"We're not that busy. Which," she added dryly, "is a good thing. I called you four days ago."

"Hey, I couldn't have got here faster if you'd been Old Nick himself."

WANNA BET?.

The locksmith pulled bushy brows down toward his nose. "Did you say something?"

"No."

"Thought I heard... Never mind. You know, you don't have to stay with me. I can just come down when I finish up."

"Like I said," Claire told him, keeping the glamour centered over the actual contents of the room, "we're not that busy."

"Oh, I get it. Lonely, eh? I know how you feel; some days when I don't leave the shop, I'm ready to climb the walls by four, four-thirty. No one to talk to, you know? What was that?" He leaned around the door, staring at the floor by the curtained window, then settled back on his heels, shaking his head. "It sorta looked like a bright blue mouse."

"Trick of the shadows," Claire said tightly. It figured that the locksmith would see the imp when neither Dean nor Austin ever had.

A few moments later, his weight on the newly installed doork.n.o.b, the locksmith heaved himself to his feet and flicked the open f.l.a.n.g.e with his free hand. "Quite the secondary locking system. I guess you can't be too careful about this kind of thing, eh? I mean, one tourist wanders in here, hurts himself on a bit of loose board and the next thing you know, you're being sued."

Peering through the glamour, Claire checked that Aunt Sara remained undisturbed by all the banging. "If a tourist wandered in here, being sued would be the least of my concerns. But you needn't worry, this is only a temporary measure."

"So you are going to fix it?"

"Sooner or later."

"Hopefully sooner, eh?" He pulled the door closed and nodded with satisfaction as the lock clicked into place. "When the time comes, and you need some help, don't forget my cousin."

Claire had a vision of the locksmith and his cousin facing down the hordes of h.e.l.l. It was strangely comforting.

The ink soaked out of the site journal had turned the onions blue. The brine had been absorbed and the whole thing smelled like pickled sewage. With a cheese sauce.

When Claire opened the plastic container, Austin left the building.

Breathing shallowly through her mouth, she used a fork to tease apart the pages. The process had been partially successful. The few pages of Augustus Smythe's notes now legible made it clear he knew an incredible number of dirty limericks but offered no other useful information.

The first four pages after his summoning remained stuck together in a glutinous blue ma.s.s.

"One more week should do it," Claire sniffed at Dean, peeling another three onions and dropping them into fresh brine.

"Great," Dean gasped. He snuck a look at the card.

Aunt Claire, Keeper Your Accident is my Opportunity (face it, life stinks)

Later, he threw out the fork.

"This is the sixth morning in a row she's come out of that wardrobe looking wiped. Two days ago, she fell asleep in that old armchair up in room six, and yesterday she didn't have enough energy to take the chains off the furnace room door."

Austin lifted his head off his paws and gazed across the dining room at Claire, who'd fallen asleep with her cheek on an egg salad sandwich. "Did you take them off for her?"

"No. I figured if she was too tired to open the door, she was too tired to face h.e.l.l."

"I've said all along you're more than just a pretty face. What did Claire say?"

Dean grinned. "That I was an interfering, idiotic bystander."

"That's all?" The cat snorted. "She must've been tired."

"What's happening in that wardrobe, Austin?"

"From the steely-eyed determination on her face when she goes in, I'd say she's trying too hard. The other side has kind of zen thing going, you can't force it."

"So she's doing it to herself, then?"

"Well, I don't think she'd have chosen to fight her way through those pre-Christmas sales this morning but, yeah, essentially."

"If there's anything I can do, will you let me know?"

"Sure."

As Austin laid his head back down, Dean's concern evolved into full-blown worry. Any other morning, that question would've brought a suggestion that he feed the cat.

"What have you done, that Claire suddenly try so hard to find this Historian?"

"I didn't do anything," Dean told him, getting a can of oven cleaner out from under the sink. "I'm not the one exposing myself to Mrs. Abrams."

"I do not expose myself. She has no business to be in the parking lot to peer through the windows while you attach the blinds. I vanish the moment I see her."

"But did she see you?"

"She did not scream and run. She waves to you, puts two thumbs up in the air, and leaves quietly." Jacques pressed his back up against the wall between the two windows, the one place in the dining room where he couldn't be seen from outside when the new vertical blinds were open. "It is not my fault she is always looking in."

Dean might have believed him had he not sounded so defensive. "You're careless. You don't care how much trouble you cause."

"I am causing trouble?"

"That's what I said."

"So, you say it is my fault that Claire tries so much harder to leave us?"

Shrugging, Dean dropped to his knees in front of the stove. "If the shroud fits."

"And what does that mean, if the shroud fits?"

"It means you're always all over her. Give me flesh, give me flesh." His accent was a pa.s.sable imitation of the ghost's. "You're too pushy."

Jacques disappeared and reappeared sitting on the floor behind the peninsula. "I am too pushy? You are too... too... too nice!"

"Too nice?"