The palms in front of me rustled as a black shadow streaked into the corner made dark by an overhead curtain, and a lurking machine that churga-churgaed away quietly to itself.
What are you doing?
I smiled at the peevish note in Paen's voice. Poor man, all this sunlight had to be uncomfortable for him.
Listening to the butterflies argue.
A meaningful pause filled my head. Butterflies argue?
Oh yeah. They're really actually quite cantankerous for such pretty things. Always getting into fights with each other.
I see. Is this an elf trait, or have you just lost your wits?
I gave him a mental eye roll. Look, I don't pick on you because of the way you were born, OK? So don't give me any grief about being able to understand butterfly. And while we're on the subject of different—what made you change your mind about doing the mental thing with me?
A sigh emerged from over my shoulder, in the vicinity of the misting machine. I smiled straight ahead at a couple of startlingly blue mortho butterflies that were flitting around taunting each other.
"Are you going to try scrying now?"
"As soon as Jake gets back from looking at creepy-crawlies. Are you going to avoid answering my question?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because I don't wish to answer it. How long will the scrying take?"
"Probably not too long. Why are you so adamant about avoiding the fact that we can mind-talk?"
"Why are you so desirous of doing it?"
I shrugged, still watching the butterflies as one took offense to a slur and attacked the other. "I've never had this ability with anyone. It's pretty unique. I just don't understand why you're so freaked about it—oh, hi, Jake."
"Don't tell me, you're talking to the butterflies?"
"No, to my client, Paen Scott. Paen, this is Brother Jacob, one of the Diviners who used to teach me."
Jake glanced around quickly, giving me a worried look. "Erm… Sam…"
"He's behind the machinery," I said, waving at the big misting machine. "He's a Dark One. Sunshine is a no-no."
"Ah," Jake said, squinting at the machine. "Pleasure."
"Likewise," came Paen's voice from behind the machine. "Can we get on with this? I have a tip I'd like to discuss with you, Samantha."
"Tip? What tip? About your statue?"
Paen said nothing.
"Fine, be mysterious." I sighed, picking up the black mirrored bowl in one hand, the flask of spring-water in the other. "Hopefully this won't take very long."
Scrying isn't my forte. I came to that conclusion some ten minutes later, when I was trying to decipher the images that flashed in my mind while covered with hundreds and hundreds of squabbling butterflies. An image of the gold bird statue popped into my head for a moment. Clearly I had statues on the brain. I closed it out and focused my thoughts on the monkey statue before looking into the bowl.
"What exactly do you see?" Jake asked, batting at a couple of butterflies that left me to investigate him.
"I see the statue," I hissed through my teeth, experience having proven that opening your mouth to speak while covered in butterflies is not a good idea. "It's a black monkey all right. Smallish, kind of ugly. Has a really big… er… masculine attribute. Looks Pagan rather than Chinese."
"Where is it?" Paen asked from the cover of the misting machine.
I shook my head to dislodge a couple of the butterflies that clung to my eyelashes, and looked deep into the reflective water held in my scrying bowl. It was a bit difficult to scry because the butterflies, evidently attracted to me while I was doing my sun elf thing, were flitting around in front of the bowl, but I managed to see past them, past the surface of the water, deep into that twilight place between realities also known as the beyond.
"It's in a dark place. Closely confined in some sort of sarcophagus or something like that. Maybe a tomb," I said, sending the mental picture of it to Paen. "There's a definite feel of it being held in a confined, protected place."
"A tomb? What tomb?" he asked.
I shook my head. "No idea. I can't see its location beyond the fact that it's entombed. All I see is the statue itself."
"Er… Sam? I hate to hurry you, but I think you should try to wrap this up," Jake said, his voice worried.
"Why?" I asked, my vision still turned inward, trying to pull out of the tomb to see where it was located.
"Because you're starting to emit light, and there's a lorry-load of butterflies heading this way that look like they aren't going to be content with just fluttering merrily around you."
