"Can anyone tell me why..." I asked half an hour later as Paen and I stopped in front of Clare. She stood with a familiar dark-haired, dark-eyed man, both of them leaning over a small, portable plastic table spread with a wispy, gauzy bit of fabric in green, blue, and gold that I assumed was the all-so-important dress in question. We were a good fifteen yards away from a brightly lit area around a cluster of trailers. Beyond, half hidden by a couple of scrawny trees, blinding arc lights cut through the night as someone yelled instructions via a bullhorn for people to charge and retreat at specific cues. I paused, trying to see into the darkness. Something tugged at my consciousness, as if it was trying to get my attention. I scanned the area, slowly turning to locate whatever it was that called to me, then decided it was the location itself. Like my office, this land was founded.
"Can anyone tell you why what?" Clare asked.
"Hmm? Oh, why were you wearing a Versace gown to meet with a fence? On a movie set, yet?"
"They're having a ceilidh here after the battle shooting."
"Ceilidh? Oh, a party?"
"Yes. They've been making some sort of a Scottish historical movie, and since it's almost over, the movie people are letting the extras use the area for ceilidhs for the next couple of nights before they leave," Clare answered, waving toward the man next to her. "But I can't let anyone see the dress like this! Just look at it! Even if I could pretend the bullet holes were meant to be there, the blood has stained the fabric!"
"Hi, Finn," I said, smiling at Paen's brother. I'd only met him briefly before, just a quick introduction before we had set off for the castle, but now I had a chance to study him covertly. I could see a physical resemblance between him and Paen - they both had the same forehead, and similar dark, curly hair, but the fundamental difference was something not quite so obvious.
Finn had a soul.
Why does your brother have a soul? I thought Dark Ones didn't have them?
Paen shot me a glance, but didn't answer. I wanted to ask him again what the problem was with mind-talking, but since it made him so uncomfortable, I let it pass.
"Hello, Sam. What did you think of Castle de Ath?"
"It's big. And old. But nice. I liked it. Clare, what exactly happened?"
Clare wrung her hands in a delicately helpless manner that had Finn murmuring soft little platitudes in her ear. "Oh, it was awful, Sam, just awful! I arranged to meet Raul the fence, and he turned up with another man, a very evil man."
"The evil man shot you?" I asked, eyeing her. She had obviously borrowed a spare costume from an extra, since she was clad in a plain-spun ankle-length skirt and green bodice.
"He shot my dress, yes." Clare nodded. "Oh, stop making that face. Yes, I realize he meant to shoot me and not the dress, but you know how I am with wounds - I heal so quickly that the bullets did more damage to the dress than me."
"It's because you're a faery, Clare. Immortal. It's not that you heal fast - you just don't get injured."
Clare glanced quickly at Finn. "You'll have to excuse my cousin. She's normally very nice, but there are times when she's absolutely unreasonable."
"Ah?" Finn asked, looking at me.
I rolled my eyes and turned to Paen. "Is Clare a faery?"
"Yes," Paen said, poking a finger through a hole in the dress.
"Oh!" Clare gasped, her silvery eyebrows pulling together in a frown as she glared at Paen. "Do you think I'm going to listen to the opinion of a vampire?"
"Moving on," I said, not bothering to argue the obvious with her. "Who was the man who shot you? And why exactly did he try to kill you?"
"I don't know who he was, but I wrote up a report for you while Finn was sweet-talking the wardrobe mistress in order to get some club soda to remove the bloodstains. I know how you like reports," Clare said, pulling from her purse a small notepad.
"Hmm," I said, quickly scanning the pages. Paen moved to stand behind my shoulder so he could read it as well. I was momentarily distracted by the feeling of him so warm and solid behind me, but I firmly squelched the desire to turn around and run my hands over his chest again. "Finn was called away by some friends, so you met with Raul alone... He said he'd brought someone who wanted to talk to you... The other man had a monkey on his shoulder? A spider monkey?"
"I didn't ask him what sort it was," Clare answered, tsking over some new atrocity to the dress. "But it was small, so I guess it could be. It had on the cutest little sailor suit."
