That didn’t help.
Two spots of heat burning high on each cheek, she turned to stare out at the pink granite rising in mighty slabs up into the sky.
Neither did that.
Think of something else, Claire. Anything else. Three times nine is twenty-seven. Fried liver. Brussels sprouts. Homer Simpson…
The insistent under-tug of the Summoning suddenly rose to a crescendo. Claire’s hand jerked up and pointed toward a parking lot entrance for the Thousand Islands Sky Deck and Fantasy Land. “Pull in there.”
Responding to her tone, Dean managed to make the turn, back end of the truck fishtailing slightly in the light dusting of wet snow. “It’s closed,” he said, coming to a stop by the entrance to the gift shop that anchored the Sky Deck.
“Not to me.” This was it. The end of the line. Claire felt strangely unwilling to get out of the truck. And not only because it was beginning to snow again. You’re doing this for him, she reminded herself. He’s only a Bystander, and you have no business putting him in danger.
When he moved to turn off the engine, she steeled herself and stopped him, restraining herself from keeping a lingering grip around his wrist. “There’s no point, you won’t be here long enough.” She undid her seat belt, pulled her toque over her ears, and grabbed the cat carrier from its place behind the seat. “Come on, Austin.”
His back remained toward her, rigid and unyielding.
“Austin!”
He ignored her so completely she had a moment’s doubt about her own existence.
“What’s the matter with…” And then she remembered. “Oh, for…Austin, I’m sorry I said you were beginning to sound like a dog. It was rude.”
One ear swiveled toward her.
“You have never sounded like anything but a cat. Cats are clearly superior to dogs, and I don’t know what I was thinking. Please accept my abject apologies and forgive me.”
He snorted without turning. “You call that groveling?”
“Yes, and I’m sorry if it falls short of your high standards. Unless you’re planning to walk, I also call it the last thing I’m going to say before picking you up and stuffing you into the carrier.”
Her hands were actually touching his fur before he realized she was serious. “Oh, sure,” he muttered, tail scribing short, jerky arcs as he climbed into the case, “give a species opposable thumbs, and they evolve into bullies.”
Dean watched without speaking as she opened the door, set the cat carrier carefully down on a dry bit of pavement up near the building, and finally lifted her backpack out from under the tarp. She paused as if she was trying to think of something to say. She was wearing some kind of lip stuff that made her mouth look full and soft and…He leaned over and rolled down the window. “Do you need any help, then?”
He hadn’t intended to say it, but he just couldn’t stop himself; his grandfather’s training was stronger than justified anger, emotional betrayal, and the uncomfortable way the seat belt was cutting into his…lap.
An emphatic “Yes!” came out of the cat carrier, but Claire ignored it. “No, thank you.” She swallowed around the kind of lump in her throat that Keepers were not supposed to get. “You’d better get going if you’re driving all the way to Newfoundland.”
“It’s an island, Claire. I won’t be driving all the way.”
“You knew what I meant.” Her gloves suddenly took all her attention. “This is for your own good, Dean.”
“If you say so.”
It was as close to a snide comment as she’d ever heard him make.
For a moment Claire thought he wasn’t going to go, but the moment passed.
“Good-bye, Claire.” He wanted to say something wry and debonair so she’d know what she was losing, but the only thing that came to mind was a line from an old black-and-white movie, and he suspected that “You’ll never take me alive, copper!” didn’t exactly fit the situation. This was clearly the day his aunt had been referring to when she’d said, “Some day, you guys are going to wish you’d watched a couple of movies with more talking than hitting.” He settled for raising his hand in the classic whatever wave.
He left the window rolled down until he reached the highway. Just in case she called him back.
Claire stood and watched Dean back up and drive away, realizing she should have wiped his memory with something more possible—although at the moment, she couldn’t think of anything more possible than the two of them spending their lives together.
I did it for his own good.
It was colder than it should be, and the chill had nothing to do with standing in an empty parking lot beside a closed second-rate summer attraction while an early November wind stuffed icy fingers under her collar and threatened snow. She stared at the single set of tire tracks until she couldn’t feel her feet.
In the summer, Fantasy Land consisted of mazes and slides built into child-sized castles scattered along a path that twisted through the woods and paused every now and then at a fairy-tale tableau constructed of poured concrete and paint. In the summer, the fact it was a convenient place for the children to run off some excess energy before they were stuffed back in the car to fidget and complain for another hundred kilometers, lent the place a certain charm. In the winter, when nothing hid the damage caused by the same children who could disassemble an eight-hundred-dollar DVD player armed with nothing more than a sucker stick and a cheese sandwich, it was just depressing.
The Summons rose from the center of the Sleeping Beauty display.
Five concrete dwarfs, their paint peeling, stood around the bier that held the sleeping princess—or at least Claire assumed that’s what the bier had held. The princess and two of the dwarfs had been thoroughly gone over with a piece of pipe. Bits of broken concrete lay scattered around the clearing, and Sleeping Beauty’s
