His eyes darkened. “You are wrong, Claire. It changes what I know.”
She couldn’t argue with that, even if she’d wanted to. “Okay. Fine. I should’ve told you. I should’ve told you both. But I didn’t. I’m sorry.” And that, she decided was the last time she was apologizing for it. “You both know now. I’m going to have another shower even though it won’t do any good because the touch I can feel is inside my head, and then I’m going to get some breakfast because I’m starving. All right?” Her chin rose. “Is there anything else you’d like me to tell you?”
The two men, now side by side, exchanged interrogative glances.
“Non,” Jacques said after a moment. “I cannot think of anything.”
“No more secrets,” Dean added.
“God forbid I should have secrets.” Her ears were burning and she didn’t want to think about a probable cause. “My cat can’t keep his mouth shut, and suddenly my life is an open book.”
“Hey!” Austin stuck his head out from under the table. “You let the ghost out of the attic all on your own, and I said you should tell them about the furnace room.”
“You did not.”
He thought about that for a moment. “Well, I never told you not to.”
Claire swept a scathing glance over the three of them, suggested they watch their language, and stomped out of the dining room. It would’ve been a more effective exit had she not been in socks and had her heels hitting the floor not set up a painful reverberation in her head, but she made the most of it.
“There will be secrets,” Jacques observed, as the door to her suite slammed shut. “Women must have secrets.”
“Why?” Dean asked, going into the kitchen.
“Why? Because, espece d’idiot, between a man and a woman, there must be mystery. The worst of Hell is that there is no mystery.”
ROSEBUD IS HIS SLED. When silence was the only response, Hell sighed. GET IT? NO MYSTERY. ROSEBUD IS HIS SLED…. DOESN’T ANYONE CARE ABOUT THE CLASSICS ANYMORE?
Dean turned to face the ghost, feeling slightly sick when he thought of what he’d nearly done. “I can only keep saying I’m sorry.”
“That is right, Anglais,” Jacques agreed. “You can keep saying you are sorry.”
“The way I see it,” Austin said, leaping from chair to counter-top, “you’re even. You unjustly accused each other of wanting to wake her. You, Dean, accidentally almost sent Jacques to Hell, but then you purposefully went in and rescued him.”
“Non. Not even.” Jacques glared over the cat’s head at Dean. “He also accuses me of hiding behind Claire.”
“Yeah, and you called him something pithy and insulting.”
“You speak French?”
“I’m a cat.”
“Look, I overreacted,” Dean admitted. He paused while the hot water pipes banged out the rhythm of Claire’s shower. “It’s just you’ve been pretty obvious about how much you want a body.”
“I would take a body from the cat before I took a body from her.”
“Don’t hold your breath,” Austin recommended.
Pulling the toaster from the appliance garage, Dean shook his head. He couldn’t help feeling he should be more upset about the reality of a hole to Hell in the furnace room except that reality and hole to Hell in the same sentence just didn’t compute. “Why does she bother me more than Hell?”
“I could go into the deep psychological problems men experience when they come face-to-face with powerful women…”
“We do not!” both men exclaimed. Standing with their arms crossed, they regarded each other warily.
The cat snickered. “…but it’s simpler than that. Hell is too nasty for mortal minds to comprehend, so they trivialize it, knock it down to size. It’s a built-in defense mechanism.”
Brow furrowed, Dean stared down at the cat. “So she bothers me more than Hell because I don’t have any natural defenses against her?”
“And because the original Keepers put a dampening field around the furnace room. Without it, business would be worse than it is, as difficult as that may be to imagine, and any sane person would run screaming once they found out what was in the basement.”
“And with it?”
“Unnerving but endurable. Kind of like opera.”
“A dampening field to dull the reactions.” Rubbing at the perpetual stubble along his jaw, Jacques nodded. “That does explain why I take this so well.”
“That,” Austin agreed, assaulting the lid on the butter dish, “and because you’re dead. The dead don’t get worked up about much.”
“Except getting their rocks off,” Dean muttered.
“You desire I should tell Claire why we were really fighting?” the ghost demanded.
“If you know, why didn’t you tell her upstairs?”
“Two reasons. If you do not know, me, I am not the one to tell you. And two…” He shrugged. “I remember in the neck of time…”
“Nick of time.”
“What?”
“Not neck,” Dean told him. “Nick.”
“D’accord. In the nick of time, I remember that women do not always appreciate being fought over the way those who fight might assume.”
“Oh.” Opening the fridge, Dean stared at the contents, ignored the little voice suggesting that, under the circumstances, it was all right to have a beer before noon, and closed the door again, saying, “That’s pretty smart for a dead guy.”
“I was, as you say, pretty smart for a live guy.”
“You’re bonding,” Austin observed sardonically. “I’m touched. Well, what would you call it?” he asked when both the living and the dead fixed him with an identical expression of horror.
“We’re not bonding,” Dean declared.
“Not even a little bit,” Jacques added. “We are…” He looked to the living for help.
“Not bonding,” Dean repeated.
“Oui.” Settling himself cross-legged an inch above the table, the ghost leaned back on nothing and studied the other man. “Me, I have no choice, but you, now you know, do you stay?”
“Claire asked me that, too.” He folded his arms. “I don’t run away from things.”
“Perhaps it is wiser to know when to run.”
“And leave you alone here?”
Jacques spread his hands, the pictures of
