When Dean set down the plate, she stared aghast at the scrambled eggs, sausage patties, grilled tomatoes, and three pieces of toast. "This is more food than I'd usually eat all day."

"I guess that's why you're so..."

"So what?"

"Nothing."

"What?"

"Skinny." His ears slowly turning red, Dean set the cutlery neatly on each side of the plate and hurried back into the kitchen. "I'll, uh, get you another coffee, then."

While his back was turned. Claire rolled her eyes. She was not skinny; she was pet.i.te. And he was so, in rapid succession she considered and discarded intense, earnest, and stalwart. Before she worked her way down to yeomanly, she decided she'd best settle on young and leave it at that. "Aren't you having any?" she asked as he returned with her mug.

A little surprised, he shook his head. "I ate before you got up."

"That was hours ago. Bring another plate, you can have half of this."

"If I bring another plate..." Austin began.

"No." When Dean hesitated, Claire prodded at his conscience. "Trust me, I'm not going to eat all of it; it'll just get thrown out."

A few moments later, a less intimidating breakfast in front of her and Dean eating hungrily on the other side of the table the way only a young man who'd gone three hours without eating could, Claire turned suddenly toward the cat and said, "You're sure he's a part of this?"

"I'm positive."

"You were positive that time in Gdansk, too."

Austin snorted. "So my Polish was a little rusty, sue me." He stared pointedly up at her, his tail flicking off the seconds like a furry metronome.

"All right. You win." Chewing and swallowing a forkful of tomato delayed the inevitable only a few moments more. Feeling the weight of Dean's gaze join the cat's, she lifted her head and cleared her throat. "First of all, I want you to realize that what I'm about to tell you is privileged information and is not to be repeated. To anyone. Ever."

Wrapped in the comforting and lingering odors of sausage and egg, Dean ran through a fast replay of the morning's events. "Nothing personal, but who'd believe me?"

"You'd be surprised. When I got up today, I didn't expect I'd be telling it to you." Eyes narrowed, she leaned forward. "If this information falls into the wrong hands..."

Unable to help himself. Dean mirrored her movement and lowered his voice dramatically. "The fate of the world is at stake?"

"Yes."

When he realized she meant it, he could've sworn he felt each individual hair rise off the back of his neck. It was an unpleasant sensation. He pushed his chair away from the table, all of a sudden not really hungry. "Okay. Maybe you'd better not tell me."

Claire shot an annoyed look at the cat. "Too late."

"But you don't even know me. You don't know you can trust me."

The possibility of not trusting him hadn't crossed her mind. Total strangers probably handed him their packages while they bent to tie their shoelaces. If a game needed a scorekeeper, he'd always be the one drafted. Mothers could safely leave small children with him and return hours later knowing that their darlings had been fed, watered, and harmlessly amused. And he does windows.

"I know we can trust you," Austin muttered, leaping up onto an empty chair and glaring over the edge of the table at a piece of uneaten sausage. "Get on with it. I'm old. I haven't got all day. Are you going to finish that?"

"Yes." While she cleared her plate, Claire created and sc.r.a.pped several possible beginnings. Finally, she sighed. "I suppose Austin's right..."

"Well thank you very much."

"... it begins with believing in magic."

"And ends with?" Dean asked cautiously.

"Armageddon. But if it's all the same to you, I'd rather leave that for another day." When he indicated that Armageddon could be left for as long as she liked, Claire continued. "Magic, simply put, is a system for tapping into and controlling the possibilities of a complex energy source."

"Energy from where?"

"From somewhere else." It was clear that she'd lost him. She sighed. "It doesn't have a physical presence, it just is." In fact, a part of it had reputedly once explained itself by saying, "I AM." but that wasn't a detail Claire thought she ought to add.

"It just is," Dean repeated. Since she seemed to be waiting to see if he was willing to accept that, he shrugged and said, "Okay." At this point, it seemed safest.

"Let's compare magic to baseball. Everyone is more-or-less capable of playing the game but not everyone has the ability to make it to the major leagues." Pleased with the a.n.a.logy, Claire made a mental note to remember it. She could use it should she ever be in this situation again, owning a hotel complete with sleeping evil, a hole to h.e.l.l in the bas.e.m.e.nt, and a handsome, young caretaker to whom her cat spilled his guts. Yeah, right. Her nostrils flared.

Taken aback by the nostril flaring, Dean shuffled his feet under the table, glanced around the familiar dining room, and finally said, "Could I do it?"

"With training and discipline, lots of discipline," she added in case he started thinking it was easy, "anyone can do minor magics, so minor that most people don't think they're worth the effort."

Feeling like he'd just been chastised by his fifth grade teacher, an intense young woman right out of teacher's college whom every boy in the cla.s.s had had a crush on. Dean slid down in his chair until his shoulders were nearly level with the table and his legs, crossed at the ankle, stretched halfway across the room. "Go ahead."

"Thank you." An irritated so kind came implied with the tone. Who did he think he was? "Most of the energy magic deals with comes from the center part of the possibilities. The upper end is for emergency use only and the lower end is posted off-limits. For the sake of argument, let's call the upper end 'good,' and the lower end 'evil.'" She paused, waiting for an objection that never came. "You're okay with that? I mean, good and evil aren't exactly late twentieth century concepts."

"There were at my granddad's house," Dean told her. Tersely invited to elaborate, he shrugged self-consciously. "My granddad was an Anglican minister."

"This is the Reverend McIssac, the grandfather who raised you?"

He nodded.

"What happened to your parents?" Claire didn't entirely understand his expression, but as the silence went on just a little too long, she suspected he wasn't going to answer. "I'm sorry, that was tactless of me. I'm not actually very good with people."

"Quel surprise," Austin muttered, head on his front paws.

"No, it's okay." Dean spun one of the breakfast knives around on the table, eyes locked on the whirling blade. "They died when I was a baby," he said at last. "House fire. It happens a lot when the woodstove gets loaded up on the first cold night of winter and you find out what condition your chimney is really in. My dad threw me out the upstairs window into a s...o...b..nk just before the building collapsed."

"I'm sorry."

"I never knew them. It was always just me and my granddad. My father was his only son, see, and he wouldn't let any of my aunts raise me. He's the one who taught me to cook." All at once. Dean had to see Claire's expression. Too many girls fell into a "poor sweet baby" mood at this point in the story and things never really recovered after that. Catching the knife between two fingers, he looked up and saw sympathy but not pity, so he told her the rest. "They could've saved themselves if they hadn't gone upstairs for me. I've always known, without a doubt, how much they loved me. There's not a lot of people who can say that."

Swallowing a lump in her throat, Claire reached over and lightly touched the back of his hand. "No wonder you're so stable."

He shrugged self-consciously. "Me?"

"Do you see anyone else around here who isn't a cat?" Austin reached up and batted the knife off the table. "Thank you for sharing. Now, can we get on with it?"

Partly to irritate the cat, and partly to allow emotions to settle, Claire waited while Dean dealt with the smear of b.u.t.ter and toast crumbs on the floor before picking up the scattered threads of the explanation. "You ready?"