Summon the Keeper

by Tanya Huff

  Something heavy hit the floor in the room above the dining room. Dean and Austin stared at the ceiling.

  “What do think she’s doing up there?”

  “She’s still in the attic,” Austin told him. “And so the question becomes, what’s she doing up there?”

  Dean leaned into his polishing cloth with a certain amount of violent activity. “Finding antiques.”

  “I’m amazed you left them up there together.” The cat flopped down on the polished end of the table and stretched to his full length. “A woman. A man. Didn’t you say he was a sailor? You know what they say about sailors.”

  “They don’t say it about dead sailors.” He peered sideways at the cat. “Austin, can I ask you a personal question? Were you castrated?”

  Austin rolled over and blinked up at him. “My, that is personal. Why do you ask?”

  “Something Claire said.”

  “She sees all, she tells all.” The cat snorted. “If you must know, yes, I was. I was with a less enlightened—and, as it turned out, allergic—family before I moved in with Claire.”

  “How do you feel about it?”

  “It broadened my horizons. I was no longer forced by biology to endlessly pursue females in heat and could turn my attention to philosophy and art.”

  Dean nodded, understanding. “It pissed you off.”

  “Of course it pissed me off!” Ears back, Austin glared up at him. “Wouldn’t it piss you off? But…” he spent a moment grooming the dime-sized spot of black fur on the side of a white paw. “…I got over it. Eventually it was a relief to be able to go outside and not come home with my ear shredded by some feline Goliath out to overpopulate the neighborhood.”

  “Did you talk to the other family?”

  “Not after that.”

  A crack of displaced air heralded the sudden appearance of a ladder-back chair in the far corner of the dining room. Closely followed by Jacques, who displaced no air but made up for it in personal volume.

  “Liberté! I am free! She was right! I go where the furniture is!” He advanced on Dean, his arms flung wide. “Freed, I gladly apologize to you.”

  Dean backed up a step as Jacques walked through the table.

  “You are not a Newfie like an insult even though you are from the colony of the despicable British.”

  “Newfoundland joined Canada in 1949,” Dean told him stiffening.

  “Bon. Just what this country need, more Anglais. It has no matter, we start again, you and I. So tell me, Dean, why do you stay here in such a place?” He paused and looked him up and down. “Should you not be fishing or whacking on the seals or something?”

  Dean folded his arms. “I stay,” he said through clenched teeth, “because Claire needs me.”

  “For what?” As Dean’s expression darkened, Jacques raised both hands, palms out. “No, no, it is not another insult. I want to know because I think of you. Since I must stay, you can go if I can do for Claire what you can do.” His volume dropped dramatically. “You know of her? Sleeping upstairs? I tell you, it is not safe for a young man in a building where she is.”

  “You must think I’m really stupid,” Dean snarled. “It’s sure as scrod not my safety you’re thinking of.” If he’d ever even considered packing it in and shipping away from this weirdness, he certainly had no intention of going anywhere now.

  “Then think of the Keeper’s safety. When you are here she must protect you all the time. Her attention it is divided.”

  “I can protect myself!”

  “How?”

  “His strength is the strength of ten,” Austin muttered, dropping his chin onto his paws, “because his heart is pure.”

  Nose-to-nose, both men ignored him.

  “If Claire allows me a body…”

  “If Claire what?” Dean interrupted.

  The cat looked up. “It’s an incubus kind of a thing. Not generally approved of by the lineage, but there have been exceptions.”

  “And I have been already excepted,” Jacques announced smugly, and disappeared.

  “I hate it when they do that,” Austin said, dropping his head again. “You never know when they’re really gone.” As Dean turned toward him, eyes wide behind the lenses of his glasses, he added, “I know, of course, but you don’t.”

  “Is he gone?”

  “Yes.” Claire answered as she came into the dining room brushing cobwebs off her shoulders. “He’s upstairs investigating the rest of the hotel. I spread the stuff from the room he died in as widely as possible.”

