Tanya Huff - Keeper's Chronicles 1 - Summon the Keeper

When the storm broke, rain pounding down in great sheets out of a black and

unforgiving sky, Claire Hansen had to admit she wasn't surprised; it had been that

kind of evening. Although her ticket took her to Colburg, three stops farther along the

line, she'd stepped off the train and into the Kingston station certain that she'd found

the source of the summons. It was the last thing she'd been certain of all day.

By the time it started to rain, her feet hurt, her luggage had about pulled her

arms from their sockets, her traveling companion was sulking, and she was more than

ready to pack it in. She'd search again in the morning, after a good night's sleep.

Unfortunately, it wasn't going to be that easy.

A Great Lakes Hydroecology convention had filled two of the downtown

hotels, the third didn't allow pets, and the fourth was hosting the Beer Can Collectors

of America, South Eastern Ontario Division. Claire had professed indignant disbelief

about the latter until the desk clerk had pointed out the sign in the lobby welcoming

the collectors to Kingston.

Some people have too much spare time, she thought as she shifted her suitcase

into her left hand, the lighter, wicker cat carrier into her right, and headed back out

into the night. Way too much spare time.

Pulling her coat collar out from under the weight of her backpack and

hunkering down into its dubious shelter, she followed her feet along King Street

toward the university, where a vague memory suggested there were guest houses and

B&Bs hollowed out of the huge old mansions along the lake. Logically, she should

have caught a cab out to the parade of hotels and budget motels lining Highway 2

between Kingston and Cataraqui, but, as logical solutions were rare in her line of

work, Claire kept walking.

Thunder cracked, lightning lit up the sky, and it started to rain harder. Down

the center of the street, where the reaching leaves of the huge, old trees didn't quite

touch, grape-sized drops of water hit the pavement so hard they bounced. On the

sidewalk, under the trees, it was…

A gust of wind tipped branches almost vertical, dumping a stream of icy water

off the canopy and straight down the back of Claire's neck.

… not significantly drier.

There were times when profanity offered the only satisfactory response.

Denied that outlet, Claire gritted her teeth and continued walking through

increasingly deeper puddles toward City Park. Surely there'd be some kind of shelter

near such a prominent tourist area even though September had emptied it of fairs and

festivals. Tired, wet, and just generally cranky, she'd settle for anything that involved

a roof and a bed.

At the corner of Lower Union and King, the lightning flashed again, throwing

trees and houses into sharp-edged relief. On the third house up from the corner, a

signboard affixed to a wrought iron fence reflected the light with such intensity, it left

afterimages on the inside of Claire's lids.

"Shall we check it out?" She had to yell to make herself heard over the storm.

There was no answer from the cat carrier, but then she hadn't actually

expected one.

In this, one of the oldest parts of the city, the houses were three- and four-

story, red-brick Victorians. Too large to remain single-family dwellings in a time of

rising energy prices, most had been hacked up into flats. The first two houses up from

the corner were of this type. The third, past a narrow driveway, was larger still.

Squinting in the dark, water pouring off her hair and into her eyes, Claire

struggled to make out the words on the sign. She was fairly certain there were words;

there didn't seem to be much point in a sign if there weren't.

"Never any lightning around when it's needed…"

On cue, the lightning provided every fleck of peeling paint with its own

shadow. At the accompanying double crack of thunder, Claire dropped her suitcase

and clutched at the fence. She let go a moment later when it occurred to her that

holding an iron rod, even a rusty one, wasn't exactly smart under the circumstances.

White-and-yellow spots dancing across her vision, the faint fizz of an

electrical discharge bouncing about between her ears, she stumbled toward the front

door. During the brief time she'd been able to read the sign, she'd seen the words "uest

House" and, right now, that was good enough for her.

The nine stairs were uneven and slippery, threatening to toss her, suitcase, cat

carrier, backpack, and all, down into the black depths of the area in front of the house.

When she slid into the railing and it bowed dangerously, she refused to consider it an

omen. From the unsheltered porch, she could see neither knocker nor bell but,

considering the night and the weather, that meant very little. There could have been a

plaque warning travelers to abandon hope all ye who enter here, and she wouldn't

have seen it-or paid any attention to it if it meant getting out of the storm. A light

shone dimly through the transom. Holding her suitcase against the bricks with her

knee, she tried the door.

