by Tanya Huff
Dean ignored him. When he turned to Claire, the twinkle was gone. “You wouldn’t, would you?”
“And why wouldn’t she?” Jacques asked matter-of-factly. “She is young, she is healthy, she has needs.”
“Jacques!” Her elbow went right through him.
“I only say that since there is no one else, I am here.” He turned on Dean, who was shaking his head. “What?”
“You’re dead!”
“And you cannot stand the thought of a dead man achieving that which you…”
This time Claire protested with power.
“OW!” Pulling himself together, the ghost turned to face her. “I have to say, cherie, I am not at this moment thrilled by your touch. Obviously, the mood has been broken. I will leave you now but, you have my word as a Labaet, I will keep my part of the bargain until we have a chance to speak again.”
“What did he mean,” Dean asked as Jacques vanished, “about keeping his part of the bargain?”
Claire shrugged, running her thumb along the edge of the counter. “Who knows what he thinks.”
A LIE! A LIE!
A PREVARICATION. WE CAN’T USE IT. SAYS WHO? THE RULES. DAMN THE RULES.
Heated air, redolent of sulfur and brimstone, gusted up into the furnace room. DON’T THINK WE HAVEN’T TRIED.
Before Dean could answer, Claire lifted her head and actually noticed what he was wearing. “Are you going out?”
He shoved his hands into the pockets of his faded, leather football jacket. “Yeah. I meet some friends from back home every Saturday night.” He hesitated, then continued in a rush. “Do you want to come, then?”
For a moment, she thought it might be nice to spend an uncomplicated evening with Dean and his friends, going to another pub, listening to music, with Dean and his very young friends, in another dark, smoky, crowded, overpriced pub, listening to over-loud music not being sung by a vampire. “Thanks for asking, but no thanks.”
“My friends wouldn’t mind.”
A LIE!
IN KINDNESS.
BUT…
OH, GIVE IT UP.
Claire hid a smile. “It’s okay. I’ve got things to take care of.”
“I, uh, heard Ms. Moore’s van leave.”
He was far too nice to look as relieved by her refusal as she knew he felt. “It’s her last night at the pub.”
“The stalker?”
“I think he got scared off.”
He thought, as she’d intended him to, that she meant he’d been scared off when he’d been chased away from the vans. “Will you be okay alone?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“And what on earth do you think you could do if I wasn’t?” remained mostly silent.
Should I have insisted? Dean asked himself as he paused halfway down the front stairs to let his eyes grow accustomed to the dark. From what he understood of Claire’s life, it had to be a lonely existence, constantly on the move with few opportunities to make real friends.
A sudden vision of Claire sitting at the Portsmouth with the guys and Kathy, listening to them swap stupid mainlander stories, picking up her round of beer in turn, stopped him from going back into the lobby. They wouldn’t be rude. In fact, they’d be glad to see another woman in the group, but she wouldn’t fit in.
And she wouldn’t try to, he admitted. Maybe you should stay with her, boy. Keep that dead freak away. Wondering just how Jacques knew what Claire’s needs were, he turned toward the office window in time to see her drop to her knees and out of sight. Oh, man, not the imps again.
Fists in his pockets, he continued down to the sidewalk, navigating the uneven brick steps with the ease of familiarity, and made his way out to the bus stop on King Street without looking back. What with scraping the front counter and refinishing the dining room floor, not to mention the weirder stuff, it had been some long week and he wasn’t up to another argument about the types of vermin infesting the guesthouse. Now that he thought about it, he was really looking forward to a nice, normal evening, finding out how many mainlanders it took to screw in a light-bulb, and watching George drink until he puked.
Claire sat back on her heels and glared at the trap. After replacing the marshmallow pieces, she’d moved the cage back over the hole and was now trying, unsuccessfully, to convince herself that an imp, or imps, had taken the bait without being caught. Unfortunately, the evidence suggested one of two possibilities and she didn’t care much for either. The first implied that the power she’d wrapped about the trap wasn’t strong enough to hold even a minor piece of evil, and the second involved her being wrong from the start.
“And I just don’t think I can handle multicolored mice,” she muttered, getting to her feet. Had Austin been privy to her thoughts he’d have reminded her that what she really couldn’t handle was being wrong but, since he wasn’t, the emphasis remained on the mice.
“Still, they’ve been breeding around a major accident site for generations,” she allowed as she locked the lobby door—Sasha and Dean both had keys and if by some strange stroke of misfortune any guests happened to wander by, she’d hear the knocker. “I suppose they should consider themselves lucky if color is the only variation. I mean,” she added to no one in particular, entering her own suite, “look at the platypus.”
Picking her way through the sitting room in the dark, she tripped only twice, and was feeling pretty pleased with herself when she flicked on the bathroom light.
“Sweet heaven.”
At first she thought the letters on the mirror had been written in blood, but then she noticed the crushed remains of her favorite lipstick in the sink. Claw marks on the metal case and a perfect, three-fingered, Jaded Rose handprint pressed onto the porcelain identified the graffiti artist beyond a shadow of a doubt. Imps.
