Grave Heart

THE COLLECTOR 2: GRAVE HEART

Emily Veinglory

® www.loose-id.com

Warning This e-book contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language and may be considered offensive to some readers. Loose Id® e-books are for sale to adults ONLY, as defined by the laws of the country in which you made your purchase. Please store your files wisely, where they cannot be accessed by under-aged readers.

***** This book contains explicit sexual content, graphic language, and situations that some readers may find objectionable (homoerotic sex).

The Collector 2: Grave Heart Emily Veinglory This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Published by Loose Id LLC 1802 N Carson Street, Suite 212-2924 Carson City NV 89701-1215 www.loose-id.com

Copyright © November 2006 by Emily Veinglory All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this e-book may be reproduced or shared in any form, including, but not limited to printing, photocopying, faxing, or emailing without prior written permission from Loose Id LLC.

ISBN 978-1-59632-354-4 Available in Adobe PDF, HTML, MobiPocket, and MS Reader

Printed in the United States of America

Editor: Raven McKnight Cover Artist: Christine M. Griffin

Prologue

Andrew eased back in his chair as he closed the thick file on his desk. The dog-eared manila folder was stuffed with etchings, photographs, clippings, and voluminous notes in his own cramped cursive hand. The ragged stack of documents represented everything he knew about the mysterious artifact known as the heartstone, research that dated back thirty years. This artifact had been held by the hands of Nostradamus, described in the lays of Marie de France, and hung, no more than a hundred and fifty years ago, around the neck of Queen Victoria herself. He was almost certain that the stone had been in the possession of Dutch neuroscientist Thirza van der Ven quite recently -- but like every other person who had possessed it, she would say nothing about the heartstone. Andrew hissed with exasperation to meet yet another dead end. This piece was seen everywhere, but found nowhere. Some of the totem pieces were lost or hoarded or hidden, but this one stone seemed always to be, like the grapes of Tantalus, close enough to smell yet just out of reach. His carefully cultivated contact at the airport confirmed that the box Dr. van der Ven kept the stone in had gone back to Amsterdam in her carry-on bag -- empty. The heartstone was right here, somewhere, in Vancouver. “Professor Martin?”

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Audra Phelan leaned over his shoulder to put a piece of paper before him. It was a printout from a website, on glossy photo paper. GALLERY JANUS, the title banner proclaimed, and beneath it a small, square picture of a smiling man with tawny blond hair leaning back upon a desk. Andrew opened his mouth to ask the question, but Audra was already dropping a second sheet of paper over the first. Magnified and sharpened, the man’s left hand was shown in mottled, over-enlarged tones. Beside his slender fingers a small glass bell jar stood on his desk, covering what looked like little more than a rounded river stone. Andrew straightened. “What put you on to him?” Audra dropped a final sheet of paper with a slight but satisfied flick and left the room. The upcoming exhibition at Gallery Janus was a debut collection by local Inuit artist Jennifer Shu. She was shown standing next to an incomplete work, smiling as she looked over her shoulder towards the photographer. At the center of the complex collage before her, rich with symbolism and natural forms, was a glowing, ambiguous shape. The heartstone showing its most distinctive aspect. Audra had been tracking Dr. van der Ven’s movements. Obviously the stone had passed from her to this artist, and -- given the recent date of the online posting -- from the artist to this blond man. It was changing hands more quickly, becoming more active. There was no doubt that time was running out. Andrew eased back in his old padded chair, feeling his bones protest. He had so many plans laid out to garner information and to bring the pieces of the magical totem to him. But things were coming together, slowly, so slowly -- maybe too slowly. He ran his hand over the copy of his best reference that always lay within easy reach -- a sharp rendering of hieroglyphs and Greek text almost scrubbed from the walls of the temple before he could read them, by little more than the worst enemy of all, time itself. Not for the first time he wondered why a scholar of Plenius’s stature had never succeeded in assembling the totem, in reaching his own heart’s desire, whatever that was. Andrew had learned so much from this one source and hated to think of a man, so long ago

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but so much like himself, dying without his deepest yearnings satisfied. Had he ever held this stone that “showed a man his own heart and where it dwells”? It had taken Andrew a long time to realize the type of person the artifact was drawn to, to develop lures for it rather than trying to hunt it to ground. He pushed his chair back and pulled out his mahogany-veneered file drawer, searching for another folder. People with wounded, muted hearts in professions involving acquisitions. With a snap it came together. For a small moment the pain and doubt receded; synchronicity aided rather than thwarted his plans. Mr. Kieran Harris, of Jericho Beach, Vancouver -- freelance corporate profiler. Andrew allowed himself a small, private smile as he reached for the telephone.

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Chapter One

Kieran cleared the back wall of his home office of the printouts, photos, receipts, and other ephemera from his last job. It had been an easy one -- convincing an old man to sell his business to a larger competitor. He simply had to build a profile of the sort of person to send and the belief system they had to feign. Even the worst of corporate raiders could come across as ‘Mom and Pop’ as long as they had one man who’d experienced a rural childhood, boasted a bit of acting ability, and could follow a detailed brief. They’d returned the outfit Kieran had selected, along with a healthy bonus. God knows what he was going to do with a stylish but noticeably homemade suit and a slightly frayed work shirt. His own tastes ran more towards plain colors, good labels, and minimalism. It helped him blend in and do good work. He salvaged the poster putty from the wall, wadded it into a dingy ball, and stuck it to the surface of his desk. The surface behind and around his workstation was revealed, scuffed and marked where tape and the so-called ‘removable’ putty had marred the white gloss paint and revealed the equally white matte particle board beneath. He wadded the papers up and stuffed them into white kitchen rubbish bags, then tied the tops firmly with a double knot so that the two ears stood up perkily. After a moment’s hesitation, the suit was bundled into

