“I just want what’s best for him.”
“How about you let him decide what’s best for him and you answer my question.” Nalo settled into a wing-back recliner and stared at Claire over the edge of her glass. “Do you love him?”
“Love.” She tried for nonchalance and failed dismally. “What is love anyway?”
“Claire…”
There was power in a name. In this particular instance, there was also a warning.
The depths of the eggnog held no answers although the rum made a couple of suggestions Claire ignored. Sighing, she set the empty glass down on the coffee table next to a crocheted Christmas tree. “Since he left, I’ve felt like there’s a part of me missing.”
“Close but not good enough. Do you love him?”
“I…”
“Yes or no.”
Yes or no? There had to be other options. When none presented themselves, she sighed. “Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, I love him.” The world stopped for a moment, and when it started up again, Claire felt a little light-headed. “Shouldn’t there be music or something?”
“The world stopped. That wasn’t enough? You want a sound track, too?”
“I guess not.”
“Good. Does he love you?”
“I don’t know.”
Austin looked up from the bottom of his saucer. “He does.”
“How do you know?” Claire demanded, leaning forward to stare into his face.
“He told me.”
“No, he didn’t.”
“Are you calling me a liar?”
“I’m calling you a cat.”
Austin thought about that for a moment. “Fair enough,” he conceded.
“It’s obvious you and Dean should be together,” Nalo declared, drawing the attention of both Claire and the cat. “So what are you going to do about it?”
Claire shook her head. “Keepers don’t…”
“Don’t tell me what Keepers don’t; I’ve been one a lot longer than you have. Keepers don’t deny the truth when it jumps up and bites them on the ass, that’s what Keepers don’t. If it helps, think of the space between you as an accident site you have to close.”
“But the danger.”
“Girl, don’t you think for a moment that Keepers have the only power. If you love him, you find that boy then you trust in the power of love to keep him safe. And if that cat doesn’t quit making gagging noises,” she added with a dark look at Austin, “I’m going to use him to line a pair of slippers.”
“She didn’t tell you anything you didn’t already know.”
“I know.” Bedded down on Nalo’s couch for the night, Claire stared out the window, past the lights of the city at points farther east. Dean was out there, somewhere, and as much as it was going to cost her, she could think of only one way to find him.
Austin kneaded her hip, his claws not quite going all the way through the duvet. “So what are you going to do about it?”
“Go home for Christmas.”
“Diana?”
“Diana.”
“And if you’re Summoned somewhere else?”
“Then I’ll know that Dean and I aren’t supposed to be together and I’ll be miserable and unhappy for the rest of my life.”
“That’s your entire plan?”
Claire sighed and stroked her fingers along his spine. “That’s it.”
“You know, you guys really need a union.”
The Christmas dance was Diana’s first. She hadn’t planned on attending but when her parents had discovered what she’d done too late to have her undo it, they’d insisted she be there just in case. They’d said rather a great deal more as well, but she’d stopped listening to the lecture early on.
Standing against the wall of the gym, arms crossed, a cardboard cup of punch in one hand, she watched twinkling bits of light falling gently through the central hole in the crepe-paper pattern. It was working exactly as designed; the weave captured good feelings rising up from the crowd, filtered and purified them, then sprinkled them back down like metaphysical snowflakes through the center hole. And in spite of minor panic from the ’rents about the dangers inherent in too much of a good thing, the inevitable counterbalance of teenage angst insured that the system didn’t spiral up and out of control.
It was probably going to be the first high school dance in history where everyone had a good time and no one had too good a time.
As ordered, the pattern even looked like a snowflake from below.
She was remarkably pleased with herself.
Draining the cup, she set it down and walked across to where the senior basketball team were standing morosely by the wall. They were now zero and nineteen. The chess club was more popular.
“Joe, dance with me!”
He looked startled but took her hand and allowed her to lead him out onto the floor.
As the music started to slow, Diana reached into the possibilities and changed the CD before he could pull her close.
Everyone was going to have a good time, but there were limits to even the most selfless charity work and Joe had missed his last five free throws.
Just after one a.m., Diana slipped off boots and coat and padded upstairs in her socks, reaching just far enough into the possibilities to muffle the sound of her arrival. She didn’t actually have a curfew—there was a certain inane sound to you can only save the world until ten on a school night—but she liked to keep the parental units guessing. Fully aware of this, they set certain metaphysical traps, which she easily deflected, and all parties remained secure in the knowledge that they were holding up their respective ends of the teenager/parent relationship, Keeper/Cousin variety.
Diana suspected her parents didn’t think of it that way, but as long as they were happy, she didn’t really mind.
She waited until she had her bedroom door closed behind her before she turned on the light.
“I need a favor.”
The possibilities muffled her startled shriek and Claire easily fielded the candle she threw. “Don’t you have somewhere to be Summoned to!”
“No.” Claire set the candle on the stack of paperbacks piled by the bed.
“No?”
“How loud was the music at that dance? No. I am, at the current time, not being Summoned anywhere.”
Her heartbeat beginning to return to a more
