Um... Paen?... Paen?... Helloooo?
Sam?
Oh, good, I was hoping you didn't have your mental voice mail turned on.
My what?
Nothing. Little joke.
Very little.
Yeah, well, you try making a joke when you're caught between realities, and see how well you do.
A pause filled my head. You're caught between realities?
Yes. I seem to be stuck here. I was wondering if there was something you could do to help me out?
His silence was telling. Where are you?
I don't think I'm anywhere, to be honest. I seem to be nowhere, caught in some sort of a web between reality and the beyond.
Then how do you expect me to help you?
We have to pass through this to get to the beyond. I was hoping you'd merge with me, and that would pull me out. Kind of a reverse of what I did with you earlier.
Or it might just pull me in.
True. I hesitated, hating to ask him for anything, but not seeing any other choice. I'd been stuck here for the last couple of hours as I tried everything I knew to get out, to no avail. Can you help me, please?
He didn't answer, but I knew the moment he merged with me, the two of us like separate pools of mercury forming into one glorious entity. Joined as we were, I could feel everything he felt, and what it was he was thinking.
And he could do likewise.
He had to know I was trying to avoid confronting the emotions that swirled around in me, a vortex of love and anger and pain. But he said nothing as the merging pulled me back into reality, separating us into two people again.
I found myself standing in my office at the window, blinking at the bright afternoon sun that poured in and spilled into a warm pool on the floor. Thanks, Paen. I appreciate that.
I wish to talk to you about what's happened.
Sorry, can't right now. Things to do, places to go, people to curse.
What?
Nothing. Another little joke.
Sam -
Signing off for now. I'll see you for dinner later. Bye.
I'm just outside your office -
La la la, my fingers are in my ears and I can't hear you!
You're not listening to me with your ears, woman. I'll be at your office in twenty seconds or less, and then we will discuss the situation.
It wasn't easy to tune him out of my mind, but I did it. I hurried out the front way so I wouldn't run into him coming in the back, my soul bleeding tears of anguish. I just about cried salty ones when I got to Diviners' House and discovered that the shoebox in my bag was empty.
"Sam? Are you all right?" Jake asked as I stared numbly at the inside of the empty shoebox.
"No, I'm not all right. I'm just about as far from all right as you can possibly get and still be alive. God damn it, Jake! Someone stole my statue!"
He gave me a thin-lipped look. "After what you told me about being shot by that man Pilar, I'd think it would be a relief to have it off your hands."
I narrowed my eyes as I thought back to the visit to Caspar's house. "I bet it was Pilar who zapped me. I bet he stole the statue while I was immobile between realities. How on earth am I going to get it back?"
"Why do you want it back? It sounds to me like it hasn't brought you anything but bad luck."
"It's mine," I said, putting the empty box back into my bag. "The demon gave it to me. Yes, by mistake, but both Clare and I were shot for it - that means I have the right to get to the bottom of what it is, and why Pilar wants it so bad. Thanks, Jake. Sorry to disrupt your day for nothing."
He saw me to the door, stopping me briefly as I stood on the doorstep, soaking in the warmth of the sunshine. "So, this thing with you and Paen - I can't tell you how happy I am that you've found someone at last. I wasn't sure about him, since Dark Ones tend to be a bit intense, but he seems like a nice bloke. I wish you both an eternity of happiness. One question - should I be buying a wedding present anytime soon?"
The sun went behind a cloud. Pain gripped my chest and didn't allow me to breathe. "No," I said, and left.
I was pretty much on autopilot all the way back to the office, finding my way to the correct bus, getting off at the correct stop, and walking the two blocks to the office without seeing, feeling, or registering anything around me. I was too caught up in my own misery to even notice the sudden bank of black clouds that started rolling in from the north.
"Life sucks," I said as I opened the door to my office. Finn and Clare, back from wherever it is they'd gone off to, looked up from her computer, questions evident in their expressions. At my desk, Paen sat, making notes on a notepad. I noticed he was left-handed, as I was. It warmed my heart for a moment before I remembered that as far as he was concerned, my heart could take a flying leap.
"You look horrible," Clare said, getting up to take my coat and hang it properly on the coat-tree. "Did Brother Jacob not have anything helpful to say about the statue?"
"What statue?" I asked, pulling the shoebox out of my purse and handing it to her.
She opened it. "I don't understand. Where is the statue?"