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another bag and set with the trash. He felt a bit guilty about that -- somebody had spent many hours with needle and thread putting it together, perhaps a gift for a loved one. With a dismissive shrug he piled the bags next to the door and went back to his computer. A few taps on the keyboard brought up his calendar on one flat-screen monitor and his online banking info on the other. It did no more than confirm what he already knew. His finances were in good order, which was just as well because he had no work lined up for well over a month. His stomach sank as he glared at the thirty-one smug blank white squares. As he stared, the pixels danced, hinting at the colors beneath. Somewhere in the background the air conditioner came on with a slight click. Its subtle whisper opened a door on old, dark memories -- harsh breathing out of time with a rhythmic sound halfway between tearing and pounding. The sound grew louder, more like the innards of some pneumatic, whistling machine as the bright, plain walls of his condo faded back. Kieran shifted on his chair, praying to evade the black mood that was settling on him. The subtle hallucination omened depression waiting in the wings. The phone bleated shrilly. Kieran reached for it, knocking the handset off the top of the long, bench-shaped desk. He fumbled for it and thrust it to his ear. “Commercial Profiling Solutions, Kieran Harris speaking.” As the voice on the other end began to speak, Kieran felt his center return. From the first word, it was clear it was a case, a job, a focus. He felt the sweat drying on his forehead, the nameless, irrational fears slinking reluctantly back into the cracks of his consciousness. He hit a key and started to make rapid notes on the touch screen, translated by the handwriting recognition software into the first tentative outlines of the man he would soon know everything about. The target, Joshua Brassington. “You are certain he has this artifact you seek?” Kieran asked. “Oh, yes.” The client’s voice was simultaneously buffed by education and burred with age. “But he has not been approached by my staff or myself. I feel it is crucial that he is given

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the opportunity to relinquish the heartstone under optimal conditions, to secure his agreement. Price, I assure you, is not an obstacle. I will also ask you to act as my agent.” “And you are?” “My assistant will send you an email presently, including all the pertinent information.” “I suggest you provide all the information you have and allow me to judge what is pertinent,” Kieran said coolly. “I had heard that you were a very thorough young man.” That said with all the condescension of a man used to being in complete control. Kieran pursed his lips. Here was an older, Ivy League-educated man with access to considerable wealth. His sharp focus on this one obscure antique suggested the mania of a collector. This man would be exacting and inclined to interfere. “I always complete a task if I take it on, but the matter of timing and approach must be left entirely to me. I shall report progress at my discretion. My rates I believe you know.” “Oh, yes, indeed I do. I am sure that you will be most satisfactory.” The smug voice was cut off by the dial tone. The computer bleeped and an automated macro opened Kieran’s e-pay account, registering a deposit of five thousand dollars -- his standard retainer. Kieran’s fingers hovered over the keyboard. Based on a phone number, IP address, and accent cues, he could have this man’s identity within minutes and his motives fully exposed by the end of the day. But that was not how he worked. Although client motives could be a crucial part of the equation, CPS was a strictly confidential, one-man operation. Kieran took pride in never deliberately learning more about his clients than they chose to tell him. If that ever spoiled a deal, he felt no responsibility. That reputation for privacy respected to the point of folly was the reason he did steady business without ever resorting to anything as crass as advertising.

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Kieran opened his email and awaited the incoming message, but after a few minutes he grew impatient. He stood from the workstation and walked across his open-plan apartment to stand before the window that took up most of one wall. A few low buildings obscured a calming view of the ocean, but he could feel the sullen buzz of the city behind him. Vancouver city, the perfect place for a man who specialized in delving below the polite surface into the seedy underbelly of business, and occasionally personal, affairs. A city that thrived upon a sparkling image of nature at its most beautiful and architecture at its most ugly, where courtesy was as ubiquitous as deceit. Kieran had made and broken deals worth literally billions by knowing just what it took to push a person one way or the other, or turn them totally around. He’d convinced a complete bigot to sell a compressed steel factory to a Chinese company; he’d brokered a deal for organized crime to relocate so a councilwoman could take the credit for ‘cleaning up the neighborhood’; he’d found out why a small software company was holding out against a takeover despite near bankruptcy, and had stolen their breakthrough product from beneath their noses. Parting one man from an old knickknack should be no trouble at all. He took one deep breath, rolling his head to ease his aching neck, and then replaced the ink cartridge in his laser printer and set coffee to percolate. The air conditioning rumbled to a halt, and his email program pinged, loud in the stillness of the room. Time to get back to work.

***** It was never gradual; there was always a distinct moment when Kieran realized he had done all he could working the net and the phone. The advantage of a local target was that he didn’t have to depend on investigators for the close work. ‘The wall’ was up again, pictures blown up enough to start pixelating. They kept catching his eye. That alone told him he was off his game. The target was just that. Any

