“Why is that one still here?”
How much to tell him? “Do you know what Keepers do?”
“She told me. They guard the places where evil can enter the world.” He rematerialized, cross-legged on the bed, expressive features folded into worry. “But me, I think she want the evil for herself. I do not know what happened, but all at once, she did not come and Augustus Smythe was here. He is not a Keeper.”
“No, he’s a Cousin. Less powerful. She…” It was impossible not to pick up Jacques’ inflection. “…was put to sleep for trying to take over the, um, evil.” Claire could see no reason to be more specific, especially considering Jacques’ transitional state and his lack of certainty over his final destination.
“She was put to sleep?” His voice rose, making it more a shriek than a question. “And if she wake up?”
“It won’t happen.”
“So you say. Me, I learn a lullaby or two. And now, what happens? To me?”
Claire frowned, uncertain of what he meant “Nothing happens to you. She can’t do anything while she’s asleep or she’d have done something by now.”
“Je ne demande pas ce qu’elle peut faire a moi!” Agitation threw him back into French. “I know what she can do to me.” He raised both hands and made a visible effort to calm down. “I am asking what do you do now with me.”
“What do I do?” He was persistent, she’d give him that. “Nothing.”
“Nothing happens to me for years.” Jacques lay down again and flung an arm up over his eyes.
“Could you please reattach that? It looks disgusting.”
Jacques sighed but complied. “At least will you visit?”
“When I can.”
“Ah, you have no time because you must guard the place where evil can enter the world?”
“I’m working at sealing the hole.”
“And when the hole is sealed?”
“Then I’ll move on.”
Opening one eye, he peered up at her. “Will you bring back my table?”
“No. You don’t need it.” When he began a sorrowful protest Claire cut him off. “You began haunting the attic when Augustus Smythe moved the furniture up from the room you died in, right?”
“Oui.”
She chewed on a corner of her lower lip. “Did he know you were there?”
“He knew. He did not care.” Jacques rolled back up onto his side. Misery made his eyes surprisingly dark. “For so many years with no one who cared; do you know, cherie, I think that is worse than Hell.”
Which explained why there was no response from the basement. Hell appreciated pain. “I have an idea.”
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.”