by Tanya Huff
When Austin made no protest, Dean sucked a speculative lungful of air through his teeth and pulled as far off the road as he could. It was one thing to have Claire explain exactly what demon residue meant and another thing entirely when the cat faced a walk over snow in subzero weather without complaint. Things were clearly some serious.
He shut off the engine and reached for his hat. “Is it Hell again?”
“I’d like to think we’d have noticed that,” Claire told him, chewing nervously on the thumb of her mitten.
“Well, I’d like to notice about a half a dozen garlic shrimp,” Austin pointed out acerbically, “but that doesn’t mean I’ll get them, and let’s face facts, there was a hole to Hell in Kingston for over forty years you Keepers never knew about.”
“You didn’t know about it either.”
“Hey, I’m the cat. I do comfort when needed and color commentary. I don’t deal with metaphysical rifts in the fabric of the universe, and I don’t fetch. Live with it.” His single eye narrowed. “Now let’s get on with it before it gets any colder out here.”
The snowbank blocking the driveway was about four-and-a-half-feet high but packed hard and easy to climb over. The snow in the parking lot was almost as deep and a lot softer.
“I’d better go first to break a trail,” Dean offered. “You can follow me, Austin can follow you. Which way?”
Claire pointed. A line of footprints, strangely unfilled by blowing snow stretched back behind the building. “Angels walk lightly on the world, they don’t leave footprints. Demons do. Demons want people to know they’ve passed by because you can’t tempt people who aren’t paying attention.”
A side door, leading into a small office, was open. Streaks of demon residue crossed the crumpled lock.
“It was in here,” Claire said softly, turning in place.
“No shit, Sherlock.” Austin kicked snow off first one back foot and then the other. “Its prints lead right to the door.”
The Keeper ignored him. “It took something from that hook, from the back of the chair, and from under the desk. Something that’s been here for a while given how thick the dust is.” Reaching into the possibilities, she filled the empty spaces with spatial memory. The translucent image of a pair of overalls hung from the hooks, a jacket draped over the back of the chair, and a pair of grimy running shoes lay half on top of each other under the desk. “Clothes?”
“Demons don’t wear clothes?” Dean asked, unable to resist poking a finger through the overalls as they disappeared.
“Yes, but I’ve never heard of a demon buying off the rack, let alone…” She waved a hand around the room and shuddered. “Granted they tend to be a little too fond of shoulder pads, but this is just not them.”
“The footprints keep going back into the woods.”
“Then that must be where the hole is, and if you say, ‘No shit, Sherlock’ to me one more time,” she warned the cat before he could speak, “you’ll be sorry.”
Austin stared up at her, whiskers bristling with affronted innocence. “I was merely going to ask if that was where Summons came from, but if you’re going to get snappy…”
“I’m sorry.” Pulling off a mitten, she rubbed at the crease between her eyes. “The thought of a demon wandering around unremarked by the good guys has me a little tense. I’d better lead from now on,” she added, walking back to the door. “If there’s danger out in those woods, better a Keeper face it than a Bystander.”
Although Dean didn’t like it, he couldn’t disagree and stepped out of her way.
“You were going to say ‘No shit, Sherlock,’ weren’t you?” he asked Austin quietly when Claire had moved a few paces ahead.
The cat snorted. “Well, duh.”
Claire picked her way carefully to the center of the small clearing, avoiding the worst patches of filthy snow. Squatting, she dragged her right mitt off with her teeth and extended her hand, fingers spread.
“What’s all over the snow?” Dean murmured to the cat he held cradled against his chest.
Austin squirmed around to get a better look. “Darkness. When it took form, it flaked.”
They watched Claire sift the air for a moment, then stand, frowning.
“This hole is tiny and old. It should have closed on its own and as far as passing a demon—it would have been like passing a kidney stone.” She shook her head. “I could be days defining it well enough to close it.”
