“As to how, I do not know. As to what, I am inviting you to go for the walk.”
“The walk? Jacques, I don’t think you quite realize where you are.” Had she been able to hold him, she’d have grabbed his hand and yanked him back into the relative safety of the elevator.
“And where am I, cherie! Where is this place that gives me such freedom?”
“I don’t know. And that’s my point!”
“Ah, you are frightened of the unexpected. I understand, cherie, you are a woman, after all.” Lit from behind by the sun, his eyes gleamed.
She folded her arms. “If you’re implying I’m not taking the same stupid chance you are because I’m only a woman, go ahead. I’m not going to fall for it.”
“You wound me, cherie. I said I understood why you are frightened.”
Dean moved out of the elevator too fast for Claire to grab him. “Are you saying I’m a coward?”
“Am I saying that?” Jacques drifted backward, toward the edge of the water. “Non. I would never think of such a thing.”
“You better not be,” Dean muttered. He drew in a deep lungful of air and smiled contentedly. “Man, this place smells just like home.”
The ghost snorted. “If your home smells like this, Anglais, it is no wonder you clean so much.”
The familiar salt air had put Dean in too good a mood to continue the argument. Shaking his head, he wandered down to meet the next wave coming in.
“Excuse me!”
Both men turned and, drawn by Claire’s expression, found themselves returning to the elevator considerably more quickly than they’d left it.
“If you two are quite through exposing yourselves, maybe we could think about getting…now what?”
Dean had disappeared around the doorframe.
“This is some weird.” His voice came from directly behind her. “There’s just this door in the sand. From this side, you can’t see the elevator at all.”
“Don’t step where it should be!” Claire shouted. She didn’t want to think about what could happen should three realities—elevator, beach, and Dean—suddenly find themselves sharing the same space. When Dean reappeared, she backed away from the door, leaving him room to get in. “Come on.”
Jacques stepped between them, his long face wearing the half rakish, half pleading expression she found so difficult to resist. “Cherie, how often is there the chance to enjoy such a sunset?”
“And how enjoyable will it be if I leave the elevator and it disappears?”
“So before you leave, we prop the door open with a rock. If only the door is real here, then the elevator will go nowhere.”
“You don’t know that,” Claire muttered, but she could feel her resolve weakening. It was a beautiful beach; brilliant white sand stretching down to turquoise water, the setting sun brushing the entire scene with red-gold light.
“If I cannot convince you, cherie…” His eyes twinkled under lowered lids. “…then I dare you.”
“You dare me?”
“Oui. I dare you to enjoy yourself, if only pour un moment.”
“You think I’m incapable of enjoying myself?”
“I did not say that.”
“Well, I’m not Dean…”
Dean had already found a rock. He rolled it up against the open door and, telling herself that Jacques’ theory made a great deal of sense, Claire stepped over the threshold.
After a few moments of anticipatory silence, when neither the elevator nor the beach seemed affected, Jacques threw up his hands in triumph. “You see,” he said, catching them again. “I am right.”
Nearly body temperature, the water invited swimming, but both mortals contented themselves with tossing shoes and socks back into the elevator and wading through the shallow surf. Behind the open door, the beach rose up to become undulating dunes and finally a multihued green wall of jungle vegetation.
“Austin would love it here,” Claire laughed, digging her toes into the sand. “It’s the world’s biggest litter bo…oh, my God! He’ll be frantic!”
“I don’t think it works that way.”
Fighting to keep her balance in the loose footing, she whirled to glare at Dean. “What makes you such an expert?”
He held out his arm, watch crystal reflecting all the red and gold and orange in the sky. “The second hand hasn’t moved since we got here.”
“Oh, I see,” she snarled, “time has stopped. Did it ever occur to you that it might be your watch?”
Crestfallen, he shook his head.
“Excusez-moi.” Jacques’ tone laid urgency over the polite form of the interruption. “Something happens in the water.”
About twenty feet from shore, the waves had taken on a lumpy appearance. Bits of them seemed to be moving in ways contrary to the nature of water, rolling from side to side as they headed for the shore. Then the center hump of a wave kept rising past the crest, the mottled surface lifting up, up, until it became obvious, even staring into the sunset, that what they were watching wasn’t water.
“If I didn’t know better,” Dean murmured, one hand shading his eyes, “I’d swear that was an octopus.”
“Octopi do not come so big,” Jacques protested weakly.
“Well, it’s not a squid.”
A tentacle, as thick as Dean’s arm, broke through the surf no more than four feet from where they were standing.
“Octopi, regardless of size, don’t come up on the shore,” Claire announced as though daring the waving appendage to contradict her.
The twenty feet had become fifteen. Fourteen. Twelve. Ten.
“On the other hand,” she added as a suckered arm fell short and gouged a trench in the sand at her feet, “I don’t think this is an octopus either. RUN!”
Stumbling and falling in the loose sand, they raced for the elevator.
A tentacle slammed into Claire’s hip, throwing her sideways into Dean. He caught her and held on, dragging her forward with him, her feet barely touching down.
From the water’s edge came the sound of a large, wet, leather sack being smacked against the shore.
Unaffected by the footing, Jacques reached safety first, turned, and went nearly transparent. “Depeche toi!”
Gesture made his meaning plain.
Dean shoved Claire forward,