Grief built up inside me until I thought I'd break down into a good, old-fashioned elf-dirge. I'd lost Paen, lost the statue, and I wasn't the tiniest bit closer to finding either the Jilin God or the Coda. A big old pity party welled up inside me and whined to be set free. "The statue was stolen from me sometime while I was held prisoner."
It took only a few minutes to tell my startled audience the events of the last two hours, ending up with a brief rant against everything that had gone wrong of late. "I can't believe this," I said, storming around the office, waving my hands in the best drama queen fashion. "I'm known for my ability to find things. It's what I do best! Nothing has ever stayed lost once I've tried to find it, and yet here I am, employed to find two simple items, and I'm no closer now to finding their whereabouts than I was when I was hired, not to mention losing a third item I wanted to keep!"
Clare popped a lilac blossom in her mouth, her eyes huge as she watched me emote.
"I think you're allowing things to get to you," Paen offered, getting to his feet. He tucked his notebook away into his jacket pocket.
I pointed a finger at him. "You're a big part of the problem, buster."
He raised his eyebrows. "I fail to see how our personal situation - "
"I'm not talking about your commitment issues - I'm referring to the fact that you didn't tell me everything you knew about the Jilin statue. You willfully withheld information about it, information that might have helped me if I had known it two days ago." That wasn't strictly fair, but I was grasping at straws.
"What information?" Finn asked, frowning at his brother.
Paen frowned back at him for a moment before turning to me. "I told you everything I knew about the statue."
I marched over to stand in front of him, my hand on my hip. "Oh you did, huh? You didn't mention that the statue represents the origins of immortal races, and that it supposedly contains some big secret of how they were created. You didn't tell me that it was priceless, worth so much that someone would offer me fifty thousand pounds just to find it for him."
"Fifty thousand - " Paen grabbed the finger I was using to punctuate my sentences by poking it into his chest. I squelched the little tremor of pleasure that zipped through me at his touch. "Who offered you money to find my statue?"
"The mage expert I consulted earlier. It turns out he is also looking for the Jilin God, only he was a bit more forthcoming with information about it." I let Paen see the full extent of my discontent.
He glared right back at me. "I had no idea it represented the origin of immortal races any more than I knew it was priceless. I've done extensive research into the origin of the Moravians and never heard of it, so perhaps the information from your source is questionable. Who is this mage expert?"
"Possibly it's questionable, but it sounded like the truth. It would explain why a demon lord would want it - if it held secrets of the immortals, surely that would give a demon lord power over the various races?"
"It is within the realm of possibility, but just barely," Paen said, releasing my hand. "The expert's name?"
"Hmm? Oh. Caspar Green."
I thought Paen's eyeballs were going to pop out of his head.
"Who?" he roared.
"Caspar Green. Why are you so upset?"
"That's not a man, that's a demon," Paen snarled, slamming his fist into the wall. I flinched at both the hole he left and the red welts that appeared on his hand. "He's the one who is demanding I repay my father's debt."
It was my turn to do the eyeball pop. "You're kidding. Caspar is the one doing this? We're going to have to have another talk with him."
"Right now," Paen said, snatching up his coat and heading for the door.
All four of us trooped out and descended upon Caspar. Or tried to, at least. He didn't answer his door buzzer or the phone, and when Paen, driven by fury, scaled the outside of the building and deliberately broke into the apartment, he came up empty-handed.
"He's gone to earth," Paen growled a few minutes later, as I dabbed at the cuts on his hand made by the broken glass. "Search the flat. We may find something that says where he is, or what he's up to playing us against each other like this."
We found nothing. The flat was almost sterile in its pristine state, as if it were there for show and not really lived in.
"So what do we do now?" Clare asked when we returned disheartened to the office. She munched lilac blossoms like they were popcorn. "Just wait around for Caspar and Mr. Race to return? Do we have time for that? What if Mr. Race doesn't know anything about the statue? What if the demon who talked to Paen was wrong? What if Caspar won't cooperate?"
"Race is the only lead we have," Finn said.
"Yes, and we can't talk to him if we can't find him. Evidently he's en route, and no, he doesn't have a cell phone. I asked his housekeeper. So we're playing the waiting game for both him and Caspar."
"But we should be doing something!" Clare wailed, waving her hands around.
Paen jumped up from a chair and marched over to the window, staring out it with an expression of extreme frustration, anger, and a tinge of hopelessness that just about broke my heart.
