Chronicles Of The Keeper - Summon The Keeper Part 31

"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's dead."

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 sons of lovely new tensions now available for exploitation.

CHAPTER FIVE.

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 gla.s.ses, 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 s.p.a.ce.

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 s.h.i.+p 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 embarra.s.sing 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!"

Behind his gla.s.ses. Dean's eyes narrowed as he raised his gaze from the felted cobwebbing to the ghost. "Is it yours, then?"

"It is mine as much as it is anyone's."

If the picture belonged to Jacques, that explained why he'd never seen it before. "Why should I put it down?" he asked suspiciously.

Jacques' expression matched Dean's. "Why do you hold it?"

"I found it on the floor."

"Then put it back on the floor."

"There?" A nod indicated the picture's previous position against the wall, far, far too handy to the sleeping Keeper.

"Oui, there! What are you, stupide?"

"Why do you want me to put it there?"

"Because that is where it was!"

"So?"

"Do you try to block my way, Anglais?"

"If I can," Dean growled, taking a step toward the dead man. The way he understood it, Jacques had been dead as d.i.c.k and haunting the hotel at the same time as the evil Keeper's attempt to control the accident site. It wouldn't surprise him to discover the ghost had been her accomplice and now, with Claire unwilling to give him a body, he had only one other place to turn. Dean couldn't let that happen, not after everything Claire and her mother and the cat had said. "What are you planning, Jacques?"

Jacques folded his arms and rolled his eyes. "I should think," he said scornfully, "that what I, as you so crudely say, plan, would be obvious even to a muscle-bound imbecile like yourself."

"You're after waking her?"

"Waking her?" The ghost shot a speculative look in Dean's direction. "Oui, if you like. I wake her to new sensations. And when I tell Claire that you gather what allows me to walk within the hotel, that you try to keep me from her, she will not like that, I think."

... what allows me to walk within the hotel. Dean's scowl faded as he realized, for the first time in his life, he'd leaped to the worst possible conclusion, his response based solely on his irrational reaction to a dead man. The picture had nothing to do with the sleeping Keeper. Working from the attic, Claire must've sent it to the third floor hall without considering where it might end up.

He'd completely forgotten about Jacques' anchors. He opened his mouth to explain and was amazed to hear himself say, "Sure, run and hide behind Claire."

"Run and hide?" Anger blurred Jacques' edges.

"Too dead to stand up for yourself?"

"Claire..."

"This has nothing to do with Claire." Dean set the picture back on the floor, as far from room six as he could put it without appearing to give ground, then straightened, shoulders squared. "This is between you and me."

"Me, I think this has everything to do with Claire," Jacques murmured, studying the younger man through narrowed lids. "But you are right, mon pet.i.t Anglais, this is between you and me."

Claire had been vaguely disappointed not to find Jacques waiting for her when she pa.s.sed through the sitting room on her way to the bathroom. Thoughts of him spending the night pressed up against her bedroom door had inserted themselves into her dreams and jerked her awake almost hourly. She'd wanted to share her mood with him while she still felt like giving him a body in order to wring his neck.