by Tanya Huff
His back remained toward her, rigid and unyielding.
“Austin!”
He ignored her so completely she had a moment’s doubt about her own existence.
“What’s the matter with…” And then she remembered. “Oh, for…Austin, I’m sorry I said you were beginning to sound like a dog. It was rude.”
One ear swiveled toward her.
“You have never sounded like anything but a cat. Cats are clearly superior to dogs, and I don’t know what I was thinking. Please accept my abject apologies and forgive me.”
He snorted without turning. “You call that groveling?”
“Yes, and I’m sorry if it falls short of your high standards. Unless you’re planning to walk, I also call it the last thing I’m going to say before picking you up and stuffing you into the carrier.”
Her hands were actually touching his fur before he realized she was serious. “Oh, sure,” he muttered, tail scribing short, jerky arcs as he climbed into the case, “give a species opposable thumbs, and they evolve into bullies.”
Dean watched without speaking as she opened the door, set the cat carrier carefully down on a dry bit of pavement up near the building, and finally lifted her backpack out from under the tarp. She paused as if she was trying to think of something to say. She was wearing some kind of lip stuff that made her mouth look full and soft and…He leaned over and rolled down the window. “Do you need any help, then?”
He hadn’t intended to say it, but he just couldn’t stop himself; his grandfather’s training was stronger than justified anger, emotional betrayal, and the uncomfortable way the seat belt was cutting into his…lap.
An emphatic “Yes!” came out of the cat carrier, but Claire ignored it. “No, thank you.” She swallowed around the kind of lump in her throat that Keepers were not supposed to get. “You’d better get going if you’re driving all the way to Newfoundland.”
“It’s an island, Claire. I won’t be driving all the way.”
“You knew what I meant.” Her gloves suddenly took all her attention. “This is for your own good, Dean.”
“If you say so.”
It was as close to a snide comment as she’d ever heard him make.
For a moment Claire thought he wasn’t going to go, but the moment passed.
“Good-bye, Claire.” He wanted to say something wry and debonair so she’d know what she was losing, but the only thing that came to mind was a line from an old black-and-white movie, and he suspected that “You’ll never take me alive, copper!” didn’t exactly fit the situation. This was clearly the day his aunt had been referring to when she’d said, “Some day, you guys are going to wish you’d watched a couple of movies with more talking than hitting.” He settled for raising his hand in the classic whatever wave.
He left the window rolled down until he reached the highway. Just in case she called him back.
Claire stood and watched Dean back up and drive away, realizing she should have wiped his memory with something more possible—although at the moment, she couldn’t think of anything more possible than the two of them spending their lives together.
I did it for his own good.
It was colder than it should be, and the chill had nothing to do with standing in an empty parking lot beside a closed second-rate summer attraction while an early November wind stuffed icy fingers under her collar and threatened snow. She stared at the single set of tire tracks until she couldn’t feel her feet.
In the summer, Fantasy Land consisted of mazes and slides built into child-sized castles scattered along a path that twisted through the woods and paused every now and then at a fairy-tale tableau constructed of poured concrete and paint. In the summer, the fact it was a convenient place for the children to run off some excess energy before they were stuffed back in the car to fidget and complain for another hundred kilometers, lent the place a certain charm. In the winter, when nothing hid the damage caused by the same children who could disassemble an eight-hundred-dollar DVD player armed with nothing more than a sucker stick and a cheese sandwich, it was just depressing.
The Summons rose from the center of the Sleeping Beauty display.
Five concrete dwarfs, their paint peeling, stood around the bier that held the sleeping princess—or at least Claire assumed that’s what the bier had held. The princess and two of the dwarfs had been thoroughly gone over with a piece of pipe. Bits of broken concrete lay scattered around the clearing, and Sleeping Beauty’s head had been propped into a decidedly compromising position with one of the dwarfs.
“I’m guessing these guys are all named Grumpy,” Claire muttered, as she approached the bier. “None of them are smiling.”
Austin sat down in the shelter of a giant concrete mushroom and wrapped his tail around his toes. And ignored her.
Which was pretty much the response Claire expected. That dog comparison would likely haunt her for a while.
The hole itself was centered on the bier—no surprise since the vandalism had probably opened it. It was larger than mere vandalism could account for, though, and it had been seeping for some time. Unfortunately, the seepage wasn’t dissipating.
Which meant that something in the immediate area was absorbing it.
A quick search showed no wildlife, not even so much as a single pigeon although evidence of pigeons had been liberally splattered on all five dwarfs.
“I hope this isn’t going to be another one of those possessed squirrel sites. They’re always nuts.” She glanced over at the cat and, when he didn’t rise to the provocation, sighed. Great, my cat’s not even responding to bad jokes, Dean’s gone… Her attention elsewhere, she tripped over a piece of broken princess, barely catching herself on the shoulder of a stone dwarf. …and now I’ve twisted my ankle. How could this day possibly get any worse?
A small stone hand closed painfully around her wrist.
I had to ask.
Fortunately, the hands were more or less in proportion to the body, so although the grip pinched, it wasn’t difficult to break. Jerking free, Claire stepped away from the dwarf and felt something poke her in the back of the upper thigh.
It turned out to be a nose.
Her anatomical relief was short lived as this second dwarf made a grab for her knee, muttering, “Write on me, will you!”
He was pretty fast for concrete.
They all were.
“…rotten kids…”
“…ice cream on my hat…”
“…you want Happy, I’ll tell you what’ll make me happy, you little…”
“…gonna pay for those malt balls…”
“…I’ll hi your ho right up your…”
“Hey!” Claire danced away from the last dwarf and glared down at him. “Watch it, buster, you’re supposed to be a children’s display.”
Stone eyes narrowed. “Grind your bones to make my bread.”
“Oh, great…” She leaped off the concrete pad and onto scuffed grass. “…now they’re free-associating.”
The dwarfs came to the edge of the concrete but no farther.
Claire would have been a lot happier about that had they not been between her and the accident site. A quick jog around the perimeter proved she couldn’t outrun them and, as long as the site was open, they wouldn’t run down.
Secure in the knowledge that the Keeper couldn’t get past them, four of the dwarfs started a soccer game with Sleeping Beauty’s head while the fifth kept watch.
Two feints, a dodge, and an argument over whether it was entirely ethical to use chunks of dwarfs six and seven for goalposts, Claire realized she wasn’t going to get by without a plan. Or a distraction.
“Austin?”
“No.”
“I just wanted…”
“Tough. I’m not doing it.”
“Fine. Then what’ll distract five of the seven dwarfs?”
“A trademarked theme song?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You could sing the short v
ersion.”
“No.”
“You don’t think they’d be up to it?”
She sighed down at the cat. “Are you done?”
“I will be shortly.”
“Austin…”
“Okay. I’m done.” He took a quick lick at a flawless shoulder. “How about five concrete lady dwarfs?”
“Why not? I’ll just put an ad in the personals.” Claire shoved her hands into her pockets and glanced around at the broken bottles, the scattered garbage, the senseless vandalism. She didn’t even want to think about what the inside of Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater’s wife’s house looked like—give some people a dark corner, and they’d do one of two things in it.
Well, maybe three things.
Or four.
“Ow!” Kicked a little too hard, Sleeping Beauty’s head rolled off the concrete and clipped Claire’s ankle. “Yuck it up,” she snarled, scooping up the head and taking aim at the clump of snickering dwarfs. “It’s about to be game over!” As she released her makeshift bowling ball, she had visions of a five/two split, an easy spare, and a quick end to the stalemate.
“You missed,” Austin pointed out, his tone mildly helpful.
“I know!” She had to shout to be heard above the laughter. Two of the dwarfs were propping each other up as they howled, one had fallen to the ground and was kicking little concrete heels in the air, and the last two were staggering around in increasingly smaller circles as they mocked her athletic ability.
It wasn’t what she’d intended, but it had the same effect.
A quick dash, a fast sidestep over a pile of stained feathers that suggested at least one of the pigeons had been slow to get away, and a graceless but adequate leap put her up on the bier.
Keepers learned early on that the repair didn’t have to be pretty as long as it did the job. Claire had personally learned it while closing a site at a book launch for a writer who very nearly acquired a life as interesting as his fiction—although it wouldn’t have gone on as long. In the end, she’d been forced to evoke the paranormal properties of a crab cake, two stuffed mushroom caps, and a miniature quiche. The caterer had been furious.
Though not as furious as the dwarfs.
Who were too short to climb up on the bier themselves. The stream of profanity this evoked made up in volume what they lacked in size. Claire assumed they’d learned the words from the vandals and not the children—but she wouldn’t have bet on it. Fortunately, concrete dwarfs were not fast thinkers. She had the parameters of the site almost determined when one of them yelled, “Pile up the broken bits. Build a ramp!”
As the first of the little men rose into view, Claire pulled a stub of sidewalk chalk from her pocket and scrawled the site definition across Sleeping Beauty’s one remaining smooth surface. Reaching into the possibilities, she closed the hole, turned, and came hip to face with the advancing dwarf.
“Before the energy fades,” he growled, “we’ll rip you limb from limb.”
Had they not been fighting each other to get up the ramp, they might have. As it was, Claire jumped off the other side of the bier and sprinted to the safety of the grass unopposed. The first dwarf to leap off after her, stumbled and smashed.
They were visibly slowing.
“Gentlemen!”
Four heads ground around to face her.
“You’ve got less than thirty seconds left. If I were you, I’d arrange myself so that I was making a statement when I solidified.”
“Who’d have thought those concrete breeches would even come down?” Austin murmured as Claire carried him back toward the parking lot.
She half expected Dean to be there waiting for them.
He wasn’t.
Of course he isn’t, you moron. You sent him away.
She could barely feel the beginning of the new Summons over the incredible sense of loss. “I feel like I’m missing an arm or a leg,” she sighed as she set Austin down beside the cat carrier and turned up the collar of her coat.
He snorted. “How would you know?”
“What?”
“The only thing you’re missing is a sense of perspective. Some of us are missing actual body parts.”
“I’m sorry, Austin. I keep forgetting about your eye.”
“My eye?” His remaining eye narrowed. “Oh, yeah, that too. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go behind this building where I believe I saw a litter box shaped like a giant plastic turtle.”
“That’s a sandbox.”
“Whatever. While I’m gone, why don’t you answer the phone?”
“What phone?”
The pay phone on the other side of the parking lot began to ring.
Weight on one hip, Diana cradled the receiver between shoulder and ear and rummaged in her backpack for a pen. The odds were extremely good that Claire had paid no attention to her warning, but—having given it—she was curious about the outcome.
“Hello?”
“So, did you do it?”
On the other end of the phone, she heard Claire sigh. “Did I do what?”
“Make the huge mistake.” Moistening the tip of one finger, she erased the phone number at the end of the ubiquitous for a good time call and replaced it with the number of the original graffiti artist. Erasing it entirely would only leave a clear space for some moron to refill and it was balance, after all, that Keepers were attempting to maintain.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Diana. I’ve just closed a small site and I’m about to move on to the next one.”
“I’m talking about my precog. This morning’s phone call. My timely warning.” Brow furrowed, she tapped the pen against her lip, then rubbed out the punctuation and added forest fires in the same handwriting as Rachel puts out changing it from nasty to inane and thus maintaining the high school status quo. If there was a place more inane, Diana didn’t want to know about it. “I bet you didn’t even take precautions.”
“That is none of your business.”
Diana shook her head. No one did self-righteous indignation at the mere possibility of a double-entendre as well as Claire. And no one gave away so much doing it. “You ditched Dean, didn’t you?”
“I did not ditch him. We’re just not traveling together any longer.”
“Dork.”
“A Keeper has no business involving a Bystander in dangerous work.”
“Think highly of yourself, don’t you? You didn’t involve him, he got involved all on his little lonesome. And, as I recall, his lonesome ain’t so little.”
“Diana!”
“Claire!” Suddenly depressed, she hung up. In her not even remotely humble opinion, Dean had been the best thing that had ever happened to her older sister. Just by existing, he’d managed to shake up that whole lone Keeper only-I-can-save-the-world crap that Claire believed. Apparently, he hadn’t shaken it hard enough.
Sighing, she filled in the last blank space on the wall by the phone with a quick John loves Terri in a somewhat lopsided heart. It wasn’t her best work, but at least it would keep something harmful out of the spot.
“A word, Ms. Hansen.”
Pushing a strand of dark hair out of her eyes, Diana turned and forced a fake smile. “Yes, Ms. Neal?”
The vice-principal’s answering smile had a certain sharklike quality about it. “If you think the school needs adornment, why not put your talents to use on the decorating committee for the Christmas dance.”
“I’d love to, Ms. Neal, but I just don’t have the…that wasn’t a suggestion, was it?”
“Actually, it was an alternative to a month’s worth of detention.”
After the incident with the football team, her parents had forbidden her to open anyone’s mind to new possibilities—although to give them credit, they’d admitted that two of the linebackers and a defensive end had been significantly improved.
“The committee has their first meeting tomorrow at lunch, on the stage. Be there.”
“Yes, Ms. Neal.�
�
“Now, if you’re finished for the day, go home.”
“Yes, Ms. Neal.”
She could feel the vice-principal’s gimlet gaze on her all the way to the door. This bites. Save the world evenings and weekends and the rest of the time I’m at the beck and call of every petty dictator who works for the school board. I’m a Keeper. Why am I still here?
As the door closed behind her, two confused teenagers walked in slow motion toward the phone from opposite ends of the hall, music from a modern love song growing louder and sappier the closer they got. When their hands touched, the music reached a crescendo, then faded as Ms. Neal confiscated the boombox from a group of students on the stairs.
“John?”
“Terri?”
On the wall, the heart glowed.
“Well, gee, this is just so much better than sitting in a warm and comfy truck with someone who cares about you.” Shooting the darkening sky a disgusted look, Austin picked his way between wet snowflakes to where Claire was sitting on a parking lot divider and jumped up on her lap. “I personally think it’s pathetic that you’d rather face a quintet of evil gnomes than a normal human relationship.”
“I’m not a normal human.”
“Who is?”
“Diana thinks I’ve made a huge mistake with Dean.”
“And this is the same Diana who very nearly released the hosts of Hell?”
Claire smiled and buried her face in the back of his neck. “You’re right. She’s been wrong before.”
“First of all, of course I’m right. Secondly, she’s not wrong this time. And thirdly, stop sighing like that, you’re getting me damp.”
“I know my responsibility as a Keeper.”
“Responsibility?”
“Yes.”
“That and three seventy-five will get you a mocha latte. Speaking of which, when do we eat?”
“Soon.” Claire nodded at the late model sedan pulling into the parking lot. “There’s our ride.”
“Oh, great. She brakes for unicorns. And hobbits.” Leaping down, he headed for the cat carrier, muttering, “I only hope she brakes for stop signs.” Settling into the sheepskin pad, he glared up at Claire. “You know she’s going to spend the whole trip telling us cute stories about her three cats.”