EVEN VAMPIRES GET THE BLUES

you can take me there.'

'It's a ridiculous plan,' she snorted, casting pathetic glances at Paen. 'Don't you think it's ridiculous?'

'Very much so,' he said.

'Stop doing that. Paen is on the edge as is,' I whispered to Clare, jerking her hand to get her attention. 'My hands are full trying to keep him from attacking Pilar, without you baiting him into an action we'll all regret.'

'Well, it is silly. I don't know anything about this beyond place. I don't know why he thinks I'm going to be able to find the statue,' she said, frowning at Pilar.

Beppo sat on his shoulder, making occasional chirruping noises as Clare and I prepared to retrieve the statue.

'You do not have to find it. The Beloved will find it. She was born of the light; she will have powers there,' Pilar told her for the third time. 'Just do as you've been instructed.'

'Yes, but it's all so very silly,' Clare said, stalling like mad.

'Look at it this way,' I told her. 'At least if we die, we'll die together.'

Her look of outrage would have brought a mortal to her knees. 'I am not going to die!'

'I know that,' I soothed, giving her hand a friendly squeeze.

'I should hope you do,' she said, transferring her glare from me back to Pilar.

'Faeries can't die,' I added, smiling at her outraged snarl. 'Come on, Glimmerharp. Let's get this over with so we can take care of Caspar.'

Clare swore colorful oaths at me as we turned and walked straight toward the rock face, where Pilar had indicated the nearest entrance to the beyond was. I was just about to ask her if she talked to her mother with that mouth when we hit a wall—or rather, I did. Clare passed through it, but I was held back by a field that didn't want to let me pass.

'Clare, you're going to have to pull,' I said, pushing myself against the barrier between realities. 'I can't… seem… to get thr—'

She wrapped a second hand around my wrist and yanked with a strength that was surprising. I was jerked clean through the barrier into the beyond, stumbling over a rock and falling to my knees, the shock of passing through it enough to strip the air from my lungs.

Sam? Are you all right? You disappeared. Paen's voice was warm and reassuring in my head, but it was different somehow—stretched, as if it came from a great distance.

I'm fine, I answered, getting to my feet, brushing the knees of my jeans as I took a quick look about. Just a little shaky. I don't think that was the most graceful entrance I've ever made. Everything OK out there?

Yes. Pilar and I are having a stare-down.

Who's winning?

He is. I don't think he has eyelids.

Maybe you should offer to arm-wrestle him, or have a spitting contest or something, I said, gathering up every warm emotion I could muster in the cold void of my soulless self, and sending them to him.

I love you, too, he said, and for a moment, he shared his warmth and light with me, reminding me again that I wasn't alone.

Clare looked around us. 'This is certainly different. Where did all these trees and lovely flowers come from? And that brook? I know that brook wasn't there a few seconds ago,' she said, pointing to a stream of silver that spilled over the rocks in a graceful display that promised refreshment and relaxation to any who paused to sit a while near it.

'You're in the beyond, now, Clare. Things are different here. Expect Disney music and dancing teacups at any moment. Put down that dove you found and come along. We have places to go, statues to rescue, demon lords to cream.'

'Where exactly are we going?'

'To find the statue.'

'I know that, silly,' she said, snatching up a handful of wildflowers as I held out my hands, feeling for a familiar tingle that would herald a wrinkle. 'But where is the statue?'

'Evidently where Pilar stashed it, somewhere around Caspar's apartment.'

'Doesn't he know where he put it?'

'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.