"Huh." If it was Beppo, then that would explain why the shopkeeper thought I was insane when I mentioned his monkey. But what was the man who was in Paen's castle doing shooting Clare? I read further in the report. "You chatted, he asked you about a statue - "
"Statue?" Paen asked, his voice rumbling close to my ear. Goose bumps ran down my arms at the nearness of it.
"A bird statue," Clare said, dabbing at the dress with a grubby bit of paper towel. "It's all there in the report. He asked me where the statue of the golden bird was."
"Are you sure he said a bird statue?" Paen asked.
"I thought the same thing," Finn said quickly. "Clare said she was sure - it was a golden bird."
"A falcon." Clare nodded. "I told him I didn't know anything about any falcon statue, gold or otherwise. He snarled something rude that I won't repeat, and told me I was lying, and that he would kill me if he had to in order to get it. I told him that wouldn't do any good because I didn't know where the statue was, but he shot me anyway, then both he and Raul ran away. I knew I was better off here than anywhere else, so even though Finn wanted to take me to the hospital, I called you instead."
"What do you mean you're better off here?" I asked, confused why she would think a movie set out in the middle of the wilderness was the location of choice after a shooting.
"It's nice here," Clare said with a shrug. "It's pretty country. I like the way it makes me feel."
I looked around. There wasn't much to see in the darkness, the Lammermuir Hills being a remote and exposed area that was known for its wild beauty, sheep grazing, and grouse. I understood what it was she felt - this land was founded... No, more than founded. It was a lodestone, a holy place to faeries and elves. I didn't bother mentioning the fact to Clare, though. She had a soft, protective security blanket of denial wrapped around her that she clearly wasn't going to shed until she was ready.
"Interesting," I said, glancing at Finn. "Do you have anything to add to Clare's summary of events?"
"Only that I wish I'd been here to catch the bastard who shot her," Finn said. "A friend of mine wanted my opinion on some weaponry, so I left Clare watching the filming." He shot her a reproachful glance. "She was supposed to tell me when the fence came so I could be with her just in case of trouble, but I wasn't of much help on the other side of the field. I heard the shots, and found Clare lying bloody on the ground. I couldn't leave her to chase after the bastards, so I told Paen I needed his help."
"Finn told you he needed help?" I asked Paen. I'd been with him every minute since I had the phone call from Clare, and he hadn't used a phone once. Which meant... "Oh. That sort of message. You've got mind-mail."
"You asked me if my statue was of a hawk," Paen said slowly, an abstracted frown on his face as he turned toward me. "A brass hawk or a falcon. Am I correct in assuming you know what this man was talking about?"
"Yeah, I think I do." I nibbled my lip for a moment while considering how much to tell the expectant faces watching me, and then decided that since it didn't have anything to do with one of our cases, there was no real reason not to explain how I came by it. "It's at the office, downstairs, locked in Mila's safe."
Quickly I told them all how I had come by the statue, emphasizing that I had Jake check it over for any bad emanations. "I assume the guy who shot you must be the one the statue was intended for," I finished, glancing back at Clare's report. "He said he knew you had it, and would stop at nothing to get it?"
"Yes," Clare answered, mournfully examining a portion of the dress.
"That's odd. I wonder why he thought you had it? You weren't anywhere near the antique shop."
"He could have been using the collective you, referring to both you and your cousin," Paen pointed out, looking toward the battlefield, which now rang with cries and shouts accompanied by the sound of clanging metal as the extras gave their all to looking like a horde of wild Scots defending their land.
"True. Well, whatever he meant, I'm not at all inclined to give him the statue now that he tried to kill Clare. If he had asked nicely, I'd have had no problem giving it up, but not anymore. Now I want something."
"Revenge," Finn said, smiling his approval.
"Justice for my dress!" Clare snorted.
"Answers," Paen said succinctly.
I nodded. "I want answers. How long will they be filming?"
"At least another hour. They just got started when we arrived an hour ago. Why?" Finn asked.
Clare gave me an outraged look as I scooped her dress off the table and laid it over the back of a chair. "I'm going to try to contact the essentia of this area and see what it can tell me."
"The what?" Finn's face mirrored his confusion.
Clare explained briefly how I could communicate with locations while I made myself comfortable on the rickety portable table.
