"Yes, ma'am."

The shriek of tortured wood and steel cut off further conversation. Hands over her ears, Claire watched muscles stretch the sleeves of his T-shirt as the lock began to give. When it popped suddenly, it took her a moment to gather her wandering thoughts, although, she a.s.sured the world at large, it was purely an aesthetic interest. In that moment, the door swung open, Dean looked into the room, and froze on the threshold.

"Lord thunderin' Jesus! Mr. Smythe's been hiding a body up here!"

"Calm down." Claire put her palm in the center of Dean's back and shoved. She'd have had more luck shifting the building. "And move!" Over the years she'd seen bodies in every condition imaginable, and frequently the imagination had belonged to fairly warped individuals. If this body had merely been left lying around, she'd consider herself lucky.

Dean stayed in the doorway, the breadth of his shoulders blocking her way and her view.

"I don't think," he said, grasping both edges of the doorframe, "that this is something a lady ought to see."

"Well, you got part of it right, you don't think!" Choosing guile over force, she slammed her knees into the back of his at the spot where the crease crossed the hollow. As he collapsed, she pushed past him, one hand reaching out to the old-fashioned, circular light switch.

The room was a little larger than the room Claire had slept in and the decorating hadn't been changed since the early part of the century. An oversized armchair sat covered in hand-crocheted doilies, a Victorian plant stand complete with a very dead fern stood between the two curtained windows, and a woman lay fully clothed on top of the bed, a sausage-shaped bolster under her head and a folded quilt under her feet. Everything, including the woman, wore a fuzzy patina of dust. The air smelted stale and, faintly, of perfume.

Claire could feel the edges of a shield wrapped around the body, which explained why she hadn't been able to get a sense of what room six held. The shield hadn't been put in place by a Cousin. At some point, a Keeper had been by and wrapped the site up so tightly that even another Keeper couldn't get through.

Had Augustus Smythe not needed to leave so badly, Claire could've pa.s.sed happily through Kingston without ever realizing the site existed. The one thing she couldn't figure out was why a Keeper would bother. While people did occasionally manifest an accident site, the usual response was an exorcism, not the old Sleeping Beauty schtick.

A choking noise behind her reminded Claire she had a more immediate problem. The woman on the bed had clearly been there for some years; she could wait a few minutes longer.

When she turned. Dean had regained his position in the doorway. Her movement drew his locked gaze up off the bed, breaking the connection. For a moment he stared at her, eyes wide, then he whirled around and managed two running steps toward the stairs.

"Dean McIssac!"

There was power in a name.

He stopped, one foot in the air, and almost fell.

"Where are you going?"

Shoving his gla.s.ses back into place, he tired to sound as though he found dead women laid out in the guest rooms all the time. "I'm after calling 911." His heart was pounding so loudly he could hardly hear himself.

"After calling?'

He rolled his eyes anxious to be moving, impatient at the delay. "After calling, going to call; it's the same thing."

"Why?"

"I don't know!" Frustration had him almost shouting. Suddenly self-conscious, he ducked his head. "Sorry."

Claire waved off the apology. "I meant, why are you going to call 911?"

"Because there's a body..."

"She isn't dead, Dean, she's asleep. If you look at her chest, you can see she's breathing."

"Breathing?" Without moving his feet, he grabbed the splintered doorjamb and leaned in over the threshold. "Oh." Feeling foolish, he shrugged and tried to explain, "I was raised better than to stare at a woman's chest."

"You thought it was a corpse."

"Doesn't matter."

"Who raised you?"

"My granddad, Reverend McIssac," Dean told her, a little defensively.

Claire had her doubts at how often a twenty-year-old male actually followed that particular dictum but had no plans to discourage admirable intentions. "Well, good for him. And you. Now, could you do something for me?"

"Uh, sure."

"Could you go get me another cup of coffee, please."

He looked at her like she was out of her mind. "What? Now? What about the woman on the bed?"

"I don't think she's going to want one."

"No, I meant, what about the woman on the bed!"

Claire sighed. She hadn't actually thought it would work, but since it was the simplest temporary solution, it had seemed foolish not to try. Unfortunately, curiosity was one of the strongest motivating forces behind humanity's rise out of the ooze and, unsatisfied, it invariably caused problems. The safest way to deal with questions was to answer them, then, after all the loose ends were neatly tied up, wipe the whole package right out of Dean's mind. "If I promise to explain everything later, will you do me a favor? Will you wait quietly while I deal with this?"

"You know what's going on then?"

"Yes. Mostly," she amended, conscience p.r.i.c.kling.

"And you'll explain it to me?"

"When I'm done with her."

"Done what?"

"That's one of the things I'll explain later."

Feeling a pressure against his shins, Dean glanced down to see Austin rubbing against him. It was such a normal, ordinary thing for a cat to do, it made the rest of the morning seem less strange. "Okay," he said, dropping to one knee and running his fingers along the silky fur. "I'll wait."

"Thank you."

With her unwelcome audience temporarily taken care of, Claire turned her attention back to the bed. In spite of the dust, the woman did bear a striking resemblance to Sleeping Beauty, or more accurately, given her age, to Sleeping Beauty's mother. Then it became obvious that the blonde curls had been bleached, the eyebrows had been plucked and redrawn, and the lips were far, far too red. The severe, almost military-style clothing covered a lush figure that could by no means be called matronly. For some reason, Claire found the line of dark residue under all ten fingernails incredibly disturbing. She didn't know why, dirty fingernails had never bothered her before.

It would be easier to work without the shield, but with a bystander to consider, Claire went through the perimeter without disturbing its structural integrity.

The emanations rising from the body were so dark she gagged. Teeth clenched, wishing she hadn't had that coffee, she forced herself to take a deeper look.

Kneeling beside the cat. Dean watched his new boss stagger back, trip on the edge of the braided rug, and begin to fall. He dove forward, felt an unpleasant, greasy sizzle along one arm, and caught her just before she hit the floor. Under the makeup, her face had gone a pale gray and her throat worked as though she wanted to throw up. Before he could ask if she was all right, Austin leaped up onto her lap.

Her lower body still on the other side of the shield, Claire reached out to stop the cat from crossing over.

Too late.