Or at least, imp.
This was exactly the sort of petty, destructive mischief they excelled at.
“Mice. Ha!” Claire exchanged a triumphant look with her reflection. “This will prove my point once and for all. I’ll just go and get…”
Then the actual words sank in.
Someone, it said, in barely legible cursive script, needs to get laid.
“You’ll go and get who?” her reflection asked, eyes faintly glowing.
“Shut up.” Jacques would never give her a moment’s peace. Dean would be so horribly embarrassed she’d feel like a slut. And Austin—Claire was only glad that Austin hadn’t been around to hear Jacques declare she had needs. Obviously, she couldn’t show the message to any of them. And there wasn’t anyone else. “Nuts! Nuts! Nuts!” At her last declamation, she slapped both hands down on the counter.
A pair of dusty guest soaps turned into a pair of equally dusty pecans.
“Temper, temper,” warned her reflection, shaking an amused finger behind the lines of lipstick.
“You think this is temper?” Claire muttered, reaching past the seepage and pulling power. One hand shading her eyes from the flash of light, she ran a clean cantrip over the mirror. “Wait until 1 catch that imp.” Her lip curled. “Then you’ll see temper.”
Later that night, Dean let himself into his apartment through the door in the area. The evening had been no different than any other Saturday evening but still, something had been missing. It no longer seemed to be enough that these people were his best friends, his link to home in the midst of those who’d never heard of Joey’s Juice and couldn’t seem to figure out how to wipe their feet.
Undressing in the dark, he lowered himself carefully onto the bed, locked his hands behind his head, and stared at nothing, wondering why the world outside the guest house suddenly seemed smaller than the world within. Wondering why a hole to Hell and an evil Keeper seemed less important than the Keeper sleeping overhead. Wondering why the world had started to spin….
Because you drank a whole lot of beer, his bladder reminded him.
When his bladder turned out to be the only organ offering solutions, Dean surrendered to sleep.
A rustling, a scrabbling of claws on wood, lifted her gaze to the ceiling. “Mice,” she murmured.
“That’s what I keep telling them,” Austin agreed from the shadows.
The temperature dropped overnight, October arriving with the promise of winter. By morning, the air in Claire’s bedroom had chilled to an uncomfortable sixty-two degrees. She put it off for as long as she could, monitoring the seepage levels from under the covers, but she finally ran out of excuses to stay in bed. When her bare feet hit the floor, she sucked her breath in through her teeth. Nothing rose through the brass register except perhaps a sense of anticipation.
“If you think I’m heading in there to open a vent, think again,” she muttered. It would be simple enough to temporarily ward off the chill by adjusting her own temperature. Simpler still, since it wasn’t likely to warm up any time soon, to put on a second sweater.
Rummaging through the pile of clothes on the floor, she realized she hadn’t done laundry since she’d arrived. Fully aware that, in time, she wouldn’t think twice about wearing an orange sweater over a purple turtleneck with navy sweats—as they aged, surviving Keepers grew less and less concerned with how the rest of the world perceived them—Claire tried not to think about how she looked as she shoved dirty clothes into a pillowcase.
“Running away to the circus?” Austin asked testily, emerging from under a carelessly thrown fold of blanket.
“Doing laundry,” she told him, jumping off the chair with three socks and a bra she’d found on top of the wardrobe.
He stretched out a foreleg and critically examined a spotless, white paw. “Well, you know, I hadn’t wanted to say anything…”
“Then don’t.”
Hearing Claire descend to the basement, Dean gratefully left off his attempt to fit old lengths of baseboard into the new dimensions of the dining room and followed. To his surprise, he found her stuffing clothes into the washing machine. Taking in the layered sweaters, he realized she had no intention of turning up the heat. He couldn’t say that he blamed her. “Did you, uh, need help with that, then?” he asked when she turned and flashed him an inquiring glance.
“I can manage, thank you.”
About to mention that she should sort her colors, Dean forced himself to hold his tongue. Maybe Keepers never ended up with gray underwear.
She looked different. For the first time since she’d arrived, he was seeing her without makeup. Without the artfully defined shadows, she seemed younger, softer, less ready to take on the world. A sudden image of her riding into battle in the traditional, Saturday-afternoon-Western warpaint made him smile.
“What?” she demanded.
“Nothing.”
“If it’s the clothes, I don’t usually dress like this.”
“I hadn’t noticed.” Except he had. “You mean the sweaters.” He pulled at the waistband of his Hyperion Oil Fields sweatshirt “I could go out and buy some electric heaters.”
Claire’s eyes narrowed. Obviously Augustus Smythe had never used electric heaters, or there’d be some already in the building. “No. Thank you.” She closed the lid of the washing machine, started the cycle, and turned to face the furnace room door. “I’ll go in and adjust the vents.”
“I wasn’t criticizing.”
“I never said you were.”
“I understand why you don’t want to go in.”
Her chin lifted. “Who says I don’t want to go in?”
