Chronicles Of The Keeper - Summon The Keeper Part 55

"Step up inside and pull the door closed behind you, but don't latch it."

"Why not?"

"Only idiots lock themselves in wardrobes." His tone suggested any idiot ought to know that. "Once you're in there, think about Claire. Holding an image of her in your mind, walk toward the back wall. When you get to where you're going, keep thinking of her."

"Where am I going?"

"I have no idea. Once you arrive, look and listen for anything out of the ordinary. She'll be in the middle of it. Oh, and don't eat or drink while you're in there. Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada."

About ready to step inside, Dean paused. "Why not?" he asked again.

"Did you not read when you were a kid?"

"I, uh, played a lot of hockey."

Austin snorted. "I guessed. If you eat or drink inside the wardrobe, it holds you there."

The door half closed, he stuck his head out into the room. "How do I come back?"

"Think of this room and go through any opaque door."

"But do not return here without Claire," Jacques told him, "or I will make of your life a misery."

Dean accepted the warning in the spirit it had been given. "Don't worry. I'll save her."

As the wardrobe door swung shut, Austin leaped up onto the bed. "I hate waiting."

"You know," Jacques said thoughtfully, drifting over to join him. "If you are wrong and she does not need saving, she is going to be not happy with you."

"Excuse me? If I am wrong?"

The inside of the wardrobe smelled faintly of mothb.a.l.l.s. Dean found it a comforting smell as he turned away from the door and the argument gaining volume on the other side. It reminded him of the closet in the spare room at his grandfather's house. Unable to see, he took a tentative step forward, expecting, in spite of everything to whack his face on the back wall. Another step, and another. Still no wall.

A new odor began drifting in over the mothb.a.l.l.s.

His grandfather's pipe tobacco?

He stopped and closed his eyes, suddenly remembering that he was supposed to be thinking of Claire, not of home.

"Holding an image of her in your mind..."

It was hard to hold a single image, so he cycled through the highlights of their short a.s.sociation as he took another step. Claire walking into the kitchen that first morning; Claire explaining how magic worked; Claire going up the spiral stairs to the attic. The smell of the pipe tobacco began to fade. She was his boss; she was a Keeper; she had a really irritating way of a.s.suming she knew best or, more precisely, that he knew nothing at all.

When he opened his eyes, he could see a gray light in the distance.

Approximately thirty-seven steps later, he wasn't sure how many he'd taken before he'd started counting, he stood on Princess Street looking down the hill toward the water. Prepared for the strangest possible environment, he was a little disappointed to find himself in a bad copy of the city he'd just left. Everything was vaguely out of proportion, the street had been paved with cobblestones, and, although there were a few parked cars, there was no traffic. The half dozen or so people in sight paid no attention to him.

He could hear church bells in the distance and the cry of gulls circling high overhead.

There was no sign of Claire.

Hoping for a clue, he pulled out the card.

Aunt Claire, Keeper Your Accident is my Opportunity (could be worse, could be raining)

The skies opened up, and it began to pour. Dean stuffed the card back into his wallet, noting that magic had a very basic sense of humor.

Fortunately, he seemed to have pa.s.sed from October into August. The air was warm, and the rain was almost tepid. Pus.h.i.+ng wet hair back off his face, he drew in a deep lungful of air and frowned at yet another familiar smell. Hoping he hadn't screwed everything up by thinking of home, he started running downhill toward the harbor. Look and listen for anything out of the ordinary, Austin had told him. Well, as far as he knew, there were no salt.w.a.ter harbors on the Great Lakes.

It wasn't just a salt.w.a.ter harbor. Signal Hill rose across the narrows where the Royal Military College should have been. Ma.s.sive docks b.u.t.ted up against a broad thoroughfare and along the far side of it were the historic properties that should've been cl.u.s.tered around the Dartmouth ferry dock in Halifax.

"Okay. This is weird." But so far it didn't seem dangerous. Even the rain was letting up.

There were s.h.i.+ps at nearly all the docks, most of them clippers and brigantines, but he saw at least two modern vessels as well. So which were out of the ordinary? While he stood there, undecided, someone b.u.mped him from behind, muttered an apology, and kept moving.

Dean turned to see a heavily muscled man in an old-fas.h.i.+oned naval uniform, carrying a human leg over one ma.s.sive shoulder, weave his way through the crowd on the thoroughfare and enter a windowless green building on the other side. The sign on the building read "Man-made Sausages."

No one else, from the little girl selling matches to the one-eyed, peg-legged street artist with a hook, seemed to think anything of it.

"Don't eat or drink while you're in there...."

"Not much danger of that," he muttered. "I'll just find the boss..."

From somewhere in town came the enraged roar of an Industrial Light and Magic special effect followed closely by a woman's scream.

"Claire!"

His work boots slipping on the wet cobblestones. Dean raced away from the harbor through a rabbit warren of narrow streets, all of them steeply angled regardless of the direction he was running.

The roar sounded again. Closer.

Just when he thought he was hopelessly lost, he pounded out from between two empty storefronts and into the intersection at Brock and King, across from the old city library.

In the center of the intersection, stomping jerkily about like one of the old stop-motion models, was a dinosaur. A T-Rex. Off to one side, were the squashed and nearly unidentifiable remains...

Dean clutched at his chest.

...of a 1957 Corvette.

"Oh, G.o.d, no!" Eyes wide behind his gla.s.ses, he staggered forward, hands outstretched. He was almost at the wreck when he felt the ground move, felt hot breath on the back of his neck, and had the sudden uncomfortable feeling he was a secondary character in a Sat.u.r.day morning movie matinee.

He dove out of the way just in time. Rolled immediately thereafter to avoid being smacked by the ma.s.sive tail. Leaped over a crumpled fender...

Sitting in the library, surrounded by reference material and a few of the more pungent if less literate clientele, Claire heard someone call her name. Loudly. One could almost say desperately.

The voice, even in extremis, sounded very familiar.

She'd been inside since the Historian's new pet had shown up, figuring sooner or later it would get bored and wander off and, if it didn't, she'd just go back out through the library door and home. Then, looking for a map, she'd gotten engrossed in the books. She had no idea how long she'd been in there.