It was unlocked.

Another time, she might have appreciated the drama of the moment more and

pushed the heavy door open slowly, the sound of shrieking hinges accompanied by

ominous music. As it was, she shoved it again, threw herself and her baggage inside,

and kicked it closed.

At first, the silence came as a welcome relief from the storm, but after a

moment of it settling around her, thick and cloying, Claire found she needed to fill it.

She felt as though she were being covered in the cheap syrup left on the tables at

family restaurants.

"Hello? Is anybody here?"

Although her voice had never been described as either timid or tentative, it

made less than no impact on the silence. Lacking anywhere more constructive to go,

the words bounced painfully around inside her head, birthing a sudden, throbbing

headache.

Carefully setting the cat carrier down beyond the small lake she'd created on

the scuffed hardwood floor, she turned to face the counter that divided the entry into a

lobby and what looked like a small office-although the light was so bad, she couldn't

be sure. On the counter, a brass bell waited in solitary, tarnished splendor.

Feeling somewhat like Alice in Wonderland, Claire pushed her streaming hair

back off her face and smacked the plunger down into the bell.

The old man appeared behind the counter so suddenly that she recoiled a step,

half expecting an accompanying puff of smoke-which would have been less

disturbing than the more mundane explanation of him watching her from a dark

corner of the office.

"What," he demanded, "do you want?"

"What do I want?"

"I asked you first."

Which was true enough. "I'd like a room for the night."

His eyes narrowed suspiciously. "That all?"

"What else is there?"

"Breakfast."

Claire had never been challenged to breakfast before. "If it's included,

breakfast is fine." Another time, she might have managed a more spirited response.

Then she remembered. "Do you take pets?"

"I do not! That's a filthy lie! You've been talking to Mrs. Abrams next door in

number thirty-five, haven't you? Bloody cow. Lets her great, hairy baby crap all over

the drive."

Beginning to shiver under the weight of her wet clothing, it took Claire a

moment to work out just where the conversation had departed from the expected text.

"I meant, do you mind pets staying in the hotel?"

The old man snorted. "Then you should say what you mean."

Something in his face seemed suddenly familiar, but the shadows cast by the

single bulb hanging high overhead defeated Claire's attempt to bring his features into

better focus. Her left eyelid began to twitch in time with the pounding in her skull.

"Do I know you?"

"You do not."

He was telling the truth although something around the edges of his voice

suggested it wasn't the entire truth. Before she could press the matter, he snarled, "If

you don't want the room, I suggest you move on. I don't intend standing around here

all night."

The thought of going back out into the storm wiped everything else from her

head. "I want the room."

He dragged an old, green, leather-bound book out from under the counter and

banged it down in front of her. Slapping it open to a blank page, he shoved a pen in

her general direction. "Sign here."

She'd barely finished the final "n," her sleeve dragging a damp line across the

yellowing paper, when he plucked the pen from her hand and replaced it with a key

on a pink plastic fob.

"Room one. Top of the stairs to your right."

"Do I owe you anything in ad…" Claire let the last word trail off. The old man

had vanished as suddenly as he'd appeared. "Guess not."

Picking up her luggage, she started up the stairs, trusting to instinct for her

footing since the light was so bad she couldn't quite see the floor a little over five feet

away. Room one matched its key; essentially modern-if modern could be said to start

around the late fifties-and unremarkable. The carpet and curtains were dark blue, the

bedspread and the upholstery light blue. The walls were off-white, the furniture dark

and utilitarian. The bathroom held a sink, a toilet, and a tub/shower combination and

had the catch-in-the-throat smell of institutional cleansers.

Given the innkeeper, it was much better than Claire had expected. She set the

wicker carrier on the dresser, unbuckled the leather straps, and lifted off the top. After

a moment, a disgruntled black-and-white cat deigned to emerge and inspect the room.

As the storm howled impotently about outside the window, Claire shrugged

out of her coat, wrapped her hair in a towel and collapsed onto the bed trying,

unsuccessfully, to ignore the drum solo going on between her ears.