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emotions elicited were grit in the machine, throwing off his finely tuned instincts and fouling the profile before he even started to sketch it out. Joshua Brassington had an angular face dominated by a long nose with a distinctive bulge at the bridge. His eyes were surrounded by fine folds that gave him a constantly mournful look. His light brown hair was artfully highlighted and cut like a Beatles homage, and oval rimless glasses completed a look that seamlessly combined fashionista with nerd. “Geek chic,” Kieran muttered to himself disdainfully. Kieran’s account at several information brokers (rated from an arguable ‘journalistic’ to outright false ‘provincial government’ level of access) brought up everything from cell phone and credit card bills to the long process of debt clearance the family company had gone through as Joshua moved it from manufacturing into the steadier income stream of real estate. Clearly it would have made more sense to fold the company his father started and begin anew. “Clever bastard, but some kind of moral code. That’s good; it means his behavior is bound by overt rules -- at least the public aspects.” Kieran tabulated all the bills and accounts he could get hold of and started to build the financial picture. Wealthy, but less than his old-money reputation would suggest. Unless there was an emotional attachment, six figures should do it. Kieran tapped a ballpoint pen idly against his chin. He scrolled through pdfs of Janus Gallery’s exhibitions. Joshua had started the gallery as soon as profits from his condominium projects supported riskier business choices. He seemed to run it very hands-on, so the shows would be strongly influenced by his own tastes. Combined with the respect for his father’s business, the emphasis in mythic themes, traditional techniques, and female artists was suggestive. “A real gentleman, old school.”

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So cold money would be a bad approach. Joshua didn’t like to think in those terms, did he? No, patron of the arts, preserver of old buildings even as he built ranks of new yuppie cages. The offer could be sweetened if the value was translated into something with meaning. Kieran ran his fingers over the standard corporate ‘friendly’ shot of the target in his office. In the background hung a framed picture that looked incongruously like a print rather than an original. The documented facts had provided a framework, but he needed something to kick start the clinical intuition that would fill it in. He needed to have a look at this man, preferably without being seen. He thought he had the feel for the target, but until he could observe him, in situ, it was little more than a hypothesis awaiting testing.

***** Kieran felt every muscle, from his jaw to his toes, tense at the sight of the Goldfish Cafe. Joshua Brassington’s favored luncheon spot was everything Kieran hated, but at least it wouldn’t be a long wait. By the look of his credit card bills, Joshua was a man of very regular luncheon habits, who normally dined within the first quarter hour after noon, with at least one other person, and he always picked up the bill. The café was open plan, garishly colorful, pretentiously artistic, and brightly lit by fluorescent bulbs in any area sunlight did not reach. Kieran ignored the Please Wait to be

Seated sign and chose a small, round table next to a pillar in the closest thing to a corner the atrium café offered. A bar-worker watched him with open hostility, huffed, and brought him a menu. “Drink?” she asked perfunctorily. “Coffee.” Kieran looked up. The waitress was opening her mouth, probably to make some cutting comment about the general nature of the request. Whatever she saw in his eyes made her simply snap her order pad closed and walk away.

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Kieran watched her go and then tracked his eyes upwards to the art hanging on the far wall. It was an enormous, brightly colored male nude that was without a single charm or virtue, even to a man inclined to appreciate the subject. Kieran hefted the menu and searched for something palatable in the mishmash of clashing cuisines. Coronation chicken

panini indeed. He squeezed his eyes closed, but still he could hear the obnoxious water feature and some woman shrieking “She didn’t!” in a way that clearly meant ‘she’ did. His cell phone vibrated gently in the inside pocket of his jacket. It wasn’t a number he gave out too freely. Without even opening his eyes he reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out his cell. “Kieran speaking,” he said cautiously. “Mr. Harris. This is Dr. Lambert calling from the county hospital. You are listed as the next of kin of Mr. Alan Harris.” “My father, yes.” God, let the old bastard be dead. Kieran wasn’t proud of the first thought he had, but he couldn’t deny it. He had no reason to love his father, and no wish to ever see him again. “Mr. Alan Harris has been admitted experiencing severe respiratory distress, and his condition is considered quite serious. We have him on oxygen and are treating him for hypertension. However, even if we can stabilize his immediate distress, his emphysema is at an advanced stage. We would recommend that you visit him now and help him consider his options.” “I’ll ... think about it.” There was an awkward silence on the other end. “I am not sure you understand --” “My father may be dying, and if he is not, it is only a matter of time,” Kieran paraphrased pithily. “Well, yes. And decisions must be made regarding hospice care; he will not be able to continue to live independently. Is there someone else we might contact --”

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“No.” Kieran took a deep breath. Dad was a dedicated misanthrope, and in the years since they’d last spoken, he was unlikely to have acquired friends and admirers. “Mr. Harris. Your father is weak and disoriented. He will need assistance in arranging his affairs and ...” Kieran’s mind ranged over the years in isolated homes, living with the cold of an unheated house, the fear of sporadic and violent beatings, and the years of taunts and ridicule from his father. Just like your whore mother. She was a cunt, and you’re a cunt-boy. For a moment he toyed with the idea of going down to the hospital to spit in the old man’s face and walk away. The doctor’s voice faded into the background as Kieran sat with his head resting on one hand and the phone pressed hard against his ear. A clink and bump jerked him back to reality. He opened his eyes and looked up. Black coffee in a thick white cup sat before him. Light flashed off a passing car, and the world just seemed too loud, too bright. “Are you all right, sir?” the waitress asked, leaning close enough that he could see where foundation marked a distinct line between the Barbie-flesh tone of her face and the frozen-chicken pallor of her neck. He placed one hand over the receiver. “Yes ... thank you. Yes. Fine. Thank you.” The doctor’s voice was still an interrogative buzz as Kieran snapped the phone closed. He had to get a grip, had to pull himself back under control, and there was only one thing that allowed him to do that -- work. He turned the phone off and laid it flat on the table. The waitress had started to step away, but turned back. “Oh, would you like to order now?” “Could you give me a little longer, please?”

