“Peculiar conditions?”
“Learned man. Eyes the color of rotting reeds. That sort of thing.”
“A learned man with greenish-brown eyes doesn’t seem that peculiar.”
“Three nipples…”
“Ah.” Cheeks burning, Dean paid a great deal of attention to his next swallow of coffee. “Lance says Meryat took over your mind.”
The doctor smiled into the shadows as desiccated fingers with blackened tips closed around his hand. “Meryat took over my heart. How could I not love a woman who’d suffered so bravely for so long? I know what you’re thinking, she’s not at her best physically, but every day she’s in the world she gains back a little more of her beauty.”
“She’s not sucking the energy out of people, is she?”
“People give off energy merely by existing. She absorbs that.”
“Lance said that when you left the lab, you left him for dead.”
That drew his attention back to Dean. “I pushed him into a supply closet,” he explained dryly, “and locked the door. Lance tends to exaggerate.”
“Yeah.” Dean decided he’d best keep both the foul fiend and pustulant monster comments to himself. “Does he exclaim everything he says, then?”
“Almost everything, yes. I’m amazed you managed to send him away. He’s remarkably tenacious.”
“I didn’t so much send him away as send him on a wild goose chase. He still thinks he’s after you.”
“I’m glad he isn’t. Well done and thank you.” As Dr. Rebik drained his mug, Meryat asked a question, her words running together like liquid and music combined. “Meryat wonders if you wonder how we found this place. This sanctuary.”
Dean shrugged, trying to look as though having the guest house called a sanctuary didn’t please him as much as it did. “You’d be amazed at the people who find this place.”
“In our case, it came about when Meryat’s ka managed to gain a small amount of freedom even before I opened the sarcophagus. Still trapped, it couldn’t touch the real world, but it could touch what she calls the possibilities. They told her of the Keepers and specifically of the Keeper who works from this inn. We were hoping you’d help us. Until she fully regains her physical form, Meryat is helpless and prey to every media influenced, addle-pated adventurer we meet.”
“Meet a lot?”
“You’d be surprised.”
Dean considered the hole to Hell that had once heated the guest house. “Not really, no.”
“So will you?”
“Will I what?”
“Help us.”
“Me? I’m not the Keeper.”
Meryat’s hand which had been reaching toward him, exposing more of a wrapped arm than he really wanted to see, withdrew.
“You’re not?”
“No. The Keeper’s my, uh, girlfriend and she’s away on business right now. But I’m expecting her back any time,” he added as Dr. Rebik’s face fell and Meryat’s hooded head sagged forward. “The room’s available as long as you need it.”
“So we’ll wait.”
Meryat asked another question.
“No, my love, I can’t think of a place we’d be safer. And now, if you don’t mind, Meryat needs to lie down. As yet she can manage only an hour or two on her feet a day.”
Dean stood as they did and managed to keep from flinching when Meryat’s fingertips touched the bare skin of his forearm for an instant as they passed. He took a long, comforting swallow of coffee and when he heard the door close on the second floor, said, “You were some quiet.”
Austin, who’d been lying on the windowsill, lifted his head from his front paws. “Something Dr. Rebik said isn’t right.”
“Yeah, three nipples. That’s just wrong.”
“Hey, I’ve got six!”
“My point exactly; nipples should come in even numbers.”
Austin shot him a suspicious look but let it go. “Something else…”
“Last night he had to translate for her; this morning, she understood what we were saying.”
The emerald eye blinked once in surprise. “You’re not as dumb as you look. But that wasn’t it.”
“You think Dr. Rebik was lying?” Dean asked as he gathered up the doctor’s empty mug and headed for the dishwasher.
“No, but I think there’s stuff he’s not telling us.”
“He said he’s sparing Meryat’s feelings. You can’t blame him for that.”
“Why not?” Austin’s tail carved a series of short jerky arcs through the air. “I wish Claire was here.”
“Me, too.”
* * *
“Elderly ninja assassins?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Well, you kind of implied it.”
“Sam…”
His ears bridled as he leaped to the top of Bozo’s School Bus and turned to glare. “You did. You said there were handrails around the skylights and, if the way to the roof was in the wrong area, we could expect an attempt on Arthur’s life. Then you said, ‘but not ninjas’ and you’ve been mumbling about dangling old people ever since. So: elderly ninja assassins.”
“Okay, you win.” Claire scooped him off the ride and continued out into the main concourse with him tucked indignantly under one arm. “Just stop repeating it so I can stop thinking about it!”
“It’s not the worst thing you could be thinking about,” Sam muttered. “I mean if anything’s got to drop down from the roof, el…” He squeaked as she tightened her grip. “…that would at least be easy to beat. Right?”
“Wrong. The Otherside deals with subconscious imagery, it takes what you think you’re thinking about and warps it.”
“So if I was thinking about a nice, juicy, unattended salmon?”
“Nothing would happen. When I say it takes what you’re thinking, I don’t mean you specifically. Cats live in the now, there’s nothing in your thoughts the Otherside can use.”
“Fine. If you thought about a nice, juicy salmon?”
“We’d probably get grizzlies.”
Back feet braced against her hip, he squirmed around until he could stare up at her. “You’re kidding?”
“Or a rain of frozen peas. Maybe even big, green, frozen grizzlies.”
“Why would the Otherside want anything to do with what’s in your head?” he demanded as Claire set him down. “Things aren’t weird enough around here without your two cents’ worth?”
“Apparently not.”
“Hey,
