by Tanya Huff
When Dean set down the plate, she stared aghast at the scrambled eggs, sausage patties, grilled tomatoes, and three pieces of toast. “This is more food than I’d usually eat all day.”
“I guess that’s why you’re so…”
“So what?”
“Nothing.”
“What?”
“Skinny.” Hie ears slowly turning red, Dean set the cutlery neatly on each side of the plate and hurried back into the kitchen. “I’ll, uh, get you another coffee, then.”
While his back was turned, Claire rolled her eyes. She was not skinny; she was petite. And he was so—in rapid succession she considered and discarded intense, earnest, and stalwart. Before she worked her way down to yeomanly, she decided she’d best settle on young and leave it at that. “Aren’t you having any?” she asked as he returned with her mug.
A little surprised, he shook his head. “I ate before you got up.”
“That was hours ago. Bring another plate, you can have half of this.”
“If I bring another plate…” Austin began.
“No.” When Dean hesitated, Claire prodded at his conscience. “Trust me, I’m not going to eat all of it; it’ll just get thrown out.”
A few moments later, a less intimidating breakfast in front of her and Dean eating hungrily on the other side of the table the way only a young man who’d gone three hours without eating could, Claire turned suddenly toward the cat and said, “You’re sure he’s a part of this?”
“I’m positive.”
“You were positive that time in Gdansk, too.”
Austin snorted. “So my Polish was a little rusty, sue me.” He stared pointedly up at her, his tail flicking off the seconds like a furry metronome.
“All right. You win.” Chewing and swallowing a forkful of tomato delayed the inevitable only a few moments more. Feeling the weight of Dean’s gaze join the cat’s, she lifted her head and cleared her throat. “First of all, I want you to realize that what I’m about to tell you is privileged information and is not to be repeated. To anyone. Ever.”
Wrapped in the comforting and lingering odors of sausage and egg, Dean ran through a fast replay of the morning’s events. “Nothing personal, but who’d believe me?”
“You’d be surprised. When I got up today, I didn’t expect I’d be telling it to you.” Eyes narrowed, she leaned forward. “If this information falls into the wrong hands…”
Unable to help himself, Dean mirrored her movement and lowered his voice dramatically. “The fate of the world is at stake?”
“Yes.”
When he realized she meant it, he could’ve sworn he felt each individual hair rise off the back of his neck. It was an unpleasant sensation. He pushed his chair away from the table, all of a sudden not really hungry. “Okay. Maybe you’d better not tell me.”
Claire shot an annoyed look at the cat. “Too late.”
“But you don’t even know me. You don’t know you can trust me.”
The possibility of not trusting him hadn’t crossed her mind. Total strangers probably handed him their packages while they bent to tie their shoelaces. If a game needed a scorekeeper, he’d always be the one drafted. Mothers could safely leave small children with him and return hours later knowing that their darlings had been fed, watered, and harmlessly amused. And he does windows.
“I know we can trust you,” Austin muttered, leaping up onto an empty chair and glaring over the edge of the table at a piece of uneaten sausage. “Get on with it. I’m old. I haven’t got all day. Are you going to finish that?”
“Yes.” While she cleared her plate, Claire created and scrapped several possible beginnings. Finally, she sighed. “I suppose Austin’s right…”
“Well thank you very much.”
“…it begins with believing in magic.”
“And ends with?” Dean asked cautiously.
“Armageddon. But if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather leave that for another day.” When he indicated that Armageddon could be left for as long as she liked, Claire continued. “Magic, simply put, is a system for tapping into and controlling the possibilities of a complex energy source.”
“Energy from where?”
“From somewhere else.” It was clear that she’d lost him. She sighed. “It doesn’t have a physical presence, it just is.” In fact, a part of it had reputedly once explained itself by saying, “I AM.” but that wasn’t a detail Claire thought she ought to add.
“It just is,” Dean repeated. Since she seemed to be waiting to see if he was willing to accept that, he shrugged and said, “Okay.” At this point, it seemed safest.
“Let’s compare magic to baseball. Everyone is more-or-less capable of playing the game but not everyone has the ability to make it to the major leagues.” Pleased with the analogy, Claire made a mental note to remember it. She could use it should she ever be in this situation again—owning a hotel complete with sleeping evil, a hole to Hell in the basement, and a handsome, young caretaker to whom her cat spilled his guts. Yeah, right. Her nostrils flared.
Taken aback by the nostril flaring, Dean shuffled his feet under the table, glanced around the familiar dining room, and finally said, “Could I do it?”
“With training and discipline, lots of discipline,” she added in case he started thinking it was easy, “anyone can do minor magics—so minor that most people don’t think they’re worth the effort.”
Feeling like he’d just been chastised by his fifth grade teacher, an intense young woman right out of teacher’s college whom every boy in the class had had a crush on, Dean slid down in his chair until his shoulders were nearly level with the table and his legs, crossed at the ankle, stretched halfway across the room. “Go ahead.”
