Chronicles Of The Keeper - Summon The Keeper Part 7

"Then it'll just have to stay there."

"I'll keep you from falling."

"Oh, sure." He squeezed in behind a bucket of sponges and peered balefully at her over the edge, ears flat against his head. "That's what you said the last time."

"Those were extraordinary circ.u.mstances. Never happen again."

"I said no."

"Okay, okay." She tried and failed to open the narrow door next to the chute. "What's in here?"

"Stairs to the attic." Dean eyeballed the opening of the laundry chute, was relieved to find he wouldn't fit, and found the required key on his master ring.

Filling an area barely five feet square, a narrow set of metal stairs spiraled upward toward an uninviting square hole cut out of the ceiling.

"Are there lights?"

"Don't think so. You stay where you're at, girl, and let me..." At the look on her face, his voice trailed off. "Never mind, then."

"Girl?"

"It's just a way we have of talkin' back home," he explained hurriedly, his cheeks crimson and his accent thickening. "I don't mean nothing by it."

"Then don't do it again."

"Yes ma'am, Ms. Hansen." A deep breath and he tried again. "Boss."

"Are you certain he's a part of this?" she demanded, turning toward the cat.

"Yes. Get along."

Claire sighed. Metal rungs ringing under her feet, she ran to the top of the stairs, crossed her fingers and stuck her head up into what looked like one large room filled with decades of discards, barely lit by the two filthy dormer windows cut into the sloping roof on either end of the building.

It was still raining.

"It'll take us months to search that place thoroughly," she announced a moment later backing carefully down the stairs. "Let's leave it for later. With any luck we'll find the hole someplace more accessible."

"Oh, sure, accessible like the laundry chute," Austin muttered as Dean relocked the attic door.

The second floor was as empty as the first, more so since there was nothing to match the occupant of room six. Remembering the mess she'd left spread out on the bed, Claire vouched for her room without opening the door. Room four, a corner single with two outside walls and no window, suggested a more thorough search.

Leaning on the edge of the bureau, Dean watched Claire slip into the bed alcove and try the bolt on the inside of the alcove's steel door. "You know someone actually asked for this room last spring."

"How would I know that? I just got here." The high box bed had one shallow drawer under the mattress and two deeper drawers below that. Hands slid between the mattress and the frame found no sign of evil but did turn up a silver earring.

Mortified, Dean apologized for a sloppy job as Claire dropped the piece of jewelry on his palm. "When we're done searching, I'll clean this room again."

"If it makes you happy," Claire muttered, checking in the bedside table. As far as she could see, the room was spotless.

Dean's expression softened as he bounced the earring on his palm. "She was a musician. Sasha something. I can't remember her last name, but she was some h..." Then, he remembered who he was talking to. His boss. A woman. Some things he couldn't say to a boss. Or a woman. "Cute. She was some cute."

"H... cute?" Shaking her head, Claire brushed past him.

Mouth partly open, Austin whipped his tail from side to side. "I don't like the way this smells."

"Then since it'd take a sledgehammer to air it out, let's go." Claire could feel a perfectly logical reason for the design hovering just beyond the edge of conscious thought, but when she reached for it, it danced away and taunted her from a safe distance. Later, she promised and added aloud, "What did you say?"

Dean paused at the top of the stairs. "I said, do you think we should search the rest of Mr. Smythe's old rooms, then?"

"He wouldn't have been living with it," she snapped dismissively. Then feeling like she'd just kicked a puppy, a large and well-muscled puppy, she added a strained, "Sorry. Where Augustus Smythe is concerned, I shouldn't take anything for granted."

The sitting room violated a number of rules concerning how many objects could simultaneously occupy the same s.p.a.ce, but the only accident it contained involved the head-on collision of good taste with an apparent inability to throw anything away. The bedroom wasn't quite as bad. Dominated by a bra.s.s bed, it also held an obviously antique dressing table, a wardrobe, and two windows. One of them framed into an inside wall.

"Probably the window missing from the room upstairs." Jumping up onto the bed, Austin began kneading the mattress. "This isn't bad. I could sleep here."

Before Claire could stop him, Dean tugged the burgundy brocade curtain to one side and closed it again almost instantly, setting six inches of fringe swaying back and forth.

"Are you okay?" she asked warily. If it was the accident site and he'd been exposed, there was no telling what he might have picked up.

Cheeks flushed, he nodded. "Fine. I'm fine."

"What did you see?"

"It was, uh, a bar." He cleared his throat and reluctantly continued. "With, uh, dancers."

"Were they table dancing?" The cat snickered. "Upon admittedly short acquaintance, that seems like the sort of scene old Augustus would go for."

"Not exactly table, no." Shaking his head. Dean lifted the curtain again. "It was dark but..." His voice trailed off.

Claire peered around his shoulder and almost went limp with relief. "That doesn't sound like a bar to me. Looks like Times Square. And over there, in front of the hookers, isn't that a drug deal going down?" Leaning forward, she rapped on the gla.s.s and nodded in satisfaction. "That put the fear of G.o.d into them."

The curtain fell closed again. Dean's voice threatened to crack as he asked, "What was it?"

"We call it a postcard."

"We?" He waved an overly nonchalant hand toward the cat. That smacked-with-a-cod feeling had returned. "You and Austin?"

"Among others." She glared at the curtain. "Smythe couldn't have managed this on his own; he had to have been pulling from the site."

"Is that bad?"

"Well it isn't good. I'll know more when we find the hole."

"Wherever it is," Austin agreed.

"Since we know it's not in the dining room, what's left?"

The bas.e.m.e.nt held, besides the mechanicals, the laundry room, Dean's spa.r.s.ely furnished and absolutely spotless apartment, several storage cupboards holding sheets, towels, and still more cleaning supplies, and, across from the laundry room, a large metal door. Painted a brilliant turquoise, it boasted not one but two padlocked chains securing it closed.