"Well, Austin, do the accommodations meet with your approval?" she asked

as she heard him pad disdainfully from the bathroom. "Not that it matters; this is the

best we can do for tonight."

The cat jumped up beside her. "That's too bad because-and I realize I risk

sounding clichéd in saying it-I've got a bad feeling about this."

Claire managed to crack both eyelids open about a millimeter. No one had

ever been able to determine if cats were actually clairvoyant or merely obnoxious

little know-it-alls. "A bad feeling about what?"

"You know: this." He paused to rub a damp paw over his whiskers. "Aren't

you getting anything at all?"

She let her eyes close again. "I seem to be getting MTV on one of my fillings.

It's part of the Stomp tour." Flinching at a particularly robust bit of metaphor, she

sighed. "I'm so thrilled."

A furry, ten-pound weight sat down on her chest. "I'm serious, Claire."

"The summons isn't any more urgent than it was this morning, if that's what

you're asking." One-handed, she unbuttoned her jeans, pushing the cat back onto the

bed with the other. "Nothing else is getting through this headache except a low-grade

buzz." "You should check it out."

"Check what out?" When Austin refused to answer, Claire decided she'd won,

tossed off her clothes, and got into a pair of cream-colored silk pajamas-standard

operating procedure suggested night clothes suitable for the six o'clock news, just in

case. Tucked under the covers, the cat curled up on the other pillow, she realized

why the old man had looked so familiar. He looked like a gnome. And not one of

those friendly garden gnomes either.

Rumplestiltskin she thought, and went to sleep smiling.

"This is weird, my shoes are still wet."

Austin glared at her from the litter box. "If you don't mind!"

"Sorry." Claire poured liquid out of the toe of one canvas sneaker, hung them

back over the shower curtain rod by their tied laces, then made a hasty retreat from

the bathroom. "It's not that I expected them to be dry," she continued, dropping onto

the edge of the bed, "but I was hoping they'd be wearably damp."

It was starting out to be a six of one, half a dozen of the other kind of a day.

On the one hand, it was still raining and her shoes were still too wet to wear. On the

other hand, her sleep had been undisturbed by signs or portents, her headache was

gone, and the low-grade buzz had completely disappeared. Even Austin had woken up

in a good mood, or as good a mood as he could manage before noon.

Flopping back against a pile of bedclothes, she listened past the sound of

feline excavation to the hotel's ambient noise, and frowned. "It's quiet."

'Too quiet?" Austin asked, coming out of the bathroom.

"The summons has stopped."

Sitting back on his haunches, the cat stared up at her. "What do you mean,

stopped?"

"I mean it's absent, not present, missing, not there." Surging to her feet, she

began to pace. "Gone."

"But it was there when you went to sleep?"

"Yes."

"So between ten-thirteen last night and eight-oh-one this morning, you

stopped being needed?"

"Yes."

Austin shrugged. "The site probably closed on its own."

Claire stopped pacing and folded her arms. "That never happens."

"Got a better explanation?" the cat asked smugly.

"Well, no. But even if it has closed, I'd be summoned somewhere else." For

the first time in ten years, she wasn't either dealing with a site or traveling to one

where she was needed. "I feel as though I've been cast aside like an old shoe, drifting

aimlessly…"

"Mixing metaphors," the cat interrupted, jumping up on the bed. "That's

better; while there's nothing wrong with your knees, they're not exactly expressive

conversational participants. Maybe," he continued, "you're not needed because good

has dominated and evil is no longer considered a possibility."

They locked eyes for a moment, then simultaneously snickered.

"But seriously, Austin, what am I supposed to do?"

"We're only a few hours from home. Why don't you visit your parents?"

"My parents?"

"You remember; male, female, conception, birth…"

Actually, she did remember, she just tried not to think about it much. "Are you

suggesting we need to take a vacation?"

"Right at the moment, I'm suggesting we need to eat breakfast."

The carpet on the stairs had seen better days; the edges still had a faint

memory of the pattern but the center had been worn to a uniform, threadbare gray.

Claire hadn't been exactly impressed the night before, and in daylight the guest house

had a distinctly shabby look.

