She stared at me again. "Don't you know what he is?"
"A client?" I asked, suddenly concerned. Clare liked men. Men worshipped Clare. For her to be in the presence of a devastatingly handsome man and not be responding with her typical flirtatious manner was very unusual.
"No. Yes, I mean, he is a client, but he's also…" Her voice trailed away as she waved the remains of the tulip around.
"What? Gay? Married? A homicidal maniac?"
"Vampire," she whispered, her eyes getting even bigger as she looked over my shoulder. A little shiver washed down my spine.
"We prefer the term Dark One, actually," a voice behind me said. I spun around to face the man. He had been right behind me, which meant I was now all but pressed up against him. Up close, he was even more handsome than standing across the room, the blunt line of his jaw and those bright silver eyes making my breath catch in my throat. "Moravian Dark One is the technical name, to be exact. If you are finished with your conference, perhaps we could get to my missing statue?"
"Statue?" I asked stupidly, wondering if it was wrong to be so instantly and wholly attracted to a man, especially when that man was a… vampire? Good lord, it was almost dinnertime. What if he was peckish?
A Diviner with a sense of humor. How amusing.
I blinked a couple of times (like that was going to do me any good). "I'm sorry, I'm clearly a bit out of it… Did she say vampire? You're a real vampire? A Dracula-type vampire?"
"I am a Dark One, yes. Is that going to be a problem to a working relationship?" Paen asked, his voice deep, with a lovely Scottish accent that seemed to roll right through me. I shivered and rubbed my arms, wondering about my reaction to him.
"Well… I don't know," I said, thinking furiously. "I've never worked with a vam—er… Dark One before. I've never even seen one. To be honest, I wasn't entirely sure that you guys existed."
"Really?" His silver eyes roamed over my face, finally touching on my ears. Without a thought, my left hand went to my ear for a moment. "And yet I would have guessed from your facial structure and eyes that you have some Fae blood in you."
"Something like that. My mother is an elf."
"Ah," he said, glancing at my nearest ear again.
I rubbed it self-consciously. "I had them bobbed when I was twelve. It was a coming-of-age present. I can't do anything about the tilt of my eyes, though."
"Don't. They are lovely as they are. Do I take it that your immortal heritage means you have no issues with taking my case and performing as many divinations as will be necessary to help me?"
I pulled myself together. Paen was a man, a potential client. His preferred choice of food was no business of mine, so long as I wasn't on the receiving end of those fangs.
A shame. I can think of so many places I would like to nibble.
"I'm only half elf, and not immortal, but yes, absolutely I will take your case. I have no issues whatsoever. Although, regarding the divinations…" I bit my lip, hesitating, ignoring my inner voice to worry over something that could become an issue. He seemed to want a Diviner to do the job for him. Clearly he didn't know that I wasn't fully qualified to conduct divinations.
"Is there a problem?" Paen asked, interrupting my uncomfortable thoughts.
If I told him I wasn't a Diviner, would he take his business elsewhere? How unethical was it for me to take a job under false pretences?
"Miss Cosse?"
I sighed. It was unethical enough to make me admit the truth. "I'm not sure where you heard I was a Diviner"—Paen glanced at Clare, who suddenly busied herself with something in a desk drawer—"but I must tell you that although I've had some training as a Diviner, I am not, in fact, one. So if you'd like to withdraw your request for help, I will understand. However, I do have some skills in finding lost objects, and I will be happy to apply my full effort to your problem if you see fit to entrust it to us."
He rubbed his chin for a moment, his eyes darkening until they were a cloudy grey. "I appreciate your honesty. If you are confident you can help me, I see no reason to go elsewhere."
I smiled, and heaved a mental sigh of relief. "Excellent. Shall we?" I gestured him back into the office. "You mentioned something about a statue. It wouldn't happen to be a brass statue of a bird, a hawk or falcon, would it?"
He didn't even bat an eye. "No. The statue I seek is black, of a monkey. It is called the Jilin God. Have you heard of it?"
My fingers itched to type the phrase into Google, but I didn't want to look so ignorant in front of a potential client. "No, I'm afraid I haven't, but admittedly, I haven't made a study of art. Can you tell me a little about it?"
"No."
"Ah." I waited a moment to see if he wanted to add to that. He just watched me. "Er… nothing about it? Nothing at all?"
He made a brief, annoyed, shrugging gesture. "Virtually nothing. I can't tell you when it was stolen from my home, what its history is, or even exactly what it looks like. All I know is its name, that it's black, and depicts a monkey. It's up to you to find it for me."
Paen leaned back in his chair, a slight arrogant twist to his eyebrows, as if he was challenging me to turn down his outrageous request.
I glanced over to Clare. She had thankfully stopped consuming flowers, but sat at her desk taking notes, a wary look on her face. That didn't bode well. Clare as a full-blooded faery (albeit one who didn't admit the fact) had an uncanny sense about people, a sense I had learned to appreciate. "I see. Well…" I stopped and nibbled my lip again, unsure of what I wanted to do.
"Yes?"
The fact that Clare was hesitant about Paen raised enough warning bells in my head that I considered refusing the job offer. I had one job already, after all. I wasn't desperate for another one. I hesitated for a moment, and then looked back at the man sitting in front of me, intending to tell him that I was unable to help him. But as I opened my mouth to do just that, waves of coldness rolled off him, a coldness of despair and utter emptiness that buffeted me, leaving me shivering with a sadness that seemed to have no end. "I'd like to come home with you," my mouth said without consulting my brain.
I almost died. Mentally, I slapped a hand over my mouth and asked myself what my problem was.
Paen's eyes widened. Clare's just about bugged right out of her head. "Pardon?" he finally asked.
"I'm sorry. That sounded like a base proposition, which I assure you it wasn't."
That's a shame, a voice in my head said.
I ignored it. "What I'd like to do is go over your home, examining it for clues as to the nature and whereabouts of the statue. Assuming it was there in the past, I might be able to pick up some whatchamacallit… vibes and things."
"Vibes and things?" he asked, disbelief evident for a moment in those gorgeous quicksilver eyes.
"Yes. Emanations and such—very powerful things. They can tell a lot about an object." Oh, great, Sam—babble like an idiot in front of a client. A very handsome client, not that his appearance had anything to do with it.
But man alive, he sure rang my chimes, what with those shoulders, and that jaw, and those flashing silver eyes… A quick glance at his expression had me pulling back from that particular mental excursion. I dug through my memory of Diviner precepts and trotted out something I thought had a bit more of a professional ring to it. "Sometimes objects leave behind a non-tangible record of their existence. Diviners can use that trail to learn more about the object itself, and tune into its wavelength, if you will, thus allowing them to locate the item."