“Before the energy fades,” he growled, “we’ll rip you limb from limb.”
Had they not been fighting each other to get up the ramp, they might have. As it was, Claire jumped off the other side of the bier and sprinted to the safety of the grass unopposed. The first dwarf to leap off after her, stumbled and smashed.
They were visibly slowing.
“Gentlemen!”
Four heads ground around to face her.
“You’ve got less than thirty seconds left. If I were you, I’d arrange myself so that I was making a statement when I solidified.”
“Who’d have thought those concrete breeches would even come down?” Austin murmured as Claire carried him back toward the parking lot.
She half expected Dean to be there waiting for them.
He wasn’t.
Of course he isn’t, you moron. You sent him away.
She could barely feel the beginning of the new Summons over the incredible sense of loss. “I feel like I’m missing an arm or a leg,” she sighed as she set Austin down beside the cat carrier and turned up the collar of her coat.
He snorted. “How would you know?”
“What?”
“The only thing you’re missing is a sense of perspective. Some of us are missing actual body parts.”
“I’m sorry, Austin. I keep forgetting about your eye.”
“My eye?” His remaining eye narrowed. “Oh, yeah, that too. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go behind this building where I believe I saw a litter box shaped like a giant plastic turtle.”
“That’s a sandbox.”
“Whatever. While I’m gone, why don’t you answer the phone?”
“What phone?”
The pay phone on the other side of the parking lot began to ring.
Weight on one hip, Diana cradled the receiver between shoulder and ear and rummaged in her backpack for a pen. The odds were extremely good that Claire had paid no attention to her warning, but—having given it—she was curious about the outcome.
“Hello?”
“So, did you do it?”
On the other end of the phone, she heard Claire sigh. “Did I do what?”
“Make the huge mistake.” Moistening the tip of one finger, she erased the phone number at the end of the ubiquitous for a good time call and replaced it with the number of the original graffiti artist. Erasing it entirely would only leave a clear space for some moron to refill and it was balance, after all, that Keepers were attempting to maintain.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Diana. I’ve just closed a small site and I’m about to move on to the next one.”
“I’m talking about my precog. This morning’s phone call. My timely warning.” Brow furrowed, she tapped the pen against her lip, then rubbed out the punctuation and added forest fires in the same handwriting as Rachel puts out changing it from nasty to inane and thus maintaining the high school status quo. If there was a place more inane, Diana didn’t want to know about it. “I bet you didn’t even take precautions.”
“That is none of your business.”
Diana shook her head. No one did self-righteous indignation at the mere possibility of a double-entendre as well as Claire. And no one gave away so much doing it. “You ditched Dean, didn’t you?”
“I did not ditch him. We’re just not traveling together any longer.”
“Dork.”
“A Keeper has no business involving a Bystander in dangerous work.”
“Think highly of yourself, don’t you? You didn’t involve him, he got involved all on his little lonesome. And, as I recall, his lonesome ain’t so little.”
“Diana!”
“Claire!” Suddenly depressed, she hung up. In her not even remotely humble opinion, Dean had been the best thing that had ever happened to her older sister. Just by existing, he’d managed to shake up that whole lone Keeper only-I-can-save-the-world crap that Claire believed. Apparently, he hadn’t shaken it hard enough.
Sighing, she filled in the last blank space on the wall by the phone with a quick John loves Terri in a somewhat lopsided heart. It wasn’t her best work, but at least it would keep something harmful out of the spot.
“A word, Ms. Hansen.”
Pushing a strand of dark hair out of her eyes, Diana turned and forced a fake smile. “Yes, Ms. Neal?”
The vice-principal’s answering smile had a certain sharklike quality about it. “If you think the school needs adornment, why not put your talents to use on the decorating committee for the Christmas dance.”
“I’d love to, Ms. Neal, but I just don’t have the…that wasn’t a suggestion, was it?”
“Actually, it was an alternative to a month’s worth of detention.”
After the incident with the football team, her parents had forbidden her to open anyone’s mind to new possibilities—although to give them credit, they’d admitted that two of the linebackers and a defensive end had been significantly improved.
“The committee has their first meeting tomorrow at lunch, on the stage. Be there.”
“Yes, Ms. Neal.”
“Now, if you’re finished for the day, go home.”
“Yes, Ms. Neal.”
She could feel the vice-principal’s gimlet gaze on her all the way to the door. This bites. Save the world evenings and weekends and the rest of the time I’m at the beck and call of every petty dictator who works for the school board. I’m a Keeper. Why am I still here?
As the door closed behind her, two confused teenagers walked in slow motion toward the phone from opposite ends of the hall, music from a modern love song growing louder and sappier the closer they got. When their hands touched, the music reached a crescendo, then faded as Ms. Neal confiscated the boombox from a group of students on the stairs.
“John?”
“Terri?”
On the wall, the heart glowed.
“Well, gee, this is just so much better than sitting in a warm and comfy truck with someone who cares about you.” Shooting the darkening sky a disgusted look, Austin picked his way between wet snowflakes to where Claire was sitting on a parking lot divider and jumped up on her lap. “I personally think it’s pathetic that you’d rather face a quintet of evil gnomes than a normal human relationship.”
“I’m not a normal human.”
“Who is?”
“Diana thinks I’ve made a huge mistake