Not a place to make an extended stay, she thought as she twisted the pommel

back onto the end of the banister.

"I think we should spend the day looking around," she said, following the cat

downstairs. "Even if the site's closed up, it wouldn't hurt to check out the area."

"Whatever. After we eat."

Searching for a cup of coffee, if not the promised breakfast, Claire followed

her nose down the hall to the back of the first floor. With any luck, that obnoxious

little gnome doesn't also do the cooking.

The dining room stretched across the end of the building and held a number of

small tables surrounded by stainless steel and Naugahyde chairs-it had obviously been

renovated at about the same time as her room. Outside curtainless windows, devoid of

even a memory of moldings, a steady rain slanted down from a slate-gray sky,

puddling beneath an ancient and immaculate white truck parked against the back

fence. Fortunately, before she could get really depressed about either the weather or

the decor, the unmistakable scent of Colombian double roast drew her around a corner

to a small open kitchen. The stainless steel, restaurant-style appliances were separated

from the actual eating area by a Formica counter, its surface scrubbed and rescrubbed

to a pale gray.

Standing at the refrigerator was a dark-haired young man in his late teens or

early twenties, wearing a chefs apron over faded jeans and a T-shirt. Although he

wore a pair of wire frame glasses, a certain breadth of shoulder and narrowness of hip

suggested to Claire that he wasn't the bookish type. The muscles of his back made

interesting ripples in the brilliant white cotton of the T-shirt and when she lowered

her gaze, she discovered, after a moment, that he ironed his jeans.

Austin leaped silently up onto the counter, glanced from the cook to Claire,

and snorted, "You might want to breathe."

Claire grabbed the cat and dropped him onto the floor as the object of the

observation closed the refrigerator door and turned.

"Good morning," he said. It sounded as though he actually meant it.

Distracted by teeth as white as his shin and a pair of blue eyes surrounded by a

thick fringe of dark lashes, not to mention the musical, near Irish lilt of a

Newfoundland accent, Claire took a moment to respond. "Good grief. I mean, good

morning."

It wasn't only his appearance that had thrown her. In spite of his age, or rather

lack of it, this was the most grounded person she'd ever met. First impressions

suggested he'd never push a door marked pull, he'd arrive on time for appointments,

and, in case of fire, he'd actually remember the locations of the nearest exits. Glancing

down at his feet, she half expected to see roots disappearing into the floor but saw

only a pair of worn work boots approximately size twelve.

"Mr. Smythe left a note on the fridge explaining things." He wiped his hand

against his apron, couldn't seem to make up his mind about what to do next, and

finally let it fall back to his side. "I'm Dean Mclssac. I've been cook and caretaker

since last February. I hope you'll consider keeping me on."

"Keeping you on?"

Her total lack of comprehension appeared to confuse him. "Aren't you the new

owner, then?"

"The new what?"

He jerked a sheet of notepaper out from under a refrigerator magnet, and

passed it over.

The woman spending the night in room one, Claire read, is

Claire Hansen. As of this morning, she's the new proprietor. Except for a

small brown stain of indeterminate origins, the rest of the sheet was blank. "And that

explains everything to you?" she asked incredulously.

"He's been trying to sell the place since I got here," Dean told her. "I just

figured he had."

"He hasn't." So far, everything young Mr. Mclssac had said, had been the

truth. Which didn't explain a damned thing. Dropping the note onto the counter, she

wondered just what game the old man thought he was playing. "1 am Claire Hansen,

but I haven't bought this hotel and I have no intention of buying this hotel."

"But Mr. Smythe…"

"Mr. Smythe is obviously senile. If you'll tell me where I can find him, I'll

straighten everything out." She tried to make it sound more like a promise than a

threat. Although two long, narrow windows lifted a few of the shadows, the office

looked no more inviting in the gray light of a rainy day than it had at night.

"He lives here?" Claire asked sliding sideways through the narrow opening

between the counter and the wall, the only access from the lobby.

"No, in here." The door to the old man's rooms had been designed to look like

part of the office paneling. Dean reached out to knock and paused, his hand just above

the wood. "It's open."

"Then we must be expected." She pushed past him. "Oh, my."

