"Reveal to you the unsavory side to my brothers?"
"No. Smile. It looks good on you. It makes me go all girly inside when you smile."
His smile faded, his eyes turning dark. "Sam, I don"t like this."
"You don"t like me complimenting you?"
"No, I don"t like you falling in love with me." He crossed his arms over his chest and loomed over me, clearly trying to intimidate me.
"I never said I was falling in love with you."
"You didn"t deny it, either."
Despite my tall parents" genes, I"m not a tall person, which leaves me a tad bit resentful when I"m loomed over. I stood up and faced him. "You want me to do something elfy to you?"
He frowned. "You"re changing the subject."
"Yes, of course I am. I learned it from you. You want me to or not?""Do what? Curse me?"
"No. This." I leaned against him, closing my eyes, breathing deeply as I allowed my soul and his to merge. We were still Paen and Sam, but now we were one being made up of two. As we bonded into something new, I reached out with my inner elf, searching for the entry point. I found it and pushed through, pulling Paen with me, causing the world to shift slightly. It was as if everything had been ever so minutely out of focus before, but now everything was sharp and correct. "Welcome to the beyond."
"Beyond?" Paen asked, looking around my office. "The shadow world of the elves?"
"Well... kind of. Elves live here, but so do others. Faeries, for one."
His gaze touched the familiar objects in the office. "It doesn"t look different."
I smiled. "My mother chose this building for our office. She"s the original feng shui-er. Or rather, the first to do the elf version of it. She chose this location because it is in what the elves call a founded place-one fundamental to the world, rich in the essence of the beyond. Sympathetic to elfkind, in other words."
"Ah. I wondered why you chose Scotland to live if you needed sunshine. We"re not known for our overabundance of sunny weather." A smile flirted with his lips.
I went all melty inside at that smile, but I tried to keep things light. "Any sunlight is good. It doesn"t have to be a gloriously sunny day like today. The reason you don"t see anything different in the office is because this building stands on land that is founded, but the area down the block isn"t. If you can risk a peek out the window, you"ll see the difference."
Paen used a folder to angle the sun off his face as he opened a window and poked his head out quickly. A low whistle of surprise followed.
"Pretty freaky, huh?"
"Different. It looks... unpleasant. Disjointed. Harsh."
"Yeah, it does. That"s what our world looks like to elves who walk in the beyond."
Paen closed the window, looking thoughtful. "That would explain why there are so few of them around."
I nodded. "Only the ones like my mother who are comfortable in the mortal world live outside the beyond. The rest prefer this world, where they can avoid anything upsetting, and stay in founded areas."
"Understandable." His lips pursed. "How do we get back?"
I smiled. "Worried I"ll leave you here?"
"Hardly." This close to him, and with my elf senses running amok in their native environment, I could feel every emotion in him.
His face held polite interest, but inside him, curiosity was driving him nuts. "I"m merely curious. I had no idea you could bring a non-elf into this world."
"I"ve never been able to before, and yes, I"ve tried. I think it"s because now we"re bound together." I slowly backed up a step, pulling my soul from his, shifting us back into our reality.
"Interesting," he said. "You said elves are not the only ones who can enter the beyond?"
"Any Fae being can. Others as well-mages, for instance, can, or so I"ve been told. I"ve never seen any there, but to be honest, I"ve only been there a couple of times. I prefer this version of the world. Now, about your need to smile more... maybe you just need a ma.s.sive influx of kissing?""We weren"t talking about me smiling-we were talking about you falling in love with me, and why it"s a bad idea," he said, not moving when I leaned into him and gave his chin a flirtatious slurp.
"No, we weren"t. I haven"t said one single word about being in love with you. Kiss me, dammit!"
"Sam-" Paen stopped me from lunging at him. I was teasing him, but I could see in his eyes-I could feel inside him-that he wasn"t responding. "I"m quite serious. I can"t allow you to continue down this path."
"You can"t allow me..." I stopped, disbelief twisting painfully in my heart. "Oh. I see how it is. You have your soul, so you have no further need for me. I was just a means to an end, wasn"t I?"
