"I thought you were supposed to be the sacrifice?" Clare groused as she took my hand. "I don't see why I have to come along."
I looked beyond her to Paen, giving him a small, hopeful smile. He didn't return it.
"You have to pull me into the beyond. Evidently since I'm soulless, I can't enter or leave it on my own, but 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.
Clare said nothing, but grabbed my hand. We climbed the stairs in silence, carefully making our way through the darkness, doing our best to search each inch of the landings, stairs, and hallways as we came to them.
"Well," I said what seemed like an eternity later as I stood outside a door labeled 12-C. "I guess we're going to have to go in and see if it's right under Caspar's nose."
"Oh, no," Clare said, backing down the hallway. "There is no way I'm going into that apartment."
"I don't think he can see into the beyond," I said, biting my lip. "We should be safe enough."
"No. Absolutely not. And I think you're insane for even thinking about going in there."
"Well, I'm not too wild about the idea myself, in case you hadn't noticed." I thought for a minute. "What we need is a distraction, something to grab Caspar's attention in case he can see us."
"How are you going to do that?" she asked, her face puckered with worry.
Paen, my love, we need some help.
I knew it! You're in trouble, aren't you? Tell Clare to pull me in -
We are not in trouble. We just need help. I need someone to capture Caspar's attention so we can check his apartment for the statue.
Paen created and discarded any number of objections to the thought of us going into the apartment, but he wasn't the man I loved for nothing. Let me talk to Pilar.
We huddled together in the darkness of the apartment hallway, vaguely aware when one of the mortal inhabitants passed by on their way to or from their homes, but mostly just aware of the profound sense of dread that seemed to soak into everything, ourselves included.
Go ahead, Sam, Paen told me eons later. Noelle is conducting a ritual to summon Caspar. It should keep his attention off you, but she says you'll only have about five minutes before she has to stop the ritual.
Perfect. Thank her for me, will you? Uh... you can't do the mind thing with her, can you? I asked, a little spike of jealousy going through me at the thought of someone else sharing something so intimate with Paen.
Ever hear of a mobile phone, sweetheart? he said, laughing into my mind.
I knew where Caspar was the second we slipped into the apartment. He was in the sitting room, the same lovely peach and cream room that had seemed so peaceful to me before, but was now a place of such horror my stomach clenched.
"Sam?"
The whisper barely penetrated the blackness. I turned back to where Clare stood in the doorway, her arms clutched around herself.
"I don't think I can go in."
I took one look at the terror in her eyes and went over to give her a reassuring hug. "It's OK. I've been here before, so it won't take me any time to go through the room I was in when Pilar zapped me. You just stay here, OK?"
"OK," she said, hugging me tightly. "If I was a faery - not that I am, but if I was - I'd rub magic faery dust on you to keep you safe."
I smiled and didn't point out the fact that the front of my shirt glowed with the incandescent light from the faery dust which had rubbed on me when we hugged. Instead I mentally girded my loins, marched over to the sitting room door, and prayed that Noelle the Guardian had enough power to keep a demon lord occupied while I stood only a few feet away from him.
I needn't have worried. Caspar was there in the room, standing in the middle, but he was frozen, as if locked in that position. Little curlicues of dark power snapped around him, but I clearly didn't register on his consciousness as I scooted around him, heading for the chair I'd sat on during my second visit.
The statue was tucked away behind a settee, still wrapped in the blue cloth. I snatched it up, uncovering just a bit of it to make sure it was really the statue before making a dash for the door.
Unfortunately, I forgot to watch where I was going, and tripped over a small footstool that sat almost hidden away under a table. Almost.
The statue flew from my hands as I fell to the floor, slamming up against the wall. My knees cracked painfully on the hardwood floor as I lunged forward to grab the statue before it could rebound, but to my complete and utter surprise, it didn't bounce off the wall like a proper brass statue of a falcon should.
Instead it shattered in an explosion of brass-coated plaster, the pieces of the bird falling into large chunks on the hardwood floor with several large thunks, the biggest of which was made by a small black statue of a monkey.
Caspar roared a scream of anger behind me as he broke the bonds of the summoning and spun around to see me scrambling madly toward the Jilin statue.
"You!" he screeched, his voice literally causing the windows to erupt into a thousand little shards of glass.
"Holy crap," I muttered, not taking the time to pick the monkey statue out of the debris of the bird - I just scooped it all up, hugged it to my chest, and bolted for the front door.
"Run, Clare, he's on to us!" I bellowed. She didn't stop to ask who; no doubt she caught a glimpse of the monstrosity behind me.
Paen, pull us out, I yelled, my skin erupting into pain as Caspar's tendrils of power lashed out and caught me, holding me fast at the doorway.
"Noooooo!" Clare screamed, grabbing my arm to keep me from being pulled back in.
Bless his heart, Paen didn't bother with asking unimportant questions - he simply merged himself with me, filling me, holding me, binding me to him, and what was most important at that moment, yanking both Clare and me out of the beyond, back onto the cliff shelf on the Lammermuir Hills.
I threw myself into Paen's arms, unmindful of the sharp corners of the bits of statue I held clutched to my body, so grateful to be away from Caspar, tears mingled with the kisses I pressed to his face.
"Clare," Finn shouted from the plain below.
"I'm all right," she yelled back, going to the edge to wave at him. "But that demon lord was awful! He was the most horrible thing I've ever seen!"
Behind us, the stone groaned as if in protest.
"He was hideous, all black and twisted and misshapen!"
The sound of a thousand souls in agony ripped through us as the fabric of being was shredded.
"I think I would die if I were ever to see him again, he was just that awful," Clare called to Finn.
Caspar stepped out of the beyond, power coiled around him like snakes, writhing and twisting, snapping at everything they could reach. The ground shook, as if protesting Caspar's presence in such a sacred spot.
"I see you found my statue," he said, his voice filled with the promise of eternal torment. "I will take it back now, if you don't mind."
An immense cracking noise rent the air, causing everyone to cover their ears. The rocky shelf we stood on shattered, the stone crashing to the ground below, taking us with it.