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“Of course.” Her slight frown creased her face and added ten years to her age. But Kieran knew the unsympathetic turn of his thoughts was one indication that he needed to really get his teeth into this job and get his equilibrium back. Then he saw Joshua Brassington. Dressed in a pale gray suit, Joshua strolled into the café with a loose-limbed gate and an easy smile. A short-haired woman came in at his side, and he slipped an arm about her waist as he scanned the room. There was an almost palpable snap as Joshua’s eyes happened to meet Kieran’s own. Kieran looked away casually, trying to give the menu another chance, but all appetite was gone. He could still feel eyes on him. Then a chair scraped the floor just one table over. “You are terrible, Joshua,” said a female voice. “I don’t know what you mean.” Joshua’s voice was a little like that of the wealthy collector who was behind this commission. An east coast university of the better sort had molded the vowels, but a strong Canadian lilt could be also be discerned, along with a very slight English influence, no doubt from his earlier schooling. Kieran glanced up briefly as he reached for his coffee. They were both looking at him. Kieran returned their appraisal blankly, and the woman glanced away, abashed. Joshua Brassington simply met his eyes. “Unless you’re waiting for someone, would you care to join us?” he said.

What amazing, arrogant presumption. Kieran stood; digging out his wallet, he dropped a tenner on the table. “Thank you, no,” he said tersely as he left. He bumped awkwardly against a chair, pushing it noisily over the tiled floor. The waitress glanced at him sharply before her eyes darted to the money on the table, and then she simply shrugged. “See,” Joshua’s companion whispered in a slightly too loud sotto voice. “Now you’ve chased him away.”

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“Not to worry,” Joshua replied breezily. “He and I are going to meet again.”

***** He was off. Everything was off. It wasn’t right, and it was driving him crazy. Like some dripping tap or nagging ache that, no matter how slight, would by its sheer unremitting, unresolved existence keep his meticulous mind from rest or sleep. Kieran stalked the nonfiction shelves of the university library. He piled up a stack of books on Victorian art, focusing on the lesser known pre-Raphaelites, along with a surprisingly relevant master’s thesis that might be the answer to his prayers if the student had been any good. Having a specific task before him helped. His mood settled, and the hours ahead started to look purposeful and orderly, just as they should. He got back to Jericho Beach and rode up the slow elevator in his apartment building. He felt clear and focused, but only tenuously so; it took an effort to keep his emotional balance. All he needed was the right piece of artwork to exchange for the stone. It would be a little too much to hope for, but the print on Joshua’s back wall would be ideal. Failing that, the most similar work that could be found and obtained would do. It was not a particularly easy task, but one with clear boundaries and a definite goal. He set down the book and made fresh coffee, mentally setting aside the evening and next day to get up to speed. He settled on the recliner and swung his keyboard tray and monitor around so that he could use them from that position. Picking up the most general text he had acquired, he began to read. But even as he opened the cover, he heard a light, husky voice saying, Not to

worry. He and I are going to meet again.

***** “She’s gone and left you, kid. So quit sniveling. Mention your cunt mother one more time, and I’ll beat every last thought about her right out of your cunt head.”

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Kieran paced before the panoramic view from his small home. He could hear his father’s voice like a phantom standing just behind him -- a dark presence he never quite shook off. He had identified the picture on Joshua’s wall. The original was safely ensconced in a public collection in Amsterdam. However, the work was originally a triptych, and the left panel was in a private collection held largely for its investment value. Hanson-Smith’s

Progression of the Angels, it seemed to have surprisingly little symbolic content for a Victorian painting, was just beautiful flesh rendered acceptable with a few feathered appendages. The third panel seemed to have been lost, and the exact image depicted on the privately held portion was not recorded. Kieran got several expert evaluations of the left panel’s worth, as best as it could be assessed sight unseen. He then doubled the top estimate and made an offer contingent on seeing a photograph of the work and a commitment that it could be delivered within a week. Hanson-Smith was an artist so minor that there were only a handful of his works known, and biographical information had to be scraped together from the footnotes in the biographies of more celebrated painters. His closest brush with real fame seemed to have been suggestions of an affair with the Scottish sculptor H.C. Nesbit that was cut short by Nesbit’s premature death by suicide, hastily disguised as an accident in his studio to allow him to be buried within the pale. It was about three in the morning, and with no real chance of a reply before dawn, Kieran tried to pace off excess caffeine and the unsettling feeling that he was still off his game. It was the news about his father, no doubt. Kieran had never subscribed to the Hollywood notion that family were to be endlessly forgiven and indulged as if such stupidity would inevitably cause even the most callous bastard to turn from Ebenezer to Santa Claus. After all, his father would not want him there making important decisions. He’d made it pretty clear that he thought Kieran inept in every possible way. And after years of minimal

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contact, Kieran still knew little more about his father than that he had a mean left hook and a fondness for the word ‘cunt’. No, some things were better left buried. His large laser printer finished the job of scrolling out an A3-sized copy of a picture he had come across in the course of his research. Careful interpolation by his graphics software made the picture look pretty sharp even at that size. He wasn’t sure exactly why it had caught his eye. It was nothing pertinent to the case, and digressions were not something he usually indulged. Unlike Joshua’s obscure tastes, The Beguiling of Merlin was famous to the point of cliché. Nimue stood over the sorcerer who lay lax amongst tangled overgrowth, looking up at her even as he was bespelled into eternal sleep. There was something about the look in his eyes ... dread, fascination, and -- somewhere beneath it -- love, perhaps, despite the betrayal. He held up the thick, glossy paper. He looked around the apartment, surveying the blank walls. The desk, recliner, and television were the only furniture other than built-in bookshelves -- sparse enough furnishings to make even the small living room look cavernous. There was no reason to put the picture on the work wall, and it would look small and out of place anywhere else, a single point of color in a room where everything but the bare floorboards was neutral and white. He held the picture out in front of him for a moment, looking at the face of the gaunt and passive Merlin, then calmly tore the picture in half and balled it up in his hands.