“Thank you.” An irritated so kind came implied with the tone. Who did he think he was? “Most of the energy magic deals with comes from the center part of the possibilities. The upper end is for emergency use only and the lower end is posted off-limits. For the sake of argument, let’s call the upper end ‘good,’ and the lower end ‘evil.’” She paused, waiting for an objection that never came. “You’re okay with that? I mean, good and evil aren’t exactly late twentieth century concepts.”
“They were at my granddad’s house,” Dean told her. Tersely invited to elaborate, he shrugged self-consciously. “My granddad was an Anglican minister.”
“This is the Reverend McIssac, the grandfather who raised you?”
He nodded.
“What happened to your parents?” Claire didn’t entirely understand his expression, but as the silence went on just a little too long, she suspected he wasn’t going to answer. “I’m sorry, that was tactless of me. I’m not actually very good with people.”
“Quel surprise,” Austin muttered, head on his front paws.
“No, it’s okay.” Dean spun one of the breakfast knives around on the table, eyes locked on the whirling blade. “They died when I was a baby,” he said at last. “House fire. It happens a lot when the woodstove gets loaded up on the first cold night of winter and you find out what condition your chimney is really in. My dad threw me out the upstairs window into a snowbank just before the building collapsed.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I never knew them. It was always just me and my granddad. My father was his only son, see, and he wouldn’t let any of my aunts raise me. He’s the one who taught me to cook.” All at once, Dean had to see Claire’s expression. Too many girls fell into a “poor sweet baby” mood at this point in the story and things never really recovered after that. Catching the knife between two fingers, he looked up and saw sympathy but not pity, so he told her the rest. “They could’ve saved themselves if they hadn’t gone upstairs for me. I’ve always known, without a doubt, how much they loved me. There’s not a lot of people who can say that.”
Swallowing a lump in her throat, Claire reached over and lightly touched the back of his hand. “No wonder you’re so stable.”
He shrugged self
-consciously. “Me?”
“Do you see anyone else around here who isn’t a cat?” Austin reached up and batted the knife off the table. “Thank you for sharing. Now, can we get on with it?”
Partly to irritate the cat, and partly to allow emotions to settle, Claire waited while Dean dealt with the smear of butter and toast crumbs on the floor before picking up the scattered threads of the explanation. “You ready?”
He nodded.
“All right, back to good energy and evil energy. Between this energy and what most of the world considers reality, is a barrier. For lack of a better term, let’s keep calling it the fabric of the universe. Those who use magic learn to pierce this barrier and draw off the energy they need. Unfortunately, it also gets pierced by accident.” She took a long swallow of coffee. “In order to continue, I’m going to have to grossly oversimplify, so please don’t think that I’m insulting your intelligence.”
“Okay.” It still seemed to be the safest response.
“Every time someone does something good, it pokes a hole through the fabric, releases some of the good energy, and everybody benefits. Every time someone does something evil, it releases some of the evil energy and everybody suffers.”
“How good?” Dean wondered. “And how evil?”
“The holes are proportional. If say, you sacrificed yourself to save another or conversely sacrificed another to save yourself, the holes would be large.” She paused to watch raindrops hit the window behind his head, the drops merging until their weight pulled them in tiny rivers toward the ground. “The problem is that small holes can get bigger. Evil oozing out a pinprick inspires more evil which enlarges the hole which inspires greater evil…Well, you get the idea.”
“Unless he’s dumber than kibble,” Austin growled. “I can’t believe that was the best you could come up with.”
Claire stared down at him through narrowed eyes. “All right. You come up with a better explanation.”
Twisting around on the chair seat, the cat pointedly turned his back on her. “I don’t want to.”
“You can’t.”
“I said, I didn’t want to.”
“Ha!”
“Excuse me?” Dean waved a hand to get Claire’s attention. “Is that what happened in the furnace room? Someone did something evil and accidentally made a hole?”
“Not exactly,” she said slowly, trying to decide how much he should know. “Some holes are made on purpose. There are always people around who want what they’re not supposed to have and are arrogant enough to believe they can control it.” Recalling an accident site she’d come upon her first year working solo, she shook her head. “But they can’t.”
Dean read context if not particulars in the movement. “Messy?”
“It can be. I once found a body, an entire body, in the glove compartment of a 1984 Plymouth Reliant station wagon.”
“The 1.2 liter GM, or the Mitsubishi engine?”
“Does it matter?”
“It does if you need to buy parts.”
Claire drummed her fingernails against the tabletop. “I’m talking about a body in a glove compartment, not a shopping trip to Canadian Tire.”
“Sorry.”
“May I continue?”
“Sure.”
“Thank you. Most holes can be taken care of with the magical equivalent of a caulking gun. Some are more complicated, and a few are large enough for a significant amount of evil to break through and wreak havoc before anything can be done about them.”
His eyes widened, appearing even larger magnified by the lenses of his glasses. “Has this ever happened?”
She hesitated, then shrugged; this much she might as well tell him. “Yes. But not often; the sinking of Atlantis, the destruction of the Minoan Empire…”
“The inexplicable popularity of Barney,” Austin added dryly.
Claire’s eyes narrowed again, and Dean decided it might be safer not to laugh.
“Holes,” she announced, her tone promising consequences should the cat interrupt again, “that give access to evil draw one of two types of monitors.”
