"If I could help, cherie?"

This was not something Dean could face on his knees. He stood, then turned, to find Jacques shrugging into a red-and-gray-checked flannel bathrobe. Reality, he noticed as the robe closed, appeared to have returned to normal proportions.

"Help Dean," Claire instructed from the floor. "I'll crawl over and check the professor."

"But, cherie..."

"I know. But not until we've got this mess cleared up."

About to add his protest to Jacques', Dean suddenly realized that if the ghost, or whatever he was now, was with him, he wouldn't be with Claire. "Come on." He jerked his head toward the bed. "You take her feet."

"Cherie..."

"Not now."

As Claire started crawling toward the professor, Jacques shrugged and, stroking both hands down the nap of the robe, followed Dean.

Austin had reached and done a preliminary diagnosis on the sprawled body of Professor Jackson by the time Claire arrived. "He's having trouble breathing."

"He's got a ten-pound cat sitting on his chest."

"I'm big-boned," Austin amended, primly stepping off onto the floor. "I think he's blown a fuse or two."

"Serves him right." Setting the wastebasket to one side, Claire bent over the professor and lifted his left eyelid between her thumb and forefinger.

"So giving Jacques flesh was the only solution?"

"If you had a better one...?"

"Me? Oh, no."

Letting the eye close with an audible snap, Claire glared at the cat. Traces of the matrix Aunt Sara had created to give Jacques flesh had been causing the problem; it made logical sense, therefore, to use those traces to solve the problem. She couldn't have come up with a faster or more efficient solution. That was her story and even in the relative privacy of her own mind, she was sticking to it. "What are you implying?"

"Me? Nothing." As the professor's head gently lolled toward him, Austin reached out a paw and pushed it back. "Hadn't you better pay attention to what you're doing?"

Teeth clenched, Claire carefully pulled power. After a moment, Professor Jackson moaned and opened his eyes. "Where am I?" he asked breathily.

In ten years as an active Keeper only one person had asked a different question upon regaining consciousness and since, "Do it again," was actually a statement, Claire had always a.s.sumed it didn't count. "Never mind," she said, brushing his eyes closed. "Go to sleep."

When he, too, had been laid out on the bed, at a respectable distance from Mrs. Abrams in spite of Dean's protest and Jacques' alternative suggestion, Claire told the two men to leave the room.

"Cherie, we have not so much time."

"I know. But I gave you flesh to save you, and to save him," she added nodding toward the bed. "Not to... um..." Very conscious of Dean's presence, she couldn't finish, but when Jacques took her arm and turned her slowly to face him, she didn't resist. His fingers, lightly stroking her cheek, were cool. His mouth had twisted up in the smile she found so hard to resist. When his lips parted, she mirrored the motion.

"Ow! Austin!"

"May I remind you," he said as she stumbled backward and would have fallen had not Jacques and Dean both grabbed an arm, "that the bodies already on the bed need tending; memories need changing."

"I was going to..."

"Please, no details. Just take care of these two first."

Lips pressed into a thin line, she jerked free and nodded toward the door. "Fine. Everyone out."

Not even Jacques argued.

"You take this calmly," he said thoughtfully to Dean, as the door closed behind them.

Dean shrugged. He didn't feel calm. He didn't know how he felt. "You don't seem very affected either," he pointed out as they followed Austin down the stairs. "Except that you're walking kind of carefully..."

"I am not use to feeling the floor."

"... and you keep touching yourself."

Jacques drew himself up to his full height, which, with both feet on the ground was considerable shorter than it had been. "Do I make these personal comment about you, Anglais?"

"Sorry." Ears red, Dean shoved his hands in the front pockets of his jeans. "So, uh, what do we do now?"

"I do not know."

"I do." Leaping down the last three stairs into the lobby, Austin turned and stared up at them. "Forgetting for the moment that one of you is dead and one isn't, and refusing to borrow trouble since none of us has any idea of how this is going to turn out, I think you should feed the cat."

"Wasn't there a half a slice of pizza left?' Claire asked, dropping onto the sofa almost two hours later. "I'm starved."

On the other end of the sofa, Austin opened one eye. "I let the mice take it," he said. "I didn't think anyone wanted it."

Pinching the bridge of her nose with one hand, Claire waved away the information with the other. Mice. Fine. Whatever. "Where are the guys?"

"Here I am." Jacques emerged from the bedroom, fiddling with the belt of the professor's robe. "I forget how many sensation in the world; old, new..."

Then the bathroom door opened and Dean came out, gla.s.ses in his hand, the edges of his hair damp. Claire opened and closed her mouth a time or two, but no sound emerged.

Dean's ears turned scarlet as he hastily shoved his gla.s.ses on. "I'm sorry, Claire. I used your towel. It's just it was getting late and the game just ended and I was after waiting up for you..."

"Game?"

"Oui. Hockey with ducks," Jacques explained, lip curled.

"Hockey," Claire repeated.

Austin snickered. "I know what new sensations you were thinking about."

"Shut up."

"Someone's got a dir..."

Dragging him onto her lap, she cupped her hand over his mouth. "Someone also has opposable thumbs," she reminded him.