I pulled back out of the scrying vision and glanced down first at myself, where tiny little pinpoints of sunlight were bursting out of me. "Wow. I'm in sunshine overload… holy moly!"
Heading toward us in a veritable tidal wave of brilliant color, every butterfly in the whole of Butterfly World was zooming straight at me in one solid mass that knocked down everything and everyone in its path. People screamed and threw themselves to the floor as the swarm flew at us. As if that sight wasn't frightening enough, the butterflies' chant of "Drink the light! Drink the light!" turned my blood cold.
I dumped the water out of my scrying bowl and leaped to my feet, snatching up my backpack before throwing myself through the palms, butterflies falling off me as I bolted for the door. "Run! Run for your lives! Killer butterflies!"
Chapter 9
"I don't believe I've ever run across a butterfly I'd classify as murderous," Paen commented a few minutes later. He stood in the shadow of an overhang of a maintenance building, clad in the same ankle-length black coat and hat that he'd worn to my office.
"Yeah, well, you didn't hear those little monsters chanting about drinking you." I stopped brushing off the butterfly dust—which Jake helpfully informed me was actually miniscule scales off the butterflies' wings—and scrunched my nose. "Why was I emitting light? I've never done that before."
"You've never channeled power from the sun before, either," Jake said, watching Paen with bright, interested eyes. "You probably pulled more than you needed, and it had to go somewhere."
I patted my torso, still a bit weirded out by the experience. Unlike Clare, I was not immortal, nor did I recover quickly from wounds. The fact that sunlight could burst out of me without doing damage relieved my mind on one level, and disturbed me greatly on another. I'd have to worry about it at another time, though. Right now I had more important concerns. "Whatever the reason, I'm glad it's done. I'm just sorry I couldn't pinpoint the location of the statue."
"You have no idea where it is?" Paen asked.
"Somewhere fairly close, that's the only sense of location I got."
"Close meaning Edinburgh? Scotland? The planet Earth?"
"Very funny," I said, walking toward the parking lot. I stopped and looked back at Paen, still standing in the shadows. "Mind giving us a lift back to town?"
He angled his hat so it shaded his face, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and strode past me into the sunlight. Jake and I followed, hurrying to keep up with Paen's long-legged stride.
"The answer to your question is this area. I think. Lowlands of Scotland. Somewhere around here, there's a tomb holding that statue. Any obvious spots you'd like to search first?"
"No," Paen said, turning his back to the sun so he could open the car door. I noticed for the first time that the windows of the car were heavily tinted. From the inside, they appeared normal, but anyone standing outside it saw windows almost as dark as my scrying mirror. "But I have information that may make such a search moot."
"Really? What sort of information?" I asked as I got into the car, claiming the front seat while Jake took the rear. I scooted around on the seat so I had my back to the door, able to see both men. "What did you find out?"
Paen's gaze flickered to the rearview mirror for a moment.
He's absolutely trustworthy, you know. You can say anything you want in front of him. He won't repeat it.
I know it's asking a lot, but I trust him with my life. You really don't have to worry about anything you say in front of him getting spread around.
"There was a demon waiting for me outside your flat when I left this morning," he said finally, evidently deciding to trust us both.
Jake's eyes widened.
"It's not like it sounds," I said hastily, giving Paen a small frown. "We didn't have sex."
"We didn't?" Paen asked.
"No, we didn't!"
"We were both naked," he pointed out. "And you begged me to make love to your ears."
Jake's eyes practically bugged out.
"Paen's blowing this totally out of proportion," I told him, waving a hand at my would-be lover. "The ear sex thing was unexpected. And just so you know, all he did was bite my ears. There were no ear-to-genital encounters. That's just creepy."
"I think this is probably none of my business," Jake said, looking oddly delighted. He kept shooting little questioning looks at Paen, then grinning at me.