  “In my apartment?”

  “Of course not. I didn’t put anything in the basement at all.”

  Dean folded his arms. “Is it true what he said?”

  “That depends. What did he say?”

  “That you…” She lifted an eyebrow and Dean suddenly found it difficult to continue. “That you gave him a body.”

  “He said I gave him a body?”

  Her tone lowered the temperature in the room about ten degrees. His crossed arms now a barricade, Dean couldn’t stop himself from stepping back. “Not exactly.”

  “What exactly did he say?”

  It wasn’t a request. Moistening dry lips, Dean repeated the conversation.

  Claire sighed and lifted her right hand into the air, fingers flicking off the points. “First according to my mother and my cat, you don’t need my protection and, as things stand right now, there’s nothing to protect you from. Second, I need you to run this place. Jacques certainly isn’t going to be cooking, cleaning, or unclogging toilets. Third, I didn’t make the exception for him, she did.”

  Feeling both foolish and reassured. Dean watched his finger rub along the edge of the tabletop. “Will you?” The silence drew his gaze back to Claire’s face. “Uh, never mind.”

  “Wise choice,” Austin muttered.

  Claire sighed again. Her life used to be so simple. “Look, Dean, I realize Jacques made it sound like he and I, that we…” She paused, wondering why she was so embarrassed about something that hadn’t happened. Maybe because somewhere deep in the back of her mind she’d considered it? Clearing her throat, she started again. “Put yourself in his place, trapped between life and death, trapped alone in that attic for decades.”

  “Okay. I guess I feel sort of sorry for him,” Dean allowed reluctantly. “But every ghost story I’ve ever heard says he’ll be a nuisance at best.”

  The can of furniture polish crashed suddenly to the floor.

  “See?”

  “That was Austin.”

  A cupboard door opened and one of the plastic salt shakers put out for guests flung itself halfway across the room.

  “That was Jacques.”

  “Just meeting expectations.” He materialized by Claire’s side, grinning wickedly.

  “Ground rules,” Claire told him, folding her arms and trying not to smile. “First, no throwing things.”

  “He started it.” Jacques nodded at the cat.

  “If he took poison, would you?”

  “What would be the point?”

  She had to admit that under the circumstances it was a stupid question. Actually, under most circumstances it was a stupid question. “Second, when you’re in a room with either Dean, or me, or both of us, you must be visible.”

  “And thirdly? There is always a thirdly, yes?”

  “Thirdly, if we’re all going to live together for a while, let’s make an effort to get along.”

  “I cannot go down there with you.” Jacques squatted at the top of the stairs to better watch Claire descend. “Why not?”

  “Because there’s nothing of yours in the basement.”

  “Is it because he lives in the basement and you keep us from fighting over who is most important in your life?”

  “Something like that.” Claire smiled as she moved out of his line of sight. For the moment, it was surprisingly entertaining being the center of someone’s universe.

  “Cleaning is woman’s work.” Spra
wled on the bed, the ghost peered around the room.

  Dean very carefully coiled the vacuum cleaner cord around the back of the machine. “Is it?”

  “Oui. Any man would know.”

  “Like you know it?” He picked up his divided bucket of cleaning supplies.

  “Oui.”

  “Why don’t you tell Claire?”

  “That cleaning is woman’s work?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I cannot. She is in the basement.”

  Dean mourned the missed opportunity. Even after only three days he had a fairly good idea of Claire’s response to a declaration of that type.

  “I think you need to rub harder.”

  “Don’t you have something to do?” Dean growled, scowling up at the ghost. While searching for paint for the sign, he’d come across a can of paint remover and, although the dining room was still a catastrophe, Claire had decided he should spend the rest of the afternoon stripping the front counter.

  Sitting on the countertop, Jacques thought about it, soundlessly drumming his heels. “No,” he said cheerfully after a moment. “I will remain here and watch you.”

  “Don’t”

  “Dean.”

  He leaned around the flailing legs. “Yeah, Boss?”