***** “Yeah, I’ve been to a Janus opening. Mr. Brassington’s pretty low-key, quiet. I think the word would be ‘charming’, but as in ‘old world’ not ‘prince’.” “Thanks, Jess. So tell me, he’s single, right? What’s his type?” Jessica was an old ... well, not friend; they’d met in graduate school, the clinical psychology program. He’d dropped out, and she’d seen it though and decided to stay on for a

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Ph.D. He’d found her name on the guest list for a Janus show and added her to the ‘cordon’, people he could call for their impressions without it getting straight back to the target. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “They say he’s gay, but he’s not exactly hot to trot. There’s even a rumor that he’s asexual -- it’s the hot new thing now, you know. All the coolest people are giving up sex --” “His close friends, what type are they?” “Hey, so this is to do with that deelio of yours, profiling businessmen. You know profiling is bullshit, right? Every person is --” “A product of a unique interaction between phylogeny and ontogeny. Been there, done that, Jess, remember? I was sitting in the seat next to you.” “Yeah, so when are you going to come back and finish the course? You must know Prof would take you back. And they can hardly hold it against you, about what happened. I mean, if a psychology department can’t make allowances for our human weaknesses, then --” “I gotta go now, Jess. I’ll keep in touch.” Having to interrupt Jess was just a fact of life. She never voluntarily made a gap. “You do that, Kerry. I mean --” Kieran hung up the phone. He hated how she always used that nickname. She’d started it the day they met and just ignored his objections on the matter. His appointment was in a little under an hour. He had a tall mirror propped up against the wall next to the door to make sure he walked out of the apartment looking exactly as he intended. It was unfortunate that Joshua had taken such notice of him in the café, and the reason for that was unclear. But he still had a chance to make a strong second impression before the diminishing returns of prolonged acquaintanceship gelled some inconvenient assumptions in Joshua’s mind. The look he was going for was understated, but played into Joshua’s inclinations towards the romantic, in the gothic sense rather than the intimate. Kieran straightened a well-cut black suit over a collarless black shirt. A silk handkerchief in the

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pocket struck a slight dandyish note, and an antique tie pin on the lapel added to the effect but maintained restraint. It was a piece of Victorian mourning jewelry, a small onyx heart with a tiny diamond in the centre. He’d bought it years ago for no real reason; this was the first time he’d ever worn it. Wraparound sunglasses completed the effect by making him just a little distant and unavailable and adding a strong modern note. Kieran’s best guess was that Joshua had deliberately sat near him in the cafe because he looked like he didn’t want company. Some guys were like that; nothing drew them more than a hint of aloofness, an indifferent mien. Just like cats and babies -- homing in on the people who least wanted the attention. Combined with Joshua’s clear wealth and popularity, that might explain his bachelor status. The stylish Mr. Joshua Brassington spent most of his time working and much of the rest at his gallery, surrounded by people who either worked for him or wanted to curry his favor. People who’d look him in the eye. If Kieran could have ordered a body to go with the look, he would have gone for something more tall and gaunt. But with the shades hiding his eyes, dark clothing emphasizing his pale complexion, and the suit giving shape to his trim but averagely proportioned frame, he would pass as presentable. He bent and hefted the packed painting and stepped out into the hall. As he passed over the threshold, the mirror showed a sharply turned-out man with a cold edge to his expression -- Joshua Brassington catnip if ever he saw it.

***** Kieran had studied the layout of the reception area of the Brass Building, so he stepped out of the lift with the assurance of a man who had been there a hundred times. His plan was clean and clear in his mind. The first sign that this job was going to continue to be a pain in the ass was the woman behind the reception desk. Not just that it was the same woman he’d

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seen with Joshua in the café; he had already researched her role in Joshua’s life. Kelsey Adams: ‘just friends’. Rather, it was what she said when he passed over a business card. “Mr. Kent? You’ve just cost me fifty dollars.” “May I go through?” Kieran said coolly. Kelsey stood, revealing a body barely contained by a Laura Ashley suit that was at least one size too small. “Now, when Mr. Brassington said he’d meet you again even though he had no idea who you were, I thought he was having a long overdue nervous breakdown.” She skirted the desk and led the way to the large frosted glass door of the first office.

Bloody hell, they’ve actually been talking about me. “All work and no play can do that, you know,” she added, raising a cautionary finger. Then as she opened the door, she added a triumphant. “But now here you are.” Joshua’s office was in stark contrast to the building, with wood-paneled walls and patterned carpets from a previous century. The man himself glanced up from a small laptop, and a look of pure delight splashed across his face. It seemed that the identity of ‘Mr. Kent’ was something of a surprise to him. “Now, didn’t I tell you, Kelsey?” “You turning psychic on me, Mr. Brassington? Because you oughta give a girl some notice about these things.” Joshua stepped forward, thrusting out his hand. “I have a feeling it’s a one-off,” he said. His hand engulfed Kieran’s as Kelsey excused herself with a rueful shake of her elaborately coiffed head. “Mr, ah, Kent, is it?” Joshua said with the skepticism of a man who knows what kryptonite is -- perhaps it had been a poor choice of pseudonym. “Would you care to sit?” “You’ll have to release my hand first.” Kieran didn’t even have to feign his disdain. There was absolutely no good reason for the excessive interest Joshua was showing in him.

