Laying her ear against each door only long enough to check for a rise in volume, Claire moved quickly down the hall.

Three doors. Four.

She opened the fifth door and flung herself out of the wardrobe. The volume of the barking didn't so much rise as expand to fill every available s.p.a.ce with sound.

Baby was in the hotel.

Under normal circ.u.mstances, that would have been a problem, but being torn apart by a psychotic Doberman would be significantly preferable to life with Sara controlling h.e.l.l. Claire leaped over a pile of laundry, raced through the sitting room, and slid to a halt in the office.

Baby ignored her. Toenails scrabbling against the lobby floor, he dragged the ruin of the porch and the snoring Mrs. Abrams another inch closer to the bas.e.m.e.nt.

Unwilling to scan the hotel lest she give her presence away, Claire decided to follow Baby's lead. Adding up the dog, the porch, and Mrs. Abrams, the odds were good Austin hadn't been responsible; not one hundred percent, but good.

Her back against the wall, she slid past, losing nothing more significant than a percentage of her hearing, and sped down the bas.e.m.e.nt stairs, grateful that Baby's barking would cover any possible noise she might make.

The door to the furnace room was open.

Her heart beating so loudly she could hardly hear herself think, Claire paused by the washing machine and reached for calm.

A Keeper without self-control could control neither the power accessed nor where in the possibilities that power was accessed from.

Evil favored the chaotic mind.

Whites and colors should be sorted before washing.

Claire blinked, breaking contact with the box of laundry detergent. This was as calm as she was going to get.

Wiping damp palms against her thighs, she slipped behind the masking angle of the furnace room door and peered inside.

Still wearing the dusty clothes she'd been put to sleep in so many years before, Sara stood on air over the pit, back to the door, both hands raised, head bowed. Her fingertips were red where the blood had dripped down from her nails.

Suspended horizontally over the pit in front of her, shirtless, blood dripping from a number of shallow cuts on his chest, Dean appeared to be unconscious but still alive. It took a moment to spot Diana wrapped in overlapping bands of power and propped, mummylike, against the wall.

Wait a minute... Dean was over the pit and Diana was up against the wall?

Claire took a closer look at the power holding her sister. Most of it held her in place and kept her quiet but threaded throughout it, head to toe, was a conduit set up to pour Diana's considerable power into Sara, already in place because there'd be no opportunity to stop the invocation and set it up later.

Which meant that Dean was over the pit because...

No wonder he was always blushing.

But at twenty? Looking like a young, albeit myopic, G.o.d?

Hey! she told herself sternly, now is not the time. The problem was, it was easier, much, much easier to think about Dean than to come up with a plan to save the world.

It had taken two Keepers to stop Sara the first time she'd tried this. How could she possibly do it alone?

Not alone, if I can reach Diana without attracting Sara's attention, I can use the conduit myself. With Diana's power joined to mine, Sara's extra twenty years of experience shouldn't count for much.

As the evil Keeper began a new chant, Claire realized that were two small problems with her plan. The first was that Sara sealed h.e.l.l. With Sara removed. h.e.l.l would surge free. Claire would have to sign herself onto the site so that her power would become the seal when Sara's power was removed. Which meant, if there wasn't power enough left to close the hole, she'd be stuck here. In the hotel. For the rest of her life.

And Dean was leaving.

She didn't even know where he kept the toaster.

The second problem was that Sara also held Dean. Literally. Attacked from behind, Sara would let go and Dean would fall into the pit.

When she hooked up with Diana, Sara would know. She'd have to strike immediately. If she saved Dean first, Sara would have time to marshal a defense.

If she let Dean fall...

What point in saving the world if she let Dean fall?

She'd just have to find a way to save him, and that was that. Timing her footsteps to Baby's frenzied barking, she crept down the stairs toward Diana.

Down in the pit, h.e.l.l gloried in the strength it gained from each drop of sacrificial blood.

THERE ON THE STAIRS, the rest of h.e.l.l pointed out to itself, IT'S THE OTHER KEEPER.

SO?.

SO SHOULD WE TELL HER?.

Another drop of blood evaporated in the heat. h.e.l.l breathed it metaphorically in and laughed. YOU MEAN, SHOULD WE HELP HER? WE DON'T HELP. ANYONE.

Baby had managed to drag the whole mess another three inches toward the bas.e.m.e.nt stairs. Tongue hanging out, collar cutting into the thick muscles of his neck, he kept barking and pulling in the certain belief that he had his enemy on the run.

And then, in the fraction of a second between one bark and the next, a familiar voice told him to be quiet.

The barking stopped. Claire froze.

Sara drew her fingernails along Dean's side. As blood welled up from four parallel lines, she began a new chant.

Claire recognized the guttural Latin. There wasn't much time left. Lower lip caught between her teeth, she started moving again.

A sterile dressing wrapped around his head and over his left eye, Austin had the rakish look of a wounded pirate. Breathing heavily, slightly scorched, he lay on his side on a litter made of an old silk scarf carried by twelve mice wearing multicolored frock coats, breeches, and tricorn hats.

This was so far outside Baby's experience, he sat panting and stared.

Still a safe distance away, the mice stopped and Austin opened his one good eye. "Somebody," he said without lifting his head, "is going to have to undo that collar."

Dean didn't so much regain consciousness as hijack it; consciousness wanted nothing to do with the whole situation.

HOW YA DOIN' GORGEOUS?.

He'd have jerked back at the sound of the voice, but he couldn't figure out how to operate his body. Which scared him a lot more than h.e.l.l. He had a friend, Paul Malan, who'd gone into the boards at the wrong angle and now Paul played ball hockey from a wheelchair.

HE'S IGNORING US!.