  Carrying a second box of triple-X videos from the sitting room, Claire pushed her hair up off her face with the back of her hand. “Jacques isn’t hurting anything. He’d help if he could.”

  “I would,” Jacques agreed cheerfully. “Truly I would help if I could.”

  “Yeah. Sure.” Until this point, Dean had always been able to give any new acquaintance the benefit of the doubt. Until this point they’d all been alive, but if he disliked Jacques solely because he was dead, didn’t that make him as much of a bigot as if he disliked him because he was French Canadian? Now, if he disliked him because of the way he acted around Claire, that opened a whole…

  He threw his weight behind the scraper.

  …new…

  Muscles bulged in his jaw as he gritted his teeth.

  …barrel of fish.

  “I think you reached the wood right there,” Jacques pointed out conversationally.

  “Claire?”

  She paused, one hand on the doorknob. “What is it, Jacques?”

  “You have put nothing of me in your bedroom.” Standing on the threshold, he pushed against an invisible barrier. “I cannot come in.”

  “I know.”

  He stared soulfully at her. “I want only to be where you are.”

  “Why don’t you try being back in the attic where your bed is and I’ll see you in the morning.” She pushed the door closed.

  “Even though you close the door on my face, I still desire you!”

  She had to smile. “Good night, Jacques.” Switching off the light and dropping her robe, she climbed into bed.

  “Claire?” His voice came faintly through the door. “I would just sit in the chair. My word as a Labaet.”

  “Good night, Jacques.” After a moment, she sighed. “Jacques, go away. I can still feel you standing there.”

  “I am on guard so that your sleep is not disturbed.”

  “The only thing disturbing my sleep is you. Why won’t you go away?”

  “Because…” He paused and she felt him sigh. Or she felt the emotion behind the sigh; as he wasn’t breathing, he didn’t actually exhale. “Because I have been so many years alone.”

  Alone. Once again, the word throbbed between them, and once again it evoked an emotional response. Claire couldn’t deny the urge to bring the small tapestry cushion—the cushion that gave him access to her sitting room—into the bedroom. She couldn’t deny it, but she managed to resist it. “You can stand at the door if you want to.” After a moment, she pushed her face into Austin’s side and murmured, “This could become a problem.”

  “I told you so.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “Well, I would’ve if I’d been there.” He touched her shoulder with a front paw. “You’re attracted to him, aren’t you?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, I’m a Keeper.”

  “So?”

  “I feel sorry for him.”

  “And?”

  “He’s dead.”

  Down in the furnace room, the flames reflected on the copper hood were a sullen red. It could have told the Keeper that the spirit was trapped in the same binding that held it—accidentally caught and held.

  BUT SHE DIDN’T ASK US.

  It would have been even more annoyed had it not recognized all sorts of lovely new tensions now available for exploitation.

  FIVE

  AT SEVEN-FORTY THE NEXT MORNING, at the far end of the third-floor hall, the vacuum cleaner coughed, sputtered, and roared into life. Three-and-a-half seconds later, Dean smacked the switch and it coughed, sputtered, and wheezed its way back to silence. Heart pounding, he stared down at the machine, wondering if it had always sounded like the first lap of an Indy race—noisy enough to wake the dead.

  Or worse.

  Which is ridiculous. He’d vacuumed this same hall once a week for as long as he’d worked here with this same machine and the woman in room six had slept peacefully—or compulsively—through it. Contractors had renovated the rooms to either side of her and obviously she hadn’t stirred. Mrs. Hansen had all but stuck pins in her, and still she slept on.

  The odds were good that he wasn’t after waking her up this morning.

  His foot stopped three inches above the off/on switch and Dean couldn’t force it any closer.

  Apparently, his foot didn’t like the odds.

  So he changed feet.

  His other foot was, in its own way, as adamant.

  You’re being nuts, boy. He carefully cleaned his glasses, placed them back on his nose, and, before the thought had time to reach his extremities, stomped on the switch, missed, and nearly fell over as his leg continued through an extra four inches of space.

