Summon the Keeper

by Tanya Huff

  I cannot name the Keeper because she remains in the building, continuing to seal the site with her power—which is considerably more than considerable according to the arrogant s.o.b. of an Uncle John who helped defeat her. I hate how some of those guys get off on being “more lineage than thou,” as if the universe shines out his ass.

  “I guess that answers the Augustus Smythe personality question.”

  The other Keeper, Uncle Bob, isn’t so bad. Is it because Bob’s your Uncle?

  “And that raises a few more.”

  Two of them wouldn’t have been enough to defeat her if she hadn’t…

  Slipping the fork carefully under the damp paper, trying, in spite of her excitement, to keep breathing shallowly, Claire turned the page.

  …had trouble wi th th e vir g i…

  “Oh, no!” One by one, faster and faster, the letters slid off the paper and into the brine. For a moment, Claire stared aghast at a journal of blank pages, then the paper turned into a gelatinous mass and shimmied off the spatula. The resultant splash sprayed a couple of dozen letters up over Claire’s hand and sweater.

  She staggered back until she hit the edge of the sink, too stunned to speak.

  Jumping forward, holding his breath, Dean slapped the lid onto the container. When the seal caught, he hurried around into the kitchen, plucked the spatula from Claire’s hand and tipped it almost immediately into the garbage.

  “You must wash your hand, cherie,” Jacques told her. “There is em’s upon it. And other letters there upon your sweater.”

  “I don’t think it’ll wash out,” Dean offered.

  Jacques sniffed. “It does not amaze me you also do laundry.”

  Slowly Claire lifted her hand to her mouth and touched her tongue to one of the letters.

  The two men exchanged a horrified glance.

  Her lips drew back off her teeth.

  “I do not think she is smiling,” Jacques murmured.

  “Spider parts,” Claire snarled. “That rotten, little piece of Hell!”

  Both men flinched but nothing happened.

  “Don’t you see?” Claire’s glare jerked from one to the other and back again. “The imp introduced spider parts into the solution. It couldn’t have opened the fridge, so it had to have dusted the onions in the bin under the counter just before I started the second batch. It ruined everything!”

  OH, VERY WELL DONE.

  DO WE GIVE COMPLIMENTS?

  WE GIVE CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE.

  Hell was silent for a moment. NO, WE DON’T, it said at last.

  “Mrs. Abrams is up to something; she’s humming. It’s an intensely scary sound. Why the long faces?” Austin asked, jumping up on the counter. He sneezed and turned a disgusted glare on the container. “Haven’t you finished with that yet?”

  “Oh, yes, I’ve finished with it.” Claire pulled off her sweater and handed it to Dean who held it much the same way he’d have held a dead jellyfish. “It’s all over. I’m not going to be able to undo what was done because I’ll never find out what they did. I can’t fix it I might as well call the locksmith’s cousin.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Never mind.” Moving mechanically, she turned, squirted a little dish detergent into her palm and washed her hands.

  When Dean explained what had happened, the cat jumped down to rub against her legs.

  “Spider parts can get onto onions a number of different ways; you don’t know it was an imp. Or even that there is an imp.”

  “Don’t start with me, Austin.”

  Wisely, he let it drop. “There’s still the Historian,” he reminded her.

  “No, there isn’t.” She scrubbed her hands dry on a dish towel—which Dean retrieved to hold, two-fingered, with the sweater—and scooped Austin up into her arms. “I can’t get out of that town she’s built.”

  “The wardrobe Kingston?” Dean asked.

  “Not quite Kingston,” Claire told him bitterly. “There’s a camp of killer girl guides to the north. When I take the bridge over the narrows and go east, I get hit with a snowstorm I can’t get through. To the west there’s a military academy. And south…”

  “Un moment,” Jacques interrupted. “Why can you not get by a military academy?”

  “It’s the men in uni…”

  Claire put her hand over the cat’s muzzle. “They think I’m one of their teachers and I’m AWOL. Attempting that route’ll only get me stuffed into an ugly uniform and thrown in the brig until I agree to teach two classes in military history.”