Overdone was an understatement when applied to the room on the other side

of the door, just as overstuffed wasn't really sufficient to describe the furniture. Even

the old console television wore three overlapping doilies, a pair of resin candlesticks

carved with cherubs, and a basket of fake fruit.

Tucked into the gilded, baroque frame of a slightly pitted mirror was a large

manila envelope. Even from across the room Claire could see it was addressed to her.

Suddenly, inexplicably, convinced that things were about to get dramatically out of

hand, she walked slowly forward, picking a path through the clutter. It took a

remarkably long time to cover a short distance; then, all at once, she had the envelope

in her hand.

Inside the envelope were half a dozen documents and another note, slightly

shorter than the first.

"Senile but concise," Claire muttered. "Congratulations, you're the new owner

of .the Elysian Fields Guest House." She glanced up at Dean. "The Elysian Fields

Guest House?" When he nodded, she shook her head in disbelief. "Why didn't he just

call it the Vestibule of Hell?"

Dean shrugged. "Because that would be bad for business?"

"Do you get much business?"

"Well, no."

"I can't say I'm surprised." She bent her attention back to the note. "Stay out of

room six. What's in room six?"

"There was a fire, years ago. Mr. Smythe didn't need the room, so he saved

money on repairs by keeping it locked up."

"Sounds charming. That's all there is." She turned the paper over but it was

blank on the other side. "Maybe these will give us some ans…" Her voice trailed off

as, mouth open, she fanned the other papers. Her signature had been carefully placed

where it needed to be on each of the legal documents. And it was her signature, not a

forgery. Smythe had lifted it out of the registration book.

Which could only mean one thing.

"Mr. Mclssac, could you please go and get me a cup of coffee."

Dean found himself out in the office, the door to Mr. Smythe's rooms closed

behind him, before he'd made a conscious decision to move. He remembered being

asked to go for coffee and then he was in the office. Coffee. Office. Nothing in

between.

"Okay, so your memory's going." He ducked under the counter flap. "Look at

the bright side, boy, you're still employed."

Jobs were scarce, and he hoped he could hang on to this one. The pay wasn't

great, but it included a basement apartment and he'd discovered that he liked taking

care of people. He'd begun to think about taking some kind of part-time hotel

management course; when there were no guests, and there were seldom guests, he had

a lot of free time.

All that could change now that Mr. Smythe had gotten tired of waiting for a

buyer and given the place away to a total stranger. Who didn't seem to want it.

Claire Hansen was not what he'd expected. First off, she was a lot younger.

Although he'd had minimal experience judging the ages of women and the makeup

just muddled it up all the more, he'd be willing to swear she was under thirty. He

might even go as low as twenty-five.

And it was weird that she traveled with a cat.

"I can't feel the summons anymore, because I'm where I'm needed."

Austin blinked. "Say what?"

"Augustus Smythe is a Cousin."

"Augustus?"

"It's on the documents." Claire fanned them out so the cat could see all six

pages. "Printed. He knew better than to sign his name. He's been here for a while, so

obviously he was monitoring an accident site-a site he's buggered off from and made

my responsibility." She dropped down onto a sofa upholstered in pink cabbage roses

and continued dropping, sinking through billowing cushions to an alarming depth.

"Are you okay?" Austin asked a few moments later when she emerged,

breathing heavily and clutching a handful of loose change.

"Fine." Knees still considerably higher than her hips, Claire hooked an elbow

over the reinforced structure of the sofa's arm in case she started to sink again,

dropping the change into a bowl of dubious looking mints. It might have made more

sense to find another place to sit, but none of the other furniture looked any safer.

"The summons wasn't coming from the site, or I'd still be able to feel it. It had to have

been coming from Augustus Smythe."

The cat leaped up onto the coffee table. "He needed to leave so badly he drew

you here?"

"Since he left last night, which is when the summons stopped, that's the only

logical explanation."

"But why?"

"That's the question, isn't it? Why?"

Austin put a paw on her knee. "Why are you looking so happy about this?"

Was she? She supposed she was. "I'm not drifting any more." Stalling the day

with neither a summons nor a site had been disconcerting. "I have a purpose again."

