"Stop it. Both of you." Shirtless, Dean had pretty much lived up to Claire's expectations. Eyes locked on the wounds instead of the rippling expanse of bare chest, she dabbed antibiotic cream on the punctures and fought to keep her mind on the job. "None of these are deep. You were lucky. He could've ripped your whole arm off. Both arms." She was babbling. She knew it, but she couldn't seem to stop. "Ripped both your stupid arms off and thrown them on the ground." He not only looked great, he smelled terrific. Which had nothing to do with the matter at hand. Nothing at all. "You'd have bled to death before I could get to you. You could have been killed."

Jacques snickered. "Such a magnifique manner beside the bed, cherie."

"I'm just saying," she began, and stopped. "I'm just saying," she repeated, "that I need him to run this hotel and..." If she hadn't looked up and seen Dean watching her, his expression teetering halfway between hope and disappointment, she could've left it at that. "... I've gotten used to having him around and I don't..." The end of one finger covered in cream, she poked at the last three punctures. "... want him dead."

"Ow."

"Sorry."

"About what?" Austin asked, jumping up onto the table beside Dean. "And what happened to your arms? And, just out of curiosity, why don't you have any chest hair?"

While a blushing Dean shrugged into his shirt, Claire answered the first two questions.

"And the chest hair?" the cat prodded when she finished.

She picked him up and dropped him on the floor.

"You're just mad because I was right," he muttered as he jumped back up again. "I can see the sign now. This elevator holds a maximum of... How many dimensions?"

"That's not important."

"It will be to the elevator certification guys."

"I'll get some dry wall and reseal the doors tomorrow," Dean offered.

"No." When three pairs of eyes locked on her, she shrugged. "I'd like to study it for a while, maybe I can fix it. It's perfectly safe if you all stay off it."

"And if you stay off it, cherie."

"I know enough to stay in it."

"Penny for your thoughts?" Austin asked from the other pillow.

Claire rolled onto her side and stroked his head. "That only works if you hand me the penny," she reminded him.

"If I had hands..."

She smiled. "I was thinking about..." How Jacques and I make a good team. How I felt when I saw Dean lying on the rocks. How one of them's too young and the other's too dead. How a Keeper should be able to keep her mind on the job even if it has been six months which is a bit of personal information relevant to absolutely nothing. "... the elevator."

"Really?"

Why doesn't Dean have any chest hair? "Uh-huh."

"Liar."

ISN'T THAT OUR LINE?.

CHAPTER TEN.

By the last Sat.u.r.day in October, it was obvious that the seepage had been successfully contained. h.e.l.l had tried directing it, spreading it, and cutting it off completely; nothing worked. When a sudden cold snap drove Claire into the furnace room to adjust the heat, she found h.e.l.l hunkered down and sulking.

It continued to make personal appearances, however. As long as evil existed. h.e.l.l explained wearing Dean's face in Claire's mirror, personal temptation would be its stock in trade.

Cautious experimentation with the elevator determined that if the door was opened by someone outside in the hall, pa.s.sengers could actually exit onto the desired floor. Seepage, or lack of it, affected neither the mechanical functioning nor the variety of destinations. As far as Claire could determine, the elevator had no actual connection to h.e.l.l and only a tenuous connection to reality.

But there was one unfortunate casualty of the seepage slowdown.

"I guess this'll be the next thing you'll get rid of," Austin sighed, perched on the silent bust of the king of rock and roll.

The sitting room, emptied to essentials, had a lobotomized look, as though all personality had been surgically removed. Stripped of their accessories, Augustus Smythe's florid, oversized furniture seemed self-consciously large.

Although she'd had every intention of removing the plaster head, Claire surrendered to the pale green stare making unsubtle demands from the top of the high-gloss pompadour. "If it means that much to you, it can stay."

"Will you start it up again?"

"No."

"You could adapt it to run off the middle of the possibilities."

"No."

"But..."

"I said, no. It'd be easier to go out and buy a complete set of CDs and a stereo." Either Augustus Smythe had taken his stereo with him when he'd abandoned the site, or, unlike most men, who tended to buy stereo equipment before unimportant things like groceries or clothing, he'd never owned one.

"If you're afraid of a bit of hard work..."

"Don't start with me, Austin. Elvis has left the building." Before the cat could claw his way through her resolve, Claire turned on a heel and headed for the bedroom. The bust hadn't been the only amus.e.m.e.nt in Augustus Smythe's rooms to run on seepage. Grabbing the fringed curtain hanging over the postcard, she flung it open and barely managed to bite back a startled scream.

"What?" Diana twisted far enough to see that nothing particularly startling had slipped into the s.p.a.ce behind her. When she saw that nothing had, she shrugged and directed her attention back out of the postcard. "You don't look so good, Claire. Maybe you ought to sit down."

Not really hearing her sister's suggestion, Claire staggered backward until she hit the edge of the bed and sat. "What are you doing in there?"

"Practicing postcards. Mom said you had one running so I thought I'd see if I could tap into it..."

Claire began breathing again. Diana's room had not been part of Augustus Smythe's dirty little picture gallery.

"... that way you could see me, too, and I couldn't be accused of spying on you."

Theoretically, that wouldn't be possible; as a Keeper, Claire would know if she were under observation even by another Keeper. However, since Diana had just tapped into a powerless postcard with no apparent difficulty, something that Claire doubted she could have managed even with nearly ten extra years of experience, she wasn't about to declare it couldn't be done. So she did the next best thing: "You postcard me, and I'll rip your liver out and feed it to you."

Diana grinned. "As if. You think I'm stupid enough to get that close?"

"Speaking of close, when did you get back from the Philippines?"

"Last week. I landed in San Francisco, stuck my two cents into a site Mich.e.l.le was dealing with by Berkeley, took Amtrak to Chicago, helped One Bruce seal two small sites, both of them in the middle of major intersections, can you believe it, and flew home from there. I can't wait until I get to do this stuff on my own."