The remainder of the drive to Paen's home was anti-climactic (literally, but we won't go there). I was momentarily surprised to see that the castle I had astrally visited was his.
"It's just like I saw when I was floating around," I said as he drove across a long causeway that connected a tiny little island with land. "I had no idea you lived in a castle. Wow. It's really impressive. It's... er... not haunted or anything, is it?"
"Haunted?" Paen frowned. "Why do you think it would be haunted?"
"Aren't most castles?"
"Mine isn't."
"Oh. How old is it?"
He spent the time it took us to circle around the castle to a parking area at the back to give me a quick history of the place. By the time he escorted me into the main building, I knew it was approximately six hundred years old, had been inherited by his father via his grandmother's mortal family, and although it was beset with a dampness issue that no amount of modern technology could seem to fix, it housed nothing more extraordinary than a family of vampires.
Which, I suppose, was pretty extraordinary when you considered it.
"How many people does it take to keep up a castle?" I asked as he walked me through a huge hall.
"We have a day staff of four - two inside, and two outdoors."
"Ah. And nighttime?"
"None of the staff remains after dark," he answered, shooting me an unreadable look.
"Oh, right. That's when you guys do your thing." I stopped for a moment and looked at Paen. He turned back to see what was keeping me. "Do you miss the daylight?"
A tiny little frown wrinkled his brow. "Miss it? What do you mean?"
"Well, you're up at night rather than day. I wondered if you missed it."
"I am up no later than noon each day," he answered, looking oddly hurt. "I keep late hours, yes, but I assure you that I don't spend my life in darkness."
"Oh. I thought all vamps were nighttime only. So you don't miss being able to go outside in the sun? You don't... you know, brood about being a Dark One, not being able to do things other people can do?"
"Good lord, no. I don't brood about anything. I am perfectly happy being what and who I am," he said, giving me a mildly annoyed look. "To do otherwise would be a waste of time."
"But... you have no soul," I said, following him through a door. "I may not have been around any Dark Ones before, but even I can tell there's something missing in you. It's like your insides are made of ice. Doesn't that bother you?"
"Not at all. I may lack a soul, but I have not allowed that to hinder me in any way," he said, turning to wave a hand around the room. "You said you wanted to see the house. This is the library. My father is seldom home to use it, so it's really my room."
"It's lovely. Very comfortable," I said, looking around. It was a typical room of its sort - floor-to-ceiling bookcases lining two walls, dark leather furniture gathered around a fireplace, long, heavy (assumedly light-inhibiting) curtains framing huge windows and a pair of French doors, and a familiar desk lurking at the opposite end of the room - familiar because this was the room my brain had zipped off to while Paen was snacking on me.
It was interesting that I had been sent to this place earlier. "Can you guys disappear?"
Paen just stared at me.
"Is that a no?" I asked.
"Yes, it's a no. Dark Ones are more or less human, Samantha. We have some integral differences, but despite popular lore, we don't shape-shift, we can't fly, and we are not able to disappear into nothing."
"Hmm. Then who was that man at your desk? The bad one, the one who creeped me out so much?"
He looked startled for a moment. "What man?"
"The one I saw while you were sucking down Vintage Sam. There was a man at your desk, poking around in things. I assumed it was his own. He seemed to hear me, though, and then I could have sworn he saw me, which is impossible. He seemed threatening somehow. I'm so glad you pulled me back before he had time to..."
"To what?" Paen asked, quickly examining his desk.
"I don't know. Something bad." I moved closer to the desk, looking hard at it like it would spill whatever secrets it kept.
"Why would someone want to harm you?"
"No idea. I haven't been in the business long enough to have jealous rivals, and we just got our first and second cases today, so it's not a pissy client or something. What are you doing?"
"Looking to see if anything has been disturbed," Paen said, checking the computer. "I don't see anything missing."
"Maybe he didn't find what he came for," I suggested.
"That, or he was looking for information rather than an object," Paen answered, tidying up some papers. "We won't know that unless you see the man again. Unless you can..." He waved a hand over the table, one eyebrow cocked in question.
I held out my hands over the table, but didn't get the slightest inkling of anything untoward. "Sorry. That's not really my forte."
He grunted a noncommittal response as he shoved some papers into a leather attache. I used the moment to get a better look around the room. I wandered down a line of bookcases, noting a few empty shelves. "Is this the room where the statue had been kept?"
"No."
