Cautious experimentation with the elevator determined that if the door was opened by someone outside in the hall, passengers could actually exit onto the desired floor. Seepage, or lack of it, affected neither the mechanical functioning nor the variety of destinations. As far as Claire could determine, the elevator had no actual connection to Hell and only a tenuous connection to reality.
But there was one unfortunate casualty of the seepage slowdown.
“I guess this’ll be the next thing you’ll get rid of,” Austin sighed, perched on the silent bust of the king of rock and roll.
The sitting room, emptied to essentials, had a lobotomized look, as though all personality had been surgically removed. Stripped of their accessories, Augustus Smythe’s florid, oversized furniture seemed self-consciously large.
Although she’d had every intention of removing the plaster head, Claire surrendered to the pale green stare making unsubtle demands from the top of the high-gloss pompadour. “If it means that much to you, it can stay.”
“Will you start it up again?”
“No.”
“You could adapt it to run off the middle of the possibilities.”
“No.”
“But…”
“I said, no. It’d be easier to go out and buy a complete set of CDs and a stereo.” Either Augustus Smythe had taken his stereo with him when he’d abandoned the site, or, unlike most men, who tended to buy stereo equipment before unimportant things like groceries or clothing, he’d never owned one.
“If you’re afraid of a bit of hard work….”
“Don’t start with me, Austin. Elvis has left the building.” Before the cat could claw his way through her resolve, Claire turned on a heel and headed for the bedroom. The bust hadn’t been the only amusement in Augustus Smythe’s rooms to run on seepage. Grabbing the fringed curtain hanging over the postcard, she flung it open and barely managed to bite back a startled scream.
“What?” Diana twisted far enough to see that nothing particularly startling had slipped into the space behind her. When she saw that nothing had, she shrugged and directed her attention back out of the postcard. “You don’t look so good, Claire. Maybe you ought to sit down.”
Not really hearing her sister’s suggestion, Claire staggered backward until she hit the edge of the bed and sat. “What are you doing in there?”
“Practicing postcards. Mom said you had one running so I thought I’d see if I could tap into it…”
Claire began breathing again. Diana’s room had not been part of Augustus Smythe’s dirty little picture gallery.
“…that way you could see me, too, and I couldn’t be accused of spying on you.”
Theoretically, that wouldn’t be possible; as a Keeper, Claire would know if she were under observation even by another Keeper. However, since Diana had just tapped into a powerless postcard with no apparent difficulty, something that Claire doubted she could have managed even with nearly ten extra years of experience, she wasn’t about to declare it couldn’t be done. So she did the next best thing: “You postcard me, and I’ll rip your liver out and feed it to you.”
Diana grinned. “As if. You think I’m stupid enough to get that close?”
“Speaking of close, when did you get back from the Philippines?”
“Last week. I landed in San Francisco, stuck my two cents into a site Michelle was dealing with by Berkeley, took Amtrak to Chicago, helped One Bruce seal two small sites—both of them in the middle of major intersections, can you believe it—and flew home from there. I can’t wait until I get to do this stuff on my own.”
Claire couldn’t remember hearing about any earthquakes or train derailments, and since Chicago seemed to be functioning at least as well as it ever did, she breathed a sigh of relief. “What about school?”
“I’ll catch up.” Dropping into an ancient beanbag chair that she’d long outgrown but refused to get rid of, Diana leaned left until she had to brace herself against the floor, then repeated the movement to the right.
“What are you doing?”
The younger woman straightened. “I was trying to get a better angle on your room. Mom says Dean’s a major babe, so I was looking for him.”
“Mom said Dean was a major babe?”
“Not exactly; she said he was ‘quite an attractive young man’ and I translated.”
“This is my bedroom.”
Diana snorted. “So that’s why you have a bed in it.”
“I don’t even want to know why you think Dean might be in here.”
“Well, jeez, Claire, I hope I don’t have to explain it to you. At your age.” After a self-appreciative snicker, she crossed her legs and settled back until it looked as though she’d perched on the crushed remains of a red vinyl flower. “Go and get him, please.”
Even through the postcard, Claire felt the pull of power her younger sister laid on the magic word. “No,” she said, folding her arms. “I am not putting Dean on display to fulfill your prurient interests.”
“Ooo, prurient. Big word. So are you guys getting it on?”
“Diana!” Righteous indignation propelled her onto her feet “Dean’s a nice guy who does most…” Diana’s left eyebrow rose. There was as little point in lying to her as there would have been in her lying. “…almost all…okay, all of the work around here. A nice guy. Do you even know what that means?”
“Sure, I know. It means he’s not getting any.”
“Diana!”
“Relax, I’m just yanking your chain.” Lips pursed, she made a disgusted face. “Man I hope I’m not as big a prude when I’m almost thirty. I told One Bruce and Michelle about you getting stuck on an unsealable site and they both said that Keepers are sent where they’re needed. Not very helpful, I thought Anyway, since you’re settled, I gave them both the phone number. They seemed to think that with you in one place and me still in training and us in contact because we’re family, we have a chance to actually lay some lines of communication between Keepers. Which reminds
