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Given the innkeeper, it was much better than Claire had expected. She set the wicker carrier on the dresser, unbuckled the leather straps, and lifted off the top. After a moment, a disgruntled black-and-white cat deigned to emerge and inspect the room.

As the storm howled impotently about outside the window, Claire shrugged out of her coat, wrapped her hair in a towel and collapsed onto the bed trying, unsuccessfully, to ignore the drum solo going on between her ears.

“Well, Austin, do the accommodations meet with your approval?” she asked as she heard him pad disdainfully from the bathroom. “Not that it matters; this is the best we can do for tonight.”

The cat jumped up beside her.“That’s too bad because—and I realize I risk sounding clich?d in saying it—I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

Claire managed to crack both eyelids open about a millimeter. No one had ever been able to determine if cats were actually clairvoyant or merely obnoxious little know-it-alls.“A bad feeling about what?”

“You know: this.” He paused to rub a damp paw over his whiskers. “Aren’t you getting anything at all?”

She let her eyes close again.“I seem to be getting MTV on one of my fillings. It’s part of the Stomp tour.” Flinching at a particularly robust bit of metaphor, she sighed. “I’m so thrilled.”

A furry, ten-pound weight sat down on her chest.“I’m serious, Claire.”

“The summons isn’t any more urgent than it was this morning, if that’s what you’re asking.” One-handed, she unbuttoned her jeans, pushing the cat back onto the bed with the other. “Nothing else is getting through this headache except a low-grade buzz.”

“You should check it out.”

“Check what out?” When Austin refused to answer, Claire decided she’d won, tossed off her clothes, and got into a pair of cream-colored silk pajamas—standard operating procedure suggested night clothes suitable for the six o’clock news, just in case.

Tucked under the covers, the cat curled up on the other pillow, she realized why the old man had looked so familiar. He looked like a gnome. And not one of those friendly garden gnomes either.

Rumpelstiltskin, she thought, and went to sleep smiling.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“This is weird, my shoes are still wet.”

Austin glared at her from the litter box.“If you don’t mind!”

“Sorry.” Claire poured liquid out of the toe of one canvas sneaker, hung them back over the shower curtain rod by their tied laces, then made a hasty retreat from the bathroom. “It’s not that I expected them to be dry,” she continued, dropping onto the edge of the bed, “but I was hopingthey’d be wearably damp.”

It was starting out to be a six of one, half a dozen of the other kind of a day. On the one hand, it was still raining and her shoes were still too wet to wear. On the other hand, her sleep had been undisturbed by signs or portents, her headache was gone, and the low-grade buzz had completely disappeared. Even Austin had woken up in a good mood, or as good a mood as he could manage before noon.

Flopping back against a pile of bedclothes, she listened past the sound of feline excavation to the hotel’s ambient noise, and frowned. “It’s quiet.”

“Too quiet?” Austin asked, coming out of the bathroom.

“The summons has stopped.”

Sitting back on his haunches, the cat stared up at her.“What do you mean, stopped?”

“I mean it’s absent, not present, missing, not there.” Surging to her feet, she began to pace. “Gone.”

“But it was there when you went to sleep?”

“Yes.”

“So between ten-thirteen last night and eight-oh-one this morning, you stopped being needed?”

“Yes.”

Austin shrugged.“The site probably closed on its own.”

Claire stopped pacing and folded her arms.“That never happens.”

“Got a better explanation?” the cat asked smugly.

“Well, no. But even if it has closed, I’d be summoned somewhere else.” For the first time in ten years, she wasn’t either dealing with a site or traveling to one where she was needed. “I feel as though I’ve been cast aside like an old shoe, drifting aimlessly…”

“Mixing metaphors,” the cat interrupted, jumping up on the bed. “That’s better; while there’s nothing wrong with your knees, they’re not exactly expressive conversational participants. Maybe,” he continued, “you’re not needed because good has dominated and evil is no longer considered a possibility.”

They locked eyes for a moment, then simultaneously snickered.

“But seriously, Austin, what am I supposed to do?”

“We’re only a few hours from home. Why don’t you visit your parents?”

“My parents?”

“You remember; male, female, conception, birth…”

Actually, she did remember, she just tried not to think about it much.“Are you suggesting we need to take a vacation?”

“Right at the moment, I’m suggesting we need to eat breakfast.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

The carpet on the stairs had seen better days; the edges still had a faint memory of the pattern but the center had been worn to a uniform, threadbare gray. Claire hadn’t been exactly impressed the night before, and in daylight the guest house had a distinctly shabby look.