’t want to try and use them someday and find them warped.”

At the unmistakable sound of Mrs. Abrams’ voice, Jacques faded slightly, muttering, “Someone for everyone.C’est legitime, it’s true what they say.” He’d been strongly enough affected not to add anentendre.

Austin poked a paw through the ghost.“Get out in the lobby and see what they’re talking about.”

“Claire said I am not to spy on the guests.”

“So spy on the neighbor!”

He started to dematerialize, then thought better of it and glanced at Claire.

“Go ahead.”

“Jacques, don’t.” Dean’s hand went through an ethereal arm. “They have a right to their privacy.”

“Jacques, go. Or they’ll be upstairs and we’ll never know.”

Turning toward Dean, Jacques spread his hands in a gesture that clearly indicated whose side of the argument he came down on and vanished.

“Don’t tell me,” Claire cautioned Dean before he could speak, “that you’re not curious because I won’t believe you. I mean, good quality legs?”

“Well, for a woman her age…” His voice trailed off as Jacques reappeared.

“They carry a small folding table.”

“A card table?”

“I see no cards but she is wood and square, like so.” He held his hands out just beyond shoulder width.

“The table is?”

“Oui.”

“They’re going to play cards.” Claire knew she had no right to feel relieved, but a card game was a lot less disturbing than what she’d been imagining.Geta grip, Claire. Irritating oldwomenhave as much right to a sex life as you do….

“I’m glad Mrs. Abrams has a friend to share her interests,” Dean said happily, reaching for the remote as the second period started.

Grinning broadly, Jacques rolled his eyes. One fell off the edge of the coffee table.

…maybe more.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

With eight minutes still on the clock until the second intermission, Claire felt the hair lift off the back of her neck.“Something’s happening.”

“It’s a power play for Montreal,” Dean explained. “New Jersey got a penalty for high sticking, so they have one less man on the ice. They’re only one goal ahead so Montreal wants to lengthen their lead.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Claire heaved herself up out of the sofa and onto her feet. “Austin…”

“Yeah. I feel it, too.” Tail twice its normal size, he jumped down onto the floor, breathing through his half-open mouth.

“It’s coming from inside the hotel.”

“The furnace room, then?” Dean asked, eyes locked on the television. Montreal had the puck. Hell could wait another twenty-three seconds.

“No, it’s not the furnace room, and it’s nother either.”

“That’s good.”

“No, that’s bad. An unidentified power surge in this building can’t be good.”

“Claire.” Jacques stared at her through the translucent outline of his hand. “I am fading.”

She was about to tell him tostop fading when the near panicin his declaration broke through.“You’re not doing it on purpose?”

“Non.”

“Medium.”