“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 amusement 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 space 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 Michelle 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.”
Claire couldn’t remember hearing about any earthquakes or train derailments, and since Chicago seemed to be functioning at least as well as it ever did, she breathed a sigh of relief. “What about school?”
“I’ll catch up.” Dropping into an ancient beanbag chair that she’d long outgrown but refused to get rid of, Diana leaned left until she had to brace herself against the floor, then repeated the movement to the right.
“What are you doing?”
The younger woman straightened. “I was trying to get a better angle on your room. Mom says Dean’s a major babe, so I was looking for him.”
“Mom said Dean was a major babe?”
“Not exactly; she said he was ‘quite an attractive young man’ and I translated.”
“This is my bedroom.”
Diana snorted. “So that’s why you have a bed in it.”
“I don’t even want to know why you think Dean might be in here.”
“Well, jeez, Claire, I hope I don’t have to explain it to you. At your age.” After a self-appreciative snicker, she crossed her legs and settled back until it looked as though she’d perched on the crushed remains of a red vinyl flower. “Go and get him, please.”
Even through the postcard, Claire felt the pull of power her younger sister laid on the magic word. “No,” she said, folding her arms. “I am not putting Dean on display to fulfill your prurient interests.”
“Ooo, prurient. Big word. So are you guys getting it on?”
“Diana!” Righteous indignation propelled her onto her feet “Dean’s a nice guy who does most…” Diana’s left eyebrow rose. There was as little point in lying to her as there would have been in her lying. “…almost all…okay, all of the work around here. A nice guy. Do you even know what that means?”
“Sure, I know. It means he’s not getting any.”
“Diana!”
“Relax, I’m just yanking your chain.” Lips pursed, she made a disgusted face. “Man I hope I’m not as big a prude when I’m almost thirty. I told One Bruce and Michelle about you getting stuck on an unsealable site and they both said that Keepers are sent where they’re needed. Not very helpful, I thought Anyway, since you’re settled, I gave them both the phone number. They seemed to think that with you in one place and me still in training and us in contact because we’re family, we have a chance to actually lay some lines of communication between Keepers. Which reminds me, the Apothecary is thinking of setting up as an online server so we can start using e-mail to stay in touch. Here we are, joining the twentieth century in time for the twenty-first.”
Carrying on a conversation with Diana was often like shopping in a discount store: piles of topics crowded the aisles, stacked ceiling high in barely discernible order. The trick was pulling one single thing out to respond to. “The Apothecary doesn’t even have electricity.”
“I know. He says he can work around it. So what about you and this Jacques guy Mom mentioned?”
Claire sighed. “Jacques is dead.”
“I know. But if the Apothecary can run e-mail without electricity…” She let her voice trail off but her eyebrows waggled suggestively up and down. “It sounds like what you really need is Jacques possessing Dean’s body.”
HELLO.
“That is never going to happen.” Although Claire directed her response as much at Hell as at her sister, only her sister acknowledged it.
“I know.”
“You know, you know, you know; you’re beginning to sound like Austin.”
Diana fixed Claire with an exasperated stare. “Keeping the peace, fulfilling destiny, that doesn’t mean we can’t be happy.”
“I am as happy as I can be under the circumstances.”
“Now who’s sounding like Austin. What makes you think I’m talking about you?”
Claire winced. That had been incredibly insensitive of her. “I’m sorry, Diana. Did you have a problem you want me to help with?”
She grinned and shook her head. “No. But if you want, I’ll come by and figure out how to deal with Sara, seal the pit, and get your butt on the road again.”
“Diana!”
“Oh, chill, Claire.” Dark brows dipped into a disdainful frown. “I’m five hundred and forty-one kilometers away, she’s not going to hear me.”
“Your butt is in a sling if she has!” Claire could feel nothing through the shield. Unfortunately, that only meant she hadn’t yet gone through the shield. “If you’ll excuse me, and even if you won’t, I’m going to go check and see if you’ve started Armageddon.” Ignoring protests, she closed the curtain with one hand and pulled at the neck of her cotton turtleneck with the other, telling herself that the room hadn’t suddenly gotten warmer. She wasn’t quite running as she crossed the sitting room.
“Can I assume you’re not hurrying out to feed me?” Austin asked. “Who were you talking to?”
“Diana.”
“Subverting a powerless postcard? Typical. What did she have to say for herself?”
“Nothing much. Her name. Out loud. Through a power link. If she’s woken her up…”
Austin caught up to Claire at the door. “What are you going to do.”
“Beats me. You know any good lullabies?”
Out in the lobby, Dean looked up from prying open a new gallon of paint as Keeper and cat raced for the stairs. “Problem, Boss?”
“I don’t know.”
“Need my help?”