Carrying on a conversation with Diana was often like shopping in a discount store: piles of topics crowded the aisles, stacked ceiling high in barely discernible order. The trick was pulling one single thing out to respond to. “The Apothecary doesn’t even have electricity.”
“I know. He says he can work around it. So what about you and this Jacques guy Mom mentioned?”
Claire sighed. “Jacques is dead.”
“I know. But if the Apothecary can run e-mail without electricity…” She let her voice trail off but her eyebrows waggled suggestively up and down. “It sounds like what you really need is Jacques possessing Dean’s body.”
HELLO.
“That is never going to happen.” Although Claire directed her response as much at Hell as at her sister, only her sister acknowledged it.
“I know.”
“You know, you know, you know; you’re beginning to sound like Austin.”
Diana fixed Claire with an exasperated stare. “Keeping the peace, fulfilling destiny, that doesn’t mean we can’t be happy.”
“I am as happy as I can be under the circumstances.”
“Now who’s sounding like Austin. What makes you think I’m talking about you?”
Claire winced. That had been incredibly insensitive of her. “I’m sorry, Diana. Did you have a problem you want me to help with?”
She grinned and shook her head. “No. But if you want, I’ll come by and figure out how to deal with Sara, seal the pit, and get your butt on the road again.”
“Diana!”
“Oh, chill, Claire.” Dark brows dipped into a disdainful frown. “I’m five hundred and forty-one kilometers away, she’s not going to hear me.”
“Your butt is in a sling if she has!” Claire could feel nothing through the shield. Unfortunately, that only meant she hadn’t yet gone through the shield. “If you’ll excuse me, and even if you won’t, I’m going to go check and see if you’ve started Armageddon.” Ignoring protests, she closed the curtain with one hand and pulled at the neck of her cotton turtleneck with the other, telling herself that the room hadn’t suddenly gotten warmer. She wasn’t quite running as she crossed the sitting room.
“Can I assume you’re not hurrying out to feed me?” Austin asked. “Who were you talking to?”
“Diana.”
“Subverting a powerless postcard? Typical. What did she have to say for herself?”
“Nothing much. Her name. Out loud. Through a power link. If she’s woken her up…”
Austin caught up to Claire at the door. “What are you going to do.”
“Beats me. You know any good lullabies?”
Out in the lobby, Dean looked up from prying open a new gallon of paint as Keeper and cat raced for the stairs. “Problem, Boss?”
“I don’t know.”
“Need my help?”
Five weeks ago, even three weeks ago, she’d have snapped off an impatient “No.” What good would a bystander be against a Keeper who’d attempted to control Hell? Today she paused and actually considered the possibilities before answering. “There’s nothing you can do.”
“Is it her?” Jacques asked, materializing as they started up the second flight of stairs.
“It could be,” Claire panted, silently cursing the circumstances that made the elevator inoperative. It seemed to take forever to open the padlock, and the lack of noise from inside room six was surprisingly uncomforting.
The shield was intact. Aunt Sara lay, as she had, on the bed. The only footprints in the dust were Claire’s, laid over her mother’s, laid over her own and Dean’s. She stepped forward, following the path, and studied the sleeping woman’s face with narrowed eyes.
No change.
Sighing deeply, she took what felt like her first unconstricted breath since Diana had called Aunt Sara’s name.
And sneezed.
Nose running, eyeballs beginning to itch, she backed out of the room and relocked the door.
“We are safe?” Jacques demanded from the top of the stairs. “She sleeps?”
“She sleeps,” Claire reassured him, wiping her nose on a bit of old wadded-up tissue she’d found in the front pocket of her jeans.
“Admit it,” Austin prodded as they started back downstairs, the ghost having gone on ahead to fill Dean in on the details, “you’re a little disappointed.”
Claire stopped dead and stared at the cat After a moment, she closed her mouth and hurried to catch up. “All right, that settles it. We’re taking a break in the renovations. You’ve been sucking up too many paint fumes.”
“You’re not willing to wake her yourself,” Austin continued. “But you’d love to know who’d win if you went head-to-head. Keeper to Keeper.”
“You’re out of your furry little mind.”
“One final battle to settle this whole thing. Winner takes all.”
“Get real.”
“I can’t help but notice that you’re not making an actual statement of denial.”
PRIDE IS ONE OF…
“Yours. So you’ve said.”
HAS ANYONE EVER POINTED OUT THAT IT’S VERY RUDE TO INTERRUPT LIKE THAT?
“Sorry.”
USELESS APOLOGY. SINCERITY COUNTS.
“Get out of my head.”
“Jacques told me what happened; is everything okay?” Dean asked as they descended into the lobby.
“Austin’s senile,” Claire told him tightly. “But other than that things seem to be fine.”
He watched her walk down the hall toward the kitchen and shook his head. “Once again,” he sighed, “I’m left muddled.” Stepping back, he put his right foot squarely down in the paint tray.
Two things occurred to him as he watched the dark green pigment soak into his work boot.
He hadn’t left the paint tray there.
And he couldn’t possibly have seen a five-inch-tall, lavender something diving behind the counter.
For the first Saturday since Claire’d begun handing out the money for groceries, there was considerably more than seventy dollars in the envelope. Dean whistled softly as she pulled out the wad and began counting the bills.
“One hundred and forty, one hundred and sixty, one hundred and eight-five dollars.” Tossed back into the safe, the envelope landed with non-paperlike clunk. “One hundred and eighty-six dollars,” Claire corrected as she pulled a loonie out of the bottom corner.
“Premium cat food all around,” Austin suggested from the top of the computer monitor.
“You’re getting a premium cat food.”
“I’m not,