  “The sea’s to the south,” Dean said. “What about one of the ships?”

  “Get on a ship crewed by the Historian’s people?” Claire shook her head. “I don’t think so. It’d be faster just to drown myself and save them the trouble.”

  “Austin thinks you’re trying too hard.”

  “Does he? Interesting he should know so much about a place he’s never been.” The cat in her arms became very intent on cleaning between the pads of a front paw. “No, it’s obvious. I can’t get to the Historian, and this…” She stared down at the jumble of letters and the sludge of the journal. Her shoulders slumped. “…this is less than useless.”

  “But what about studying the actual, you know, spell?”

  “What about it?” She’d been spending an hour with Sara every morning and, so far, she’d developed an allergy to dust. Her ten minutes every other afternoon, the longest she could spend so close to Hell and a running monologue she couldn’t shut off, had taught her a number of things she’d have rather not known about the Spanish Inquisition, World War II, and the people who program prime time TV but nothing about how to deal with the unique situation surrounding the site. “It’s time I faced it; I’m going to be stuck here for the rest of my life.”

  After a moment, when the silence in the kitchen stopped ringing to the slam of a metaphorical door, Jacques sighed and said, “Would that be so bad, cherie?”

  Claire paused on the verge of plunging into a good long wallow in self-pity, realizing he was actually asking, Would it be so bad to spend the rest of your life here with me? “You’re missing the point, Jacques. If I were needed to seal the hole, doomed to become an eccentric recluse years before my time, it’d be different, at least I’d be doing something useful. Here…” A toss of her head managed to take in the entire hotel. “…I’m a passive observer, watching a system I can’t affect, doing sweet dick all. It’s like, like having last year’s Cy Young winner sitting in the bullpen in case one of the starters blows a rotator cuff.”

  The ghost stared at her in bewilderment “And that means…”

  “It’s baseball,” Dean told him before Claire could explain. “It means she feels her abilities are wasted here.”

  “Wasted?” Jacques repeated. “Here where there is a hole to Hell in the basement and une femme mauvaise asleep upstairs? If there is something that goes wrong here…”

  DEATH! DESTRUCTION!

  A FIVE HUNDRED CHANNEL UNIVERSE!

  “…your, what you call, abilities will not be wasted, cherie.”

  “But if nothing goes wrong…”

  “We should all be so lucky,” Austin interrupted, jumping out of her arms. He checked the dry food in his bowl and sat, tail wrapped around his toes. “You know this place needs to be monitored.”

  She waved a dismissive hand. “Well, yes, but…”

  “And since you’ve been summoned here, this is where you need to be.”

  “That’s the theory, but…”

  “And since you can’t access the information you need to deal with this unique situation, it seems apparent that you’re the monitor needed for the site.” The catechism complete, he flicked an ear back for punctuation. “If it helps, think of yourself as the world’s last line of defense. A missile in a silo, hopefully never to be used. A sub…”

  “That’s enough,” Claire told him shortly, breathing heavily through her nose. She’d always believed t
hat the one thing she hated most was being lectured to by the cat, but she’d just discovered she hated being lectured to in front of an audience even more. “It’s not helping. You want to know what will?” Whirling around, she yanked a large bag of chocolate chip cookies out of the cupboard. “This. This’ll help.” Tucking it under her arm, she pushed through Jacques, past Dean, and toward the dubious sanctuary of Augustus Smythe’s…no, her sitting room.

  “Perhaps I can see her point,” Jacques mused as the distant door slammed. “Although, I am with her in this bull’s pen, so at least she is not alone.”

  “And what am I?” Austin demanded. “Beef byproduct?”

  “What is…”

  “Never mind.” Paws against the cupboards, he stood up on his hind legs to watch Dean check the seal on the plastic container.

  “I’d better dump the rest of those onions.”

  “Why bother? You’ve been eating them for a week.” He snickered at Dean’s expression. “That which does not kill you makes you stronger.”