I waited a moment for Paen to elucidate, but he just shucked his coat, held out a hand for my jacket, then went back to the desk to check the answering machine for messages.
"All righty," I said, looking around the room again, trying to orient myself. "Where was it kept? If you take me there, maybe I can pick up some information about it."
He stopped frowning at the answering machine and frowned at me instead. "That's what you're here to do - find it. I have no idea where it was kept."
"Why do I think there's more to this statue thing than you're telling me?" I asked, taking a seat on a chair next to his desk. "You don't know what it looks like, don't know when it was stolen from your family's castle, don't even know where it was kept... Nope. Not adding up. Why don't you tell me the whole story?"
He stood silent for a moment. I don't know if I can trust you.
Of course you can. I'm eminently trustworthy, just ask anyone. Besides, we're going to sleep together. Even you, Mr. No Emotional Commitment, must have some level of trust you are willing to grant to a sexual partner.
Paen's jaw slackened for a moment as a look of absolute surprise filled his lovely silver eyes. "How did you do that?"
"Do what?" Talk to you without actually speaking aloud?
He stared at me as if I was an escapee from a freak show. "Yes."
"I'm not quite sure," I said, shrugging. "I could hear you, so I figured the reverse might be possible if I thought at you. Evidently it is. Are Dark Ones usually telepathic like that?"
His eyes widened for a moment before narrowing. "No, they are not. Not without some connection, usually a close blood relationship."
"Oh, so you can talk to Finn that way?"
"My brothers, yes. But not others," he answered, moving behind the desk. I got the distinct feeling he was uneasy, as if he was avoiding something. "About the statue - it has been demanded as payment to the demon lord Oriens. I have five days to find it, or a horrible penalty will be placed upon my family."
"What penalty?" I asked, feeling nosy, but needing to know everything there was to know about the statue and its history.
He toyed with a pen for a moment. "My mother's soul will be forfeited."
"Ouch. OK, so we need to find this statue in five days. That's an impossibly short amount of time to find anything, but I'll give it my utmost attention." I rubbed my chin as I thought. "Does anyone in your family know anything about it?"
"Assumedly my parents do, but they are on a research trip in an uninhabited forest in Bolivia, and thus are out of communication for the next month or so."
"Can't you do the brain thing with them?"
"No." His lips got a wry twist to them for a few seconds. "When I was a child I could, but now I can only do the brain thing, as you call it, with my brothers."
"Hmm." I rubbed my chin some more. "Can they do it with your parents?"
"Not anymore. Like me, they lost the ability when they reached adulthood."
"Huh. Weird. I'd have thought once you had it, you had it forever."
Paen made an exasperated tsking noise. "I appreciate you wishing to know all that there is to know about my family and our relationship to the statue, but shouldn't you get on with finding it? That is your job."
"Yes, but as I told you before, I'm not a Diviner. It's not just a matter of me consulting the higher spirits and asking where the statue is now."
"You may not be a Diviner, but you have elf blood, and you are talented in finding objects - or so you said."
"Hey now, no slurs," I said, getting up to pace the length of the room. "I am good at finding things. Better even than my mother, and she's nothing to sneeze at in the locating department. But every little bit of information I can get helps narrow down the search. Since you don't know anything else... well, we'll just do this logically."
"What are you doing?" Paen asked, coming over to where I was stretching out on the carpet.
"I'm going to open myself up to the castle, and let my consciousness roam the hallways, looking for signs of the statue."
"You intend to search for the statue while lying on the floor?"
"Sure. My mother does it artistically arranged on a fainting couch, but whenever I try that I get a case of the giggles, so I just use the plain old floor."
He stood over me, his hands on his hips, glowering. I smiled up at him. You really are handsome, you know? If you weren't so messed up about relationships, I might go for you.
"Stop that."
Stop what, this?
"Yes. I don't like it."
I could feel how uncomfortable it was making him, so I didn't continue, although I couldn't help but ask why. "All right. But why does me doing that bother you so much?"
He glowered some more at me, and ignored my question. "Why are you trying to find the statue here? I told you it was stolen. Why aren't you using your powers to locate it?"
"I'm looking here first because you don't know for a fact that it was stolen."
"It has to have been stolen. I know every inch of this castle, and there are no monkey statues anywhere."
"It could be hidden," I pointed out, admiring for a moment the gloss on his shoes. "Until we rule out absolutely that it's not here somewhere, it doesn't make sense to search elsewhere."
"Doubtful."
