“Dean?”
He glanced up to see Claire staring at him.
“Penny for your thoughts?”
Instinct caught the coin she tossed, and to his surprise he found himself repeating his musing aloud.
“No, I am not too old to call my mother,” she said when he finished, ignoring the cat’s muttered, “Serves you right for asking.”
“My mother has been in the business a lot longer than I have, and I could use her professional advice since not one thing that happened this morning was what I expected. Not room six, not the furnace room, not you.”
“Not me?”
“If Austin wasn’t so convinced that you’re a part of this whole mess, we’d be sitting down to rearrange your memories right about now.”
Dean squelched his initial response—why ask if she could do it when there was absolutely nothing in that statement to suggest she couldn’t. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to keep my memories the way they are.”
“Good for you.” Austin sat down and stared pointedly at the fridge. “So if we’re not going to adjust the status quo until your mother’s had a look, what are we waiting for? When do we eat?”
Claire sighed. “I think Dean’s waiting for an explanation.”
“I already explained,” Austin protested, twisting out from under Claire’s hand. “He told me he believed in magic. I told him that’s what was going on.”
“That’s not much of an explanation.”
“It’s enough to tide him over until after breakfast.”
They surrendered to the inevitable. While Dean cooked for Claire, she ran up to her room to get a can of cat food.
As she put the saucer of beige puree on the floor, Austin glanced down in disgust and then glared up at her. “I can smell perfectly good sausages,” he complained.
“Which you’re not allowed to have. Remember what the vet said, at your age the geriatric cat food will help keep you alive.”
“One sausage couldn’t hurt,” Dean offered, his expression as he looked into the saucer much the same as the cat’s.
Claire caught his wrist and moved the hand holding the fork holding the sausage back over the plate. “Austin’s seventeen years old,” she told him. “Would you feed one of these to someone who was a hundred and two?”
“I guess not.”
“You won’t live forever; it’ll only seem that way,” Austin muttered around a mouthful of food.
As Dean carried the loaded plate over to one of the small tables in the dining room, Claire attempted to organize her thoughts. Of the morning’s three surprises, four if she counted Augustus Smythe disappearing and leaving her the hotel, Dean was actually the one she felt least qualified to deal with. When it came right down to it, Sara and Hell and Augustus Smythe were variations on a theme—extreme variations, really extreme variations, granted, but nothing entirely unique. On the other hand, in almost ten years of sealing sites, she’d never had to explain herself to a bystander. Manipulate perceptions so she could do her job, yes. Actually—to tell the truth, the whole truth—no.
When Dean set down the plate, she stared aghast at the scrambled eggs, sausage patties, grilled tomatoes, and three pieces of toast. “This is more food than I’d usually eat all day.”
“I guess that’s why you’re so…”
“So what?”
“Nothing.”
“What?”
“Skinny.” Hie ears slowly turning red, Dean set the cutlery neatly on each side of the plate and hurried back into the kitchen. “I’ll, uh, get you another coffee, then.”
While his back was turned, Claire rolled her eyes. She was not skinny; she was petite. And he was so—in rapid succession she considered and discarded intense, earnest, and stalwart. Before she worked her way down to yeomanly, she decided she’d best settle on young and leave it at that. “Aren’t you having any?” she asked as he returned with her mug.
A little surprised, he shook his head. “I ate before you got up.”
“That was hours ago. Bring another plate, you can have half of this.”
“If I bring another plate…” Austin began.
“No.” When Dean hesitated, Claire prodded at his conscience. “Trust me, I’m not going to eat all of it; it’ll just get thrown out.”
A few moments later, a less intimidating breakfast in front of her and Dean eating hungrily on the other side of the table the way only a young man who’d gone three hours without eating could, Claire turned suddenly toward the cat and said, “You’re sure he’s a part of this?”
“I’m positive.”
“You were positive that time in Gdansk, too.”
Austin snorted. “So my Polish was a little rusty, sue me.” He stared pointedly up at her, his tail flicking off the seconds like a furry metronome.
“All right. You win.” Chewing and swallowing a forkful of tomato delayed the inevitable only a few moments more. Feeling the weight of Dean’s gaze join the cat’s, she lifted her head and cleared her throat. “First of all, I want you to realize that what I’m about to tell you is privileged information and is not to be repeated. To anyone. Ever.”
Wrapped in the comforting and lingering odors of sausage and egg, Dean ran through a fast replay of the morning’s events. “Nothing personal, but who’d believe me?”
“You’d be surprised. When I got up today, I didn’t expect I’d be telling it to you.” Eyes narrowed, she leaned forward. “If this information falls into the wrong hands…”
Unable to help himself, Dean mirrored her movement and lowered his voice dramatically. “The fate of the world is at stake?”
“Yes.”
When he realized she meant it, he could’ve sworn he felt each individual hair rise off the back of his neck. It was an unpleasant sensation. He pushed his chair away from the table, all of a sudden not really hungry. “Okay. Maybe you’d better not tell me.”
Claire shot an annoyed look at the cat. “Too late.”
“But you don’t even know me. You don’t know you can trust me.”
The possibility of not trusting him hadn’t crossed her mind. Total strangers probably handed him their packages while they bent to tie their shoelaces. If a game needed a scorekeeper, he’d always be the one
