Page 41 of Outside the Veil
Chapter ten
Visitation
Tara turned the wide brim of her hat around and around in her fingers. “I wish I had better news for you, Mr. Sandoval. I really do.”
She’d seen guys upset over losing dogs before but this man was crushed flat. Good-looking, in a young Antonio Banderas kind of way. At least he probably cleaned up nice when he showered and shaved and got some sleep. He sat on the top porch step and held the collar in both hands, staring at it as if it might talk to him.
“He must have been something special, eh?”
His brittle laugh made her cringe.Any second now, he’ll fall apart.He surprised her, though, answering in a gentle, steady tone.
“Special, yes. That’s a good way to put it. Thank you. For bringing it out to me.”
“No trouble at all. I was up this way. Like I said, we’ll all keep an eye out. Ask visitors if they’ve seen him.”
“I appreciate that.”
“You going to be here for a few days yet, Mr. Sandoval?”
He nodded, eyes on the collar again. “I… Probably. I’ll call you when I decide to go back home.”
Tara climbed into her jeep and drove off, her heart aching for the dejected figure on the steps, dwarfed by that enormous house.
“It’s not as if he was a tame lion,” Diego whispered to his reflection in the window. The line from the children’s book failed to comfort him, though.
I should pack up and go home.
He didn’t. He delayed another day and another. The weather looked threatening. He didn’t feel well. Finn might come back. He couldn’t disappear without saying goodbye.
The book still hung over his head, so he tried his best to forge on, Finn’s taped voice both a comfort and a torment.
Chapter 7—Relationships
Your liaisons with humans all seem to have been short ones. A night or two at most. Haven’t you ever had longer affairs?
“With humans? Yes.”
And?
“I truly don’t want to discuss it. Could we talk about something else? Anything else?”
How about relations with nonhumans?
“Oh, well, those can’t be helped. When one is a duck in the springtime and approached by an amorous female…”
Um, I didn’t mean that. Other intelligent beings.
“Ducks are far from stupid.”
(The long pause on the tape is me counting to ten.)
Other magical beings, I meant.
“Why didn’t you say so, then? Merciful currents, how am I to glean your meaning when you’re so circuitous? Yes, from time to time one of the sidhe would catch my eye, or a merrow. There was a silkie off the southern coast who would swim upriver in the summers to guest with me. She was quite lovely. Silken hair and silver-shimmer skin. And the way she wrapped her…”
(Thistle rhapsodizes at some length about the silkie’s talents.)
“I’ve embarrassed you somehow.”