I sighed, closed my eyes, and crossed my arms over my chest. "Shoo."
"What?" Disbelief was rife in his voice.
"Shoo. Go away. Leave me alone so I can work."
"You're shooing me from my own library?"
"Yes." I uncrossed my arms to make shooing motions, peeking at him through barely opened eyes. He looked outraged at the thought of me telling him what to do. "If you're not going to be quiet and let me concentrate, you have to leave."
He drew himself up, not that he wasn't impressive enough before. Now he positively loomed over me. "I will not be shooed from my own room."
"Fine, then. Just give me a little quiet so I can focus and do the mental thing."
The leather couch sighed softly as he sat a few feet away from me. "I thought you said you could only do the astral projection when you were aroused?"
"I can. But this isn't astral projection - I'm just opening myself up to the castle and touching its awareness. My mind will send out little tendrils to wander around, but my consciousness will remain here."
"Mind tendrils? That sounds stranger than anything I've ever heard of, even sexually driven astral projection."
I laughed and opened my eyes long enough to grin at him. "Yes, it is a bit weird, huh? But it works."
The only sound in the room for the next few minutes was of the central heating kicking in and blowing warm air through a grate on the floor near me. I let myself relax, pushed down my brain's desire to think about Paen, and slowly allowed the essentia of the castle to sink into my body.
Every building has an essentia. It's the essence of existence, similar to the souls of living beings, a collection of emotions and thoughts that have been imbued upon its structure and pulled from the surrounding environment. Most dwellings' essentias consist of a mixture of happiness, contentment, and sorrow, as collected over the years from the people who've lived in them. I've only once encountered a place that had a bad essentia, but most places, like this castle, were an assortment of emotions, most good, a few bad, but nothing unexpected.
"This castle has been at peace for the last five hundred years," I told Paen without opening my eyes. "But before that, it had a violent history. Many people were killed here, some justly, others without reason."
I heard him shift on the couch. "My great-grandmother's family fought long and hard to retain the castle. It was under siege many times."
"You resemble the man who built the castle," I said, catching a flash of him in the castle's consciousness. "He loved this land dearly. He died defending it, and was happy to do so."
Just what I need - a house whisperer.
I laughed. "I can't help it if houses talk to me."
"Stop reading my mind!"
"I'm not reading it. You're talking into mine."
"I am not," Paen said crossly. "I've told you I can't do that with strangers. You're poking into my mind, and I want it to stop."
I bit back the urge to argue, and kept focused. As soon as I saw what there was the castle wanted me to see, I let my mind wander around it.
"What are you doing now?" Paen asked quietly some ten minutes later.
"I've just checked the top two floors, and am now in the basement. So far there's nothing to see, although I did find two hidden rooms."
"One off the dining room?" he asked.
"Yes. And one in the basement, leading into a tunnel."
"That is the castle's bolt-hole. It collapsed several hundred years ago due to the land shifting."
"Ah. Well, there's nothing in either other than cobwebs, damp, and mouse droppings, so it looks like you're right - the statue must have been stolen. What bothers me is that I don't get any sense of it ever having been here in the first place."
Paen shifted again on the couch. "Why don't you just ask the castle where it went?"
I snorted. "A house isn't a living being. I can't ask it questions - I'm limited to just sorting through information from its memories." I opened my eyes and sat up, blinking a bit at the lights Paen had turned on. "And this castle has no memories of the statue you described. There are lots of other objet d'art memories, too many for me to look at individually, but I glanced at every one that would match the description, and there was no black monkey statue. There's an ebony statue of a man with a giant penis in a second floor bedroom, but he's not a monkey in any form."
Paen looked mildly embarrassed. "That would be one of my mother's mementoes from the time they lived in New Guinea."
"She sounds like an interesting woman."
"She is. What do you intend to do now?" he asked.
I bit my lip, glanced at my watch, and thought for a moment. "Well, I don't think the castle has anything else to tell me."
"I don't see that it told you anything," he said, rather grumpily.
"Sure it did. It told me that the statue wasn't here, and hasn't ever been here."
"That's ridiculous. It has to have been here. The castle is... er... confused."
I sat up, hugging my knees. "I suppose it could be, but most houses are pretty good about things like that. It's their purpose, you know - to hold and protect the things inside them. This castle doesn't know anything about a black monkey statue. Does your father own other houses?"
"No," Paen said, shaking his head. "This is our only family home. The statue had to be here."
