EVEN VAMPIRES GET THE BLUES

'Good morning, Miss Cosse. What a pleasant surprise. And Paen Scott! Welcome to my humble home. It is indeed a pleasure to see you both again. I take it you have come to deliver the statue to me?'

'Not quite. We've come to talk about a few things with you,' I said, sitting when he gestured toward a peach love seat. 'Not the least of which is your choice in employees.'

'Why did you try to hire Sam to find the statue when you knew I was already searching for it?' Paen asked abruptly, every line in his body radiating anger.

'Ah. I thought perhaps you might put things together. Please, Paen, take a seat. There is no need to be uncivilized about this. You are naturally upset by what would appear to be some sort of trickery on my part, but I assure you that there is none intended.'

Paen snorted something rude under his breath, but sat down next to me.

Do you believe him? I asked Paen.

No.

Good. Neither do I. He's lying. All my elf senses are tingling.

Sweetheart, I'm beginning to believe your elf senses are easy tinglers. But I agree—he's not telling us the truth.

'The situation is a little more complicated than I originally led you both to believe,' Caspar said, making another of those hands-spread-in-honesty gestures that I didn't for a moment buy into. His face was blank, unreadable, although he seemed to be watching us with sharp, dark eyes. 'In hindsight, I am perhaps a little guilty of muddying the waters, so to speak, but I assure you that everything I told you, Paen, and you, Samantha, was the absolute truth. The demon lord Oriens has called the statue due as payment for services rendered to Sir Alec.'

I shot Paen a questioning look. Your father is a knight?

Baronet, Paen said, his arms crossed over his chest as he waited for Caspar to continue.

So, someday when your father decides he doesn't want the title, you'll get it?

Eventually, yes. He will pretend to die of old age in a distant location, and I will take over the title until he has passed from mortal memory, then we'll reverse the procedure. It's worked quite well the last few hundred years.

Let me get this straight—you're a brooding, sexy titled Scottish vampire?

Paen shot me a quick puzzled look. What's your point?

Nothing. But remind me to write a book about you someday when this is all over. I bet women would eat you up with a spoon.

'Are you finished?' Caspar asked politely, brushing an infinitesimal bit of nothing off his knee.

'Sorry. I didn't mean to stop you. Please, continue. This is fascinating,' I said, blushing a little at being caught mind-talking to Paen.

Caspar smiled, and I swear if I had been mortal, I'd have lost a couple of years off my life at the sight of it. 'I have been remiss in congratulating you on finding your Beloved, Paen. My felicitations.'

Paen was made of sterner stuff. 'What exactly haven't you told us about the statue?'

'So forceful, so blunt and to the point,' Caspar said, the creepy smile still on his lips. Something about him had changed since I last saw him. Before, he seemed like a relatively pleasant, if a bit intense, man. Now I could swear I felt tendrils of dark power snapping and crackling around him, as if he sat in the middle of an electrical charge. 'You two will do well together, I think. The information I perhaps unwisely kept from you is in regards to the statue's origin.'

I thought back to our last meeting. 'You said that it had been commissioned from a Chinese artist and later given to Marco Polo by the emperor.'

'As indeed it was. But the person who commissioned it… well, there is no avoiding this revelation. The person who commissioned the statue was none other than myself.'

Now, that took me by surprise. I don't know what I was expecting him to say, but it wasn't that he was the one behind the creation of the statue some two thousand years ago. 'So the statue was originally yours… Wait a minute.' I dug through my recent memories and came up with something that didn't make sense. 'You told me that the statue depicted Sun Wukong, the monkey god.'

'As indeed it does,' Caspar agreed.

I looked at him, a sense of dread building inside me until it was so great it spilled over onto Paen. He took my hand in his, rubbing his thumb over my fingers. What's wrong, love?

So many things, I don't know where to start. 'You also said that the person who ordered the statue created was the god of death.'

Paen's thumb stilled. Outside the room, the normal sounds of Edinburgh traffic faded away until it was as still as the room in which we sat.

'That is so,' Caspar said finally, a tiny muscle twitching in his eyebrow the only sign that he was less than pleased that I had such a good memory.

'You are Yan Luowang, the god of death?' Paen asked.

'It is one of my names.' Caspar made an odd sort of dismissive gesture with one hand. 'Not one that I have used for some time.'

'You're a god of death,' I said, stunned. 'A Chinese god of death. A real, honest-to-god god. Of death.'

'God of the fifth hell, if I remember correctly,' Paen said softly to me before frowning at Caspar. 'But you told me you were an alastor. How can you be both?'

Caspar's shrug was a thing of elegance. 'One does not reach heights of godhood without earning such a position. I rose through the ranks, naturally. I began as a mortal, became an alastor due to the intervention of a vengeful god, and eventually assumed the mantle of god of death. To be honest, it sounds much more impressive than it was.'

I had an epiphany at that point. I'd like to think it was my own razor-sharp brain putting facts together, but I suspect it was my elf side seeing beyond the obvious. 'You're also Oriens, aren't you? You're the demon lord who wants the statue.'

The muscle in his eyebrow twitched twice before he got it under control. 'How perspicacious of you. I see I underestimated you, my dear Miss Cosse.'

Paen rose slowly to his feet. Fury rose in him, hot and red, and I knew he was going to lunge at Caspar, intending to punish the demon lord for threatening his mother. I couldn't let him do that, of course—even if Caspar didn't seem like one hell of a badass power, he was. I grabbed Paen's arm and dug my feet in. He snarled an epithet into my head. I held firm. No, Paen. You can't. I know you want to stop him, but even if he looks human, he's not. He's a death god. You can't beat him up.

'Interesting,' Caspar said, watching Paen's struggle to contain his anger. 'But counterproductive. I can't help being who I am any more than you can, nor do we have the time to waste in trivial shows of anger.'

'Trivial!' Paen growled. I held on with both hands, murmuring soft words of reason into his head.

Caspar waved away Paen's objection as if it was a pesky fly. 'Time is running out. If you do not bring the statue to me before midnight tonight, I will be forced to take what payment I can for your father's debt.'

'You bas—'

I slapped my hand over Paen's mouth, oddly enough agreeing with what Caspar was saying. My darling, my sweet, sweet Paen, I would like nothing more than to see you rip him to shreds, but he's right. We don't have the time to waste hours arguing. We have to find that statue. Now.

We wouldn't be in this position if he hadn't invoked the debt! Paen snarled.

I know. And I agree. But there's nothing we can do now but find the statue and give it to him. So let's put aside the fact that Caspar is the source of all the trouble, and get the damned statue.

'I see you have reasoned with your lover,' Caspar said with another cold smile as I half shoved Paen back into the love seat. 'My estimation of you rises even more, Samantha.'

I whirled around and made the meanest eyes I could at him, letting him see in them the extent of my feelings. 'I swear to you by all that is holy in this world and the next, you will pay for all you have done. You have threatened the family of the man I love, and I will never forget nor forgive that.'

His smile dimmed a couple of notches.