by Tanya Huff
“Go…1 darn it!”
Thanks to the two huge, plate glass windows in the back wall, any solution had to take the possibility of Mrs. Abrams into account. Making a mental note to buy blinds as soon as possible, she grabbed power and shot into the air so quickly she cracked her head on the hall ceiling.
“Scooped up the seepage,” Austin said with a snicker.
Both hands holding her head, Claire glared down at him. “I didn’t mean to.”
“You wanted it quick and dirty, didn’t you?”
“Well, yes, but…”
“That’s what you got. Still, I doubt you’ve permanently warped your character.”
“This wasn’t the first time. When I tried to stop Mrs. Abrams yesterday, I got knocked to my knees.”
“Once, twice; what’s the harm?”
“That’s probably what Augustus Smythe used to think.” The faint buzz of building seepage seemed to have disappeared; it was hard to be certain given the ringing in her ears from the impact. Drawing power carefully from the middle of the possibilities, she sank down until she was about two inches off the floor and then skated slowly forward. Another time, she might’ve been hesitant about continuing buoyancy initiated by seepage from Hell but right now she was too hungry to care.
Breathing eau de sealant shallowly through her mouth, she sat down by the sink, poured a bowl of cereal, and began to eat. She’d started a second bowl when Jacques appeared beside her.
“I think you should know,” he said, “that the man who deliver the flowers yesterday, he is just come in the front door.”
“What?”
“The man, who deliver the flowers yesterday…”
“I heard you.” Dropping her cereal in the sink, she flung herself off the counter and raced for the front of the hotel…
…unfortunately forgetting the section of tacky polyurethane she had to cross.
“Fruitcake!”
The emotional force behind the substitute expletive transfigured the toaster and the smell of candied fruit soaked in rum rose briefly over the prevailing chemicals.
Jacques studied the cake thoughtfully. “What would have happened, I wonder, had you actually used that old Anglo-Saxon expletive with you and I here together?”
“Do you have to!” Claire snapped, loosened her laces, pulled power, and floated to the hall, leaving her shoes where they were stuck.
“Not exactly have to,” Jacques murmured.
As Claire ran for the lobby, the deliveryman ducked out from behind the counter, holding what seemed to be the same bouquet of red mums. “I was just lookin’ for a piece of paper,” he said hurriedly. “The boss said I could leave the flowers, and I was gonna leave you a note.”
He was lying. Unfortunately, unless she knew for certain he was a threat to the site, Claire couldn’t force him to tell the truth.
“OH, WHY NOT?” asked the little voice in her head. “WHO’S GOING TO KNOW? YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO.”
“Shut. Up.” Claire held her hand out for the flowers. “I’ll see that Ms. Moore gets these,” she said aloud.
“Sure.” Watching her warily, he backed along the edge of the counter toward the door, reaching behind him for the handle. He slipped out, still without turning, and paused, peering through the crack just before the door closed. Yellowing teeth showed for an instant in an unpleasant smile. “Give Ms. Moore my regards.”
Setting the flowers down, Claire glanced into the office, but nothing seemed to have been disturbed. “Yeah, well, we’ll see about that.” Ducking under the counter, she lifted her backpack off a hook and rummaged around in the outer pocket. A few moments later, she pulled out the tattered remains of what had once been a large package of grape flavored crystals and poured what was left of the contents onto the palm of one hand.
“Sorry your shoes got stuck to the floor, Boss. I figured you’d notice it was still…” Dean’s voice faded out in shocked disbelief as he watched Claire fling a fistful of purple powder into the air.
The powder hung for a heartbeat, a swirling purple cloud with added vitamin C, then it settled into a confused jumble of foot and handprints leading from the front door into the office and back to the door again. A fair bit of the powder settled around the flower stems.
“What a mess,” Claire sighed. “This tells me nothing except that he was in here and I knew that already.”
“Who?”
“The flower deliveryman. I was trying to find out what he was up to.”
