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One hand raised to shield his eyes, Jacques shook a chiding finger at her.“You are a Keeper. You cannot do that. You have rules.”

“You drew blood.” Claire nodded toward the cut on Dean’s cheek. “Yes, I can.”

“Ah.” He pursed his lips and thought about it.“D’accord. You win. I give you my word.”

The symbols disappeared.

“You are a woman ofaction rapide, I allow you that.” Blinking away afterimages, he stepped toward her. “For all you are so…beautiful.” His mouth slowly curled up into a lopsided smile that softened the long lines of his face, creating an expression that somehow managed to combine lechery and innocence. Claire found it a strangely attractivecombination.“Tes yeux sons comme du chocolat riche de fonce…. Your eyes they are like pools of the finest chocolate; melting and promising so very much sweetness. Does anyone ever tell you this?”

“No.”

“Are you certain?”

He sounded so surprised she had to smile.“I’d have remembered.”

“So foolish are mortal men.” After a dramatic sigh, his voice deepened to a caress. “Your lips, they are like the petal of a crimson rose, your throat like an alabaster column in the temple of my heart, your breasts…”

“That’s quite far enough, thank you.” There was such a mix of sincere flattery and blatant opportunism in the inventory that Claire found it impossible to be insulted.

Jacques spread expressive hands.“I mean only to say…”

Standing at the edge of the cleared space, Dean cleared his throat.“She said that was enough.”

“Really?Et maintenant, what did I say of mortal men?” One brow flicked up to punctuate a disdainful glance. “Ah,oui, that they are fools. Are you mortal, man? No, wait, it is not a man at all; it is a boy.”

Moving up behind Claire’s left shoulder, Dean dropped his voice. “What is this?”

“This is Jacques Labaet.” She couldn’t decide if she were amused or irritated by Dean’s interruption, mostly because she couldn’t decide if he were being supportive or protective. “He’s a ghost.”

“A ghost?” Dean repeated. He turned his head and found himself nose-to-nose with the phantom.

“Boo,” said Jacques.

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“We have just left Kingston, steaming for Quebec City; the weather, she is bad, but she is always bad on the lakes in the fall and we think anything is better than being stuck in with the English over freeze up. We barely reach Point Fredrick when things, they go all to Hell.”

Claire winced, but there was no response from the furnace room.

“Pardon. Such language I should not use around a lady.” Blowing her a kiss, Jacques continued his story. “The wind she came up, roaring like a live thing. I remember something hard, I don’t know what, catching me here.” He tapped the sweater just below his sternum. “I remember cold water and then,rien. Nothing.” His shoulders rose and fell in a Gallic shrug. “They said I wash up on shore, more dead than alive. Me, I don’t know why they bring me here. Two days later, I died.”

“And you’re a ghost.” Dean wanted to be absolutely clear on that. Every community back home had at least one story of a local haunting—ghost husbands, ghost stags, ghost ships—and if this annoying little man was the real thing, then the old stories could be real as well and there were a significant number of apologies owed. He’d have to make some phone calls when the rates went down.

“Oui. A ghost.” Jacques favored the younger, living man with a long, hard stare, then deliberately turned away from him. “First, I haunt the room I die in. That was not so bad although, I tell you, this place is not so popular with the living. When that Augustus Smythe, thatespece de mangeur de merde, he moves everything up to the attic, I must go as well and I am haunting this place ever since.”

“As a ghost.”

“Does he have to keep repeating?” Jacques demanded of Claire. Before she could answer, he spun around to face Dean. “Would you feel better if I disappear? All of me?” He faded out. “Bits of me?” His head reappeared.

“You’ve been dead seventy-two years,” Dean reminded him disdainfully. If the ghost had thought to frighten him with all the appearing and disappearing, he hadn’t succeeded. The whole performance too closely resembled the Cheshire cat in the Disney version ofAlice in Wonderland.“Seventy-two years, that’s some time to be dead. You’re used to it, I’m not.”

Jacques’ body came back into focus as he stood, hands curled into fists and chin in the air. “Nobody asks you to be used to it,Newfie. You don’t like it, then you can get out!”

Rising slowly and deliberately to his feet Dean was significantly larger.“I live here.”

“And I died here,enfant, long before you were born on that hunk of rock in water!”

“You know, you’ve got a real bad attitude for a dead guy!”

“Say you?”

“Yeah.”

“This is why we have cats castrated,” Claire said to no one in particular. “Sit down. Both of you. You’re acting like idiots.” While she understood how males were hardwired to defend their territory, this was ridiculous.