"How nice for you." He sat back. "We're not going to get our vacation, are

we?" "Doesn't look like it." Her smile faded as she tapped the papers against her

thigh. "Why didn't Smythe identify himself when I didn't recognize him?"

"Better question, why didn't you recognize him?"

"I was tired, I was wet, and I had a headache," she pointed out defensively.

"All I could think of was getting out of that storm."

"You think he fuzzed you?"

"Where would he get the power? I was distracted, all right? Let's just leave it

at that." After another short struggle with the sofa, Claire managed to heave herself

back up onto her feet. "Since the site's in the hotel-or Smythe wouldn't have bothered

deeding it to me-and since I can't sense it, I'm guessing that it's so small it never

became enough of a priority to need a Keeper and Smythe finally got tired of waiting.

I'll close it, and we'll move on."

"And the hotel?" Austin reminded her.

"After I seal the site, I'll give it to young Mr. Mclssac."

"You think it's going to be that easy?"

"Isn't it always?" She picked up a squat figurine of a wide-eyed child in

lederhosen playing a tuba, shuddered, and put it back down. "Come on."

"Come on?" Trotting to the end of the table, he jumped over a plaster bust of

Elvis, went under a set of nesting Chinese tables, and beat her to the door. "Where are

we going?"

'To get some answers."

"Where?"

"Where else? Where we were told not to go."

Austin snorted. 'Typical."

Room six was on the third floor. As well as the standard lock, the door also

boasted a large steel padlock on an industrial strength flange. Both locks had been

made unopenable by the simple process of snapping the keys off in the mechanism.

"Seems like a lot of fuss over a small site," Austin muttered, dropping down

from his inspection.

"Well, he could hardly have guests wandering in on it regardless of size."

Releasing the padlock, Claire straightened. There were a number of ways she could

gain access to the room, but most of them were labeled "emergency use only" as they

involved the kind of pyrotechnics more likely to be deployed during small Middle

Eastern wars. "I wonder if young Mr. Mclssac has a hacksaw."

"Ms. Hansen?" Dean put the tray down on the desk and pushed his glasses

back up the bridge of his nose. She wasn't in Mr. Smythe's suite-her suite now, he

supposed-and she wasn't in the office. He hoped she wasn't upstairs packing. Am I

fired if she leaves?

Footsteps descending the stairs seemed to confirm his worst fears, but when

she came into view, she wasn't carrying her bags. She hadn't even put her coat on.

"Oh, there you are, Dean."

There he was? He hadn't gone anywhere except to get her the coffee she'd

asked for. "I brought cream and sugar," he told her as she squeezed under the counter

flap. "You didn't say how you took it."

"Definitely cream." She poured some into the mug and frowned at the sugar

bowl. "Do you have any packets of artificial sweetener?"

"Sure." As far as he could tell, she didn't need to watch her weight. While not

quite a woman a man could see to shoot gulls through, she was on the skinny side and

that much cream would pack on more pounds than a bit of sugar. "I'll go get you

some." "Dean?"

He straightened in the lobby and turned to face her over the counter.

"Bring your toolbox, too."

Cradling the coffee mug in both hands, Claire leaned against the wall and

watched Dean work. He'd had no trouble cutting the padlock off, but the original lock

was proving to be more difficult.

"I think you should call a locksmith, Ms. Hansen. I can't get in there without

damaging the door some."

"How much?"

He shrugged. "If I get my crowbar from the van, I could probably force it

open. Just stick it in here…" He ran a finger down the crack between the door and the

jam where the tongue of the lock ran into the wall. "… and shove. It'll crack the wood

for sure, but I can't say how much."

Claire took another swallow and considered her options. As long as Dean

stayed out of the actual room, there should be no problem; only the largest of sites

were visible to the untrained eye. "Go get your crowbar."

"Yes, ma'am."

When the sound of Dean's work boots clumping against bare wood suggested

he'd reached the lobby, Austin stretched and glared up at Claire. "Couldn't this have

waited until after breakfast? I'm starved."

"Could you have actually eaten not knowing what we were in for? Never

mind. Stupid question."

"You've got your coffee, the least you could've done was given me the cream."

