"I'll be fine."

"And what on earth do you think you could do if I wasn't?" remained mostly silent.

Should I have insisted? Dean asked himself as he paused halfway down the front stairs to let his eyes grow accustomed to the dark. From what he understood of Claire's life, it had to be a lonely existence, constantly on the move with few opportunities to make real friends.

A sudden vision of Claire sitting at the Portsmouth with the guys and Kathy, listening to them swap stupid mainlander stories, picking up her round of beer in turn, stopped him from going back into the lobby. They wouldn't be rude. In fact, they'd be glad to see another woman in the group, but she wouldn't fit in.

And she wouldn't try to, he admitted. Maybe you should stay with her, boy. Keep that dead freak away. Wondering just how Jacques knew what Claire's needs were, he turned toward the office window in time to see her drop to her knees and out of sight. Oh, man, not the imps again.

Fists in his pockets, he continued down to the sidewalk, navigating the uneven brick steps with the ease of familiarity, and made his way out to the bus stop on King Street without looking back. What with sc.r.a.ping the front counter and refinishing the dining room floor, not to mention the weirder stuff, it had been some long week and he wasn't up to another argument about the types of vermin infesting the guesthouse. Now that he thought about it, he was really looking forward to a nice, normal evening, finding out how many mainlanders it took to screw in a light-bulb, and watching George drink until he puked.

Claire sat back on her heels and glared at the trap. After replacing the marshmallow pieces, she'd moved the cage back over the hole and was now trying, unsuccessfully, to convince herself that an imp, or imps, had taken the bait without being caught. Unfortunately, the evidence suggested one of two possibilities and she didn't care much for either. The first implied that the power she'd wrapped about the trap wasn't strong enough to hold even a minor piece of evil, and the second involved her being wrong from the start.

"And I just don't think I can handle multicolored mice," she muttered, getting to her feet. Had Austin been privy to her thoughts he'd have reminded her that what she really couldn't handle was being wrong but, since he wasn't, the emphasis remained on the mice.

"Still, they've been breeding around a major accident site for generations," she allowed as she locked the lobby door, Sasha and Dean both had keys and if by some strange stroke of misfortune any guests happened to wander by, she'd hear the knocker. "I suppose they should consider themselves lucky if color is the only variation. I mean," she added to no one in particular, entering her own suite, "look at the platypus."

Picking her way through the sitting room in the dark, she tripped only twice, and was feeling pretty pleased with herself when she flicked on the bathroom light.

"Sweet heaven."

At first she thought the letters on the mirror had been written in blood, but then she noticed the crushed remains of her favorite lipstick in the sink. Claw marks on the metal case and a perfect, three-fingered. Jaded Rose handprint pressed onto the porcelain identified the graffiti artist beyond a shadow of a doubt. Imps.

Or at least, imp.

This was exactly the sort of petty, destructive mischief they excelled at.

"Mice. Ha!" Claire exchanged a triumphant look with her reflection. "This will prove my point once and for all. I'll just go and get..."

Then the actual words sank in.

Someone, it said, in barely legible cursive script, needs to get laid.

"You'll go and get who?" her reflection asked, eyes faintly glowing.

"Shut up." Jacques would never give her a moment's peace. Dean would be so horribly embarra.s.sed she'd feel like a s.l.u.t. And Austin, Claire was only glad that Austin hadn't been around to hear Jacques declare she had needs. Obviously, she couldn't show the message to any of them. And there wasn't anyone else. "Nuts! Nuts! Nuts!" At her last declamation, she slapped both hands down on the counter.

A pair of dusty guest soaps turned into a pair of equally dusty pecans.

"Temper, temper," warned her reflection, shaking an amused finger behind the lines of lipstick.

"You think this is temper?" Claire muttered, reaching past the seepage and pulling power. One hand shading her eyes from the flash of light, she ran a clean cantrip over the mirror. "Wait until I catch that imp." Her lip curled. "Then you'll see temper."

Later that night, Dean let himself into his apartment through the door in the area. The evening had been no different than any other Sat.u.r.day evening but still, something had been missing. It no longer seemed to be enough that these people were his best friends, his link to home in the midst of those who'd never heard of Joey's Juice and couldn't seem to figure out how to wipe their feet.