I slumped into the chair that he vacated, the faint warmth left behind by his body sinking into mine until it made my soul want to weep. Life suddenly seemed so overwhelming, so bloody impossible. I had tried everything I knew how to do, and yet repeatedly failed. "This is beyond frustrating. Why can't I find that damned statue and manuscript? I've never not found anything I've looked for before, so why am I now having absolutely no luck? What is Caspar up to? Why is Race suddenly incommunicado when we need to talk to him? I tell you, it's enough to make an elf-girl cry."
"Poor sweet Sam," Clare said, gliding over to me. "Maybe you've lost your power?"
"Huh?"
Clare nudged the phone over so she could perch elegantly on the edge of my desk. "Because you... you know." She nodded to where Paen was standing at the window, careful to avoid direct light. "Maybe that caused you to lose your powers."
I pulled out a small mirror from my desk and checked. "Nope. Still half elf. And we were in the beyond today. I wouldn't have been able to do that if I'd lost my elfly powers."
"You went to the beyond?" she asked, slanting another glance at Paen. "Together?"
"Yes, not that it has any relevance to my sudden inability to find things," I said glumly, resting my forehead on the desk.
"But you lost that bird statue, too. That's incredibly careless and irresponsible."
I raised my head to glare at her.
"Which is not like you at all," she added quickly. "Perhaps someone has cast a spell or cursed you?"
"We'd see a curse, and surely Sam would be able to tell if someone cast a spell on her? Elves are notoriously hard to enchant," Finn said, taking his place next to Clare, and giving her shoulder a supportive squeeze.
As if her shoulder needed the reassurance that it was cherished... I dropped my forehead to the desk again. "I'm not cursed, and not enchanted. I'm just suddenly... ineffective. But that's going to change."
"You have another plan," Clare said, clapping her hands with delight. "I knew you'd come up with something, Sam. It's best not to put too much reliance on what a demon says. What are you going to do?"
"Desperate times call for desperate measures," I told the desk.
"I told you she wouldn't give up," Clare said to Finn. He started to protest that he never doubted me, but I held up a hand to stop him.
"I don't trust that demon who spoke to Paen," I said thoughtfully. "Not Caspar, the other one."
He half turned toward me. "Is there any particular reason why, or do you just have a general distrust of demons?"
"The latter." I pushed Clare's hip off the desk and replaced the phone where I wanted it. "It's too pat, too convenient. It smacks too much of trying to divide and conquer."
Everyone looked at me.
"Don't you see?" I asked, waving my hands around in a vague gesture intended to convey coherence. "The demon wants to confuse us, throw us off the track by sending us on a wild-goose chase. And who does it want us to chase? Our other client. No, it just seems too coincidental."
"She has a point," Clare said. Finn nodded. Paen frowned.
I took a deep breath. "Since I can't seem to locate either object we were hired to find - nor hang on to a simple bird statue - I've decided that I'm going to engage the services of someone who can."
"Who is that?" Clare asked, blinking. "Brother Jacob?"
I shook my head.
"Another Diviner?" Finn asked.
I shook my head again, avoiding looking at the silent man whose presence behind me registered on every molecule in my body. "No. I'm going to have to bring in some big help. I'm going to consult a seer."
I thought for a moment that Clare was going to choke. "You're... you're... no, you can't! Finn, tell her she can't! Seers are bad!"
"They're not bad, they're just a bit... pricey. And Finn has nothing to do with the matter, so don't try to drag him into it," I said. "We were hired to do a job, Clare, and we're going to do it by one means or another."
"But... a seer, Sam? That's even worse than a Guardian or a theurgist!" Clare, distraught, ran for her flower vase.
"I accepted the job. I don't have a choice in the matter."
"Paen?" Clare turned to him. "Don't you have something to say about Sam's plan to use a seer?"
"No," he answered, crossing his arms over his chest as he leaned against the wall. His eyes, normally so bright, were dulled like tarnished silver plate. "But only because the idea is so ridiculous it doesn't merit an answer."
"Ridiculous!" I gasped, sitting up straight.
"That's what I said. Anyone who deludes themselves into believing that they can consult a seer without paying an unthinkable price deserves the label of ridiculous." My gasp changed into an outraged huff. "You are not going to turn this over to a seer," he added, walking around the client's chair in front of my desk where his coat and hat lay. "I want to find this statue more than anyone, but not at the cost of others' lives. You're hungry and exhausted. You need food. I believe we can spare an hour to feed you and Clare while we discuss the next step."
