“The cat told me?” Austin asked as she closed the door.
“Hey, it’s Halloween.”
“Then you should have shown them the ghost,” Jacques pointed out with a toss of his head.
“Jacques!”
Catching it one-handed, he set it back on his shoulders at a rakish angle. “If you give me flesh, I could not do that.”
Suppressing a shudder, Claire glared at him. “If I gave you flesh right now, I’d smack it.”
His grin broadened. “D’accord.”
“No.”
“Tease.”
The wards blazed red.
“Well…” Claire glanced around at the man, the cat, and the ghost as she reached for the door. “…let’s check out the next contestant.”
A young woman stood on the step. She had short brown hair, brown eyes, and matching Satin Claret lipstick and nail polish.
Claire tapped her own Satin Claret nails impatiently against the doorjamb. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
The young woman shrugged. “Trick or treat?”
Behind her, Claire heard Dean gasp. “Boss. It’s you.”
“Not quite. It’s a Waff, a kind of Co-walker. Technically, it’s a death token.”
“A what?”
“Don’t worry about it.” Folding her arms, Claire looked the Waff in the eye and said in her best primary schoolteacher voice, “You’ve no business being here. Go on, then. Off with you! Scram!”
Looking embarrassed about the entire incident, the Waff slunk down the steps and out of sight.
“Honestly,” Claire sighed as she closed the door. “They used to get chased off by mortals, you’d think they’d know better than to even try against a Keeper.”
“I doubt it had a choice,” Austin pointed out, scratching vigorously behind one ear. “Once it was called, it had to come. Things are going to get a lot worse before they get better.”
“Do you know that, or are you pontificating?”
He licked his nose and refused to answer.
Three sets of street clothes, a couple of Disney characters and a Gwyllion later, Dean headed for the kitchen under the pretext of getting coffee. He was going to get coffee, but that wasn’t his only reason for going to the kitchen.
The Gwyllion had looked rather like one of the city’s more colorful bag ladies and had been mumbling what sounded like directions to the bus station when Claire’d banished it with an iron cross she’d pulled out of her backpack. Without a backpack of his own, Dean opened the bread box for the next best thing.
A fairy bun.
Technically, it was a leftover brown’n’serve from supper, but in a pinch it’d have to do. As an Anglican minister, his granddad had fought a continual battle against the superstitions that rose up in isolated communities and had told him how even in the sixties many of the more traditional men would carry fairy buns into the woods to protect them from being led astray by the small spirits. Dean had never thought to ask what exactly his granddad had meant by small spirits but reasoned that anything that could make it up the steps to the door had to count.
He wrapped the bun in a paper towel and carefully squashed it down into the front right-hand pocket of his jeans. Turning to go, a movement in the parking lot caught his eye.
His truck was the only vehicle out there. If some of the older kids were about to do any damage, it would have to be to his truck.
Over his dead body. That truck had brought him from Newfoundland to Kingston in February and, in one of the worst winters on record, had gone through everything he’d asked it to. And one thing he hadn’t asked it to, but the gas pumps hadn’t actually exploded and the police had determined that the large patch of black ice had been at fault rather than his driving, so technically it had been an uneventful trip. Anyway, he loved that truck.
Moving quietly to the window, he pushed aside enough of the vertical blinds to allow him to scout the enemy; no point in rushing out like an idiot if his truck was safe.
The most beautiful woman he’d ever seen looked in at him, smiled, and gracefully beckoned him closer.
Dean swallowed, hard. He could feel his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down like a buoy on high seas.
Her smile sharpened.
Moving from space to space between the vertical slats so that he wouldn’t have to take his eyes off her, Dean shuffled toward the door.
“Dean?” Austin brushed up against his shins. “What are you looking at?”
His tongue felt thick. He had to force it to make words. “Irresistibly beautiful woman.”
“Out there? In the parking lot?”
“Needs me. Needs me to go to her.”
“Uh-huh. Look again.”
A sudden sharp pain in Dean’s calf jerked the world back into focus. Out in the parking lot, the beauty was no longer quite so irresistible. Her eyes held dark shadows, her teeth were far too white and there didn’t seem to be much in the way of boundary between where she ended and the night began. Feeling as though he were standing on the edge of a fog-shrouded cliff, Dean stuffed trembling fingers into his pocket and grabbed one end of the fairy bun.
Belief is everything when dealing with baked goods.
A misty figure, vaguely woman-shaped directed her burning gaze down toward the cat and hissed angrily.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Nice try, now get lost Come on,” he added as the spirit disappeared, “let’s get me a piece of that pork left from dinner, then get you back to the lobby before something else shows up.”
Conscious of the blood slowly soaking into his jeans, Dean fed and followed without an argument.
“Well?” Claire asked impatiently as they came out into the light.
“I was right He was in trouble. Judging from his reaction and the noise it made before it disappeared, I’m guessing it was a Lhiannan-Shee.”
“A fairy sweetheart?”
“Not a sweetheart,” Dean protested remembering its final appearance.
“We all have our bad days.” Claire grabbed him by the elbow and spun him around. “Are you all right?”
“Sure.” He felt a little light-headed and his skin prickled where the hair had risen all over his body, but he still had his soul, so the
