Summon the Keeper

by Tanya Huff

  “We have. How could you tell?”

  He felt his ears redden. “You’re sweating. Mr. Smythe was always sweating when he came out of the furnace room.”

  Martha smiled and dabbed at her forehead with a tissue pulled from her vest pocket. “How observant of you. We have, indeed, been in the furnace room, but we’re on our way up to room six now and we’d like you to come along.”

  He glanced over at Claire and noticed her slight hesitation before she nodded. “I don’t want to be in the way.”

  “Nonsense. As Austin says, you’re a part of this.”

  “Then just let me hang up my mop.”

  When he disappeared into his apartment, Martha turned toward her daughter. “He’s a kid?”

  “He’s barely older than Diana.”

  “Sweetie, I hate to tell you this, but your sister isn’t exactly a kid any more either.” When Claire’s brows drew in, she patted her on the arm. “Never mind. I don’t think you’ll have any problems with Dean. He’s a remarkably stable young man, not to mention very easy on the eyes. I like him.”

  Forced to agree with the first two sentiments, Claire snorted. “You’d like an Orchi if it did housework.”

  “This is incredible.” Remaining within the shielded area, attention locked on the sleeping Keeper, Martha moved around to the far side of the bed. “Just think of all the factors involved in achieving such an intricate balance of power.”

  “I am thinking about it, Mom. Or more specifically, I’m thinking about what’ll happen if I unbalance it, ever so slightly.”

  “Don’t.”

  Safely outside the shield, Claire sighed. Had she forgotten her mother was prone to those sorts of facetious comments? “I don’t suppose you can see a way to break the loop without precipitating disaster?”

  “No, I can’t. I’ve never seen anything so perfectly in balance. I’m very impressed. Such a pity I’ll never have a chance to tell the Keepers who designed it.”

  “Keepers.”

  “Oh, yes, this definitely took two people. You can see a double signature in the loop.”

  “Where?”

  “Here. And here.”

  Claire pressed the back of her hand against her mouth. She shouldn’t have missed the signs her mother had just pointed out. After all, she was a Keeper and her mother only a Cousin. “How can you stand to get so close to her?”

  “I concentrate on the binding, not on her. Still…” Dusting off her hands, she stepped out through the shield. “…that was nasty.”

  Crouched in the doorway, rubbing Austin behind the ears to keep him distracted, Dean shook his head. They were like TV cops standing over a body matter-of-factly discussing multiple stab wounds. “You don’t get disturbed about much, do you, Mrs. Hansen?”

  Martha turned to face him. “Actually, I’m very disturbed.”

  “It doesn’t show.”

  “After a few decades spent dealing with various sundry and assorted metaphysical accidents, I’ve gotten good at hiding my reactions. Also, the lineage is trained to remain calm about these sorts of things. It wouldn’t do to have us yelling ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater, now would it?”

  Not entirely certain that he understood the analogy, he let it go.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Austin murmured. “Just try sharpening your claws on the sofa and you’ll see how disturbed she gets.”

  Arms folded, Claire frowned down at the woman on the bed. In a strange way, Hell was the lesser of two evils. Unlike Aunt Sara, hell had done nothing it wasn’t supposed to do. “All right, Mom, you’ve seen the situation. Where should I begin?”

  “I suggest we begin by leaving the room.” Shooing Dean, Claire, and Austin out in front of her, she pulled the door closed then frowned at the splintered wood. “Then I suggest you get this fixed. Thank you, Dean.” She stepped aside as he snapped the padlock back on. “Finally, I suggest you get used to the idea of being here a while.”

  “I never thought I’d work out how to close this down in a day or two, Mom.”

  “You may not be intended to close it down, Claire. You may have been summoned here as a monitor.”

  Claire blinked. “I find that highly unlikely. The last monitor was a Cousin.”

  “And the site was clearly too strong for him to manage. It needs a Keeper.”

  “If it needs me,” she said, her eyes narrowing, “then it doesn’t need a monitor.”

  “I can’t see a way for you to safely interfere with the current arrangement. I think Dean’s idea is correct; given there was a war on, the Keeper, or Keepers, who dealt with this situation probably intended their solution to be a temporary measure. They plugged in the first available Cousin, then were killed during the fighting. Augustus must have been quite young and would have agreed to watch the site until the Keepers returned. They never did, and he was held by his word until another came along.

  “Just at the point where the site was about to destroy him utterly, there was Claire, drawn by his need to leave. I realize I’m speculating here, but I find myself feeling quite sorry for him.”

  “I don’t.” Claire flinched under her mother’s gaze. “All right, yes I do. He got a raw deal, but I don’t see why I should be happy to have the same one.”

  “Not exactly the same deal, if the site was intended to have a Keeper as a monitor.”

  “Or,” Claire insisted, “if that Keeper was intended to close the site down. I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, I’m going to find the Historian, find out exactly what those two Keepers did, then undo it. I have no intention of either allowing this to continue or of spending the rest of my life here.”

  “The Historian is seldom easy to find.”

  “That’s only because I’ve never gone looking for her.”