I frowned in return. "True, so if Mr. Blabberfangs there doesn't mind, we can move on past the fact that we were naked and indulging in a little ear make-out session, and get to the point." Unbidden, my gaze dropped to Paen's lap. "Er… point of the conversation. You saw a demon?"
"Yes. On the street. It was waiting for me. It said it had been sent by its master, the demon lord who demanded the statue. The demon said that there was a man in Edinburgh, a theurgist who has an interest in art from the Dark Ages. This man evidently has information about the statue, and possibly knows where it is located."
"Oooh, good clue, even if it does come from a demon," I said, pulling out my PDA to take notes. "What's the name of the guy?"
"Owen Race. Professor Owen Race."
I almost dropped my PDA. "Huh?"
Paen didn't seem to notice for a second or two that Jake and I stared at him with mouths hanging open in surprise. "What? Do you know him?"
"Kind of," I said, choking slightly. "He's a client. Jake referred him to me."
"Client!" Paen looked as surprised as I felt. "What did he hire you for?"
I bit my lip (a bad habit, but one I am unable to stop). "I can't tell you. That would be violating my ethics. It's not to find your statue, though, I'll tell you that."
"I appreciate that you wish to adhere to client confidentiality, but I must insist on knowing what work Owen Race has engaged you to undertake."
"Insist away. You are a client—I respect your right to privacy. Likewise, I respect Mr. Race's. I'll go so far as to assure you that my job for him has nothing to do with your statue, but that's all I'm saying."
"That's not good enough. There may be a connection that you don't see," Paen argued, turning onto a familiar street.
"Might I remind you that I'm a professional?" My frown got a little tighter. "I'm not a complete idiot, you know. I can tell the difference between a job locating a stolen book and one to find a missing statue."
"Stolen book? What book was stolen?"
I growled to myself.
"I think this is where I get off," Jake said, evidently sensing the coming argument. He waited until Paen pulled past a zebra crossing and hopped out, poking his head back into the car for a moment. "Nice meeting you, Paen. Thanks for the entertainment, Sam."
"Bye, and thank you for all the support," I said, upping my frown at Paen to a full-frontal glare. "I'll let you know later how things turn out, OK?"
"It's a deal. Later."
Paen drove off, heading not toward my office as I wanted, but into the newer part of town where our apartment was.
"You're taking me home? I don't want to go home. I have work to do at the office," I said. "There's a little business about your mother's soul, remember?"
"Of course I remember! How could you possibly imagine I'd forget something like that? I am, however, capable of dealing with more than one situation at a time. Since we are going to continue to work closely together, I think it's appropriate to discuss a few things regarding our personal relationship." Paen's jaw was set as he whipped us around a corner.
"Oh. That makes sense. But we can talk at the office."
"Finn is there with Clare."
"So? I bet if we tried hard, we could talk with them there anyway."
"Would you also like to have sex with them there?"
My lips formed an O. I was about to protest that I wasn't interested in having sex with him, but the truth was, the idea was more than a little intriguing. Just the thought of his hot breath on my ears made me shiver. "Um. No. But it's the middle of the day, and I have work to do. I hate to waste time."
One of his eyebrows rose. "I have heard sex referred to as many things, but a waste of time is not one of them."
"You're not planning on sexing me up, then trying to worm out secrets about Owen Race, are you?" I asked, sudden suspicion causing me to narrow my eyes. No wonder he suddenly was interested in doing the sheet tango.
Paen turned onto my street and headed for the tiny lot behind my building. "The thought had crossed my mind, yes."
"Ha! I knew it. Well, it won't work."
"That was my conclusion as well. You are too honorable to do such a thing."
I basked for a moment or two in the warm glow of his approval, frowning when I realized that his tone added a different interpretation to the statement. "So why are we going to my apartment if you know I don't kiss and tell?"
He shot me a look that had every cell in my body clamoring for action. "I desire you. I believe you desire me. That emotion is impairing my ability to function. I need that ability to continue directing the pursuit of the statue. Therefore, a lovemaking session will do much to clear both our minds. Consider it work therapy."