“Gee, days spent out in the bush.” Austin sighed and laid his head in the crook of Dean’s elbow. “Words can’t express my elation.”
“You needn’t get too elated,” Claire told him, yanking her mitt back on. “And you needn’t get too comfortable either, I’m going to need you.”
“For what?”
“You get to play bad cop. Dean, maybe you should go back to the truck.”
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, wreathing his head in vapor. She was using the voice Diana referred to as more-Keeper-than-thou and, in his experience, that was never good. “Why should I go back to the truck?”
“We need answers, and we need them quickly. I’m going to gather up the darkness around the hole, and Austin’s going to question it.”
“The darkness?”
“It is substance; it should be coherent. But this is one of those ‘the ends justify the means’ situations and that’s always tricky for the good guys.” Reaching up, she broke a dead branch off an oak tree. “We’ll pull more darkness from the hole. I can contain it in a circle, but it’s going to want out, and you’ll be the only thing it can use to break free.”
“You’ll be inside the circle?”
“I’m a Keeper. I can deal.”
“And Austin?”
“It isn’t actually possible to make a cat do something a cat doesn’t want to do.”
“But we try to keep that quiet,” Austin added as he moved from Dean’s arms to Claire’s. “We learned a long time ago if people can hang onto the absurd hope that someday they’ll train us to stop scratching the furniture, they’ll keep handing over the salmon treats.”
Dean squared his shoulder. “I’m not leaving you if you’re going to be in danger.”
“I’ll be in more danger if you stay. And, you’ll be in danger. If you leave…”
“I won’t be able to help if you need me.”
“You’re fighting testosterone,” Austin murmured into her ear. “Millions of years of evolution that says he has to protect his mate. You can’t win.”
“His mate?”
“Mate, girlfriend, old lady—all valid evolutionary terms.”
“What?”
The cat sighed, his breath painfully loud up under the edge of her toque. “You know, if you watched more National Geographic specials and fewer after school specials…”
“You watch National Geographic to see lions mating!”
“So?”
Without the time to count to ten, Claire counted to three, looked into Dean’s eyes, and reluctantly decided Austin was right. She couldn’t win. If she convinced Dean to leave her, it would diminish him in his own eyes and, all things considered, further diminishing would not be a good thing.
“Okay. You can stay.” His smile made the potential for disaster almost worthwhile. Deep down, she realized how completely asinine that thought was, but she couldn’t seem to prevent a warm glow from rising. “Whatever happens,” she murmured a moment later, leaning away from his mouth, “don’t break the circle.”
To Dean’s surprise, the darkness gathered into a familiar form. Its legs were froglike and ended in three toes. Its arms, nearly as long as its legs, ended in three fingers and a thumb. Its eyes were small and black, and it appeared to have no teeth. Its fur and/or scales changed color constantly.
Imp.
The last time Dean had seen an imp, he’d been scraping the lumpy mass of its pulverized body out from under a sheet of wallpaper. The last time he’d seen an imp alive, it had been dangling from Austin
’s mouth.
The tiny piece of physical darkness sat up, looked around, squeaked something that sounded very much like “Oh, fuck,” and disappeared under Austin’s front paws.
Claire squatted beside the cat. “Tell us everything that went on here, and I’ll pop you back through the hole before I close it.”
Faint defiant squeaking.
“Wrong answer.”
Austin’s tail lashed and the squeaking grew louder.
“You’re lying,” Claire sighed.
Indignant squeaking.
“I know, it’s hard for you to tell the truth. But it’s hard for Austin to keep his claws sheathed, too. You don’t honestly think they’d lie to protect you?”
Reluctant acknowledgement. From the intensity of the high-pitched torrent that followed, the imp was clearly spilling more than name, rank, and serial number.
Shifting from foot to foot, Dean tried not to think about how cold he was getting. Maybe he should have gone back to the truck. Maybe he should go now. He’d just go in and tell Claire he’d decided to leave.
