"An imp." Claire's tone left no room for argument. "Somebody," she shot a scathing look at the cat, "has moved the trap."

"Probably the mice."

"Oh, give me a break."

Sitting down with his back toward her, Austin began washing his shoulder with long, deliberate strokes of his tongue.

Although Dean hoped it was his imagination, the air between cat and Keeper felt chilled. "I could take the keyboard apart," he offered, flipping it and frowning at the half-dozen, tiny, inset screw heads. "Maybe I can clean the coffee out of it."

"Take it apart? As in pieces?" On the other hand, she couldn't use it the way it was so how much worse could it get. "All right. But be careful."

"No problem." His enthusiastic smile faded as a bit of broken ceramic crushed under one work boot. "First off, I'll go get a broom and dustpan."

"Dean?"

He stopped on the other side of the counter.

"What was it you wanted to talk to me about?"

What was it? The sudden, deliberate destruction of the coffee mug had driven it right out of his head.

"Do you know what you are doing, Anglais?" Jacques leaned over Dean's shoulder and poked an ethereal finger at the key board. "Can you put the pieces back together when they all fall out?"

"That's not about to happen," Dean told him, inserting a Phillips head screwdriver into the last tiny screw. "These day's everything's solid state."

Leaning against the other side of the desk, Claire drummed bubblegum-colored fingernails on the CPU and bit her tongue. The buzz of the acc.u.mulated seepage had become a constant background noise as impossible to ignore as a dentist's drill, and the smallest things set her off. She'd yelled at Dean for returning the wallpaper sample books before she'd finished with them after telling him that she'd definitely made up her mind, at Jacques for going through the dining room table rather than around, at Dean again for waiting until after lunch before opening up her keyboard, and at Austin, just because. It was like continual PMS only without the bloating.

"That's got it." Setting the screw in the saucer with the others. Dean slid a pair of slot screwdrivers into the crack between the front and back of the keyboard and twisted in opposite directions. The plastic began to creak as the tiny levers moved off the horizontal. When the crack widened to half an inch, he pried the back of the keyboard carefully free.

The sudden flurry of tiny white pieces of plastic exploding into the air strongly resembled a small, artificial blizzard.

"Score one for the dead guy," Jacques observed when the last piece landed.

Dean scooped up one of the escapees. A tiny spring fell off one end, bounced on the desk, and rolled out of sight. "Sorry," he said, shoulders up around his ears as he peered up over the top of his gla.s.ses at Claire. "But I'm sure I can fix it."

It took an effort, but Claire managed to count all the way to ten before responding. "Just clean it up," she snarled, "and move on."

Dean's eyes widened and a muscle jumped in his jaw.

"Now what's your problem?"

"For a minute there you sounded..." He paused and shook his head. "It's okay. I'll just clean this up like you said."

"I sounded like what?" Claire growled. "Tell me. Please."

He didn't want to tell her, but he couldn't seem to help himself. "Like Augustus Smythe."

She stared at him, saw that he was serious, and opened her mouth to call him several choice names. Snapping it closed on the first of them, she stomped into her sitting room and slammed the door.

Jacques snickered. "I must hand it over to you Anglais, you have the way with women."

"He said I sounded like Augustus Smythe!"

Austin rolled over and stared up at her. "No," he said after a moment. "Too high-pitched."

"It's the seepage." She rubbed at her temples where the buzz had lodged. "It's barely been two weeks since I cleared it out, and it's already making me cranky."

"Got news for you, Claire, you're way beyond cranky."

"Smythe couldn't have lived like this all the time."

"Feeling sorry for him?"

"No." Her lips pulled back off her teeth. "Wanting to wring his neck."

"Maybe you're more susceptible because you're a Keeper and under normal circ.u.mstances, which these aren't, you're able to adjust the seepage." The cat washed the black spot on his front leg thoughtfully. "Why not use it to close down the postcard?"

"Because the postcard is using seepage. If I close it down, in a few days I'll have a worse problem than before. And besides, I don't want to use it."

"The postcard?"

"The seepage!" She dropped down onto the couch and emerged from the depths a few moments later to add another forty-three cents and a plain gold ring that smelled of fish to the half-filled bowl of retrieved flotsam on the coffee table. "I can't go on like this."

The distant sound of a ten-pound sledge slamming through plaster board jerked her forward, almost tipping her into the precarious area between the coach cushions.

Austin yawned. "Maybe you should cut back on the caffeine."

"Maybe you shouldn't say anything if you can't say something helpful." Tapping her nails against her thigh, Claire gritted her teeth. "There has to be a logical solution."

"Why?"

"Shut up. Point: Power is seeping out around the edges of the seal two presumably dead Keepers created with another Keeper's power. A further point: It's not my power sealing the site, so I can't make adjustments. Yet another point: I can't just leave the seepage be because it's driving me nuts. And one final point: The only way to get rid of the seepage buildup is to use it, but using the power of h.e.l.l can't help but corrupt the individual using it no matter her intentions. So." She drew in a deep breath and exhaled noisily. "Where does that get us?"

"Absolutely nowhere," Austin told her, climbing onto her lap.

Claire slumped back into the sofa. "It was a rhetorical question anyway. What we need is a way to use the seepage without strengthening h.e.l.l."

"Can't be done. h.e.l.l works only in its own best interests."

Stroking the cat, Claire spent a moment wallowing in the innate unfairness of the universe, and then...

"Hey!" Austin fought his way out from between the two sofa cushions. "If you're going to stand suddenly, warn a guy!"

"h.e.l.l can be made to work against itself." Claire whirled around to face the cat. "I'll feed the seepage into the shield around the furnace room!"

The cat stepped over onto the coffee table and, with a solid surface below him, paused to smooth the ruffled fur along his side. "How?" he asked after a moment.

"Adhesion. The moment anything escapes from the pit. Slap!" She smacked her palms together. "Right into the shield but set up so that it's distributed evenly, like oyster spit building a pearl. h.e.l.l sends more out, the shield gets stronger. h.e.l.l sends nothing at all, nothing happens because the original shield is still in place."