Summon the Keeper

by Tanya Huff

  “I do not see why that should matter.”

  “Neither do I, but it does.”

  “If you gave me flesh, it would not happen,” he pointed out reasonably.

  “Just move,” she told him without looking up.

  Jacques glanced down toward the sidewalk, opened his mouth to say something, and shook his head. Floating closer, he sat down on the floor with his back against the outside wall. “So, if someone who believed walked by…?”

  “They’d see the sunlight streaming right through you.”

  “And that would be a problem because?”

  “People who see ghosts seldom keep the information to themselves.” Carefully working stripper-soaked steel wool carefully along the grain of the wood, she wrinkled her nose at the smell. “And I don’t feel like dealing with tabloid reporters.”

  “I know reporters, but what are tabloids?”

  “Sleazy newspapers that deal in cheap sensationalism. Hundred-year-old woman has lizard baby, that sort of thing.”

  “Is that not what Keepers deal in?”

  “No.”

  “Hole to Hell in basement?”

  “It’s not the same.”

  “Woman sleeps for fifty years?”

  Shifting her weight back onto her heels, she turned and glared at him. “You know what your problem is? You never know when to quit!”

  He cocked an eyebrow and spread his hands. “Evidentment. If I knew when to quit, I would not be haunting this place, and if I were not haunting this place, I would not have met you. Voila, all is for the best.” Wrapping a weightless grip around Claire’s fingers, he leaned forward and murmured, “Have I ever told you how sexy I find big, pink rubber gloves?”

  She laughed in spite of herself, pulling her hand back through his. “You’re unbelievable.” The laughter vanished when he started to fade. “Jacques?”

  “If you do not believe,” he told her mournfully, “you cannot see me.”

  “Stop it!”

  Rematerializing, he grinned triumphantly. “You do not want to lose me.”

  Lips pressed tightly together, Claire bent back over the bit of unstripped molding on the counter. Her search for the Historian had ended up at a medieval bazaar selling Japanese electronics, and her hour with Sara had brought her no closer to an answer. She’d have to study both ends of the balance if she wanted to figure it out and that meant spending time next to the pit. Since she’d been in the furnace room once already today and since stripping the counter had been her idea…

  She’d like to see it finished before she left. She’d like to see the dining room finished, too—wallpaper, trim, blinds, maybe new light fixtures.

  This is nuts. The steel wool stopped moving. When she closed this site, need would summon her to another. It might be in Kingston—there were, after all sixty thousand people in the city and townships and population density was directly proportional to how often a Keeper was needed—but it might be across the continent. Or on another continent entirely. I am not getting attached to this place.

  “Claire? I do not want to lose you either. Please, I am sorry. Come back to me.”

  “I haven’t gone anywhere.” The silence clearly stated he didn’t believe her. She shifted from knee to knee and finally sighed, “Could I give you flesh to help me finish this?”

  “Non.” Although she didn’t turn to look she could hear the relieved smile in his voice. “I can take flesh only to give you pleasure.”

  “It’d give me pleasure to have some help with this.”

  “It does not work that way.”

  She sighed again, resting her forehead on the edge of a shelf. “Why,” she asked dramatically, “am I not surprised?”

  Sasha Moore checked out that evening, paying for her room in cash. “Will I see you in the spring?” she asked, effortlessly swinging her heavy duffel bag up onto one shoulder.

  Claire stared at her, aghast. “The spring?”

  “Comes after winter. The snow melts. The dog crap lies exposed on the lawn.”

  “I won’t be here in the spring.”

  “I hope you’re not expecting old Gus to come back. He’s blown this popsicle stand for good.” The vampire paused at the door. “Oh, yeah; Dean’s memory of me’s going to get a bit foggy. I don’t like to leave too many specifics behind.” Ebony brows rose and fell suggestively. When it became obvious that Claire was not going to respond to this mild provocation, she snapped pale fingers. “Hey, Keeper!”

  Wandering thoughts jerked back to the lobby. “What?”

  “Domo arigato on that lifesaving thing. I know, I know, you’d do it for anyone, but this time you did it for me. In return, can I offer you these words of wisdom, culled from a long and eventful existence? You needn’t bother answering ’cause I’m going to anyway.