  “Spider parts?” Slightly green, Dean clenched his teeth and tried not to think about it.

  “Never ask me what’s in a hot dog.” The cat dropped back onto four feet. “And if you’re going to throw that out double bag it so it doesn’t leak. You’ll contaminate the whole dump.”

  “Will the boss be all right?”

  “Oh, sure. Just as soon as she comes to terms with spending the rest of her life standing guard in this hotel.”

  “Those are not easy terms,” Jacques murmured reflectively. “To haunt this not very popular hotel is not how I myself thought to spend eternity. I will go to her.”

  “Hey, hold it” Dean grabbed his arm, and stubbed his fingers against the wall as his hand passed right through the other man. “She wants to be alone.”

  “And what do you know of it, Anglais! You can leave.”

  “Yeah, but I won’t.”

  “So that makes you better than me? That you stay but do not have to.” The ghost snorted. “I know why you stay, Anglais. It is not that it is so good a job, n’est ce pas?”

  Dean’s ears burned. “Austin says I’m a part of this. And Claire’s mother says she needs me. And…”

  “Oui?”

  “And I don’t run out on my friends.”

  The silence stretched and lengthened. Dean figured Jacques was taking his time to translate something particularly cutting but to his surprise, the ghost smiled and nodded. “D’accord. If she must guard the world, we three will guard her.”

  We three.

  It felt good being part of a team. It would’ve felt better standing back to back with Claire and taking on the world, just the two of them, but deep down, Dean was a realist.

  He hadn’t ever really considered his future. He’d left Newfoundland looking for work, had fallen into this job, liked it well enough, and stayed. Because all his choices had been freely made, there seemed to be an infinite number still left to explore. He wasn’t really very happy to discover that when a person reached a certain age, choices started making themselves. “The world’s last line of defense—I wonder if the world knows how lucky it is,” he mused.

  The cat and the ghost exchanged expressions as identical as differing physiognomy could make them.

  “Still, I can see her point,” he continued in the same tone. “It’s an awesome responsibility, but it must be some boring being on guard. Ow!” He reached down and rubbed his calf. “Why did you scratch me?”

  “Never, ever say it’s boring being a guard!”

  “I didn’t,” Dean protested, checking for blood seeping through his jeans. “I said it must be some boring being on guard.”

  “Oh.” Austin sheathed his claws. “Sorry.”

  Stuffing a fourth cookie into her mouth, Claire sank back into the sofa cushions and looked for something to put her feet up on. The coffee table practically bowed under the weight of the crap it already held and the hassock was on the other side of the room. Twisting slightly sideways, she chewed and swallowed and dropped her heels down on the plaster bust of Elvis.

  “Thang you. Thang you vera much.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” She lifted her feet and let them drop again.

  “Thang you. Thang you vera much.”

  It seemed to have a limited vocabulary. “Why would Augustus Smythe waste power, even seepage, on something like you?” Unless. She chewed thoughtfully. “You don’t sing, do…”

  Her last word got lost under the opening bars of “Jailhouse Rock.”

  “Stop.”

  “Thang you. Thang you vera much.”

  “Sing.”

  A few bars of “Blue Suede Shoes.”

  “Stop.”

  “Thang you. Thang you vera much.”

  “Sing.”

  “Heartbreak Hotel.” The opening bars of “Heartbreak Hotel.”

  “That’s more like it” Claire had another cookie and prepared to wallow. From this point on, the future stretched out unchanging because to hope for change was to hope for disaster and to hope for disaster would strengthen Hell. She supposed she should call her mother, let her know how things had worked out—or rather how they hadn’t worked out—but she didn’t feel up to hearing even the most diplomatic version of “I told you so.”

  And if Diana was home…

  The ten-year difference in their ages and a childhood spent being rescued by Claire from toddler enthusiasm meant that Diana had always lumped Claire in with the rest of the old people. She wouldn’t be at all surprised to find Claire stuck running the hotel. It was what old Keepers did, after all.

  Moving down to the second layer of cookies, Claire knew she couldn’t trust herself to listen to that. Better not to call until Friday evening when she always called.