  Clearly, parts of his body were more paranoid than the whole.

  Okay, uncle. He unplugged the machine and rewound the cord. There had to be an old carpet sweeper up in the attic, and he could always use that.

  On his way back to the storage cupboard, he bent to pick up a small picture of a ship someone had left on the floor. He had no idea where it had come from; guests had found Mr. Smythe’s taste in art somewhat disturbing, so the walls had been essentially art free ever since the embarrassing incident with the eighteenth-century prints and the chicken.

  Upon closer inspection, the picture turned out to be a discolored page clipped from a magazine slid into a cheap frame. A cheap, filthy frame.

  Holding it between thumb and forefinger, Dean frowned. What was it doing leaning against the wall outside room six? And could he get it clean without using an abrasive?

  “Put that down!”

  Behind his glasses, Dean’s eyes narrowed as he raised his gaze from the felted cobwebbing to the ghost “Is it yours, then?”

  “It is mine as much as it is anyone’s.”

  If the picture belonged to Jacques, that explained why he’d never seen it before. “Why should I put it down?” he asked suspiciously.

  Jacques’ expression matched Dean’s. “Why do you hold it?”

  “I found it on the floor.”

  “Then put it back on the floor.”

  “There?” A nod indicated the picture’s previous position against the wall—far, far too handy to the sleeping Keeper.

  “Oui, there! What are you, stupide?”

  “Why do you want me to put it there?”

  “Because that is where it was!”

  “So?”

  “Do you try to block my way, Anglais?”

  “If I can,” Dean growled, taking a step toward the dead man. The way he understood it, Jacques had been dead as dick and haunting the hotel at the same time as the evil Keeper’s attempt to control the accident site. It wouldn’t surprise him to discover the ghost had been her accomplice and
now, with Claire unwilling to give him a body, he had only one other place to turn. Dean couldn’t let that happen, not after everything Claire and her mother and the cat had said. “What are you planning, Jacques?”

  Jacques folded his arms and rolled his eyes. “I should think,” he said scornfully, “that what I, as you so crudely say, plan, would be obvious even to a muscle-bound imbecile like yourself.”

  “You’re after waking her?”

  “Waking her?” The ghost shot a speculative look in Dean’s direction. “Oui, if you like. I wake her to new sensations. And when I tell Claire that you gather what allows me to walk within the hotel, that you try to keep me from her, she will not like that, I think.”

  …what allows me to walk within the hotel. Dean’s scowl faded as he realized, for the first time in his life, he’d leaped to the worst possible conclusion, his response based solely on his irrational reaction to a dead man. The picture had nothing to do with the sleeping Keeper. Working from the attic, Claire must’ve sent it to the third floor hall without considering where it might end up.

  He’d completely forgotten about Jacques’ anchors. He opened his mouth to explain and was amazed to hear himself say, “Sure, run and hide behind Claire.”

  “Run and hide?” Anger blurred Jacques’ edges.

  “Too dead to stand up for yourself?”

  “Claire…”

  “This has nothing to do with Claire.” Dean set the picture back on the floor—as far from room six as he could put it without appearing to give ground—then straightened, shoulders squared. “This is between you and me.”

  “Me, I think this has everything to do with Claire,” Jacques murmured, studying the younger man through narrowed lids. “But you are right, mon petit Anglais, this is between you and me.”

  Claire had been vaguely disappointed not to find Jacques waiting for her when she passed through the sitting room on her way to the bathroom. Thoughts of him spending the night pressed up against her bedroom door had inserted themselves into her dreams and jerked her awake almost hourly. She’d wanted to share her mood with him while she still felt like giving him a body in order to wring his neck.

  It didn’t help that the morning’s measurements had shown a perceptible buildup of seepage. With no access to the power sealing the hole, she couldn’t cut it off, and she certainly couldn’t let it build up indefinitely.