“With…” Dean rubbed a bit of the residue onto the end of a finger and sniffed it. “…grape Koolaid?”
“Actually, it’s generic. Why waste name brands if you’re just going to throw it around?”
“Okay.” He pulled a folded tissue from his pocket and carefully wiped his finger. “I’ll start cleaning this up.”
“Great. I need coffee.”
“The floor…”
“I know.” A careful two inches above the purple, she floated down the hall.
Unfortunately, the flavor crystals had been presweetened. It took Dean the rest of the morning to clean up the mess, and when he finished, he still wasn’t certain he’d got it all.
He was right. Although he glanced inside when he cleaned the purple prints off the key cabinet, he didn’t notice the small smudge that marked the end of the one empty hook.
“Look, why don’t you guys come over to the pub tonight and if this bozo’s there, you can point him out to me. I’m always eager to meet my fans.”
Dean looked doubtful. “What if he’s dangerous?”
“If he is, you’ll be there to help.” The musician smiled languorously up at him. “Won’t you?”
“Sure.” Ears red, Dean stepped sideways until he stood behind the masking foliage of a fake rubber plant that filled the southeast corner of Augustus Smythe’s sitting room. Until this moment he’d thought he’d gotten past those awkward, mortifying years of spontaneous reaction.
“What do you mean when you say sure?” Claire demanded from the other side of the room.
As far as he could tell, she had no idea why he’d moved. He glanced down at Sasha Moore, and his ears grew so hot they itched.
“Dean!”
Twisting one of the plastic leaves right off the plant, he dragged himself out of the warm, dark, inviting depths of the musician’s eyes. “I mean, uh, that is…uh, Ms. Moore, could you please look somewhere else. Thank you.” He took a deep breath and slowly released it. “I mean, that since we’ll be there, if anything happens, we’ll help.”
“You’ve decided we’re going to be there?”
“Sure. I mean, no.” He shot a helpless look at Claire. “I mean, you don’t have to go. I could always go without you.”
“He’s right, Claire, you don’t have to go. He could stay late and help load the van.” A pink tongue flicked out to moisten crimson lips. “I could give him a ride home.”
“I’ll go.”
“Good, then, it’s settled.” Twisting lithely in the chair, Sasha stood and made her way through the bric-a-brac to the door. “I’m going out for a bite. I’ll see you both at the pub.”
As the door closed behind her, Jacques materialized, eyebrows lifted toward Dean. “Showing off?” He laughed at the panicked embarrassment in Dean’s eyes, turned to face Claire, and said with patently false dismay, “He is so strong, no? He tore a leaf off your rubber plant.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she snorted dismissively. “It’s plastic. I’m more concerned about this pub thing.”
“What pub thing?” Austin asked, coming out of the bedroom and stretching. When Claire explained, he jumped up onto her lap. “Go,” he told her, butting his head against the bottom of her chin. “Take advantage of the fact you’re not actually sealing the site. If anything comes up, I’ll contact you.”
“What would happen if you were actually sealing the site,” Jacques wondered.
“I wouldn’t be able to leave the building.”
�
�Just like me.”
“Except he’s dead,” Austin pointed out. “Since you’re not, why don’t you prove it.”
“By going out?”
The cat sighed. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner. Go out. Have fun. Aren’t you the one who keeps saying you’re not planning to be stuck here?”
“I didn’t mean I should be going out to pubs,” Claire protested indignantly.
“Why not?”
“I never get to go anywhere,” Jacques said mournfully an hour later as he and Austin stood in the front window watching Claire and Dean walk toward King Street.
“Look at the bright side,” Austin observed as Mrs. Abrams hurried down her front path too late to corner them. “It can be a dangerous world out there.”
“What does she look at?”
One hand shading eyes squinted nearly shut, Mrs. Abrams stared up toward the window.
The cat stretched. “She’s probably wondering if I’m the same cat who got Baby to hog-tie himself with his own chain.”