Go in?
The toe of his right boot rested less than an inch from the circle Claire’d sketched in the snow with the oak branch. Backing quickly away, he tried and failed to remember moving forward. “…it’s going to want out, and you’ll be the only thing it can use to break free.” But if the darkness could reach outside the circle, did that mean the levels inside with Claire had become dangerously high? Claire was in danger. If he loved her, he had to save her!
If he loved her?
No if. In a world that had become a stranger place than he ever could have imagined, loving Claire was the one thing he was sure of. As he realized that, he realized he was standing back at the edge of the circle. He had to do something to distract himself.
“Wow, this is really…tidy.” Claire shifted her grip on the cat and turned slowly to look around the clearing. “Really.”
Dean finished squaring up a pile of fresh cedar prunings and straightened. “Are you okay?”
“We’re fine.” Erasing an arc of the circle with the edge of her boot, she stepped clear. “I got enough information to close the hole. I know why it never closed on its own, and I know how the demon came through. But you’re not going to like it.”
He didn’t.
“So you’re saying that by making the angel we made the demon possible?” When Claire reluctantly nodded, he felt the blood drain out of his face. It was a distinctly unpleasant feeling.
Austin studied him for a moment, then looked up at Claire. “I hope you weren’t planning on sex any time soon.”
In spite of the cold and the approaching dusk, there were still hundreds of people surging back and forth between the lights at Bloor and Yonge. Most of them, heavily laden with consumer crap they didn’t need, were tired, cranky, and desperately in search of one last bargain. Byleth had never seen anything so wonderful.
One hand clutching the dashboard as though she needed to anchor herself to the car, Eva shook her head. “I don’t like just leaving you here.”
“I’ll be fine.” She’d have been out of the car at the stoplight except the damned seat belt had jammed. And it would be damned, she see to it personally. “Pull over anywhere.”
“We’re willing to take you where you’re going,” Harry told her as he maneuvered the car into a parking place on the south side of Bloor Street, just past Yonge. “Eva’s right. I don’t like just leaving you.”
“I’ll. Be. Fine.” The stupid bulky coat was in the way. That was the problem. She squirmed around and yanked at the…there! A jerk on the handle had the door open. Byleth flung herself toward the world just in time to hear Eva say:
“I’d feel better if you took this money. It’s not much but…”
Half out of the car, she reached back and grabbed the envelope without slowing her forward momentum.
“I wrote down our phone number. Call us if you need help!” Eva called after her.
That would be a cold day in Hell, Byleth decided shoving the envelope in her jeans—Twelfth Circle excepted, of course.
“That’s certainly a generous offer, sweetheart, but I’m afraid you’re making it to the wrong guy.” He winked and patted her shoulder as he moved away. “Sorry.”
Byleth made a mental note not to offer that particular temptation to men wearing eyeliner. Beginning to get cold, she moved into the nearest store and sidled through narrow aisles to a young man examining a portable CD player. “You should steal that, Steven,” she murmured.
“Lifted one this morning,” he told her absently, responding unconsciously to the dark aura. “Besides, right at this mo, I got so many disks down my pants I can hardly walk.”
“That explains why your pants look like they’re about to slide right off your skinny ass,” she muttered.
“What’s your damage?” Projecting tough guy, he shot her a look from under pale brows and folded his arms. “Santa not bring you any prezzies?”
Santa had never brought her any presents—her part of reality never having exactly welcomed the spirit of giving. And frankly, that sucked. In her whole entire life, Santa had never given her anything! Okay, her whole entire life was just under forty-eight hours long and the Porters had given her plenty, but that was so not the point.
The tough guy look vanished. “Oh, man, I’m sorry. I never…I mean…it’s just…” Rifling his pockets, he pulled out a Santa Pez dispenser and held it out. “Here.”
“What is it?”
Steven folded the head back, forcing out a tiny pink tile. “It’s candy,” he said when she hesitated.
