"Five days?" Paen asked, his mind awhirl. He would die before he let a demon lord lay one hell-spawned finger on his mother, let alone her beautiful, pure soul. "What happened to a lunar cycle?"
"I'm afraid that it took me some time to track down your whereabouts," Caspar said with faux apology.
"That's ridiculous! Right, there are four of us. We'll just divide up the work..."
"Oh, no, I'm afraid that's not possible." Caspar gave him a sad little smile. "Didn't I tell you? This debt is yours alone to fulfill. You are your father's son, you see."
Paen frowned. "Why mine? My brothers are just as much the sons of my father as I am."
"Yes, but you are the eldest. According to the agreement your father signed" - he gestured toward the note - "the debt must be repayed by the debtor himself, or the nearest member of his blood. That would be you, the oldest son."
"That is completely outrageous. My brothers - "
" - are not eligible to locate the missing statue. If they do, the debt will be considered forfeit, and the collateral will be collected." Caspar plucked the promissory note from Paen's hands and tucked it away in the leather case. "All that remains is five days. If you do not have the statue in that time... well. We won't dwell on the unpleasant."
"Get out," Paen said, gritting his teeth against the pain that threatened to swamp him at the thought of what the alastor was saying.
"I understand that you are upset, but - "
"Get the hell out of my house! Now!" Paen roared, starting toward the unwelcome visitor.
"I will be in touch about your progress with the statue," Caspar said hurriedly, backing toward the wall as Paen prepared to grab him and throw him out of the room. Hell, he wanted to throw him out of the country... off the planet, if he could manage it. "Until then, farewell!"
Paen snarled several obscenities and medieval oaths as the man's form shimmered, then disappeared. He continued to swear under his breath over the next half hour as he placed four international phone calls and authorized three messengers to be sent out into the depths of the Bolivian forests in an attempt to locate his parents.
"I don't suppose you have any idea where they are, or where this monkey god statue is?" he asked his brothers that evening.
"Not a clue on either count," Avery said as he slipped on a leather jacket. "No one tells me anything. The whole thing sounds a bit dicey to me, to be honest. We can't help you search for this statue because you're the eldest? What's up with that?"
"Some archaic medieval law still around a few hundred years ago, no doubt," Paen grumbled. "There were all sorts of agreements then that operated under obsolete laws."
"Well, I hate to be callous, but since we can't help you search for the statue, I guess I'll go out."
"You'll do nothing of the kind," Paen said, stalking past his brother. "You and Dan will go to the Lachmanol Abbey in the Outer Hebrides, and beg the abbot for access to his very rare collection of sixteenth-century manuscripts. There you will scour the collection for references to this damned statue."
"Me? Why me?" Paen's second-youngest brother looked up from the evening paper. "Why can't you go? And I thought this demon said none of us could look for the statue."
"You're not going to be looking for the statue itself. I want to know more about it - where it came from, what its history is, that sort of thing. You're the only one besides me who knows Latin. Avery can use his charm to get access to the manuscripts, and you can translate them."
"Sounds like a bloody bore, but I'll do it for Mum." Avery admired himself in the mirror again, then frowned at Paen. "You're not going to brood the whole time we're gone, are you? Because if you are, we won't bring back any souvenir girls for you."
"We're going to an abbey, you idiot," Daniel said, smacking his brother on the arm as he stretched and grabbed his coat.
"Bet you I could find some."
Paen only just kept himself from rolling his eyes. "I'm not brooding. I never brood."
His brothers, all three of the rotters, laughed.
"Paen, you're the world's champion brooder," Daniel said, stretching again and squinting at the clock.
"Aye, and a broodaholic, to boot. I'm thinking we need to do an intervention, or maybe get you into one of those twelve-step programs. 'Hi, my name is Paen, and I'm broody.' Maybe that'll help you lighten up a bit." Finn grinned at his brother.
Paen stifled the urge to sock him in the arm. Finn was just as tall as he was, and although he had a good twenty pounds on his brother, it had been a near thing the last time he wrestled Finn - or any of them, for that matter.
Instead, Paen gave them all a narrow-eyed look, wondering for the umpteenth time how his fair-haired mother and dark-haired father could produce four sons who differed so greatly in appearance. He took after his father in looks, with black hair that insisted on curling despite his efforts to make it lie flat, and grey eyes. Avery was every bit his blond-haired, blue-eyed mother's son, while Finn and Daniel were somewhere in between. "There is a vast difference between being concerned for Mum's soul and brooding. What you see here is concern, with just a dash of worry thrown in to keep from going stale. There's not a single shred of brood on me."
"Here it comes," Avery told Finn.