"I thought you could only do that with structures?" Paen asked, watching as I stuffed my purse under my head as a support. I folded my hands together and closed my eyes, trying to ignore the exposed feeling of lying on a table in front of three other people. Fortunately, the rest of the movie people were attending to the filming, so we were alone in our corner of their camp.
"This is a structure of sorts. It's a historic battlefield - didn't you see the marker when we came in?"
"I know it's a historic battlefield. My ancestors fought here. But there's no building for miles."
"There's a ring of standing stones on the other side of the trailers, and beyond that, some sort of rocky area that's the heart of the moor. It has enough history for me to look through its memories."
Clare held a whispered conversation with Finn, telling him more about how elves can feel the souls of places. I ignored them, pushed down my consciousness's awareness of Paen standing so close by, and cleared my mind.
Normally it takes me several minutes to calm my thoughts enough to be able to hear the voice of the house, but this location, being founded so strongly in the beyond, took no time before it started talking to me.
Or rather, the men did.
"Whoa," I said, my eyes opening a few seconds after I'd closed them. Surrounding us was a ring of men, their numbers growing as I stared at them.
"Sam?" Paen asked, a faint frown between his brows. "What is it?"
I looked around at the men, a good twenty or so of them ranging in age from early teens to late sixties, all of them dressed in ragged tunics, grubby bits of plaid worn wrapped around their waists, each armed with a huge, massive sword. "I think I just met the residents of Dunstan Moor. Hello, gentlemen."
One of the men stepped forward and said something in a language I didn't understand.
"Ghosts?" Paen asked.
"That would be my guess. Unfortunately, we don't seem to speak the same language. Do either of you speak old Scottish?"
"It would be Gaelic, and I am reasonably proficient in it."
"Good," I said, taking his hand. It was warm and strong and sent little excited chills down me at the feel of it. "You can translate, then."
"Translate? Translate what?"
I opened my mind to him, willing him to see through my eyes. He jerked away at the touch of my mind. "What do you think you're doing?" His voice was low enough that only I could hear it, but it was rife with indignation.
I'm trying to let you see the ghosts. Mom used to do this with Dad whenever he wanted to see elf stuff. She said she just merged consciousness with him, and he could see things she saw.
"You are not a full elf, and I am not your father."
We can do the mind-speak thing. I think it's probably a given we can do other things, as well.
"I don't want to - "
Afraid? I interrupted.
"No, of course not."
Then merge up, handsome. The ghosts are waiting.
He gave me a long, unreadable look before I felt the tentative presence of him in my mind. I smiled to myself over his reluctance to admit what was pretty clear to me...
"Stop that," he growled.
... and turned my attention to the ghostly figures who stood around us.
Paen felt a moment of surprise that quickly melted into active curiosity.
"There are more than I expected." He pursed his lips a little as he looked at the ring of ghosts around us. "Do you normally see ghosts when you talk to houses?"
"Ooh, she found ghosts," Clare said, scooting closer to Finn. "Isn't this exciting?"
"It's something, all right," Finn answered, a comical expression of disbelief and amusement on his face.
"Not normally, no," I told Paen. "It's especially rare at night, when I'm not at my best, power-wise. Sometimes you'll find one if it has an extremely strong tie to the location. But this place is kind of special. The ground is practically steeped in blood. I'm guessing that's given these ghosts the powers to make it through to me even late at night."
"Yes, Dunstan Moor is one of the bloodiest battlefields in Scottish history. It makes Culloden look like a virtual playground. Er... can you talk to them?"
"She's going to talk to the ghosts now," Clare said to Finn, sotto voce, but not nearly quiet enough.
"Clare!"
"Sorry."
"I'll try. No promises." I looked at the nearest ghost, a man with a long scraggly black beard, a filthy yellow tunic, and a yellow and brown bit of plaid material twisted around his waist as some sort of primitive kilt. "Hello. I'm Sam."
The ghost squinted at me for a minute, then said something to the man nearest him. They both laughed.
"I don't suppose you got that?" I asked Paen without taking my eyes off the ghosts. Normally I wouldn't be worried about them, since ghosts can't interact with this reality without first being grounded, but with this area so strongly steeped in the beyond, I was willing to bet it served as a grounding force.
