He nodded.

"All right, back to good energy and evil energy. Between this energy and what most of the world considers reality, is a barrier. For lack of a better term, let's keep calling it the fabric of the universe. Those who use magic learn to pierce this barrier and draw off the energy they need. Unfortunately, it also gets pierced by accident." She took a long swallow of coffee. "In order to continue, I'm going to have to grossly oversimplify, so please don't think that I'm insulting your intelligence."

"Okay." It still seemed to be the safest response.

"Every time someone does something good, it pokes a hole through the fabric, releases some of the good energy, and everybody benefits. Every time someone does something evil, it releases some of the evil energy and everybody suffers."

"How good?" Dean wondered. "And how evil?"

"The holes are proportional. If say, you sacrificed yourself to save another or conversely sacrificed another to save yourself, the holes would be large." She paused to watch raindrops. .h.i.t the window behind his head, the drops merging until their weight pulled them in tiny rivers toward the ground. "The problem is that small holes can get bigger. Evil oozing out a pinp.r.i.c.k inspires more evil which enlarges the hole which inspires greater evil... Well, you get the idea."

"Unless he's dumber than kibble," Austin growled. "I can't believe that was the best you could come up with."

Claire stared down at him through narrowed eyes. "All right. You come up with a better explanation."

Twisting around on the chair seat, the cat pointedly turned his back on her. "I don't want to."

"You can't."

"I said, I didn't want to."

"Ha!"

"Excuse me?" Dean waved a hand to get Claire's attention. "Is that what happened in the furnace room? Someone did something evil and accidentally made a hole?"

"Not exactly," she said slowly, trying to decide how much he should know. "Some holes are made on purpose. There are always people around who want what they're not supposed to have and are arrogant enough to believe they can control it." Recalling an accident site she'd come upon her first year working solo, she shook her head. "But they can't."

Dean read context if not particulars in the movement. "Messy?"

"It can be. I once found a body, an entire body, in the glove compartment of a 1984 Plymouth Reliant station wagon."

"The 1.2 liter GM, or the Mitsubishi engine?"

"Does it matter?"

"It does if you need to buy parts."

Claire drummed her fingernails against the tabletop. "I'm talking about a body in a glove compartment, not a shopping trip to Canadian Tire."

"Sorry."

"May I continue?"

"Sure."

"Thank you. Most holes can be taken care of with the magical equivalent of a caulking gun. Some are more complicated, and a few are large enough for a significant amount of evil to break through and wreak havoc before anything can be done about them."

His eyes widened, appearing even larger magnified by the lenses of his gla.s.ses. "Has this ever happened?"

She hesitated, then shrugged; this much she might as well tell him. "Yes. But not often; the sinking of Atlantis, the destruction of the Minoan Empire..."

"The inexplicable popularity of Barney," Austin added dryly.

Claire's eyes narrowed again, and Dean decided it might be safer not to laugh.

"Holes," she announced, her tone promising consequences should the cat interrupt again, "that give access to evil draw one of two types of monitors."

"Electronic monitors?"

"No." She paused to rub a smear of lipstick off her mug with her thumb. This was turning out to be easier than she'd imagined it could be. At the moment, before the tenuous connection they'd acquired over the course of the morning dissolved back into the relationship of almost strangers, she suspected Dean would accept almost anything she said.

GO AHEAD, TAKE ADVANTAGE. HAVE SOME FUN. WHO'LL KNOW?.

The mug hit the table, rocking back and forth.

Dean grabbed it before the last dregs of Claire's coffee spilled out onto the table. "Are you okay?"

"Yes." She blinked four or five times to bring him back into focus. "Of course. Did you hear anything just now?"

"No."

He was clearly telling the truth.

"Are you sure you're okay?"

"I'm fine." The voice had sounded slightly off frequency, as though the speaker hadn't quite managed to sync up with her head. Considering the nature of the site in the furnace room there could be only one possible source for that personal a temptation. And only one possible response.

"Right, then, the monitors. Now what?" she demanded when the pressure of Austin's regard dragged her to a second stop.

"Nothing."

"You're staring."

"I'm hanging on your every word," he told her.

He was looking so irritatingly inscrutable, Claire knew he suspected something. Tough. "The monitors," she began again, fixing her gaze on Dean and blocking the cat out of her peripheral vision, "are magic-users known as Cousins and Keepers. The Cousins are less powerful than the Keepers, but there're more of them. They can mitigate the results of an accident, but they can't actually seal the hole. They watch, and wait for the need to summon a Keeper.

"For the sites that can't be sealed because the holes have already grown too large, Keepers, who're always referred to as Aunt or Uncle for reasons no one has ever been able to make clear to me, essentially become the caulking and seal the hole with themselves. A lot of eccentric, reclusive old men and women are actually saving the world."

Dean took off his gla.s.ses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "So the Keepers are the good guys?"

"That's right."

"And the woman asleep upstairs is one of the bad guys?"

"She's a Keeper gone bad." The words emerged without emotion because the only emotion applicable to the situation seemed a bit much to indulge in over the breakfast dishes. "An evil Keeper."

"An evil auntie?" he asked, unable to keep one corner of his mouth from curving up.