Break Santa’s neck, get a hit of sugar. Byleth crunched reflectively. I can deal.
“Take it.”
“What’s the catch?” Taking the Pez, she shifted her weight to one hip and looked him in the eye. “Did you want to have sex with me or something?”
His face flushed crimson, his ears scarlet. It wasn’t a particularly attractive combination. Muttering something inarticulate, he scuttled away as fast as the CDs down his pants and the crowded store allowed.
Byleth was confused. A total stranger had just give her a gift and refused something he wanted in return. Crunching candy, she went looking for store security. Ratting Steven out would realign her world.
“Hey, there’s a…”
“I’m dealing with a customer.” The harassed looking young women pushed past without really seeing her. “You’ll have to talk to someone else.”
“…particular model has a greater range, you’ll find…”
“That guy over there is shoplifting.”
“…that the battery may need to be recharged more often.”
Byleth pushed between the two men. “Did you hear me?”
“In a moment, Miss. Of course our spare batteries are also on sale, so that could easily solve the problem,” the salesman continued, passing the cell phone over her head.
“What about those chargers that fit into your cigarette lighter?”
“Hey? Hello?”
“We carry them. I’m not sure whether we have any left.”
“Why won’t anyone listen to ME!” They were ignoring her. It was like she didn’t exist—almost like, like she was actually a teenager! “This is MAKING ME ANGRY!”
“Hey! That’s enough of that!” The burly security guard folded her arms over her imitation police blazer and glared down at the demon. “You’re going to have to leave now, Miss.”
Byleth folded her own arms. “Make me.”
It shouldn’t have been possible.
“Fine!” she screamed from the sidewalk. “Like I care!”
Reaching into the dark possibilities and activating the store’s sprinkler system made her feel a little better.
“Summons?” Diana asked as Nalo paused, head cocked, listening to nothing.
After a moment, the older Keeper nodded. “Close, too,” she said, climbing the last few steps and emerging back out onto the corner of Yonge
and Dundas. “Probably no farther than Bloor. Did you want to come with me?”
“Love to, but…” The sudden realization that it was almost dark cut off a fine sarcastic response. “Holy sh…” Nalo’s lifted brow cut off the expletive. “I’ve got to get home!”
And I do have to get home, she reminded herself a few moments later, racing back down the stairs to the bank of pay phones in the subway station. But first she had to find an angel.
A little confused, Patricia held out the phone. “It’s for you.”
Samuel mimicked the motion he’d just seen Patricia make. “Hello? At the Oak Street Co-op at just up from the corner of River and Dundas Streets, town house four.”
“How does it know that?” Pixel wondered.
“It has Higher Knowledge,” Ilea informed the younger cat without opening her eyes. “It knows things.”
“It didn’t know us.”
“So? Even Higher Knowledge has an upper limit.”
Distracted by the cats’ conversation, Samuel had to ask Diana to repeat herself, twice. Finally he nodded and handed back the phone. “My Keeper is going to meet me here.”
“If it’s all right with you,” Ilea prodded.
“What?”
“Ask my soft, smiley can-opener if it’s all right with her, you moron.”
“Of course it’s all right,” Patricia told him when he’d relayed the cat’s message.
“You’re relieved I have a Keeper?”
A polite response was lost in the gold-on-brown eyes. “Oh, yeah.”
Climbing up onto the streetcar, Diana felt her gaze pulled to the north. Something was…was…awareness trembled on the edge of consciousness.…
“Hey! Exact change!”
…and tumbled into the abyss.
Unrighteous anger kept her warm for a few blocks, but with the setting sun, the temperatures had plummeted. By the time she got to Yonge and Dundas, her teeth were chattering so loudly she almost couldn’t hear the security guard kicking her out of the Eaton’s Center. He walked away, scratching at a brand new case of head lice, but that was of little consequence when she was still out in the cold.