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He was standing too close, smiling too much, and holding on too long and too tight; even his pale eyes were pierced by pupils wide enough to look blown. And what was this certainty about meeting again? Either Kieran’s profile was well off in marking Joshua as essentially a wishful non-believer in all things fanciful and occult, or this man knew who Kieran really was and what he was doing here. Neither of those options really locked in with the excessively warm welcome. And to make matters worse, the moment Kieran looked into those pale grey eyes, he knew he was going to have a hard time looking away.

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Chapter Two

Joshua held the painted panel gingerly at arm’s length. “It is very striking,” he said. “The style and composition ... Surely this cannot be?” His eyes flicked up to the print hanging behind his desk. “The left panel of Hanson-Smith’s Progression.” “Quite so.” The subject was also somewhat fortuitous. The central panel showed a male angel, in all his bare-chested glory, along with some incidental floating draperies in the name of decency. Two female angels in gowns flanked him, almost completely symmetrically. This new panel showed two more male angels, holding scarlet banners, in postures of adoration that admirably displayed their lean torsos. It was very obvious that the males in this scene were painted in dynamic poses with faces full of ecstatic expression; the females, by contrast, were little more than dead-eyed manikins. “And you bring this to me because?” Joshua said, carefully setting the panel back into its container. “Mr. Brassington, what I have to suggest, if this piece interests you, is in the nature of an exchange.”

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Joshua set down the lid. “How mysterious,” he said. He returned to giving Kieran his full attention. Which, given the intensity behind his wide gray eyes, was almost disconcerting. “What exactly is it that you wish from me?” Kieran let his gaze stray naturally to the bell jar on the desk. Joshua saw and followed that glance. “Ah,” he said, managing to pack immense disappointment into that single syllable. Kieran could feel the deal slipping away. “Surely we might simply discuss the matter,” he ventured. “Perhaps over a cup of coffee, or ...” It was barely three in the afternoon, which was not the most convenient time to suggest some form of repast, but Joshua took up the offer with alacrity. “Allow me to store this in my safe,” he said, secreting the painting in a strongbox that was tucked into a cabinet beside his desk. “I know just the place.” With one hand placed quite casually against the small of Kieran’s back, he guided him out of the office. Although he had been taken with the painting, it seemed that Joshua’s prime interest was more intimate. Rapid recalculations flickered through Kieran’s mind; he had no qualms about using sex as a negotiating tactic -- not that it was often called for. “Kelsey, whatever else I was meant to do today, make it go away,” Joshua called out as they headed back to the lifts. “Yes, sir, Mr. Brassington, sir,” Kelsey muttered after them smugly.

***** ‘The place’ in question proved to be Joshua’s charming little Victorian villa perched just off the promenade. They went there by way of a local market. “Come in, relax,” Joshua said. “Please, I find it so hard to get hold of people to cook for. And this is your chance to get me drunk and take advantage -- I mean in a business sense, of course.”

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Kieran followed Joshua through into a large, modern kitchen that jarred a little both with the house and Kieran’s assessment of Joshua’s tastes. “Remodeled by the previous owner,” Joshua said with a breezy gesture that took in the marble kitchen island, spacious room, and bay windows overlooking a verdant garden with overgrown lawn and roses. “I forgive them the lack of architectural integrity because I do love to cook and Victorian kitchens are just a little on the dinky side. They didn’t have all our appliances to play with.” He dropped his paper bags and pulled out the Australian Shiraz. “You open that. The bottle opener is in the top drawer there.” His host’s easy familiarity was not forced, but nor was it quite ... normal. He was acting as if they were long acquainted, warm and effortless, and there was an unmistakable hint of invitation in his pale eyes. Kieran opened the bottle and found wineglasses easily in the glass-fronted cabinets. He didn’t add much to the conversation, but remained open, making eye contact and smiling when required. He wasn’t entirely sure where this was going, but if it involved the bedroom, there were worse ways to mix business and pleasure, surely. As Kieran passed over a glass, Joshua’s fingers overlapped his on the slender stem. For a moment Kieran felt no calculation, just a burst of heat. He drew back, running it over in his head. This was the wise course for the negotiation, wasn’t it? He would not let any momentary lust take the lead in his thinking if it was to the detriment of his commission. Joshua seemed to notice the hesitation; he fell silent for a while, setting up a frying pan. A dash of sizzling oil, and then he set two juicy rib-eyes in the pan and turned his attention to the salad greens. “Could I help out in some way?” Kieran offered. “Not at all. You are providing the company. And I appreciate it.” “I cannot imagine that you want for company, Mr. Brassington.” “Joshua, please,” he insisted, keeping his eyes on the preparations for what was going to be a rather early dinner. “And there is a difference between being around people, and having

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company. I could tell right away that you were a man who would be good company. See, I’m making you uncomfortable just by saying it. There are so many overbearing people in the world.” He waved a spatula to emphasize the point. “I’m one of them, mind you. But good company requires people to be as complements to one another ...” The conversation wended its way along without touching on anything of particular note: art, food, architecture, the weather. Kieran gave honest answers, seeing no reason to prevaricate. Joshua kept their wineglasses filled so that once they had eaten, informally at the kitchen table as the sun set, they had reached the dregs of the second bottle. “Art?” Kieran replied. “I like to study it, to know what it shows, why it was made. But as for hanging something on the wall and living with it, day in, day out. Well, I can’t say I ever have. I’ve not felt the need to.” “No? I suppose I can see it. I imagine you are something of a workaholic, hmm? Drawn to ease and simplicity, all dressed in black like one of those high-concept architects.” Kieran laughed. He knew the type, black polo-necks and designer sunglasses, all emphasis on form not decoration. “It’s not my look for every day,” he protested. “Oh, I do hope I haven’t put my foot in it. I noticed the mourning jewelry, but I assumed ... people just wear it for decoration these days.” Kieran flushed; the wine seemed to heat his skin. “Oh, no. I wasn’t at a funeral or anything. I just wear this, sometimes ...” Hell, he needed something to say other than that this costume was designed just to catch a mark. “... in memory of my mother.” As he said it, it seemed true. He had no idea if his mother was dead. She’d simply left them back when he was no more than seven or eight years old. She might well be dead by now, if she was anything like his father described. Joshua leaned over, grasping Kieran’s lapel. “It’s a nice piece,” he said. He paused as if searching for something to say. They’d not turned the lights on, and it was almost too dark to really see. “I bought something for dessert. I think ...”

