db1bd484fe8700408f51338793ca8c56

“I would,” Jacques agreed cheerfully. “Truly I would help if I could.”

“Yeah. Sure.” Until this point, Dean had always been able to give any new acquaintance the benefit of the doubt. Until this point they’d all been alive, but if he disliked Jacques solely because he was dead, didn’t that make him as much of a bigot as if he disliked him because he was FrenchCanadian? Now, if he disliked him because of the way he acted around Claire, that opened a whole…

He threw his weight behind the scraper.

…new…

Muscles bulged in his jaw as he gritted his teeth.

…barrel of fish.

“I think you reached the wood right there,” Jacques pointed out conversationally.

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“Claire?”

She paused, one hand on the doorknob.“What is it, Jacques?”

“You have put nothing of me in your bedroom.” Standing on the threshold, he pushed against an invisible barrier. “I cannot come in.”

“I know.”

He stared soulfully at her.“I want only to be where you are.”

“Why don’t you try being back in the attic where your bed is and I’ll see you in the morning.” She pushed the door closed.

“Even though you close the door on my face, I still desire you!”

She had to smile.“Good night, Jacques.” Switching off the light and dropping her robe, she climbed into bed.

“Claire?” His voice came faintly through the door. “I would just sit in the chair. My word as a Labaet.”

“Goodnight, Jacques.” After a moment, she sighed. “Jacques, go away. I can still feel you standing there.”

“I am on guard so that your sleep is not disturbed.”

“The only thing disturbing my sleep is you. Why won’t you go away?”

“Because…” He paused and she felt him sigh. Or she felt the emotion behind the sigh; as he wasn’t breathing, he didn’t actually exhale. “Because I have been so many years alone.”

Alone. Once again, the word throbbed between them, and once again it evoked an emotional response. Claire couldn’t deny the urge to bring the small tapestry cushion—the cushion that gave him access to her sitting room—into the bedroom. She couldn’t deny it, but she managed to resist it. “You can stand at the door if you want to.” After a moment, she pushed her face into Austin’s side and murmured, “This could become a problem.”

“I told you so.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Well, I would’ve if I’d been there.” He touched her shoulder with a front paw. “You’re attracted to him, aren’t you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, I’m a Keeper.”

“So?”

“I feel sorry for him.”

“And?”

“He’sdead.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

Down in the furnace room, the flames reflected on the copper hood were a sullen red. It could have told the Keeper that the spirit was trapped in the same binding that held it—accidentally caught and held.

BUT SHE DIDN’T ASK US.

It would have been even more annoyed had it not recognized all sorts of lovely new tensions now available for exploitation.

FIVE

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_4]

AT SEVEN-FORTY THE NEXT MORNING, at the far end of the third-floor hall, the vacuum cleaner coughed, sputtered, and roared into life. Three-and-a-half seconds later, Dean smacked the switch and it coughed, sputtered, and wheezed its way back to silence. Heart pounding, he stared down at the machine, wondering if it had always sounded like the first lap of an Indy race—noisy enough to wake the dead.

Or worse.

Which is ridiculous. He’d vacuumed this same hall once a week for as long as he’d worked here with this same machine and the woman in room six had slept peacefully—or compulsively—through it. Contractors had renovated the rooms to either side of her and obviously she hadn’t stirred. Mrs. Hansen had all but stuck pins in her, and still she slept on.

The odds were good that he wasn’t after waking her up this morning.

His foot stopped three inches above the off/on switch and Dean couldn’t force it any closer.

Apparently, his foot didn’t like the odds.

So he changed feet.

His other foot was, in its own way, as adamant.

You’re being nuts, boy. He carefully cleaned his glasses, placed them back on his nose, and, before the thought had time to reach his extremities, stomped on the switch, missed, and nearly fell over as his leg continued through an extra four inches of space.

Clearly, parts of his body were more paranoid than the whole.

Okay, uncle. He unplugged the machine and rewound the cord. There had to be an old carpet sweeper up in the attic, and he could always use that.

On his way back to the storage cupboard, he bent to pick up a small picture of a ship someone had left on the floor. He had no idea where it had come from; guests had found Mr. Smythe’s taste in art somewhat disturbing, so the walls had been essentially art free ever since the embarrassing incident with the eighteenth-century prints and the chicken.

Upon closer inspection, the picture turned out to be a discolored page clipped from a magazine slid into a cheap frame. A cheap, filthy frame.

Holding it between thumb and forefinger, Dean frowned. What was it doing leaning against the wall outside room six? And could he get it clean without using an abrasive?

“Put that down!”