“Sausages?” Whiskers twitched. “I wanted bacon.”
“You’re having geriatric cat food.”
“We’re out.”
“Nice try. There’s four cans left.”
He looked disgusted. “I’m not eating that. Those cans came out of the garbage.”
“Interesting you should know that since you were in the bathroom when I found them.”
Drawing himself up to his full height, he shot her an indignant green-gold glare with his one remaining eye. “Are you accusing me of something?”
Claire looked at him for a moment, then turned to Dean as he returned to the main room. “Dean, did you put Austin’s cat food in the garbage?”
He had the grace to look sheepish as he took both plates of food from her and put them on the table. “Not this time.”
“Then, yes, I’m accusing you of something.” She popped the top of one of the cans, scooped out some brown puree onto a saucer with a plastic spoon and pushed it along the dresser toward the cat. “You’re seventeen and a half years old; you know what the vet said.”
“Turn your head and cough?”
“Austin…”
“All right. All right. I’ll eat it.” He sniffed the saucer and sighed. “I hope you realize that I plan on living long enough to see them feeding you stewed prunes at the nursing home.”
Claire bent down and kissed the top of his head. “It wouldn’t be the same without you.”
They ate in silence for a few moments. It wasn’t exactly a comfortable silence. Finally, Claire stopped eating and watched Dean clean his plate with the efficiency of a young man who hadn’t eaten for over six hours. She usually liked watching him eat.
He paused, the last bite of toast halfway to his mouth. “Something wrong?”
Aren’t we supposed to be talking about last night? “Diana called.”
“Here?” The last of his toast disappeared.
“Well, duh.” Why aren’t we talking about last night?
“Is she in trouble?”
“No, she just passed on a warning.” I have an explanation; don’t you want to hear it?
“About what?”
“She didn’t know.” Why are we talking about my sister?
“Helpful.” Plate cleaned, Dean picked up his coffee and leaned back in his chair, carefully peeling back the plastic lid.
Things seemed to be going nowhere. Claire picked up her own cup and took a long swallow. She could read nothing from his expression, couldn’t tell if he was just being polite—and Dean was always polite—or if he honestly wasn’t bothered—and Dean was so absolutely certain of his place in the world that not a whole lot bothered him. This was one of the things Claire liked best about him although it did make him a little passive, secure in the knowledge that if he just waited patiently the world would fix itself. As one of the people who fixed the world, Claire found this extremely irritating. And does everyone hold mutually opposing views about the people they’re in… Shying away from the “L” word, she settled for …a hotel room with, or is it just me?
She suspected she needed to watch more Oprah.
Although women who save the world and the men who confuse them sounded more like a visit to Jerry Springer—provided she gained a hundred and fifty pounds and lost half of her vocabulary.
Look, if he’s not questioning, why should you? With that settled, she took another drink.
“So, where do we go from here?”
“Why do we have to go anywhere?” she demanded when the choking and coughing had subsided and all of the remaining napkins had been used to deal with the mess. “What’s wrong with the way things are?”
“I just wondered where you were being Summoned to,” Dean explained, somewhat taken aback by the sight of Claire snorting coffee out her nose. “But if you don’t want to talk about it…”
“About what?” She dabbed at the damp spots on her sleeve, trying and failing miserably to sound anything but near panic. Definitely more Oprah.
“About the Summoning.”
“Right.” Of course, the Summoning. Deep calming breath. “North.”
“Back across the border, then?”
“Probably.”
“Is it another metaphysical remnant causing localized fluxes in the barrier between actuality and possibility.”
That made her smile. “Another ghost kicking holes in the fabric of the universe? I don’t know.” When he smiled back, she covered an embarrassing reaction with a brusque, “You’re getting good at this.”
“Two this week,” he reminded her.
Claire was fairly certain that her current attraction to the restless dead was merely leftover sensitivity from spending so much time with Jacques, the French-Canadian sailor who’d been haunting the Elysian Fields Guest House. But, because that previous attraction had gone farther than…well, than things were going now, she wasn’t going to mention it to Dean. With any luck the residual effects would wear off soon.
What she’d had with Jacques had been simple. He’d been dead. The possibilities between them had been finite. The possibilities with Dean, however, were…
She saw them suddenly, stretching out in front of her.
Driving together from site to site, squabbling over what radio station to listen to and/or listening in perfect accord to a group they both liked. And if anything was possible, there had to be a group they both liked. Somewhere.
Sharing endless hotel rooms like this one, same burnt-orange bedspreads in a vaguely floral pattern, same mid-brown stain camouflaging indoor/outdoor carpeting, same lame attempt to modernize the decor by pasting a wallpaper border just under the ceiling, same innocuous prints screwed to the wall over both beds.
Sharing one of those beds.
They’d work together. They’d laugh together. They’d clean up after Austin together—although the possibility of Dean doing the actual cleaning all by himself was significantly greater than them doing it together.
And one day, she’d forget he wasn’t a Keeper, or even one of the less powerful Cousins, and something would come through the barrier, and she’d forget to protect him from it. Or it would try to get to her through him. Or he’d try to protect her and get squashed like a bug. Okay, a six-foot-tall, muscular, blue-eyed, glasses-wearing bug from Newfoundland, but the result would be the same.
All of a sudden, the future with Dean seemed frighteningly finite.
I might as well just paint a target on him now and get it over with.
“Claire? Boss?” It took an effort, but Dean resisted the urge to wave a hand in front of her face. If she was in some sort of Keeper trance, he didn’t want to disturb it.
He’d seen a number of amazing things during the three months he’d worked for her at the Elysian Fields Guest House—up to and including Hell itself—but nothing had prepared him for time spent on the road in Claire Hansen’s company. He’d expected her to be a backseat driver, but that had turned out to be Austin’s job. She didn’t eat properly unless he placed food in front of her—he was beginning to understand both why Austin was so insistent about being fed and why Claire was so thin. And she actually preferred watching hockey with that stupid blue light the American television stations were using to help their viewers locate the puck. Trust the Americans not to realize that knowing the position of the puck was the whole point of the game.
He liked the way she felt in his arms, and he liked the way her face lit up when she looked at him. He liked looking at her just generally, and he liked being with her. And he was becoming fairly certain that liked wasn’t quite the right word. When he thought about his future, she was a part of it.