  “First of all, at the risk of sounding like Kenny Rogers, God forbid, you should make the best of the hand you’ve been dealt Second, a genuine, unselfish offer of help is the most precious gift you’ll ever be given. And third, remember that you never have to travel alone…” Teeth flashed. “…hitchhikers make a handy protein supplement when on the road. Thanks for coming, you’ve been a wonderful audience, maybe we can do this again sometime—less the asshole trying to kill me, of course.”

  Claire stared at the closed door for a moment, then jerked around to the window as the red van roared down the driveway, honked twice, and disappeared into the night.

  “Is Ms. Moore gone?”

  Dean’s voice seemed to come from very far away. She nodded, without turning.

  “Did she say if she’d be back in the spring?”

  It was only just October, not even winter yet, spring was impossibly far away. “I won’t be here in the spring. I’ll have finished up and moved on.”

  “Okay.” That wasn’t what he’d asked, but since it was clearly on Claire’s mind…“That, uh, book you’ve got soaking? It’s starting to stink up the fridge.”

  “It needs to soak a little longer.”

  “But…”

  “I need that information, Dean, and I’m not going to risk losing it because you don’t like the way it smells.”

  “Is Claire coming out for breakfast?”

  “In a minute,” Austin told him, staring alternately at his empty dish and Dean. “She has to have another shower first. The Historian appears to have led her through an area populated by ruminants.”

  “Say what?”

  “She crawled through some cow shit. Are you going to feed me, or what?”

  Weighing the bag of geriatric kibble in one hand, Dean scratched the back of his neck with the other. “There should be a lot more in this.”

  “Not necessarily. I told the mice they could help themselves. With any luck we’ll run out on the weekend when the vet’s closed, and you’ll have to feed me something decent.”

  The next morning, Dean handed Claire a cup of coffee and watched in concern as she slumped against the sink and stuffed a whole piece of toast into her mouth. “Manage to avoid the cow shit this morning?” he asked hesitantly.

  Claire snorted, blowing crumbs onto the spotless stainless steel. “This morning,” she said, and paused to swallow, “I crawled through the cow. Same end result though,” she added after a moment.

  “You know, lady, I got a cousin who does renovations. Not too expensive,” the locksmith assured her as he screwed down the new plate. He nodded toward the charred, smoke-damaged interior of room six. “Why leave a room in that condition when you can fix it up and use it that’s what I say. You gotta spend money to make money, you know?”

  “We’re not that busy. Which,” she added dryly, “is a good thing. I called you four days ago.”

  “Hey, I couldn’t have got here faster if you’d been Old Nick himself.”

  WANNA BET?

  The locksmith pulled bushy brows down toward his nose. “Did you say something?”

  “No.”

  “Thought I heard…Never mind. You know, you
don’t have to stay with me. I can just come down when I finish up.”

  “Like I said,” Claire told him, keeping the glamour centered over the actual contents of the room, “we’re not that busy.”

  “Oh, I get it. Lonely, eh? I know how you feel; some days when I don’t leave the shop, I’m ready to climb the walls by four, four-thirty. No one to talk to, you know? What was that?” He leaned around the door, staring at the floor by the curtained window, then settled back on his heels, shaking his head. “It sorta looked like a bright blue mouse.”

  “Trick of the shadows,” Claire said tightly. It figured that the locksmith would see the imp when neither Dean nor Austin ever had.

  A few moments later, his weight on the newly installed doorknob, the locksmith heaved himself to his feet and flicked the open flange with his free hand. “Quite the secondary locking system. I guess you can’t be too careful about this kind of thing, eh? I mean, one tourist wanders in here, hurts himself on a bit of loose board and the next thing you know, you’re being sued.”

  Peering through the glamour, Claire checked that Aunt Sara remained undisturbed by all the banging. “If a tourist wandered in here, being sued would be the least of my concerns. But you needn’t worry, this is only a temporary measure.”

  “So you are going to fix it?”

  “Sooner or later.”

  “Hopefully sooner, eh?” He pulled the door closed and nodded with satisfaction as the lock clicked into place. “When the time comes, and you need some help, don’t forget my cousin.”

  Claire had a vision of the locksmith and his cousin facing down the hordes of Hell. It was strangely comforting.

  The ink soaked out of the site journal had turned the onions blue. The brine had been absorbed and the whole thing smelled like pickled sewage. With a cheese sauce.

  When Claire opened the plastic container, Austin left the building.

  Breathing shallowly through her mouth, she used a fork to tease apart the pages. The process had been partially successful. The few pages of Augustus Smythe’s notes now legible made it clear he knew an incredible number of dirty limericks but offered no other useful information.