"Correction - you can talk about it all you like over dinner, dessert, and the swivel hips of a troop of dancing girls. I, however, have work to do, and I intend to do it before the night ages any more."
"Sam!" Clare looked scandalized.
I sighed. She was right. Just because Paen had all but ripped my heart out and stomped it into nothing but a smear on the ground didn't mean I had to be rude. He was a client. A professional, rather than personal, demeanor was clearly called for. Henceforth, I would be the personification of investigative professionalism.
"My apologies, gentlemen. I didn't mean to sound so brusque. I'm sure you'll all have a lovely dinner, but I'm afraid I'm going to be a bit busy."
Sam, why are you doing this?
I glanced at Paen. "If you have something to say to me, please say it out loud. The mental broadcasting station has been closed due to FCC conflicts."
"You're not going to use a seer. I forbid it."
I gathered up my coat and purse. "You're my client, Paen, not my father." I was unable to keep from sliding him a hurt look. "Or my lover anymore, for that matter. Therefore, I'll do as I please. I'll see you all later. Enjoy dinner."
Paen blocked the way to the door. "Very well, since you insist on playing this game - if you will not respect my wishes with regards to the seer, I will fire you."
"Really?" I stopped directly in front of him, my body demanding I keep walking until it was pressed up against all those lovely hard lines of his. "You're willing to give up your mother's soul over this?"
He hesitated for a moment. "I don't believe that a seer is the solution. If I had, I would have consulted one myself. Seers are not always what they seem, and seldom give the help you need."
"Yes, well, the bottom line is that I said I'd find that statue in the amount of time you have left, and I intend to do just that. Now please step out of the way and allow me to do my job."
His jaw tightened. "I'm removing you from the case."
"Too late. I've accepted the retainer. I'm going to find the statue," I said, trying to step around him. He grabbed for my arm. I backed up until I was out of reach.
"Sam, you can't do this," Clare said, closing in on me from the other side. Her face was puckered with worry, the remains of a flower clutched in her hand.
"I can't? Watch me," I said calmly, determination seeping from all the gaping holes Paen had left in my soul.
"There's no way out of here," Finn said, moving so he stood next to Paen. "We're not going to let you endanger yourself with a seer, Sam. Come to dinner and we'll talk about it."
I smiled, just smiled at Clare and Finn. Paen I couldn't look at without wanting to scream, sob, and rip all his clothes off in order to have my wicked way with him. Instead of any of those, I reached out and found the opening to the beyond, slipping through it before anyone realized what I was doing.
I heard an echo of my name, but it was distant and tinny, as if spoken from a long way away. I had to pass through Paen to get to the door, an act that almost brought me to tears with the pain of rejection. For one brief moment, time held its breath as my soul merged with his. Like the other times we'd merged, it was so right, so perfect I didn't want to leave. For a moment, I allowed my love to shine bright. Paen reeled in surprise. With a cry of anguish that ripped from my throat, I tore myself away from him and left the office, waiting until I was at the edge of the founded area to slip back to reality.
Paen tried a few times to mind-speak to me, but I barely had the strength to walk away from him - there was no way I could argue my feelings with him. After our last merging, he'd be well aware of the depths of my emotions, and I knew he wasn't happy about them. In a move of sheerest self-preservation, I put up a mental do not disturb sign, and blocked his mind from mine.
It took a good half hour of solid persuasion to get the name and phone number of an area seer from Jake, but after I told him I would rather sacrifice my own soul than lose Paen's mother's, he caved and gave it to me.
"Just remember that a seer's services come at an exorbitantly high price," he advised as he wrote out a name and phone number. "She'll ask you for something very precious indeed. I hope you're prepared to lose something that matters to you."
"I'm immortal now," I said, pocketing the slip of paper. "I can afford to lose a few years of my life."
"Just because the seer that Brother Bartholomew used demanded seven years of his life does not guarantee that's what this seer will ask of you," he warned, concern filling his eyes.
I gave his hand a squeeze and kissed his cheek. "Thanks for everything, Jake - both the name and the worry. But you can relax. I'm not suicidal, nor overly stupid. I'll only barter something that I can do without."
He shook his head as I left. "That's not how it works, Sam. Just remember that whatever the price she asks, it's bound to be too high. Try to get it down to something that won't deprive you too much."
I thanked him again and walked to the corner where there was a pay phone. Three minutes later I was running to a taxi stand, having managed to get an appointment with Kelsey Franklin, local seer.