"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.