"The vet said you're not supposed to have cream." She squatted and rubbed

him behind the ears. "Don't worry, it'll all be over soon. Waiting out on this side of

the door has me so edgy, I'm positive the site's in there."

"In a just world," the cat growled, "it would've been in the kitchen."

His boots wet from the run out to the van, Dean slipped them off at the back

door and started upstairs in his socks. Making the turn on the second floor landing, he

heard voices. I guess she's talking to the cat.

Voices. Plural, prodded his subconscious.

You're losing it, boy. The cat's not talking back.

She had her back to him when he stepped out into the third-floor hall. "Ms.

Hansen?"

Claire managed to bite off most of the shriek, but her heart slammed against

her ribs as she whirled around. "Don't ever do that!"

Jerking back a step, Dean brought the crowbar up between them. "Do what?"

"Don't ever sneak up on me like that!" She pressed her right hand between her

breasts. "You're just lucky I realized who you were!"

Although she was a good six or seven inches shorter than he was and there

was nothing to her besides, somehow, that didn't sound as ridiculous as it should

have. "I'm sorry!"

Austin banged his head against her shins and she looked down. "You took

your boots off."

"They got wet."

"Right. Of course." Bringing her breathing under control, Claire waved him

toward the locked door. "Break the lock, then step away. If there was a fire in there,

you won't want the mess tracked into the hall."

Dean flashed her a grateful smile as he jammed the crowbar into the crack.

Since coming west, he'd found few people who appreciated the kind of problems

involved in keeping carpets clean. "Yes, ma'am."

"And stop calling me ma'am. You make me feel like I'm a hundred years old."

When she saw him fighting a grin, Claire rolled her eyes. "I'm twenty-seven."

"Okay." A confidence given required one in exchange. "I'm t twenty-one." As

he pulled back on the bar, he glanced over at her expression and wondered how she

knew he was lying. "That is, I'll be twenty-one in a few months."

"So you're twenty?"

"Yes, ma'am."

The shriek of tortured wood and steel cut off further conversation. Hands over

her ears, Claire watched muscles stretch the sleeves of his T-shirt as the lock began to

give. When it popped suddenly, it took her a moment to gather her wandering

thoughts-although, she assured the world at large, it was purely an aesthetic interest.

In that moment, the door swung open, Dean looked into the room, and froze on the

threshold.

"Lord thunderin' Jesus! Mr. Smythe's been hiding a body up here!"

"Calm down." Claire put her palm in the center of Dean's back and shoved.

She'd have had more luck shifting the building. "And move!" Over the years she'd

seen bodies in every condition imaginable-and frequently the imagination had

belonged to fairly warped individuals. If this body had merely been left lying around,

she'd consider herself lucky.

Dean stayed in the doorway, the breadth of his shoulders blocking her way

and her view.

"I don't think," he said, grasping both edges of the doorframe, "that this is

something a lady ought to see."

"Well, you got part of it right, you don't think!" Choosing guile over force, she

slammed her knees into the back of his at the spot where the crease crossed the

hollow. As he collapsed, she pushed past him, one hand reaching out to the old-

fashioned, circular light switch.

The room was a little larger than the room Claire had slept in and the

decorating hadn't been changed since the early part of the century. An oversized

armchair sat covered in hand-crocheted doilies, a Victorian plant stand complete with

a very dead fern stood between the two curtained windows, and a woman lay fully

clothed on top of the bed, a sausage-shaped bolster under her head and a folded quilt

under her feet. Everything, including the woman, wore a fuzzy patina of dust. The air

smelted stale and, faintly, of perfume.

Claire could feel the edges of a shield wrapped around the body-which

explained why she hadn't been able to get a sense of what room six held. The shield

hadn't been put in place by a Cousin. At some point, a Keeper had been by and

wrapped the site up so tightly that even another Keeper couldn't get through.

Had Augustus Smythe not needed to leave so badly, Claire could've passed

happily through Kingston without ever realizing the site existed. The one thing she

couldn't figure out was why a Keeper would bother. While people did occasionally

manifest an accident site, the usual response was an exorcism, not the old Sleeping

Beauty schtick.

Tanya Huff - Keeper's Chronicles 1 - Summon the Keeper

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: