Claire reached into the possibilities and called a cab.
*
Chin resting on one hand, Dean covered a yawn with the other and watched Austin eat a sausage he wasn’t supposed to have. After everything they’d been through, it was reassuringly norm…“Austin?”
Both ears were up. His head turned suddenly toward the front door. A heartbeat later the rest of his body followed.
With a shriek of wood against wood and a crash as his chair hit the floor and bounced, Dean followed.
*
Claire stepped out of the taxi and braced herself as a black-and-white streak flew down the front stairs of the guest house and into her arms. She winced as claws sank deep into both shoulders but only murmured reassurances into the top of a velvet head. After a moment, Austin calmed enough to pin her in an emerald gaze.
“Never go away for that long again!”
“I missed you, too.”
“We could have been killed!”
“I’m sorry.”
“If you hadn’t sent Lance back…”
“I know.”
“I had everything under control.”
“Of course.”
“If that’s Dean I hear pounding toward you, put me down before I get crushed.”
It was, so she did.
Sitting on the sidewalk, Austin finished smoothing rumpled fur and looked up to see Sam watching him, head cocked to one side.“I’ll make her pay later,” he said.
The younger cat nodded.“I never doubted you.”
“I assume there’s a story behind the whole ‘dressed like they’re heading out to do some second-story work’?”
“Yes.”
“Well, skip it.”
Diana wrestled Jack out of the back seat—bending half a dozen or so possibilities in the process—and shoved him toward the guest house as the cab roared off, the cabby remembering only the twenty percent tip. The possibilities were cheaper, but their mother had called twice more on the ride home. Once on the cabby’s cell phone. Once using a phone booth near the intersection where they were waiting for the light.
Sooner or later, one of them would have to answer.
Claire would have to answer, Diana corrected glancing over at her sister and Dean. About to suggest Claire leave tonsillectomies to the medical profession, another phone rang. Actually, not another phone. Her phone. In her pack. Mom had clearly found a way around the dead battery.
At this point, the fastest route to Kris might be to answer it. Whileshe hadn’t broken any Rules, at this point in the proceedings, she was likely to catch just as much Hell. Leaning Jack carefully against the porch railing, Diana slipped off her pack and began to search for her cell. Finding it at last under a tunaless tuna sandwich, her thumb was poised over the connectbutton when the sound of squealing tires drew all eyes to the street.
A minivan pulled up in front of the guest house and stopped on a dime. With a tinkle of nine cents’ change hitting the pavement, the side door opened and a familiar body exploded out onto the sidewalk.
“Freakin’ OW!”
“Kris!” Diana raced forward as the van roared away. Throwing herself to her knees, she gathered the crumpled body of the elf up into her arms. “Kris say something!”
Kris blinked, and looked around.“This is Hell?”
“No, this is Kingston!”
She was still holding the wand, now flaccid and more puce than pink.“I was falling and this is where I landed.”
“You were in a minivan.”
“No. I think I’d remember that. Cavern. Falling. Pink stuff. Here.”
Diana twisted around to stare at Claire.
“I kept trying to tell you.” She leaned back against Dean’s chest and wrapped herself in the safety of his arms. “Rule one…”
“The possibilities are not to be used to bring in HBO?” Diana asked, unable to see the relevance.
“Okay, rule two. Hell can’t hold a willing sacrifice. It couldn’t hold Kris any more than it could hold Dean.”
“And you tried to tell me that?”
“A couple of times.”
Diana’s heart felt like it was beating normally for the first time in days. “Next time, try harder.”
“You guys want to keep it quiet out there!” The voice drifted down from one of the surrounding windows, open because of the heat. “It’s three in the morning and some of us are trying to sleep!”
“You want to sleep?” Claire reached into the possibilities.
“Then sleep.” Diana added her two cents’ worth as she helped Kris to her feet.
From where Diana had dropped it at the base of the steps, the phone began ringing again. She looked at Claire. Claire took a step forward, turned, and looked at Dean. Who took two steps sideways and brought his work boot down as hard as he could. Sam batted the pieces down into the area by the basement door.
“Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb,” Claire said with satisfaction.
“I could go for some lamb,” Austin murmured as he followed Sam up the stairs.
“I don’t know about lamb,” Diana sighed as she led Kris into the guest house, “but I could eat.”
Claire waved Jack in ahead of them—time for introductions when there was less chance of being overheard—and laid her head on Dean’s shoulder as he slipped an arm around her waist. They climbed the stairs together. “Where’s Lance?”
“He and Dr. Rebik are…Uh…Sleeping.”
A half turn, and she could see his ears were pink.“Sleeping?”
“Probably. By now.”
“What?”
His eyebrows made an appearance above the upper edge of his glasses.
“Oh. Happy endings all around, then.”
“Well, Dr. Rebik definitely lost a few years and Lance—actually, since I wasn’t after knowing him before, I don’t want to assume…”
“Happy endings,” Claire repeated, leaving no room for postgame analysis.
“Yeah.”
“Good. I want to hear everything that happened while I was gone, but for right now, there’s just one thing I have to know.”
He kissed the top of her head as they stepped over the threshold.“What’s that?”
“What were you doing with a basilisk in the bedroom?”
The door closed on his answer.
From King Street came the faint sound of a minivan being pulled over by the police.
And for the first time in days, a cool breeze blew in off the lake.