  “True enough. Meanwhile,” Martha glanced up and down the hall. “You have a guest house to run.”

  “Run?” Claire stared at her mother in astonishment. “Have you forgotten what’s in the basement?”

  “This was probably set up as a guest house because of what’s in the basement. This is a unique situation. The more you think about the site, the more attention you pay it, the stronger it becomes. You need a distraction, something to occupy your time.”

  “But the guests…”

  “They’re here two or three nights at most. Hardly long enough for a sealed site inside a dampening field to have much effect.”

  “But I already have a job; I’m a Keeper. I don’t know the first thing about running a guest house.”

  “Dean does.” Martha looked remarkably like Austin as she added, “And you said you didn’t want him to leave.”

  “Because I need a cook and a caretaker,” Claire explained hurriedly, picking at a wallpaper seam.

  “You still do.”

  “If I’m really a part of what’s going on,” Dean broke in, “I couldn’t just walk out.”

  “You couldn’t walk out on old Augustus,” Austin sniggered, “and he didn’t have Claire’s…”

  Claire’s head jerked up. “Austin!”

  “…sunny personality.”

  “Good, that’s settled.” Martha smiled on them both in such a way it became obvious the problem had been solved to her satisfaction.

  Since there seemed to be no point in continuing the argument, and since she wasn’t entirely certain which argument to continue, Claire started down the stairs, her heels thumping against the worn carpet. Dean fell into step beside her. “I want you to know that things are not going to continue the way they were under Augustus Smythe. I am not going to watch passively. I’m going to take action.”

  “Okay.” When she glared at him from the corner of one eye, he smiled and added, “Sure.”

  “Are you laughing at me?”

  “I was trying to cheer you up.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s all right, then.”

  As they disappeared down the stairwell, Austin wrapped his tail around his toes and looked up at Claire’s mother.
“Nice to have things settled.”

  Smoothing down the wallpaper Claire’d been picking at, Martha frowned. “It’s hard to believe that all this has been sitting here for so many years with no one aware of it.”

  “It was a bit of a surprise,” the cat admitted. “You can’t blame Claire for wanting to wrap it up and leave.”

  “Staying does ask a lot of her.”

  “Not the way she sees it. She thinks she’s been declawed.”

  “That’s only because she was looking forward to doing things, not merely waiting for all hell to break loose.”

  “Oh, that’s clever,” Austin snorted as he stretched and stood. “Come on, just in case the world’s about to end, you can feed me.”

  “Mr. Smythe has prog enough to last through freeze up,” Dean explained, setting the supper plates on the table.

  “Very reassuring, or it would be if I had the slightest idea of what you meant.”

  “I mean he has food enough to last the entire winter.”

  “Then why didn’t you say so.” Claire moved her chicken aside and tentatively tried a forkful of the wild rice stuffing. Her eyes widened as she chewed. “This is good.”

  “Try not to sound so surprised, dear, it’s rude.” Her mother waved a laden fork in Dean’s direction. “You cook, you clean, and you’re gorgeous; do you have a girlfriend?”

  “Mom.”

  “It’s okay.” His father’d had six older sisters and after twenty years of holiday dinners with his aunts, Dean pretty much expected both the comments and the question from any woman over forty. They didn’t mean anything by it, so it no longer embarrassed him. “No, ma’am, not right now,” he said, sliding into his seat.

  “Are you gay?”

  “Mom!”

  “It’s a perfectly valid inquiry, Claire.”

  “It’s a little personal, don’t you think? And it’s none of your business.”

  “It will be if you’re here for any length of time. I could introduce him to your uncle.”

  “He’s not gay.”

  “He most certainly is.”

  “I wasn’t talking about Uncle Stan! I was talking about Dean.”

  “And why are you so certain he’s not?”

  “I’m a Keeper!”

  Ears red, Dean stared intently into his broccoli. That was not a question he’d expected, at least not from Claire’s mother, although Uncle Stan did make a change from being set up with my best friend Margaret’s youngest daughter, Denise. “Um, excuse me, I was wondering, who’s the Historian?”

  “Heavens, I’d have thought you’d had enough exposition for one day.”

  Claire sighed. “He’s attempting to change the subject, Mom, you’ve embarrassed him.” She ignored her mother’s indignant denials. “The Historian is a woman…”

  “We don’t know that for certain, Claire,” Martha interrupted. “You may see her as a woman, but that doesn’t mean everyone does.”

  “Do you want to tell him?”

  “No need, you’re doing fine.”

  “The Historian,” Claire repeated through clenched teeth, “who I see as a woman, keeps the histories of all the Keepers.”

  “Is she a Keeper?” Dean asked, bending to pick up his napkin and slipping a bit of chicken under the table to the cat.

  “We don’t know.”

  “Then what is she?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “Okay. Where is she?”

  “We don’t know that either; not for certain at any given time. The Historian hates to be bothered. She says she can’t finish collecting the past with the present interrupting, so to protect her privacy she moves around a lot.”

  “Then how do you find her?”

  “I go looking.”

  Dean paused, wondering if he was ready for the next answer. Oh, well, the boat’s past the breakwater, I might as well drop a line. “Where?”