"Actually, I did. He seems to be speaking an ancient dialect of early Gaelic."
"Oh, good. What did he say?"
"That you're splayed out like a pig about to be roasted."
I glared at the ghost as I sat up, swinging my legs off the table, making sure to keep my mind firmly enmeshed with Paen's. I was a bit woozy with the drain on my power, but I figured I had enough to get us through a brief chat. "How do I say 'up yours' in ancient, ghostly Gaelic?"
He told me. It was highly satisfying to see the ghosts' eyes widen with surprise for a moment when I repeated it, and then the lot of them burst into laughter and clapped each other on the back.
"Why do I suspect you just had me telling a dirty joke?" I asked Paen as I carefully slid off the table and moved over to stand next to him.
He grinned in response. My stomach contracted at the sight of his grin, but it soon settled back to normal as we conducted a one-sided interview of the ghosts. Paen translated for me, while I tried my best to repeat phonetically everything he said.
"Did you see a man with a monkey shoot this woman here?" we asked the ghosts.
The leader, who identified himself as a man named Uilleam, answered in the negative.
"Has there been a disturbance of any sort in the area in the last hour or so?" I asked, via Paen's help.
"Nay," Uilleam answered. "Just the mortals dancing about and making fools of themselves on the plain."
"You think he means the actors?" Clare asked, clearly fascinated.
We asked. Uilleam answered in the affirmative.
"He says they don't know what they're doing," Paen said as Uilleam and two of his buddies stumbled over each other's words to speak. "He says if those swords weren't dulled, they'd have all killed themselves days ago."
"Well, they are just actors," I said, less concerned about the quality of acting and sword choreography than I was the man who shot Clare. "I wonder why they didn't see the guy with the monkey?"
Paen listened a moment as Uilleam said something else. He smiled in response. "It sounds to me as if they've been spending their time watching the film people. You're right about one thing - they are tied to the land. They all gave their lives to defend it, and to it they are bound, acting as guardians of a sort."
"Fascinating, but not terribly helpful as far as finding out why someone wants the bird statue, or for that matter, who he was. Well, I guess we're done here - "
One of the ghosts shouted something to Uilleam, who looked thoughtful for a moment, then turned to face his men and yelled something at them.
"What's going on now?" I asked Paen in a low voice, a little bit worried about the ghosts. So far they'd been perfectly well behaved, but I was still concerned about the possibility that they might have a physical presence in our world.
"Uh-oh."
"What? What are they saying?"
"Uh-oh? What uh-oh?" Clare asked at the same time as I spoke.
An odd look of chagrin passed over Paen's face. "The suggestion has been made that they do something about the lack of sword skill being demonstrated by the actors."
"Oh no," I said, a dread feeling in the pit of my stomach. "You mean - "
Paen nodded. "Yes. They intend to show everyone how it's done."
Uilleam shouted something that sounded very much like a battle cry. The air around him seemed to shimmer and part, as if he was walking through a translucent curtain.
"Goddess above, I see a ghost," Clare said, her eyes huge as she grabbed on to Finn. "He materialized! Do you see him?"
"Yes," Finn said, sounding just as curious as Paen. "Fascinating."
"No, no, no," I said, putting myself in Uilleam's path, my hands raised to stop him even though I knew it would serve no practical purpose. "I am not going to be responsible in any way, shape, or form for ghosts manifesting to teach a bunch of actors how to swordfight. I'll never live that down... Holy moly! I can feel him!"
Evidently Uilleam wasn't expecting to do more than materialize visually either, because he stopped and looked down in surprise at my hands on his chest.
"Oh no," I groaned, the dread feeling growing. "I was right. He's grounded!"
Before I could get the word out of my mouth, Uilleam decided to make up for what must have been at least six hundred years of nooky-less existence by grabbing me, pulling me into an all-too-real embrace, his lips cooler than body temperature as they mashed up against my mouth.
Paen was there in a flash, jerking me out of Uilleam's arms as he snarled something that sounded like it was probably obscene. Uilleam laughed and made him a little bow, giving me a lascivious waggle of his eyebrows.
"He heard you? He understood you?"
"Yes," Paen said, releasing my shoulder. He looked pissed, both at me and the ghost. I frowned at his frown.