  The first four pages after his summoning remained stuck together in a glutinous blue mass.

  “One more week should do it,” Claire sniffed at Dean, peeling another three onions and dropping them into fresh brine.

  “Great,” Dean gasped. He snuck a look at the card.

  Aunt Claire, Keeper

  Your Accident is my Opportunity

  (face it, life stinks)

  Later, he threw out the fork.

  “This is the sixth morning in a row she’s come out of that wardrobe looking wiped. Two days ago, she fell asleep in that old armchair up in room six, and yesterday she didn’t have enough energy to take the chains off the furnace room door.”

  Austin lifted his head off his paws and gazed across the dining room at Claire, who’d fallen asleep with her cheek on an egg salad sandwich. “Did you take them off for her?”

  “No. I figured if she was too tired to open the door, she was too tired to face Hell.”

  “I’ve said all along you’re more than just a pretty face. What did Claire say?”

  Dean grinned. “That I was an interfering, idiotic bystander.”

  “That’s all?” The cat snorted. “She must’ve been tired.”

  “What’s happening in that wardrobe, Austin?”

  “From the steely-eyed determination on her face when she goes in, I’d say she’s trying too hard. The other side has kind of zen thing going, you can’t force it.”

  “So she’s doing it to herself, then?”

  “Well, I don’t think she’d have chosen to fight her way through those pre-Christmas sales this morning but, yeah, essentially.”

  “If there’s anything I can do, will you let me know?”

  “Sure.”

  As Austin laid his head back down, Dean’s concern evolved into full-blown worry. Any other morning, that question would’ve brought a suggestion that he feed the cat.

  “What have you done, that Claire suddenly try so hard to find this Historian?”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Dean told him, getting a can of oven cleaner out from under the sink. “I’m not the one exposing myself to Mrs. Abrams.”

  “I do not expose myself. She has no business to be in the parking lot to peer through the windows while you attach the blinds. I vanish the moment I see her.”

  “But did she see you?”

  “She did not scream and run. She waves to you, puts two thumbs up in the air, and leaves quietly.” Jacques pressed his back up against the wall between the two windows, the one place in the dining room where he couldn’t be seen from outside when the new vertical blinds were open. “It is not my fault she is always looking in.”

  Dean might have believed him had he not sounded so defensive. “You’re careless. You don’t care how much trouble you cause.”

  “I am causing trouble?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “So, you say it is my fault that Claire tries so much harder to leave us?”

  Shrugging, Dean dropped to his knees in front of the stove. “If the shroud fits.”

  “And what does that mean, if the shroud fits?”

  “It means you’re always all over her. Give me flesh, give me flesh.” His accent was a passable imitation of the ghost’s. “You’re too pushy.”

  Jacques disappeared and reappeared sitting on the floor behind the peninsula. “I am too pushy? You are too…too…too nice!”

  “Too nice?”

  “Oui. You are like mushy white bread and mayonnaise. And…” He folded his arms triumphantly. “…you are always cleaning things. If I could, I would leave also.”

  “Then leave. Claire said she could send you on.”

  “And leave her with you? She would be too bored in a week.”

  “Lecher.”

  “Monk.”

  “Bottom feeder.”

  “Betty Crocker.”

  “Stereotype!”

  Before Jacques, reeling under a direct hit, could come up with a response, the ka-thud, ka-thud of a galloping animal filled the house, growing overwhelmingly louder the closer it came. The glasses in the cupboard began to chime as the vibrations brought their edges together. “Something is out of the pit,” he moaned as Austin threw himself around the corner and into the kitchen.

  The noise stopped.

  He glared down at the cat “That was you? But you weigh only what, two kilos?”

  “Can we discuss my weight another time,” Austin snapped. “Claire’s in trouble!”

  TROUBLE IS GOOD.

  BUT WE DIDNT CAUSE IT.

  SO?

  Hell sounded sulky. IT’S THE PRINCIPLE OF THE THING.

  WE DON’T HAVE PRINCIPLES!

  OH, YEAH.

  EIGHT

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

  “Thang you, thang you vera much.”

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

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

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

  “You don’t have an anchor in here?”

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

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

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

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

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

  “Where do you think?”

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

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

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

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

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

  “Oui? I hear nothing.”

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

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

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

  The two men exchanged an identical glance.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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