"Hmm. Well, regardless, the castle can't tell me anything else, and it's almost deep night, so I had better be getting along."
"What does the hour have to do with you finding the statue?" Paen looked puzzled.
"My mother is a sun elf. Deep night is the time when they are at their weakest. It would be useless for me to try to do anything during the four hours of deep night, so I should probably get back to the office and see how Clare is getting along."
I thought Paen was going to stand up, but he didn't. Instead he knelt on the floor next to where I was sitting. "You can't leave. You aren't finished here."
"I'm not?"
"No."
"The castle told me everything it could."
"I'm not talking about the castle," he said, his eyes burning with a bright silver light. A little ripple of excitement had me shivering as I realized what he was talking about,
"Oh. That. Er... you wanted to do that tonight? Now?"
"Is there anything wrong with now?" he asked, using my own words against me.
His eyes had me shivering again. I was still surprised at how strongly I was reacting to him - I'm not the sort of person to have a casual relationship - but just the thought of doing all sorts of intimate things with Paen had me flushing with arousal. That, and the sense that he needed me. I could fight the former but not the feeling that I could help him in some manner.
"Well... deep night is coming," I said weakly as he leaned toward me, the fingers on one of his hands stroking up my arm.
"That's not the only thing that will come tonight," he said. Wickedly. With an intent that made my whole body tingle.
"Oooh." I breathed the word rather than spoke it as Paen leaned into me, gently pushing me back onto the floor until I was stretched out with him leaning over me. "I suppose I could stay for a little while longer."
"I believe it will take us all of deep night to explore this attraction we share," he murmured, his lips brushing mine for a moment before they burned a little trail over to my neck. Propped up on an elbow as he was, he had only one free hand, but oh, how he made use of it! My back arched as his hand slid along my ribs to the closest breast. "I have watched you the last half hour, and have decided on many ways to give you pleasure."
A faint familiar feeling started building within me as my body quivered at his touch.
"Still with me?" he asked my neck.
"Right here," I said, breathing erratically as my hands decided to get in on the action. I tugged his shirt out of his pants and slid my hands underneath it, skimming along the very interesting planes of his naked chest.
"Good. If at any time you feel as if you are leaving your body, let me know and I'll do my best to anchor you."
My mind spent a few happy moments contemplating the form an anchoring would take, but there was too much pleasure to be had in exploring the lovely world of Paen's chest to devote too much time to that.
The hair on the back of my neck started to stand on end.
"This is a lovely jumper," he said, pulling back just enough to admire my sweater.
"Thank you. My aunt knitted it for me. She wove good luck wards into it. It's one of my favorites."
A slight smile curled the corners of his mouth. "Would you mind terribly if I removed it?"
"I'd like that a lot." I went limp as a rag as he peeled the sweater off me. No, that's not quite true - my hands were busily unbuttoning his shirt in between him pulling off my sweater. "Fair is fair," I added when he had to stop de-sweatering me for a moment while I tugged his shirt off.
"Absolutely." He stilled for a moment, looking down at where I lay languid before him, my hand sliding ever so slowly down the sleek muscles of his arm.
An abstract sense of detachment bubbled over and washed along my limbs, making me even more relaxed.
"Um... Paen?" My breasts, normally well behaved, suddenly decided they wanted out of my bra and into his hands. Or mouth. Or up against his chest. They weren't picky about which, they just wanted his full attention.
"Yes?" he asked, leaning over my belly, his tongue a brand on my flesh.
The room began to spin. "I'm starting to drift again."
His head moved up until his eyes filled my vision. "Focus on me, Samantha. Focus on what I'm doing to you. Feel every little touch I make. Concentrate on the pleasure I can give you."
"I'm... I'm trying..." My consciousness started to detach from my body. Paen's head dipped, his breath hot on my breasts as his tongue snaked between the mounds of flesh trying so desperately to escape my bra. "Er..."
"Focus, Samantha."
I started rising, lifting from my body.
"Stay with me!" Paen ordered. I floated above him, looking down to where he was peering at my face. My body looked relaxed, like I was daydreaming, a pleasant, if vague, expression on my face.
There was no drifting around the room. One moment I was there watching Paen, the next I was floating along the night, wafting who knew where.
I insist that you come back here! Samantha! Come back to me!
Pain accompanied the words in my brain, a hot burst of pain in my breast that immediately turned to pleasure so intense, it yanked me back. I blinked dumbly, surprised to find myself in my body again, Paen's curls tickling my chin as his teeth sank deep into my breast.