"Good. Then you can tell him that now is not the time to show a bunch of actors how to wield a sword. Tell him if he doesn't back off and go back to his ephemeral form, we'll call in a Summoner and have them all sent to the Akasha."
Paen duly told the ghost what I said. Uilleam spat out a few words that I didn't need to have translated, then stalked back to his men, his form shimmering slightly as he released his grounding. The men grumbled when Uilleam gave them my ultimatum, a couple of them looking daggers at me.
"They're not very happy," Paen said quietly. "Perhaps it would be best if we were to leave."
"Poor ghosts," Clare said, her mouth turned down with sadness. She turned to me. "Would it be such a bad thing if they were to join the actors - "
I raised an eyebrow.
She sighed. "I suppose so. It seems so unfair, though. They just want to have a little fun, and they are offering to help..."
"Another time," I said firmly, having way too much to deal with at the moment to add battle-hungry ghosts to my list. "I think Paen's right. There's nothing more we can find out here."
"So what do we do now?" Finn asked as we said a polite good-bye to the ghosts, gathered up our things, and climbed the slight hill to the overlook area where all the cars were parked.
"We'll just add the guy who attacked Clare to our list of things to investigate. In the meantime, I don't think it would be smart of you to go anywhere on your own, just in case this man decides to shoot you again. Or worse."
"Nothing can be worse than shooting an innocent gown," Clare said, smoothing a hand down the fabric she held tenderly in her arms.
"I will be happy to act as a bodyguard," Finn said, giving Clare a look that was unmistakable. I glanced from him to Paen, but my would-be lover was clearly thinking of other things.
"Oooh," Clare said, momentarily distracted by Finn's lascivious look. "That would be fun. I've never had a bodyguard before."
"You can't go out in daylight," I pointed out, not wanting to interfere with what could be a budding romance, but obliged to make sure Clare was protected during the day.
"I can. I just have to have protection. How do you think we came here earlier today?" Finn glanced at his watch. It was now the second hour of deep night (better known as one in the morning). "Or rather, yesterday."
"You can go out during the day?" I asked Paen. "I thought Dark Ones couldn't? Or is that just a vampire old wive's tale?"
"It's partially true," Finn answered for him. "My brothers and I can tolerate a lot more than Paen, but even he can go out if he has enough protection from direct sunlight."
"How can you tolerate more than Paen?" I asked, distracted by the idea of vampires who could walk in daylight.
"Finn - " Paen said warningly.
His brother ignored him. "We all, the three of us, are Moravians. Paen is a Dark One. That means we have souls, but he doesn't. Our parents weren't Joined when he was born."
"Huh?" I asked, more confused than ever. "Joined?"
"That's enough, Finn," Paen said, stepping over a low chain barrier at the edge of the overlook.
"Joining is the procedure a Dark One undertakes with his Beloved, the woman who can salvage his soul and make him whole again. Mum was Dad's Beloved, but due to a war, they didn't complete the Joining until after Paen was born."
"They don't want to hear about our family history," Paen said, striding over to his car. "There are more important things to be discussed, like what steps are to be taken next in the search for our statue."
"I don't know, I'm kind of interested in hearing about this," I said, smiling at Paen. He glowered back at me.
Finn looked from his brother to me, a smile growing slowly on his lips. "Sorry, Paen. I didn't realize you don't want me telling Sam about Beloveds. No doubt she wouldn't be interested if I told her how there is one woman who can save you, a woman who completes you and makes you whole again. I won't explain about the seven steps to Joining, because that would probably just bore her. Nor will I go into the fact that a Beloved knows she is such by the fact that she is marked by a Dark One, and that the marking usually takes the form of a strong psychic connection."
"God damn it, Finn, just shut up!" Paen exploded.
My jaw dropped a little. A strong psychic connection? Something like being able to mind-talk?
No. Ignore him. He's a fool and he doesn't know what he's talking about.
You answered me, I thought at him, oddly pleased by the touch of his mind against mine. It felt... right.
Paen frowned at me, but said nothing else.
Chicken. "All right," I said aloud. "Finn, if you want to volunteer to be Clare's bodyguard, that would do a lot to relieve my mind. As for what steps we're going to take next to find your statue..."