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In that hesitation, Kieran knew what he wanted to do, and it didn’t involve éclairs. He stood and walked around the small table. Joshua was not slow to react, pushing back his chair, almost on his feet as Kieran reach him. His lips were soft, opening in welcome. The chair toppled with a crash as Kieran propelled Joshua back as far as the wall. Their mouths jousted together, bodies pressing too tight for hands to find purchase. He wasn’t ready for this, no condom or lube. Let’s hope Joshua is better prepared. Hell, where was that sofa he’d seen? Just through the archway in the living room, right? Kieran barely restrained himself from tearing that fussy business shirt right off the man. He pulled back and fumbled with the top buttons impatiently. Then he wrenched up the shirt to push it over Joshua’s head. His torso was lean and proportional, but soft, smooth beneath Kieran’s fingers. Kieran began steering him towards the living room, but Joshua pulled him away to the stairs and led the way, wordlessly, to a small bedroom dominated by a large, square bed topped by a thick duvet. As they went, Kieran tore off his clothes, ditching shoes, socks, jacket and shirt, and hopping from his trousers. He felt energized, alive, and almost predatory, propelling Joshua onto the bed. Joshua slid up, on his back, in the middle of the broad mattress. Kieran dispensed with the rest of Joshua’s clothing efficiently. Joshua’s tall frame, placid, knowing eyes, and dark blond hair made him look like some mortal version of a pre-Raphaelite angel, albeit currently a fallen one. Kieran wanted him, intensely and possessively. He worked his lips up Joshua’s body, biting lightly, kissing and driving his tongue down against Joshua’s soft skin. He crawled up the bed, his knee between Joshua’s legs, which eased apart, inviting. Joshua fumbled with the bedside table, opening a drawer and pulling out a scattering of foil packets and a crumpled tube.

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Kieran seized one of the condoms, tearing open the packet with his teeth. He squeezed the tip and rolled it on impatiently; his cock, all too familiar to his own hands, twitched for more. Joshua squeezed the lube one-handed and reached for him. That touch, barely muted by latex, was cold and sudden. Slick fingers coated his head and shaft. Joshua raised his long legs. His ass was offered, and Kieran positioned himself. He pushed, feeling the tension, the limits, pressing and easing in one long stroke that was slow but without hesitation. He pushed deep, all the way in, with silence. Joshua moaned, clutching at Kieran’s back. They were sealed together, Joshua hard beneath him as Kieran pulled back wetly. It was simple and maybe selfish -- he just wanted to fuck to his own climax -- but Joshua only urged him on. Kieran thrust hard and deep, primal mating with a force that strained his muscles and raised sweat all over his body. He felt fingers curling, digging into his buttocks, pulling at him in time with each push, even faster. They found a rhythm, harsh but smooth, driving him so his breath caught and his whole body shivered with waves of pins and needles until he came with one last hard thrust that drove Joshua up towards the headboard. He could feel his lover still hard beneath him and wasted no time pulling out. Kieran eased down hungrily and devoured that cock; wet and tight, he continued the same staccato pace. Joshua gasped and gave a shout of release as he came. Kieran collapsed onto his side. His heart still raced, every system of his body flying into the void but not yet beginning to fall. His face against Joshua’s ribs, he closed his eyes and tried to calm himself, to get back in control. Joshua’s hand slid down over his sweat-slick shoulder. “So much for dessert,” Joshua said hoarsely. Kieran, still panting, crawled up to him and they met with a kiss, wet and soft. Joshua rolled into him, fitting into his arms as if they had been together forever. “What are you thinking?” Joshua asked.

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***** The porch in front of Joshua’s house was exposed, and so was Kieran. He looked out at the dark street, deserted but for the flashing lights of a passing car and then another. It was starting to rain, and here he was, naked and miles from home.

What in hell possessed me to bring up that stone? Sure, Joshua would be in a good mood just after that and surely nobody could mistake what we did for love at first sight? No, something a little to the south of that. But still, mentioning the heartstone was dumb. Does coming that hard shave a few points off the IQ? Fuck! The door opened just long enough for his wadded-up clothes to spill out the gap. “Josh --” And then it was closed again. He cursed as he struggled into crumpled clothing. The tie pin had pulled loose, dropping down the side of the step. He groped after it, fingers in the wet, tilled soil of the garden, but could not find it. He sat on the step a moment, feeling water soaking through his pants and beating down from above. Something told him that pounding on the door and begging forgiveness was hardly going to work. He wasn’t inclined to do it anyway. It might get him a lover, but that wasn’t what he was after, was it? He’d probably just screwed up this deal in the most literal sense of the word. With a sigh, he heaved himself to his feet and walked out onto the street. He wished he had a cell phone, but he’d left it at home; it spoiled the line of his suit. Keeping an eye out for a taxi, but with no great hope in a quiet suburb like this, he kept on walking and letting the rain do its persistent best. Water gradually saturated his hair and trickled down his neck. The discomfort was almost welcome, punishment for being so goddamned stupid. For some reason his mind kept going to the tie pin. He should have looked a little harder for it. It wasn’t worth more than a few hundred dollars, but it was a nice piece. And maybe it did remind him of his mother. He vaguely remembered a pendant she used to wear.

