db1bd484fe8700408f51338793ca8c56

“Oh.” Opening the fridge, Dean stared at the contents, ignored the little voice suggesting that, under the circumstances, it was all right to have a beer before noon, and closed the door again, saying, “That’s pretty smart for a dead guy.”

“I was, as you say, pretty smart for a live guy.”

“You’re bonding,” Austin observed sardonically. “I’m touched. Well, what would you call it?” he asked when both the living and the dead fixed him with an identical expression of horror.

“We’re not bonding,” Dean declared.

“Not even a little bit,” Jacques added. “We are…” He looked to the living for help.

“Not bonding,” Dean repeated.

“Oui.” Settling himself cross-legged an inch above the table, the ghost leaned back on nothing and studied the other man.“Me, I have no choice, but you, now you know, do you stay?”

“Claire asked me that, too.” He folded his arms. “I don’t run away from things.”

“Perhaps it is wiser to know when to run.”

“And leave you alone here?”

Jacques spread his hands, the pictures of wronged innocence, the gesture far more eloquent than words.

“Fat chance.” Shoving his glasses up on his nose, Dean headed for the basement stairs.

“Where are you going?”

He made the face of a man who once a month scrubbed the concrete floor with a stiff broom and an industrial cleanser.“I’m after sweeping up the rice.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

“You’ve had a busy twenty-four hours, Claire. Are you sure you’re all right?”

“I have a vicious headache.” Cradling the old-fashioned receiver in the damp hollow between ear and shoulder, she fought with the childproof cap on a bottle of painkillers. Teeth clenched, she sat the pill bottle on the table and pulled power. The bottle exploded.

“Claire, what are you doing?”

There were two pills caught in the cuff of her bathrobe.“Just taking something for my headache.” She swallowed them dry.

On the other end of the phone, Martha Hansen sighed.“You aren’t the first Keeper who’s had to apologize to a bystander, you know.”

“It’s the first timeI’ve ever had to do it.”

“It’s the first time a bystander’s ever been involved in what you do.”

Claire opened her mouth to disagree, then realized that her previous involvements with bystanders were not something she wanted to discuss with her mother. Nor, she acknowledged with a small smile, were they something she had to apologize for.

“Claire?”

Pleasant memories fled as the current situation shoved its way back to the forefront of her thoughts.“At least I needn’t worry about it happening again. Dean’s too nice a guy to even think of doing it on purpose.”

“And Jacques?”

Her lip curled.“Jacques is dead, Mom. He can’t affect anything.”

“Ah. Yes.”

Claire decided she didn’t want to know what that meant. Had the phones been Touch-Tone, she’d have suspected Austin had been talking to her mother behind her back. Since there was no way the cat could use a rotary phone…All at once, this conversation was not making her feel any better. “I’d better get dressed and get back to work.”

“I hope it helped you to talk about it, Claire. You know you can call any time. Speaking of calling, you haven’t heard from your sister, have you?”

She could feel her jaw muscles tightening up.“No. Why?”

“We had a bit of a disagreement, and she stormed out of here last night. I’m not worried, I know where she is, I was just wondering if she’d spoken to you.”

“No.”

“If she does call, would you please explain to her that turning the sofa into a pygmy hippo for the afternoon might be very good transfiguration, but it’s rather hard on the carpets and it confuses the hippo.”

[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_5]

A dry, tearing sound, the sound of something large and ancient clearing its throat, pulled Dean up from the basement. Fighting against the natural inclination of his legs to get the rest of his body the hell out of there, so to speak, he made his way to the dining room where he found Claire on her hands and knees, surrounded by pieces of broken quarter-round, ripping up the linoleum.

“She’s venting frustrations on inanimate objects,” Austin explained from the safety of the countertop. “You should consider yourself lucky.”

“Boss?”

She shuffled backward and tore free another two feet of floor covering before the section detached from the main.“There’s hardwood under here. We’re going to refinish it.”

“But I thought…”

“Congratulations.”

“…that you were after working on closing the site.”

“To close the site, I need to study it. To study it, I need to get close. To get close, I need to be calm.” Claire ripped up another ragged section. “Do I look calm?”

“I guess not.” Amazed by the extent of the mess, Dean wasn’t entirely certain he wouldn’t rather have faced the demon he’d expected. “But what about the front counter, out in the lobby.”

“I know where the front counter is, Dean.” She tossed aside a crumbling piece of linoleum. “I’m not asking you if you want to refinish the floor, I’m telling you we’re going to.”

Dean glanced over at the cat who looked significantly unhelpful.“Where’s Jacques?”

“Staying out of my way.”