"Whoa, wait a second," I said as he slipped the car into my parking spot. I put my hand on his arm, holding him in the car when he would have jumped out. "Your desire for me is impairing your ability to function? What's that all about?"
He frowned. "Surely you understand the power of desire? You said you feel an attraction to me."
"Yes, I do. But I don't have to give in to that attraction."
"Don't you?" he asked, getting out of the car, suddenly flooding my head with the emotions he felt during our previous almost-sex session. Hunger was uppermost in his emotions, but it wasn't just a hunger for blood—it was a need for something to fill the gaping hole inside him. It was a silent plea for light to fill his darkness, for someone to take away the pain of utter loneliness, the hopelessness that seeped into every corner of his being.
He needed love.
He needed me.
"OK," I said, dropping all objections as I leaped out of the car. We made it to the door of my apartment before I gave in to temptation and flung myself at him, kissing the breath right out of his mouth.
"You're good for someone who hasn't had a lot of practice," he admitted three minutes later, when I retrieved my tongue and broke off the kiss long enough to get the door to the apartment unlocked.
"I'm inspired by the subject," I told him before racing to the bedroom. I yanked off my jacket en route, simultaneously beating back the shrubberies in my room and hopping on one foot while trying to pull off my shoe. Without thinking, I yanked open the blinds to let the sunshine in, stopping for a moment to soak up the wonderfully warm rays before turning to see what was keeping Paen.
He was pinned up against the door, his shirt in one hand, the sunshine lapping at his shoes.
"Oh. Sorry about that. It's instinctive," I said as I angled the blinds to limit the sun to an area directly in front of the window.
"So I gathered," he answered, whapping at a narrow-leafed Australian Tree Fern that was infringing on his personal space.
I got both shoes and socks removed, and peeled off my jeans, standing for a moment with them in my hand, the sun warming my back as I looked at Paen. There was a lot of him to look
at, too, what with that glorious bare chest right there for me to ogle. I gave in and had a good ogle, then managed to get my mind back to the question uppermost. "Foreplay or no?"
He stopped mid-unzipping. "Pardon?"
"Are you going to get naked now? Or just torment me with that chest first, driving me to a frenzy of lust-crazed wantonness that will make me rip the rest of your clothes off?"
He looked down at his chest. "You want to rip my clothes off just by looking at my chest?"
"Very much so."
"It's just a chest. Skin and hair."
"Oh, I beg to differ." I tossed aside my jeans and walked over to where he stood in a shady patch, stroking my hand down his chest from his clavicle to his sternum, following the lovely, sleek trail of hair that led straight down his belly and disappeared into his pants. "This is not just skin and hair. This is no mere chest. It's chest deluxe. Chest supreme."
He gave me an odd look, a mixture of disbelief and amusement. "You're a strange woman."
"So it's said. I know a good thing when I see it, however," I said, pulling my hand back with an effort. "So, did you want to dally with a bit of foreplay, or just go straight for the meat-and-potatoes thing?"
He dropped his pants. "What do you think?"
"Whoa! You've been anticipating," I said, admiring the view as I backed up a few steps. I pulled off my sweater and dropped it onto the chair so I stood in the sunlight clad in nothing but my underwear and bra. "OK. I'm good with that. Investigating to do, people to see… and evidently, penises to ride. Do you like oral sex?"
"Do you always talk so much during lovemaking?" he asked, an odd look on his face.
"Not normally."
He looked thoughtful for a moment. "Are you still nervous?"
"Maybe a little. In case you haven't noticed, I tend to blabber when I'm nervous."
I've never met anyone like you before, Paen thought. I don't think he intended me to hear him, but I grinned anyway as I did a sinuous little dance in the sunshine while slowly removing my bra.
Even Vampires Get The Blues do-4 Page 13