“Are you?”
“Of course.” He jumped down off the windowsill. “Come on, it’s Friday night, let’s go watch TV.”
With a last curious look at Mrs. Abrams, Jacques turned and followed. “TV? Is it like radio?”
“You know radio?”
“Oui. Augustus Smythe, le petit salaud, he leaves in the attic a radio. I have energy enough to turn it on and off, but I cannot make different channels. Over many years, I have learned English from the CBC.”
Austin snorted. “Well, that explains a lot.”
“A lot?”
“You don’t talk like a French Canadian sailor who died in 1922.”
“So I have lost my identity to the English.”
“Although you still sound French Canadian…”
THE CAT IS ALONE!
YEAH. SO?
A gust of heated air wafted up from the pit. GOOD POINT.
“Why is it so dark in here?” Claire demanded, stopping just inside the door of the Beer Pit.
Feeling the pressure building behind them, Dean cleared his throat. “Uh, Boss, we’re blocking the entrance.”
“Technically, you’re blocking the entrance, they could get around me.” But she moved across the painted concrete floor toward one of the few empty tables. “Why is the ceiling so low?” Before Dean could point out that the pub was in a basement, she added, “And look at the size of these things. Why are the tables so small?”
“More tables, more people, more money.”
Claire shot him a look as she sat down. “I knew that. The floor’s sticky. You’ll notice, I’m not asking why. Do you see. the deliveryman?”
“It’s pretty crowded…”
“I’d suggest you wander around and search for him, but you can’t move in here. I guess we wait until he tries something. Why is it so smoky?”
Dean nodded toward the other side of the room. “There’s a smoking section.”
“And it’s got one of those invisible barriers to keep the smoke away from the rest of us.”
“It does?” After the events of the last week, he wouldn’t have been surprised.
“No. I was being sarcastic. I could create a barrier, we do it all the time when we have to contain some of the more noxious site emissions, but it would be fairly…” The spatial demands of a beefy young man in a Queen’s football jacket caused an involuntary pause. “…obvious by the end of the evening when the smokers started suffocating in their own toxic exhalations,” she finished, shoving her chair back out from the table.
The arrival of the waitress stopped conversation until the arrival of the drinks.
“Three seventy-five for a glass of ginger ale?” Claire tossed a ten onto the girl’s tray. “I could buy a liter for ninety-nine cents!”
“Not here,” the waitress said tartly, handing back her change.
“You don’t go to pubs much, do you?” Dean asked, putting his own change back in his wallet and his wallet in his front pocket.
“What was your first clue?” She took a mouthful of the tepid liquid just as Sasha Moore stepped up onto the small stage at the other end of the room.
Dean pounded her on the back as she choked and coughed ginger ale out onto the table. “Are you okay?”
“Except for a few crushed vertebrae, I’m fine.” Eyes wide, Claire stared at the woman in the spotlight. All masks were off. She was danger. She was desire. She was mystery. And no one else in the room realized why. Claire couldn’t believe it. Sasha Moore had done everything but sit under a big neon sign that said, “vampire,” and no one made the connection although everyone responded. Brows drawn down she watched Dean shift in his seat. Everyone. “There are none so blind…” she muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing.” Claire half expected Sasha to rely on the “rabbits caught in the headlight” effect that predators had on prey, but she played it straight At the end of the first set after a heavily synthesized version of “Greensleeves,” she acknowledged the applause and cut her way easily through an adoring audience to the table.
“A soft drink?” An ebony brow rose as her dark glance slid from Dean’s beer to the glass in front of Claire. “If you don’t drink beer, the house wine isn’t bad.”
“I don’t drink wine,” Claire told her.
Sasha smiled, her teeth a ribbon of white in the darkness. “Me either. So, is he here?”
“We haven’t seen him.”
“Then I guess you’ll have to stay until the end.”
