Chronicles Of The Keeper - Summon The Keeper Part 45

"I didn't mean I should be going out to pubs," Claire protested indignantly.

"Why not?"

"I never get to go anywhere," Jacques said mournfully an hour later as he and Austin stood in the front window watching Claire and Dean walk toward King Street.

"Look at the bright side," Austin observed as Mrs. Abrams hurried down her front path too late to corner them. "It can be a dangerous world out there."

"What does she look at?"

One hand shading eyes squinted nearly shut, Mrs. Abrams stared up toward the window.

The cat stretched. "She's probably wondering if I'm the same cat who got Baby to hog-tie himself with his own chain."

"Are you?"

"Of course." He jumped down off the windowsill. "Come on, it's Friday night, let's go watch TV."

With a last curious look at Mrs. Abrams, Jacques turned and followed. "TV? Is it like radio?"

"You know radio?"

"Oui. Augustus Smythe, le pet.i.t salaud, he leaves in the attic a radio. I have energy enough to turn it on and off, but I cannot make different channels. Over many years, I have learned English from the CBC."

Austin snorted. "Well, that explains a lot."

"A lot?"

"You don't talk like a French Canadian sailor who died in 1922."

"So I have lost my ident.i.ty to the English."

"Although you still sound French Canadian..."

THE CAT IS ALONE!.

YEAH. SO?.

A gust of heated air wafted up from the pit. GOOD POINT.

"Why is it so dark in here?" Claire demanded, stopping just inside the door of the Beer Pit.

Feeling the pressure building behind them, Dean cleared his throat. "Uh, Boss, we're blocking the entrance."

"Technically, you're blocking the entrance, they could get around me." But she moved across the painted concrete floor toward one of the few empty tables. "Why is the ceiling so low?" Before Dean could point out that the pub was in a bas.e.m.e.nt, she added, "And look at the size of these things. Why are the tables so small?"

"More tables, more people, more money."

Claire shot him a look as she sat down. "I knew that. The floor's sticky. You'll notice, I'm not asking why. Do you see the delivery man?"

"It's pretty crowded..."

"I'd suggest you wander around and search for him, but you can't move in here. I guess we wait until he tries something. Why is it so smoky?"

Dean nodded toward the other side of the room. "There's a smoking section."

"And it's got one of those invisible barriers to keep the smoke away from the rest of us."

"It does?" After the events of the last week, he wouldn't have been surprised.

"No. I was being sarcastic. I could create a barrier, we do it all the time when we have to contain some of the more noxious site emissions, but it would be fairly..." The spatial demands of a beefy young man in a Queen's football jacket caused an involuntary pause. "... obvious by the end of the evening when the smokers started suffocating in their own toxic exhalations," she finished, shoving her chair back out from the table.

The arrival of the waitress stopped conversation until the arrival of the drinks.

"Three seventy-five for a gla.s.s of ginger ale?" Claire tossed a ten onto the girl's tray. "I could buy a liter for ninety-nine cents!"

"Not here," the waitress said tartly, handing back her change.

"You don't go to pubs much, do you?" Dean asked, putting his own change back in his wallet and his wallet in his front pocket.

"What was your first clue?" She took a mouthful of the tepid liquid just as Sasha Moore stepped up onto the small stage at the other end of the room.

Dean pounded her on the back as she choked and coughed ginger ale out onto the table. "Are you okay?"

"Except for a few crushed vertebrae, I'm fine." Eyes wide, Claire stared at the woman in the spotlight. All masks were off. She was danger. She was desire. She was mystery. And no one else in the room realized why. Claire couldn't believe it. Sasha Moore had done everything but sit under a big neon sign that said, "vampire," and no one made the connection although everyone responded. Brows drawn down she watched Dean shift in his seat. Everyone. "There are none so blind..." she muttered.

"What?"

"Nothing." Claire half expected Sasha to rely on the "rabbits caught in the headlight" effect that predators had on prey, but she played it straight. At the end of the first set, after a heavily synthesized version of "Greensleeves," she acknowledged the applause and cut her way easily through an adoring audience to the table.

"A soft drink?" An ebony brow rose as her dark glance slid from Dean's beer to the gla.s.s in front of Claire. "If you don't drink beer, the house wine isn't bad."

"I don't drink wine," Claire told her.

Sasha smiled, her teeth a ribbon of white in the darkness. "Me either. So, is he here?"

"We haven't seen him."

"Then I guess you'll have to stay until the end."

Although she'd been about to say that they might as well leave, Claire found herself responding to the challenge. "So it seems."

Dean glanced from one to the other and realized there were undertows here strong enough to suck an unwary swimmer in deep over his head. He didn't understand what was happening, so he let instinct take over and did what generations of men had done before him in similar circ.u.mstances; he opened his mouth only far enough to drink his beer.

"So how was she?" Austin asked, his eyes squinted shut against the light.

"Pretty good, I guess." Claire lifted the cat off her pillow and got into bed. "They made her do two encores."

"Ah, yes." He climbed onto her stomach and sat down. "The creatures of the night, what music they make."