EVEN VAMPIRES GET THE BLUES

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 on the hardwood floor with several large thunks, the biggest of which was made by a small black statue of a monkey.

Caspar roared a scream of anger behind me as he broke the bonds of the summoning and spun around to see me scrambling madly toward the Jilin statue.

'You!' he screeched, his voice literally causing the windows to erupt into a thousand little shards of glass.

'Holy crap,' I muttered, not taking the time to pick the monkey statue out of the debris of the bird—I just scooped it all up, hugged it to my chest, and bolted for the front door.

'Run, Clare, he's on to us!' I bellowed. She didn't stop to ask who; no doubt she caught a glimpse of the monstrosity behind me.

Paen, pull us out, I yelled, my skin erupting into pain as Caspar's tendrils of power lashed out and caught me, holding me fast at the doorway.

'Noooooo!' Clare screamed, grabbing my arm to keep me from being pulled back in.

Bless his heart, Paen didn't bother with asking unimportant questions—he simply merged himself with me, filling me, holding me, binding me to him, and what was most important at that moment, yanking both Clare and me out of the beyond, back onto the cliff shelf on the Lammermuir Hills.

I threw myself into Paen's arms, unmindful of the sharp corners of the bits of statue I held clutched to my body, so grateful to be away from Caspar, tears mingled with the kisses I pressed to his face.

'Clare,' Finn shouted from the plain below.

'I'm all right,' she yelled back, going to the edge to wave at him. 'But that demon lord was awful! He was the most horrible thing I've ever seen!'

Behind us, the stone groaned as if in protest.

'He was hideous, all black and twisted and misshapen!'

The sound of a thousand souls in agony ripped through us as the fabric of being was shredded.

'I think I would die if I were ever to see him again, he was just that awful,' Clare called to Finn.

Caspar stepped out of the beyond, power coiled around him like snakes, writhing and twisting, snapping at everything they could reach. The ground shook, as if protesting Caspar's presence in such a sacred spot.

'I see you found my statue,' he said, his voice filled with the promise of eternal torment. 'I will take it back now, if you don't mind.'

An immense cracking noise rent the air, causing everyone to cover their ears. The rocky shelf we stood on shattered, the stone crashing to the ground below, taking us with it.

Chapter 20

The silence that followed the roar of rocks and shrieks of the soft, squishy humans (or variations thereof) as they fell to the ground was almost as deafening in its absence as the sound was previously.

Samantha? Are you hurt?

I groaned and shoved a cantaloupe-sized bit of boulder from my arm before rolling off Paen. My left wrist might be broken. It hurts bad enough that I may barf. Are you OK? Why did you grab me right as we fell? I must have crushed you when we hit the ground.

I grabbed you so you wouldn't be crushed. Let me see your arm.

A red wave of pain and nausea threatened to overwhelm me as I struggled into a sitting position, my hurt arm held tight to my chest. 'I'm fine,' I told Paen as he tried to examine my arm. He had a nasty gash in his cheek that spilled blood down the side of his face, but he looked relatively all right. 'Find Clare.'