Even The Vampires Get The Blues

'Yes, but things get shifted slightly in the beyond, so all he could say is that it would be somewhere near the apartment.'

'But that's all the way back in town,' she said, wandering over to where a silhouetted version of Pilar stood a few feet away from Paen. She waved her hand in front of his face. 'They can't see us?'

'No. What you're seeing is the representation of him in the beyond. His aura is black because he has been tainted by dark powers.' A little frisson of something went up my left hand as I felt along the rock face. I moved over a step, running both hands along the minute stream of power.

'Paen's aura isn't black,' she said, looking at him. When you're in the beyond, people in the other reality appear shadowed slightly, as if you are viewing them through a thin veil, which I suppose is as good a simile as anything. 'But he was cursed.'

'He has a soul now. Ah. Here it is.' I slipped my fingers into the stream, gently pulling it apart until there was a shimmering portal wide enough to allow a person through.

'The statue?' Clare asked, wandering over to me.

'No, the wrinkle. Come on, I don't know if it'll stay open once I go through it.'

'Wrinkle? What's that?'

I hauled her in after me. It was like walking through a faint field of electricity. One moment we were on the side of a cliff in the Lammermuir Hills; the next we were standing at the end of the street on which Caspar's apartment was located.

'How did you do that?' Clare asked, quickly stuffing a petal in her mouth.

I shot her an exasperated look. 'Didn't you ever watch any Star Trek shows? It's a wrinkle in the time/space continuum. Or something like that—I'm not quite sure what the technical name for it is. All I know is you can use the wrinkles to travel to another area in the beyond. You take that side of the street, I'll do this one.'

Needless to say, Clare was too overwhelmed to do much but follow me as I searched the sidewalk and area surrounding the steps leading into Caspar's building.

'Crapbeans,' I said, shoving a garbage can back under the stone steps leading up to the doorway. I dusted off my hands, giving the building a wary look. 'I guess this means we're going to have to go inside.'

'Oooh,' she said, her eyes big. 'Will he notice us, do you think?'

'I'm not sure. He's a demon lord, so he shouldn't be able to see into the beyond, but he's also a god, so who knows what the extent of his powers are?' I pushed down the feeling of dread that rose as I started up the stairs.

All right, sweetheart?

The warm glow of Paen's being filled me. I am now, I answered, smiling at him but unable to stop the sharp pang of regret. If only things were as they had been…

We'll get it back, love. We'll get them both back, he promised me.

I took a deep breath, sent a heartfelt prayer to let us all get through this without any more tragedies being inflicted, and opened the door to the apartments.

'Don't you have to press the buzz… oh!' Clare sucked in her breath as she followed me into the building, rubbing her arms and shivering.

'We're not restricted by the boundaries of our reality in the beyond,' I said, shivering as well.

Caspar's apartment might be on the third floor, but his presence turned the inside of the building black as night, seeping into every corner, filling it with a veritable miasma of dense, inky being. The only light we had was that coming off of Clare and myself—Clare's pure soul providing a halo of light around her, while faint sunlight seemed to gently glow from my skin.

'No wonder my elf senses were going berserk here,' I said, rubbing the back of my neck where the hairs were standing on end.

Clare said nothing, but grabbed my hand. We climbed the stairs in silence, carefully making our way through the darkness, doing our best to search each inch of the landings, stairs, and hallways as we came to them.

'Well,' I said what seemed like an eternity later as I stood outside a door labeled 12-C. 'I guess we're going to have to go in and see if it's right under Caspar's nose.'

'Oh, no,' Clare said, backing down the hallway. 'There is no way I'm going into that apartment.'

'I don't think he can see into the beyond,' I said, biting my lip. 'We should be safe enough.'

'No. Absolutely not. And I think you're insane for even thinking about going in there.'

'Well, I'm not too wild about the idea myself, in case you hadn't noticed.' I thought for a minute. 'What we need is a distraction, something to grab Caspar's attention in case he can see us.'

'How are you going to do that?' she asked, her face puckered with worry.

Paen, my love, we need some help.

I knew it! You're in trouble, aren't you? Tell Clare to pull me in—

We are not in trouble. We just need help. I need someone to capture Caspar's attention so we can check his apartment for the statue.

Paen created and discarded any number of objections to the thought of us going into the apartment, but he wasn't the man I loved for nothing. Let me talk to Pilar.

We huddled together in the darkness of the apartment hallway, vaguely aware when one of the mortal inhabitants passed by on their way to or from their homes, but mostly just aware of the profound sense of dread that seemed to soak into everything, ourselves included.

Go ahead, Sam, Paen told me eons later. Noelle is conducting a ritual to summon Caspar. It should keep his attention off you, but she says you'll only have about five minutes before she has to stop the ritual.

Perfect. Thank her for me, will you? Uh… you can't do the mind thing with her, can you? I asked, a little spike of jealousy going through me at the thought of someone else sharing something so intimate with Paen.

Ever hear of a mobile phone, sweetheart? he said, laughing into my mind.

I knew where Caspar was the second we slipped into the apartment. He was in the sitting room, the same lovely peach and cream room that had seemed so peaceful to me before, but was now a place of such horror my stomach clenched.

'Sam?'

The whisper barely penetrated the blackness. I turned back to where Clare stood in the doorway, her arms clutched around herself.

'I don't think I can go in.'

I took one look at the terror in her eyes and went over to give her a reassuring hug. 'It's OK. I've been here before, so it won't take me any time to go through the room I was in when Pilar zapped me. You just stay here, OK?'

'OK,' she said, hugging me tightly. 'If I was a faery—not that I am, but if I was—I'd rub magic faery dust on you to keep you safe.'

I smiled and didn't point out the fact that the front of my shirt glowed with the incandescent light from the faery dust which had rubbed on me when we hugged. Instead I mentally girded my loins, marched over to the sitting room door, and prayed that Noelle the Guardian had enough power to keep a demon lord occupied while I stood only a few feet away from him.

I needn't have worried. Caspar was there in the room, standing in the middle, but he was frozen, as if locked in that position. Little curlicues of dark power snapped around him, but I clearly didn't register on his consciousness as I scooted around him, heading for the chair I'd sat on during my second visit.

The statue was tucked away behind a settee, still wrapped in the blue cloth. I snatched it up, uncovering just a bit of it to make sure it was really the statue before making a dash for the door.

Unfortunately, I forgot to watch where I was going, and tripped over a small footstool that sat almost hidden away under a table. Almost.

The statue flew from my hands as I fell to the floor, slamming up against the wall. My knees cracked painfully on the hardwood floor as I lunged forward to grab the statue before it could rebound, but to my complete and utter surprise, it didn't bounce off the wall like a proper brass statue of a falcon should.

Instead it shattered in an explosion of brass-coated plaster, the pieces of the bird falling into large chunks