I pulled away, turning my back on him so he wouldn"t see the tears that suddenly made it difficult to see. I felt betrayed, hurt, used. I knew that was unfair since he"d made it clear he hadn"t been looking for a serious relationship, yet I felt like so much had changed in the last few hours. After what we"d been through together, how could he still want to close me out?
"I never asked you to redeem my soul for me." Paen"s voice was filled with regret, but nothing else. "I am grateful than you did, more grateful than I can possibly express to you, but grat.i.tude is-"
He didn"t finish the sentence. He didn"t need to, I could hear the words as if he had spoken them. Grat.i.tude was all he was prepared to offer me.
He was right. I knew that. But it still cut me to the bone that my newborn feelings for him were unrequited.
"Fine," I said, blinking rapidly to disperse the tears. I wanted to say something more, something sharp that would make him hurt the way he hurt me, but two things held me back-it wasn"t a good business practice to hurt clients, and I couldn"t hurt him even if I wanted to. That realization struck me like a wrecking ball-I wasn"t falling in love with him; I"d gone right ahead and done it.
At some point in the last few hours I"d gone from self-sufficient Sam, to needy, dependent Sam... and the man to whom I"d offered my heart didn"t want it.
Chapter 12.
Grief swamped me, so strong that I could taste its bitterness on my tongue.
"Sam," Paen said, taking a step closer to me. "I never meant for you to be hurt. I thought you understood the sort of relationship I could offer-"
Voices outside the door interrupted him before he could say something that would have me bursting into tears. Clare and Finn came into the room, laughing, Finn holding the s...o...b..x containing the statue, while Clare, with a guilty look cast my way, hustled a bag from Mila"s shop into a drawer in her desk.
"We got the statue. We had a peek at it in Mila"s office-it doesn"t look important at all to me," Clare said, the cheerful smile on her face fading when she looked first at Paen, then me. "Sam? What"s wrong? Are you crying?"
"No, of course not," I said, desperately trying to blink back the tears as I frowned out the window.
"Yes you are, you"re crying!" She rounded on Paen, a fierce expression on her face. "What did you do to her?"
"Me?" Paen asked, looking surprised. The b.o.o.b. "I haven"t done anything-"
"Leave him alone, Clare." I managed to swallow the lump of pain in my throat and turned to face the room with what I prayed was a placid smile. "It"s nothing important."
"It is so important if he"s made you cry," she said, looking militant as only an outraged faery can. She turned back to Paen with narrowed eyes. "What did you do to my cousin?"
"You didn"t-Paen, tell me you didn"t start spouting that rubbish about not needing any woman," Finn said, looking closely at him. "Oh, Christ, you did. When the h.e.l.l will you learn-"
"This is none of your business," Paen interrupted, his eyes starting to flash blackened silver.
Finn took a position right in Paen"s face, clearly furious at his brother. "It is when you"re hurting the very same woman who saved your b.l.o.o.d.y soul for you!" he shouted.
"Guys, it really isn"t-" I started to say.
"I never asked her to save my b.l.o.o.d.y soul!" Paen roared at his brother. The noise startled us all into silence for a moment.
Everyone looked away as I took the s...o...b..x from Finn and pulled out the statue.
"That was fun, but we have more important matters at hand than a broken heart," I said, setting the statue on my desk.
Clare gasped. "He broke your heart after you redeemed-"
"Enough," I said loudly, giving my cousin a warning look. "Can we move on, please? Anyone have any idea why this statue is so important that someone is trying to kill for it?"
Four pairs of eyes turned to the statue.
"It"s rather attractive, in a cheap knockoff sort of way," Clare said, her head tipped to the side as she pondered the statue.
Paen picked it up and examined it. It looked just the same as it did the first time I saw it-a gold statue of a bird, some sort of stylized, vaguely falconish bird, with a cruel curved beak, claws wrapped around a stick of wood, the bottom of it flat, adorned with a crude made in Taiwan stamp.
"It"s heavier than it looks," Paen said, turning it over. "This is bra.s.s?"
"I think so. It"s certainly not gold."
"Hmm." He rapped his knuckles against the back of the statue. "It doesn"t sound hollow. Probably it is plaster covered over with a thin veneer of bra.s.s. That"s a very common technique used by knockoff artists."
