Summon the Keeper

by Tanya Huff

  “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. One be and an ess.”

  “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.

  “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…”

  “Then she’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.”

  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 a really bad idea to steal our towels.”

  STOPPING THE SEEPAGE WON’T WEAKEN THE SHIELD, Hell told itself sulkily.

  I’M NOT STOPPING THE SEEPAGE. I’M GATHERING IT.

  TWELVE

  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 actually liked 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 you want 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?”

  “I really 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.

&n
bsp; As the door to her sitting room closed behind her, Austin stretched out on the counter. “What would she do without me?”

  “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.”

  “Is that 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 time sure 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.”

  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 counter-top. “You’re not fooling anyone, you know.”

  “Get stuffed.”

  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 is not.”

  “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 an entendre.

  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. Get a grip, Claire. Irritating old women have 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.

  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 not her 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 to stop fading when the near panic in his declaration broke through. “You’re not doing it on purpose?”

  “Non.”

  “Medium.”

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

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

  “To save Jacques!”

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

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

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