Although she’d been about to say that they might as well leave, Claire found herself responding to the challenge. “So it seems.”
Dean glanced from one to the other and realized there were undertows here strong enough to suck an unwary swimmer in deep over his head. He didn’t understand what was happening, so he let instinct take over and did what generations of men had done before him in similar circumstances; he opened his mouth only far enough to drink his beer.
“So how was she?” Austin asked, his eyes squinted shut against the light.
“Pretty good, I guess.” Claire lifted the cat off her pillow and got into bed. “They made her do two encores.”
“Ah, yes.” He climbed onto her stomach and sat down. “The creatures of the night, what music they make.”
“Go to sleep, Austin.”
“The boss not back yet?”
“No, not yet.” Austin sprang up onto the coffee table and shoved aside a shallow bowl carved from alternating colors of wood and filled with a dusty collection of old birthday cards. “She got a late start this morning.”
“You know she doesn’t want me in here before she gets back.”
“I wanted my head scratched.”
“She’s likely to be angry.”
“It’s a worthy cause.”
Although he knew he should just turn around and leave, Dean sighed and scratched where indicated, unable to resist the weight of the cat’s stare.
“Hey, go easy, big fella. I’m not a dog.”
“Sorry.”
“Of course you are,” Claire said stepping out of the wardrobe. “The question is, why are you here?”
“It’s Saturday.”
“I knew that.” Setting a pair of plastic shopping bags—one stamped with a caduceus and the other with an ankh—down beside the cat, she began pulling out small packages tied up with string.
“On Saturdays, I do the grocery shopping.”
Understanding dawned. “And you need money?”
Dean was quite certain he saw one of the packages move. Just to be on the safe side, he stepped back from the table. “Unless you’ve already done it?”
“Not quite.” Leading the way to the office, she unwrapped half a dozen pieces of six-inch-high iron grillwork as she walked. “I’m making imp traps this morning so instead of searching for the Historian, I went to the Apothecary for supplies.” The envelope had seventy dollars in it Handing over the money, she said, “Get what you
usually get, but add a dozen bagels, ten kilograms of plain clay kitty litter, and a bag of miniature marshmallows— the plain white ones. The Apothecary only had four left, and that won’t be enough if I have to reset the traps.”
“Four bags?”
“Four marshmallows.”
“You trap imps with marshmallows?” Dean asked, folding the money into his wallet.
“We’ve discovered they work as well as newt tongues and get you into a lot less trouble with Greenpeace.”
“What are the bagels and the kitty litter for?”
Claire snorted. “The bagels are for breakfast, and the kitty litter is for Austin to…”
Dean raised a hand and smiled weakly. “Never mind.”
“I thought we were going up to the attic?”
“We are.” Claire took several deep, calming breaths and picked up a bread stick from the counter. “But first, I’m going to ward the door.”
Austin rubbed against her shins. “Why don’t you just lock it?”
“Lock it?”
“Yeah, you know, that thing you turn that keeps the door from opening without a key. Remember what your mother always said.”
“Ripped underwear attracts careless drivers?”
“I was thinking more of ‘try a simple solution before looking toward more exotic possibilities.’”
“Warding the door is hardly exotic.”
“Locking it’s simpler.”
“True enough.” The tumblers fell into place with a satisfying clunk. Picking up a pair of imp traps, she followed the cat upstairs.
“A question, she occurs to me.” Floating just below the ceiling, Jacques watched Claire set the second trap beside the pink-and-gray-striped hatbox. “What will you do with an imp if you catch one?”
“I’ll neutralize it.”
“What does that mean, neutralize?”
“Imps are little pieces of evil; what do you think it means?” Precariously balanced on a pile of old furniture, Claire extended her right leg and probed for the first step down.
“A little more to your left,” Jacques told her.
She moved her foot.
“Your other left,” he pointed out as she fell. “Are you hurt, cherie?” he called when the noise had stopped but a rising cloud of dust still obscured the landing site.