Undressing in the dark, he lowered himself carefully onto the bed, locked his hands behind his head, and stared at nothing, wondering why the world outside the guest house suddenly seemed smaller than the world within. Wondering why a hole to h.e.l.l and an evil Keeper seemed less important than the Keeper sleeping overhead. Wondering why the world had started to spin...

Because you drank a whole lot of beer, his bladder reminded him.

When his bladder turned out to be the only organ offering solutions, Dean surrendered to sleep.

Still later, after letting herself in and relocking the front door, Sasha Moore paused by the counter and listened, separating out the individual rhythms of four lives. One, upstairs. Too slow and unchanging for mortal sleep. Two, downstairs. Slow and regular, a man sleeping the sleep of the just and the intoxicated. Three, close by. A Keeper, tossing restlessly in an empty bed. The vampire acknowledged temptation, then shook her head. Keepers took themselves far too seriously; regardless of how it turned out, she'd never hear the end of it. Four... She smiled and raised an ivory hand, a greeting to another hunter in the night. A greeting between equals.

A rustling, a scrabbling of claws on wood, lifted her gaze to the ceiling. "Mice," she murmured.

"That's what I keep telling them," Austin agreed from the shadows.

The temperature dropped overnight, October arriving with the promise of winter. By morning, the air in Claire's bedroom had chilled to an uncomfortable sixty-two degrees. She put it off for as long as she could, monitoring the seepage levels from under the covers, but she finally ran out of excuses to stay in bed. When her bare feet hit the floor, she sucked her breath in through her teeth. Nothing rose through the bra.s.s register except perhaps a sense of antic.i.p.ation.

"If you think I'm heading in there to open a vent, think again," she muttered. It would be simple enough to temporarily ward off the chill by adjusting her own temperature. Simpler still, since it wasn't likely to warm up any time soon, to put on a second sweater.

Rummaging through the pile of clothes on the floor, she realized she hadn't done laundry since she'd arrived. Fully aware that, in time, she wouldn't think twice about wearing an orange sweater over a purple turtleneck with navy sweats, as they aged, surviving Keepers grew less and less concerned with how the rest of the world perceived them, Claire tried not to think about how she looked as she shoved dirty clothes into a pillowcase.

"Running away to the circus?" Austin asked testily, emerging from under a carelessly thrown fold of blanket.

"Doing laundry," she told him, jumping off the chair with three socks and a bra she'd found on top of the wardrobe.

He stretched out a foreleg and critically examined a spotless, white paw. "Well, you know, I hadn't wanted to say anything..."

"Then don't."

Hearing Claire descend to the bas.e.m.e.nt, Dean gratefully left off his attempt to fit old lengths of baseboard into the new dimensions of the dining room and followed. To his surprise, he found her stuffing clothes into the washing machine. Taking in the layered sweaters, he realized she had no intention of turning up the heat. He couldn't say that he blamed her. "Did you, uh, need help with that, then?" he asked when she turned and flashed him an inquiring glance.

"I can manage, thank you."

About to mention that she should sort her colors. Dean forced himself to hold his tongue. Maybe Keepers never ended up with gray underwear.

She looked different. For the first time since she'd arrived, he was seeing her without makeup. Without the artfully defined shadows, she seemed younger, softer, less ready to take on the world. A sudden image of her riding into battle in the traditional, Sat.u.r.day-afternoon-Western warpaint made him smile.

"What?" she demanded.

"Nothing."

"If it's the clothes, I don't usually dress like this."

"I hadn't noticed." Except he had. "You mean the sweaters." He pulled at the waistband of his Hyperion Oil Fields sweatshirt. "I could go out and buy some electric heaters."

Claire's eyes narrowed. Obviously Augustus Smythe had never used electric heaters, or there'd be some already in the building. "No. Thank you." She closed the lid of the washing machine, started the cycle, and turned to face the furnace room door. "I'll go in and adjust the vents."

"I wasn't criticizing."

"I never said you were."

"I understand why you don't want to go in."

Her chin lifted. "Who says I don't want to go in?"

"The sweaters..."