“Electronic monitors?”
“No.” She paused to rub a smear of lipstick off her mug with her thumb. This was turning out to be easier than she’d imagined it could be. At the moment, before the tenuous connection they’d acquired over the course of the morning dissolved back into the relationship of almost strangers, she suspected Dean would accept almost anything she said.
GO AHEAD, TAKE ADVANTAGE. HAVE SOME FUN. WHO’LL KNOW?
The mug hit the table, rocking back and forth.
Dean grabbed it before the last dregs of Claire’s coffee spilled out onto the table. “Are you okay?”
“Yes.” She blinked four or five times to bring him back into focus. “Of course. Did you hear anything just now?”
“No.”
He was clearly telling the truth.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine.” The voice had sounded slightly off frequency, as though the speaker hadn’t quite managed to sync up with her head. Considering the nature of the site in the furnace room, there could be only one possible source for that personal a temptation. And only one possible response.
“Right, then, the monitors. Now what?” she demanded when the pressure of Austin’s regard dragged her to a second stop.
“Nothing.”
“You’re staring.”
“I’m hanging on your every word,” he told her.
He was looking so irritatingly inscrutable, Claire knew he suspected something. Tough. “The monitors,” she began again, fixing her gaze on Dean and blocking the cat out of her peripheral vision, “are magic-users known as Cousins and Keepers. The Cousins are less powerful than the Keepers, but there’re more of them. They can mitigate the results of an accident, but they can’t actually seal the hole. They watch, and wait for the need to summon a Keeper.
“For the sites that can’t be sealed because the holes have already grown too large, Keepers, who’re always referred to as Aunt or Uncle for reasons no one has ever been able to make clear to me, essentially become the caulking and seal the hole with themselves. A lot of eccentric, reclusive old men and women are actually saving the world.”
Dean took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “So the Keepers are the good guys?”
“That’s right.”
“And the woman asleep upstairs is one of the bad guys?”
“She’s a Keeper gone bad.” The words emerged without emotion because the only emotion applicable to the situation seemed a bit much to indulge in over the breakfast dishes. “An evil Keeper.”
“An evil auntie?” he asked, unable to keep one corner of his mouth from curving up.
“It’s a title, not a relationship,” Claire snapped. He looked so abashed she couldn’t help adding, “But, essentially, yes. We found her name written in the furnace room. For safety’s sake, we can’t tell you what it is.”
Replacing his glasses, Dean straightened in his chair, shoulders squared, both feet flat on the spotless linoleum. “Written in the furnace room? On the wall?”
“The floor actually.” It was very nearly the strongest reaction he’d had all morning. Claire wasn’t entirely certain how she felt about that.
“Okay. As soon as you’re done, I’ll get right on it.”
“On it? And do what?”
“Get rid of it. I’ve got an industrial cleanser designed for graffiti,” he told her with the kind of reverence in his voice most males his age reserved for less cleansing pleasures. “Last spring, some kids decorated the side wall, the one facing the driveway, and this stuff took it right off the brick. Took off a bit of the mortar, too, but I fixed that.”
“You’ll just stay out of the furnace room, thank you very much.” Although it would be a unique solution, it wasn’t likely to be a successful one. Fortunately, the dampening field would keep him from attempting it on his own.
&nbs
p; Brow creased, he shook his head. “I hate to leave a mess….”
“I don’t care.” Claire smiled tightly across the table at him. “This time, you’re going to.”
“Okay. You’re the boss,” he sighed, slumping back into his chair. “But why can’t you tell me her name?”
“Because Austin was right….”
“I usually am,” the cat muttered.
“…and we really don’t want to wake her.”
Dean nodded. “Because she’s evil. What did she do? Try to use the power coming out of the hole for her own ends?”
Claire felt her jaw drop. “That’s exactly what she tried to do? How did you know?”
“I just thought it was obvious. I mean, she was corrupted by the dark side of the force, but another Keeper showed up to stop her just in time, and although she was beaten in a fair fight, she couldn’t be killed because that would bring the good guys down to her level, so they put her to sleep instead as kind of a temporary solution.”
Mouth open, Claire stared across the table at him.
Dean felt his cheeks grow warm. “But I’m just guessing.” When she didn’t respond, he squirmed uneasily in his chair. “It’s what they’d do in the movie.”
“What movie?” The question slipped out an octave higher than usual.
“Not an actual movie,” Dean protested hurriedly, not entirely certain what he’d done wrong. “It’s just what they’d do in a movie. If they did a movie. But they wouldn’t.” He’d never actually heard a cat laugh before. “I still don’t know why her name would wake her.”
Ignoring Austin, who seemed in danger of falling off the chair, Claire wrapped the tattered remains of her dignity around her, well aware that this bystander seven years her junior had offered his last statement out of kindness, deliberately handing back control of the conversation. “Names,” she said, coolly, “are more than mere labels; they’re one of the things that connect us to each other and to the world.” Which was one of the reasons she wasn’t planning on identifying the hole in the furnace room. If Dean thought of Hell by name, it could give the darkness a connection and easier access.