I was pretty much on autopilot all the way back to the office, finding my way to the correct bus, getting off at the correct stop, and walking the two blocks to the office without seeing, feeling, or registering anything around me. I was too caught up in my own misery to even notice the sudden bank of black clouds that started rolling in from the north.

"Life sucks," I said as I opened the door to my office. Finn and Clare, back from wherever it is they'd gone off to, looked up from her computer, questions evident in their expressions. At my desk, Paen sat, making notes on a notepad. I noticed he was left-handed, as I was. It warmed my heart for a moment before I remembered that as far as he was concerned, my heart could take a flying leap.

"You look horrible," Clare said, getting up to take my coat and hang it properly on the coat-tree. "Did Brother Jacob not have anything helpful to say about the statue?"

"What statue?" I asked, pulling the shoebox out of my purse and handing it to her.

She opened it. "I don't understand. Where is the statue?"

Grief built up inside me until I thought I'd break down into a good, old-fashioned elf-dirge. I'd lost Paen, lost the statue, and I wasn't the tiniest bit closer to finding either the Jilin God or the Coda. A big old pity party welled up inside me and whined to be set free. "The statue was stolen from me sometime while I was held prisoner."

It took only a few minutes to tell my startled audience the events of the last two hours, ending up with a brief rant against everything that had gone wrong of late. "I can't believe this," I said, storming around the office, waving my hands in the best drama queen fashion. "I'm known for my ability to find things. It's what I do best! Nothing has ever stayed lost once I've tried to find it, and yet here I am, employed to find two simple items, and I'm no closer now to finding their whereabouts than I was when I was hired, not to mention losing a third item I wanted to keep!"

Clare popped a lilac blossom in her mouth, her eyes huge as she watched me emote.

"I think you're allowing things to get to you," Paen offered, getting to his feet. He tucked his notebook away into his jacket pocket.

I pointed a finger at him. "You're a big part of the problem, buster."

He raised his eyebrows. "I fail to see how our personal situation—"

"I'm not talking about your commitment issues—I'm referring to the fact that you didn't tell me everything you knew about the Jilin statue. You willfully withheld information about it, information that might have helped me if I had known it two days ago." That wasn't strictly fair, but I was grasping at straws.

"What information?" Finn asked, frowning at his brother.

Paen frowned back at him for a moment before turning to me. "I told you everything I knew about the statue."

I marched over to stand in front of him, my hand on my hip. "Oh you did, huh? You didn't mention that the statue represents the origins of immortal races, and that it supposedly contains some big secret of how they were created. You didn't tell me that it was priceless, worth so much that someone would offer me fifty thousand pounds just to find it for him."

"Fifty thousand—" Paen grabbed the finger I was using to punctuate my sentences by poking it into his chest. I squelched the little tremor of pleasure that zipped through me at his touch. "Who offered you money to find my statue?"

"The mage expert I consulted earlier. It turns out he is also looking for the Jilin God, only he was a bit more forthcoming with information about it." I let Paen see the full extent of my discontent.

He glared right back at me. "I had no idea it represented the origin of immortal races any more than I knew it was priceless. I've done extensive research into the origin of the Moravians and never heard of it, so perhaps the information from your source is questionable. Who is this mage expert?"

"Possibly it's questionable, but it sounded like the truth. It would explain why a demon lord would want it—if it held secrets of the immortals, surely that would give a demon lord power over the various races?"

"It is within the realm of possibility, but just barely," Paen said, releasing my hand. "The expert's name?"

"Hmm? Oh. Caspar Green."

I thought Paen's eyeballs were going to pop out of his head.

"Who?" he roared.

"Caspar Green. Why are you so upset?"

"That's not a man, that's a demon," Paen snarled, slamming his fist into the wall. I flinched at both the hole he left and the red welts that appeared on his hand. "He's the one who is demanding I repay my father's debt."

It was my turn to do the eyeball pop. "You're kidding. Caspar is the one doing this? We're going to have to have another talk with him."

"Right now," Paen said, snatching up his coat and heading for the door.

All four of us trooped out and descended upon Caspar. Or tried to, at least. He didn't answer his door buzzer or the phone, and when Paen, driven by fury, scaled the outside of the building and deliberately broke into the apartment, he came up empty-handed.

"He's gone to earth," Paen growled a few minutes later, as I dabbed at the cuts on his hand made by the broken glass. "Search the flat. We may find something that says where he is, or what he's up to playing us against each other like this."

We found nothing. The flat was almost sterile in its pristine state, as if it were there for show and not really lived in.

"So what do we do now?" Clare asked when we returned disheartened to the office. She munched lilac blossoms like they were popcorn. "Just wait around for Caspar and Mr. Race to return? Do we have time for that? What if Mr. Race doesn't know anything about the statue? What if the demon who talked to Paen was wrong? What if Caspar won't cooperate?"

"Race is the only lead we have," Finn said.

"Yes, and we can't talk to him if we can't find him. Evidently he's en route, and no, he doesn't have a cell phone. I asked his housekeeper. So we're playing the waiting game for both him and Caspar."

"But we should be doing something!" Clare wailed, waving her hands around.

Paen jumped up from a chair and marched over to the window, staring out it with an expression of extreme frustration, anger, and a tinge of hopelessness that just about broke my heart.

I slumped into the chair that he vacated, the faint warmth left behind by his body sinking into mine until it made my soul want to weep. Life suddenly seemed so overwhelming, so bloody impossible. I had tried everything I knew how to do, and yet repeatedly failed. "This is beyond frustrating. Why can't I find that damned statue and manuscript? I've never not found anything I've looked for before, so why am I now having absolutely no luck? What is Caspar up to? Why is Race suddenly incommunicado when we need to talk to him? I tell you, it's enough to make an elf-girl cry."

"Poor sweet Sam," Clare said, gliding over to me. "Maybe you've lost your power?"

"Huh?"

Clare nudged the phone over so she could perch elegantly on the edge of my desk. "Because you… you know." She nodded to where Paen was standing at the window, careful to avoid direct light. "Maybe that caused you to lose your powers."

I pulled out a small mirror from my desk and checked. "Nope. Still half elf. And we were in the beyond today. I wouldn't have been able to do that if I'd lost my elfly powers."

"You went to the beyond?" she asked, slanting another glance at Paen. "Together?"

"Yes, not that it has any relevance to my sudden inability to find things," I said glumly, resting my forehead on the desk.

"But you lost that bird statue, too. That's incredibly careless and irresponsible."

I raised my head to glare at her.

"Which is not like you at all," she added quickly. "Perhaps someone has cast a spell or cursed you?"