With that contact, my world changed.
Holy cow, I gasped into his mind. This is incredible. I can feel everything you feel! I can taste my own blood as you drink! I can feel passion building inside you. It's like we're sharing it somehow, like you're feeding me rather than vice versa. It's like -
My cell phone, located in my purse next to me on the floor, rang at that very moment. Paen lifted his head, the contact between us broken. Likewise the psychic connection between us disappeared, leaving me feeling oddly bereft, as if something that was a part of me, something I needed, had been taken away.
"I'm sorry," I said, apologizing both for my phone and the fact that we had been interrupted.
"We could ignore it," he suggested, his eyes so bright they almost hurt me to look at.
I wriggled uncomfortably as I reached for my purse. "Normally I would, but I told Clare to call if she needed me."
Paen leaned back to allow me to grab my purse. I extracted the cell phone, checked the incoming caller's number, and mouthed, "It's her," at him before answering. "Hey Clare. What's up?"
"Oh, Sam, something terrible has happened. My dress has been shot!"
"You what?" I shrieked, sitting bolt upright, inadvertently slamming my breasts into Paen's nose. "Oh, man, I'm sorry," I told him, covering the phone for a second. "Are you all right?"
"My dress has been shot!"
"Your dress? Why would someone shoot at your dress?" I asked, confused as hell.
"I'm fine," Paen told me, gently feeling his nose. "I don't think it's broken."
"Well, I think he was aiming at me. I was wearing the dress at the time," Clare said thoughtfully. "It was just mean of him to shoot the part of me covered by the dress. I don't know if it's going to recover."
"Clare has been shot. She's delusional, babbling on about a dress," I said aside as I grabbed my sweater and yanked it over my head, my voice muffled as I asked into the phone, "Clare? Are you seeing things? Strange, unreal things?"
"Well, I consider my dress with bullet holes in it a strange, unreal thing, so if that's what you mean, yes. It's a mess, Sam, a mess, absolutely destroyed. I've tried for half an hour to get the blood out, and it won't come out! I'm so annoyed I could just scream!"
I stared at Paen in confused horror. He had donned his shirt and was quickly buttoning it.
"How bad is she? What hospital is she at?" he asked. "I'll take you there."
Clare continued to rant about her dress. I shook my head, trying to figure out just how badly she was hurt.
"Clare? You didn't get shot in the head, did you?" I asked. "Are you lucid?"
"Of course I'm lucid. Haven't you been listening to me? My dress is ruined!" she wailed.
I rubbed my forehead as Paen helped me to my feet, waiting not-so-patiently for me to answer his questions. I was so bemused by the fact that Clare seemed more concerned for a dress than her own bullet-riddled body that I couldn't seem to think straight. "Yeah, but... Clare, exactly where were you shot?"
"Twice in the chest, once in the stomach."
"Samantha?" Paen said, clearly wanting an update.
I covered the mouthpiece. "She's been shot in the chest and stomach, but she doesn't seem to care much about that."
One of Paen's expressive eyebrows rose slightly. "She is a faery. She is immortal. Bullets can't kill her."
"No, but they can hurt her," I snapped, immediately feeling bad. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to get irritated, but Clare seems to be more worried about her dress than anything else."
"Sam? Did you hear me? What am I going to do?" Clare's plaintive voice sobbed in my ear.
"Don't worry, we'll be there as quickly as we can. Where are you?"
"On Dunstan Moor."
"Where?"
"Dunstan Moor. It's in the Lammermuir Hills. They're shooting a movie here, and Finn is part of a historical group that's providing extras for the movie, and we decided it would be fun to join in. Since he didn't think it was a good idea me meeting with the fence on my own, we arranged to meet him here."
"On the set of a movie?" I asked, more than a little incredulous.
"It's not as movie-like as you'd think. Evidently the primarily filming was already done, and they're just doing a few more battle scenes - "
I sighed. Only my cousin would think nothing was wrong with meeting a fence in a location where there were plenty of witnesses to watch. "Dunstan Moor. Got it."
"You're coming? You'll bring help?" she asked, her voice plaintive.
"Police, paramedics, or both?" I asked.
There was silence on the other end of the phone. "Neither, silly! I need an emergency dry cleaner!"
I lost my patience then. "Honest to god, Clare, you act like the dress is more important than you being shot!"
"Of course it is! It's a Versace, you idiot! Bring help! I'm going to save this dress at all costs."