I closed my eyes for a moment to think. I was never at my brightest in deep night, and after the drain of speaking with ghosts - and sharing my vision with Paen - I was left limp and exhausted, sapped of the energy needed to make a decision.
"You will go home and get some rest," Paen said authoritatively.
"I beg your pardon?" I asked, looking at him in surprise.
His eyes glittered like shadowed mercury. "You're exhausted, and at the end of your strength. You will go home and rest."
"You seem to misunderstand the basic client-investigator relationship," I told him, straightening my shoulders in an attempt to look chock-full of vigor. "I'm the one who makes the game plans. That's what you're paying me for."
"I am your employer. I have paid you to work for me," Paen said. "That entitles me to give orders."
"In your dreams!" I said, too tired to come up with a snappier comeback.
"Sam doesn't look tired to me," Finn said, eyeing me, standing next to Clare's car a few feet away. "She looks pretty good, as a matter of fact. How do you know she's tired, Paen? Do you have some special insight into Sam's feelings? Something you would instinctively know about, oh, say, a Beloved?"
We all looked at Paen. He glared back at us. "I will take Sam home. Finn, you do the same with Clare. In the morning, we will plan out a new strategy for locating both the statue and the man who attacked Clare."
"Wait a minute," I protested, dropping the intriguing idea of a Beloved. "You are not the boss here - I am. And I already have a plan for locating your statue."
"Really?" Paen asked, crossing his arms over his chest. "What would that be?"
"To start with, we will do the same thing we have been doing for another client - I'll check with the antique network and see if anyone has an interest in black monkey statues. Since you can't tell us much about it, Clare is going to do a little research into just what the statue looks like, and its provenance. Once we have a little more information on the statue itself, I can pull out the big guns."
Clare gasped in horror, and instinctively reached for a wildflower growing at the side of the overlook.
"And what would your big guns consist of?" Paen asked, his eyes so dark they looked like a stormy sky.
I took a deep breath. "I'm going to scry."
"No." The almost inaudible whimper slipped between Clare's lips as she stuffed petal after petal into her mouth.
Paen frowned. "What's wrong with Samantha saying?" he asked Clare.
Her eyes got huge as she looked at me with wordless pleading.
"It won't be like that," I told her. "Stop frightening the clients!"
"I'm not frightened," Paen said. "I am, however, a bit confused. I thought scrying was a standard divination technique?"
"It is."
"Then what's the big deal with you doing it?" Finn asked.
"I'm not actually a Diviner," I explained to him. "I studied as one for a while, but I... er... left the Order."
Paen's eyes narrowed. "You left them because you realized you were not meant to be a Diviner?"
"Something like that," I said, giving Clare a look that was meant to keep her quiet. It didn't work, of course. No one can shut a faery up when she's determined to blab.
"Sam was kicked out of the Diviners' Order after she scryed," Clare said, swallowing the last of the petals. "She was part of a scrying circle, and she lost control."
"It's not as bad as she's making it sound," I told Paen, more than a little mortified to have my dirty laundry aired in such a manner.
"How can you lose control scrying?" Finn asked at the same time Paen asked Clare, "What happened?"
"She opened a temporal rift that sucked in two Diviners," she answered, meeting my potent glare with a haughty look. "They should know, Sam! You're dangerous when you scry!"
"A temporal rift?" Paen looked at me as if I was wearing my underwear on my head.
"It's not that uncommon," I said abruptly, tossing my things onto the backseat of Paen's car. "Happens all the time."
"Hardly that," Clare said. She turned to the men with an eloquent gesture that stated how distressed she was by the very thought of me giving in to my Elvish birthright. "It took the head of the Diviner Order three weeks to get the Diviners back from where Sam had sent them."
"Inadvertently sent them," I corrected. "It was just a minor little glitch."
"And you're planning on scrying the location of the statue?" Paen asked, clearly stuck on that point.
"Yes." I gave them all a level look over the top of Paen's car. "I admit that I had a little control issue before, but I know what I did wrong. I was scrying by the moon. I'm part sun elf - unlike most Diviners, the moon does not give me power, it dilutes it. This time, I will scry by sunlight. Everything will be fine, just you wait and see."
Famous last words, eh?