"I wouldn"t doubt it. It certainly doesn"t look at all valuable. Any bright ideas on what"s so important about it?"
Paen shook his head. "None. But I"m hardly an expert on art pieces, other than an interest in the Jilin G.o.d."
"Maybe it"s cursed," Finn suggested, taking the statue from Paen. "Or maybe this isn"t really bra.s.s. What if it"s gold made to look like bra.s.s? Or what if there"s a valuable jewel or something hidden inside of it?"
"Ooh, I like jewels," Clare said, peering over Finn"s shoulder.
"Could be a secret drawer or something built into it," Finn said, pressing various parts of the statue.
Paen and I shook our heads in synchronized disagreement. "It"s too solid for that," I said."Well, then, your guess is as good as mine," Finn said, admitting defeat. He handed it to me.
"My guesses aren"t particularly good at all." I avoided looking at Paen, trying my best to ignore the dull ache in the region of my heart. Now was not the time to try to work out my feelings-with someone trying to kill one or more of us, I had to focus on what really mattered.
My broken heart sobbed a lament that was hard to ignore.
"I think you should have an expert examine the statue," Paen said, giving it a thoughtful look.
"Art expert, you mean?" I asked.
He shook his head. I tried hard to forget how silky his dark curls were as they brushed against my flesh, but the memory refused to be banished. "I was thinking more about that Diviner friend of yours," he said with a long, unreadable look at me.
I didn"t even try to reach out to his mind.
"Jake has already examined it, Kind of. He looked at the box and said that what was in it wasn"t touched by evil."
"He might find more if he could examine the statue himself."
I thought about that for a few moments. "I suppose it couldn"t hurt to ask him, although that"s not really the sort of thing a Diviner does."
Paen glanced at his watch. "I have some estate business to take care of at home. Will you be all right for a few hours if I leave?"
"Do you mean will I be shot at again by murderous villains who wish to steal my statue?" I risked a quick peek at him. His eyes were clouded and dark. I shrugged. "No idea, but now that I"m Miss Immortality 2006, it doesn"t really matter, does it?"
"Sam-"
"I"ll be fine," I said quickly, not wanting him to say anything that might set me off again. "Go do your stuff. I"ll take the statue to Jake and see what he has to say about it."
"What would you like us to do?" Clare asked, waving her hands toward the desk. "Shall we compile a list of historic tombs in Scotland?"
"That would be helpful, although I"d suggest starting with this area first. If Owen Race does, in fact, have the Jilin G.o.d, it would likely be somewhere near his house, wouldn"t you think?"
"We"ll look up the history on his house and family," Clare said, hurrying over to her computer, s.n.a.t.c.hing up a tulip as an elevenses snack.
"Great, then everyone"s got a job," I said, packing the statue up in its box and stuffing it into my oversized bag. "We can meet back here for dinner, if you all like. Hopefully I"ll have information about this statue so that we can figure out who wants it, and why."
Sam?
The soft brush of his voice in my mind almost brought me to my knees. I stiffened both them and my resolve, s.n.a.t.c.hing up my coat and bag as I headed for the door. "See you all later."
Paen"s voice was soft in my head, filled with regret. I don"t want to leave you feeling this way.I didn"t answer him. There was nothing to say. Well, nothing he wanted to hear. On the bus to the Diviners" House, I thought of quite a few things I"d like to say to him, but my pride kept me from saying them.
"You"ve been dumped before," I told myself as I got off the bus and started off the three blocks to my destination. "It stings for a bit, then goes away."
"Rather like the bite of an annoying insect?" a man asked from behind me. Cold seeped into my skin, leaching all heat from my body.
I spun around and found myself facing the man who had tried to murder Clare and Paen, the same man who shot me, rifled Paen"s desk, and menaced me so greatly that even seeing him in broad daylight on a busy Edinburgh street left me chilled and shaken. It was Pilar, and not even the sight of Beppo in cute pinstriped overalls could dilute the sensations of power and menace that rolled off the man. "You"re Pilar, aren"t you? What do you want with me?"
The man smiled. "In general, or at this moment?"
"Let"s start with what you"re doing now," I said, backing up a step.
His smile deepened. "You will come with me now."