“The sweaters…”
“I was referring to the color combination.”
“The colors?”
“That’s right. But since you’re cold…”
“I never said I was cold.”
“Then why offer to buy heaters?”
“I thought you were cold.”
“I never said I was cold.”
“No, but the sweaters…”
“Oh, I see. Well, if I can’t put on a sweater without people thinking I can’t do my job, maybe we’d just better get a little heat in here. And no, I don’t need you to go with me,” she added, crossing to the turquoise steel door. The chains were heavier than they looked and made ominous rattling sounds as she dragged them free, indignation lending strength. About to drop them to one side, a large hand reached over her shoulder and effortlessly lifted them from her grip.
“I’ll hang these here, on the hooks, where they go.”
“Fine.” Claire pressed her right palm against the steel, a little surprised at how warm it was until she realized that her exposed skin had chilled to the point where an Eskimo Pie would’ve seemed toasty. In fact, she could feel the heat radiating off of Dean and he was standing…
She turned to face him, and her eyes widened.
…rather temptingly close. Her breathing quickened as her hindbrain made a detailed suggestion. “Hey! Get out of my head!”
WHAT MAKES YOU THINK YOU DIDN’T COME UP WITH THAT ON YOUR OWN?
“Most people’s joints don’t bend that way.”
THEY DON’T?
“Get out!”
“Instead of lurking around down here, go up to the dining room and let me know when there’s heat coming through the register.”
Dean hesitated. “You’ll be all right, then?”
“Augustus Smythe adjusted these vents for fifty years and he was…”
The realization of what Augustus Smythe was, or at least of what he’d become, filled the narrow space between them.
“…a Cousin,” Claire finished. “I am a Keeper.” She turned back toward the door and took a deep breath. Then another.
“They say that as long as it’s sealed, it’s perfectly safe.”
Tapping her nails against the heavy latch handle, she snorted. “Who says?”
“You did.”
Hard to argue with such an unquestionable source. “Just yell down the register,” she said, shoving open the furnace room door. “I’ll hear you.” She paused, one foot over the threshold. All things considered, it might be best to tie up loose ends before she went any farther. “Dean?”
“Yeah, Boss?”
“Thanks.”
Anyone else would’ve asked her what for, and then she’d have had to face Hell with a caustic comment still warming her lips. Anyone else.
He smiled. “You’re welcome.”
By mid-morning the hotel had warmed about ten degrees, Dean had discovered how the pieces of baseboard fit together, Austin had eaten breakfast, made his morning visit to Baby, and gone back to bed, and Claire had been forced to spend half an hour leaning over the dryer.
“I don’t understand,” Dean had said earnestly, checking out the machine after the third time it had shut off. “It’s never done this before.” After a moment’s rummaging behind the switch with a variety of screwdrivers, he’d replaced the cover and added, “There’s nothing wrong. Try again.”
The dryer had worked perfectly while they were there, but the moment Claire had stepped off the basement stairs and out into the first floor hall, it had stopped. “Never mind,” she’d grumbled as Dean moved back toward the stairs, “it’s my laundry and you’ve got things to do. I’ll just grab a cup of coffee and go watch it run.”
“And that’ll keep it going?”
“It should.”
And it had.
The imp had, no doubt, been switching off the dryer and, with her standing guard, had now gone off to
find other ways to irritate, leaving behind no proof she could use. Weighing the alternatives while her clothes dried, Claire figured that the imp must’ve come through before Augustus Smythe. Or very soon after he arrived, before he began using up the seepage as it emerged.
She wished she knew how long it had taken, how many accidental uses, before it became habit. It would have been so much easier for him to use the seepage—power just lying around for the taking—than to reach into the narrow area of the possibilities that the Cousins could access.
How many excuses had it taken before he didn’t bother making excuses anymore? Before he used what he wanted. And every time he used it, it corrupted him a little more.
Which explained why Dean, who’d lived next to Hell for eight months, hadn’t been affected. He couldn’t use the power. At least Claire hoped he hadn’t been affected. “I shudder to think of what he must’ve been like if he’s this nice after Hell’s been working on him.”
She’d cleared the seepage twice, and she’d only been there a week. They were admittedly low levels of seepage, nothing like the buzz she’d felt on her first night, but she’d still have to start being a lot more careful.
When her laundry was finally dry, she’d lost three socks and gained a child’s T-shirt. Claire would’ve liked to have placed the blame on Hell, but this particular irritant was the result of human error. Given the metaphysical design flaw inherent in clothes dryers, those in the know were fond of pointing out how the loss of an occasional sock was nothing to complain about considering the odds against everything else coming back.
“Jacques, get away from the window!” Running her blade along a piece of molding, Claire scraped off a long curl of medium green paint. The counter had probably never been that actual color—when scraping paint there always had to be a medium green layer. “Anyone walking by and looking up can see right through you.”
“Perhaps they would not see me at all. The vampire-hunter, he did not see me.”
“He didn’t believe in ghosts.”