  “You do know Elvis is running on seepage.”

  Claire sighed, exhaling a fine mist of cookie crumbs. “He’s using a tiny fraction of what’s readily available. He’s not pulling from the pit.”

  “I wonder if that was the first excuse Augustus Smythe made.” Austin jumped up onto the back of the sofa and gingerly stretched out along the top edge of the cushion.

  “I doubt it.” The song ended and Elvis thanked his audience before she could actually do anything.

  “There is a bright side, you know. If Augustus Smythe hadn’t been a sufficient monitor for all the years he was here, he would have been replaced. Since you’re here now, obviously there’s a better chance than there’s ever been that something will go wrong.”

  Claire turned just enough to glare at the cat. “And I’m supposed to feel good about that?” But she reached out to see that the power loop remained secure.

  YOU WERE DISAPPOINTED!

  Get out of my head. She ate another three cookies so fast she almost took the end off a finger.

  “You should cheer up,” Austin told her.

  “I don’t want to cheer up.”

  “Then you should answer the door.”

  “There’s nobody…” A tentative knocking cut her off. She glared at the cat as she called out, “What?”

  “It’s Dean. You haven’t eaten yet today, so I made you some breakfast.”

  “It’s almost noon.”

  “It’s an omelet.”

  Names have power. Claire could smell it now: butter, eggs, mushrooms, cheese. All of a sudden she was ravenous. Half a bag of cookies hadn’t even blunted the edge. When she opened the door, she found he’d brought a thermal carafe of coffee and a glass of orange juice as well. She held out her hands, but he didn’t seem to want to relinquish the tray.

  “You’ve, um, probably forgotten, but it’s Thanksgiving today.”

  She hadn’t so much forgotten as hadn’t realized. A quick glance over at Miss October did indicate that it was, indeed the second Monday. And that she should replace Augustus Smythe’s calendars. “Thank you. I’ll call home.”

  “Yeah. Well, it’s just that I was kind of invited to a friend’s house for dinner.�
�

  “Kind of invited?”

  “She’s from back home, too, and we all made plans to get together and…” His voice trailed off.

  “Go. Be happy. Eat turkey. Watch football.” Claire reached over the omelet, grabbed the edge of the tray closest to his body and yanked it toward her, leaving him no choice but to let go or to go with it.

  He let go.

  “You’ve certainly earned a night off,” she said, smiling tightly up at him. “Thank you for the food. Now go away, I haven’t finished wallowing yet.” Stepping back, she closed the door in his face.

  “That was rude,” Austin chided.

  “Do you want some of this or not?”

  It was enough, as she’d known it would be, for him to keep further opinions to himself.

  Out in the office, Dean shook his head, brow creased with concern. “I don’t know what I should do,” he confessed to Jacques.

  “Do what she says,” the ghost told him. “Be with your friends. Eat the turkey, watch the football. There is nothing you can do here. She will come out when she is come to terms with this.”

  “Has come to terms with this. You could go in.”

  “I think not. What was it you said?” He started to fade and by the time he finished talking his words hung in the air by themselves. “I am pretty smart for a dead guy.”

  The interior of the refrigerator was as spotless as the rest of the kitchen. In Claire’s experience, most crispers held two moldy tomatoes and a head of mushy lettuce but not Dean’s. The vegetables were not only fresh, they’d been cleaned. She thought about making a salad and decided not to bother. Considered making a sandwich from the leftover pot roast and decided it was too much work. Reached for a plastic container of stroganoff to reheat and let her hand fall back by her side.

  In the end, she stepped away from the fridge empty-handed.

  The familiar clomp of work boots turned her around.

  “You’re back early.”

  “It’s almost nine. Not that early.” Dean set a bulging bag down on the table and began removing foil wrapped packages. “We ate, did the dishes, had a cuffer—swapped stories,” he explained as her brows went up. “And here I am, all chuffed out.” Carefully lifting out a small margarine tub, he shot her a tentative smile. “Are you feeling better?”