  “She usually sets up shop just left of reality.”

  “What?”

  “If reality exists, then it stands to reason that there must be something on either side of it.” Claire tapped the table on both sides of her plate with her fork as if that explained everything.

  He ate some chicken, delaying the inevitable. “Okay. Why left of reality?”

  “Because the Apothecary uses the space on the right.”

  “Dean? If I could have a few words?”

  “Sure, Mrs. Hansen.”

  “Martha.” She took the tea towel from his hand. “Here, let me help.”

  He watched as she dried a plate, decided her standards were high enough, and plunged his hands back into the soapy water. “Where’s Claire?”

  “Watching the news. I was wondering, did she explain her family situation?”

  “Both you and Mr. Hansen being Cousins?”

  “That’s right It’s a very rare situation, two Cousins together, and it’s why both our girls are Keepers. Now, usually Keepers become aware of what they are around puberty…are you blushing?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Must be the light.” She took a dry tea towel off the rack. “Because of their double lineage, my girls not only knew what they were from the start but were unusually powerful. Although they’re better socialized than many Keepers—my husband and I tried to give them as normal an upbringing as possible—they’ve been told most of their lives that with great power comes great responsibility—clichéd but true, I’m afraid. Now, Claire’s willing to give her life for that responsibility, but, like all Keepers, it’s made her more than a little arrogant.”

  Dean set the plate he was washing carefully back into the water and slowly turned. “What do you mean, give her life?”

  “Evil doesn’t take prisoners.” Martha shook her head, wiping a spoon that was long dry. “That sounds like it should be in a fortune cookie, doesn’t it?”

  Pulling the spoon from her hand, Dean locked eyes with the older woman and said softly, “Mrs. Hansen, why are we having this conversation?”

  “Because all power corrupts and the potential for absolute power has the potential to corrupt absolutely. This site has already corrupted a Keeper and made a Cousin, at best, bitter and, at worst, mean. I don’t want that happening to my daughter. She’s going to need your help.” When he opened his mouth, she raised her hand. “I realize your natural inclination is to immediately assure me you’ll do everything you can, but I want you to take a moment and think about it. Their abilities tend to deemphasize interpersonal relationships; she can be downright autocratic at times.”

  He dropped the spoon in the drawer. “What happens when she finds this Historian?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She thinks she’s too powerful to be here just as a monitor, doesn’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  Dean watched the iridescent light dance across the soap bubbles in the sink. “I’ll tell you, Mrs. Hansen…”

  “Martha.”

  “…I don’t know Claire and I don’t really understand what’s going on, but if you say she’s after needing me, well, I’ve never turned away from someone who’s needed me before and I’m not after starting now.”

  Long years of practice kept her from smiling at the confidence of the young. At twenty-five that speech would’ve sounded pompous. At twenty, it sounded sincere. “She won’t make it easy for you.”

  “You ever gone through a winter in Portuguese Cove, Mrs. Hansen?”

  “Martha. And no, I haven’t.”

  “Once you can do that you can do anything. Don’t worry, I’ll help her run things and I’ll try not to let her push me around because of what she is.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Everyone likes to be needed.”

  She studied him thoughtfully for a moment, then said, “You’re taking this whole thing remarkably well, you know. Most people wouldn’t be able to cope with having their entire worldview flipped on its side.”

  “But it wasn’t my entire worldview, now was it?
” He plunged his hands back into the soapy water. “The sun still comes up in the east sets in the west, rain falls down, grass grows up, and American beer still tastes like the water they washed the kegs out with. Nothing’s changed, there’s just more around than I knew about two days ago.” With a worried lift of his brows, he nodded toward the rest of the silverware on the tray. “If you could, please finish that cutlery before the water dries and makes spots…”

  They worked in silence for a while, the only sound the wire brush against the bottom of the roasting pan.

  “Mrs. Hansen?”

  “Martha.”

  “What is it you do?”

  “Claire’s father and I watch over the people who live in an area where the barrier between this world and evil is somewhat porous.”

  “But I thought Cousins couldn’t use the caulking gun.”

  Martha stopped drying one of the pots and stared at him. “The what?”

  “The magical equivalent of the caulking gun that seals the holes in the fabric of the universe.” Dean repeated everything he could remember of Claire’s explanation.

  When he finished, Claire’s mother shook her head. “It’s a bit more complicated than that, I’m afraid.” Then she frowned as she thought it over. “All right, perhaps it isn’t—but it’s certainly less rational. We’re not dealing with a passive enemy but a malevolent intelligence.”

  “Does Claire know this?”

  “Of course she does, she’s a Keeper. But she’s young enough to believe—in spite of what you might think of her advanced age,” she interjected at his startled expression, “that it’s not the energy that’s the problem, it’s what people do with it. While that may be true in a great many cases, there’s also energy that you simply can’t do good with, no matter what your intentions are.”

  “Evil done in God’s name is not God’s work. Good done in the Devil’s name is not the Devil’s work.” He set the last pan in the rack to drain. “It’s what my granddad used to say before he clipped me on the ear.”