“Sorry.” Ears red, Dean shoved his hands in the front pockets of his jeans. “So, uh, what do we do now?”
“I do not know.”
“I do.” Leaping down the last three stairs into the lobby, Austin turned and stared up at them. “Forgetting for the moment that one of you is dead and one isn’t and refusing to borrow trouble since none of us has any idea of how this is going to turn out I think you should feed the cat.”
“Wasn’t there a half a slice of pizza left?” Claire asked, dropping onto the sofa almost two hours later. “I’m starved.”
On the other end of the sofa, Austin opened one eye. “I let the mice take it,” he said. “I didn’t think anyone wanted it.”
Pinching the bridge of her nose with one hand, Claire waved away the information with the other. Mice. Fine. Whatever. “Where are the guys?”
“Here I am.” Jacques emerged from the bedroom, fiddling with the belt of the professor’s robe. “I forget how many sensation in the world; old, new…”
Then the bathroom door opened and Dean came out glasses in his hand, the edges of his hair damp. Claire opened and closed her mouth a time or two, but no sound emerged.
Dean’s ears turned scarlet as he hastily shoved his glasses on. “I’m sorry, Claire. I used your towel. It’s just it was getting late and the game just ended and I was after waiting up for you…”
“Game?”
“Oui. Hockey with ducks,” Jacques explained, lip curled.
“Hockey,” Claire repeated.
Austin snickered. “I know what new sensations you were thinking about.”
“Shut up.”
“Someone’s got a dir…”
Dragging him onto her lap, she cupped her hand over his mouth. “Someone also has opposable thumbs,” she reminded him.
The sound of voices in the lobby diverted attention.
“Mrs. Abrams leaving,” Claire explained, covering a yawn. “She remembers a lovely seance where Professor Jackson contacted the ghost of the young man she’d seen standing in the window of room two as a girl and then more recently in the dining room, and the lobby, and the office, and back in the window of room two.”
Jacques winced as her voice picked up an edge toward the end of the list. “I am sorry, cherie. I thought she see me only once.”
“You thought she saw you and you didn’t tell me?”
“I did not think it important.”
“If I’d known, I could’ve prevented this whole incident from happening.”
“Oui, but then I would not have flesh.”
Claire decided to avoid that issue for a few moments longer and slid right on by without even pausing. “Well, now she believes that you’ve gone happily to your final rest, passed over into the light, so…” She managed energy enough to jab a finger at the ghost. “…stay away from windows!”
“I will.”
“And if she happens to accidentally see you…”
“I tell you, immediatement.”
“Good.” Yawning, Claire sagged back into the sofa. “The funny thing is, I’m not the first Keeper to mess with her head. There’s a whole section of early memories that’ve been dramatically changed.”
“Mr. Smythe told me that she lived in the house next door her whole life,” Dean offered. “He said it used to be Groseter’s Rooming House and Mr. Abrams was a roomer who didn’t move fast enough and got broadsided.” When Claire lifted her head to stare at him, he shrugged apologetically. “That’s what Mr. Smythe said. Anyway, she’s always saying things aren’t like they were when she was a girl. Maybe she was poking around and saw something she shouldn’t.”
“You mean besides Jacques?”
Without an actual exhalation, Jacques’ sigh lost emphasis, but he made up for it with the peripherals. Bending over the back of the sofa, he tucked a curl behind Claire’s ear. “I am sorry the old woman cause you problems, cherie, but I am a long time dead and I am not surprise someone sees me.”
“Not surprised.” She started to move into his touch and when she realized, jerked her head away.
He smiled. “Oui.”
“I think…” Reaching up, she flicked the curl back where it had been. “I think she probably wandered into the furnace room, maybe followed the Keeper down.”
“Her?” Dean asked, jerking a thumb toward room six.
“Probably Uncle whoever. During the months she was Keeper here, Mrs. Abrams was a teenager; too old to go poking around the neighbor’s…” Another yawn cut off the last word. “…basement.”
“Time for bed, cherie.”
Dean jerked up onto his feet “Yeah, I, uh, should get down, um, downstairs.” Unable to say what he wanted to say—and not entirely sure what that was—he couldn’t seem to put a coherent sentence together. “It’s, uh, been a long, you know, day.” Feeling the blood rise in his cheeks and wishing that the floor would just open up and swallow him whole, he headed for the door.
“Dean, wait.”
With one foot in the office and one foot still in Claire’s sitting room, he waited. Because she asked him to. He wondered if she knew how much he’d do for her if she asked him to.
To his surprise, he felt her hand in the small of his back, moving him out into the office. She followed and closed the door.
“After everything we’ve been through this last month, I thought you should know that Jacques and I aren’t…that is, I’m not…I mean, we won’t…”
“Why not, then?”
Claire stared up at him in astonishment. “Why not?”
Overcoming the urge to grab her and shake her, Dean nodded. “Yeah, why not? You gave him the flesh he’s been bugging you for.”
“Only to save him and the professor and only until dawn.”
“Okay. But since you both want to…” He raised a hand to cut off her protest “I’m not blind. I can see the way you two are together. Why shouldn’t you take advantage of it?”
“He’s dead?”
“Are you asking me if that’s a reason?”
“No,” she said slowly. “I guess not. Even though Jacques’ body died, his passion, his personality, even his physical appearance, they stayed. And now they have substance.” Standing so close she could smell the faint scent of fabric softener that clung around him, Claire looked up and tried to see past her reflection in his glasses. “And you’re okay with this?”
Dean blinked. The way he’d played out this scene, he asked her, “Why not?” and she said, “Because it’s you I really want,” and things moved to a satisfactory if somewhat undefined conclusion from there. He hadn’t intended to talk her into it. Since that’s what he seemed to have done, although he wasn’t entirely certain where things had gone wrong, there seemed to be only one way out. “Sure. Go ahead.”
Claire expected sure to mean, Would it matter to you if I wasn’t? It didn’t and she couldn’t seem to find an actual translation. “I’m not saying that I’ll rearrange my life to spare your feelings, but I don’t want you to be…” She’d intended to say hurt but the assumption that her actions would cause him pain just sounded too egotistical. Even for a Keeper. “…upset.”
“Not a problem.”
It was, actually, but every Keeper learned early in her career that sometimes a lie had to serve. People were entitled to emotional privacy. “Good night, Dean.”
“Good night, Boss.”
She watched him go down the hall, listened to him go down the stairs, until a furry weight against her shins distracted her. “What?”
“Sure meant I’m not so stupid that I can’t see you’ve made your choice, so if I get all bent out of shape about it I’ll look like some kind of a wuss moaning on and on about what I can’t have, so I’m just walking away and pretending it doesn’t matter.”