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It was heart-shaped, with black enamel on it. It had a hinge so that it could be opened, and she’d had a baby photo inside, a photo of him all chubby-cheeked and smiling. He didn’t remember ever being that happy, but babies must experience joy for their own ineffable reasons. He only wished that he could remember them. He had nothing of her in his mind but a few blurry images, more likely a lonely boy’s fantasies than a toddler’s memories. She’d left, just left. Gone off with some man. In retrospect he supposed he could understand that; Dad was hardly a prize. But why would she leave him behind? And why was he thinking about it now as the rain began to beat harder? It hissed down on the ground so hard, the water bounced back up in waves of spray. He remembered, coldly, the way his father would laugh at the mention of her name. “Cunt’s boyfriend didn’t want no weasely boy tagging along ...” The dirt on his hands, from Joshua’s garden, was gritty. He wiped them impatiently on his trousers, but the fine soil stuck under his fingernails. His feet pounded out an impatient rhythm, water wheezing from his shoes with each step. All around, harsh streetlamp light rebounded off the dark asphalt and tall hedges of the houses, hollow with sleep.

Maybe that’s why you couldn’t hack clinical psych, he scolded himself. Maudlin dwelling on your mother’s failings -- should have gone into psychoanalysis. Walking through the rain set up a tempo; his cool thoughts flattened into a sort of uncomfortable trance. Once on the main road, he didn’t try to flag a taxi or find a phone. He was wet through anyway. By the time his apartment building was in sight, his feet were blistered but his mind was clear. Just lost my balance again, Dad’s bloody doctor has thrown

me off. Nothing for it but to climb back up and get it right next time. He’d blown one chance at it, but he was going to get that stone.

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Chapter Three

So he’d need a proxy, no big deal. Kieran had worked with front-people in the past. First he needed to find out exactly why Joshua had closed down on the issue of the stone. It could not possibly have personal value for him, being such a recent acquisition -- but that was how he had acted as soon as that thing was mentioned. Also, he had latched on to Kieran far too quickly and unconditionally; perhaps the two matters were related somehow. Kieran kicked back on his recliner, his keyboard within reach. He started a comprehensive search to put a name to every face in Joshua’s past and present. Was this sudden attraction on his part the effect of some resemblance? On the second screen, he looked through the mixed bag of thugs and investigators he had worked with in the past for someone who might get a new handle on Joshua and his precious bloody stone. Predawn was bleaching out the sky when a sudden shiver reminded him that he was still wearing his sodden clothes. He pushed back the keyboard tray and wandered into his small tiled bathroom, letting his clothes drop on the floor. Too much confusion and doubt made him feel unfocussed, and even his senses seemed vague and blunted.

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He stepped into the shower, turned up the water as hot as he could stand, and rotated the showerhead to a hard, pummeling strength. As he reached down, his mind went in an instant to Joshua. Steaming water hit his face and chest and fogged the small room so he could barely breathe. With a shaking hand, he teased back the hood of his cock. In flashes, vivid like hallucinations, he saw Joshua’s gray eyes, the creases around them as he laughed. His white skin like an alabaster angel, his body laid out like a sacrifice. Kieran smoothed his hand over the soap to make it slick and worked his cock impatiently. He wanted more than the empty air, wanted a body to fuck. Cursing, he let the water run over him, all but scalding, and then stepped out and hurriedly toweled off, his cock still bobbing hard before him. In the bedroom, he threw himself upon the unmade bed, crumpling the quilt up beneath him. Reaching down, he slid his hand over his cock again, humping against the bunched-up quilt, clutching it to him. He came with an impatient, unsatisfied moan, pressing his face down into the musty sheets. After no more than a few minutes, he knew he would not sleep at all that night. His mind leapt from thought to whirling thought. Jennifer Shu’s new show tomorrow. Her work would give someone a good reason to ask about the stone and discover what it was he was missing. The PI, Sarah Mantel, she might do it. Maybe his reporter buddy -- he did movie reviews; would a gallery show be too much of a stretch? Lips parting, sucking his probing

tongue, hands clutching at him to urge him on. Kieran stood, hissing. Clean clothes and coffee. An invitation should not be hard to arrange. Hard to plan for the contingencies beyond that. He would just have to learn every damn thing he could about Joshua and about the heartstone before that. Bribes, lies ... blackmail, even. Whatever it took. Of course, he’d left the damn painting at the Brass Building, but that would weigh more on Joshua’s mind than his own -- his research told him that Joshua was never the sort to steal, even by accident or neglect. Good, that was an upper hand right there.

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Now, Sarah would do it. She had the look of an art buyer when she dressed up. Not that she owned anything designer. He would have to lay that on. Kieran went through to the living room naked but for a quilt draped loosely around him. He began to systematically make his plans, but it took all his concentration to keep his mind on a narrow and purposeful path. On one side there were lurid fantasies that seemed to well up from within. Joshua’s pale ass and long limbs, his mournful face and sly eyes. On the other side, a rhythmic tearing sound, a chill darkness. Nightmares, lucid dreams he had known from childhood, suffering them alone in the dark, trying to be some kind of brave, bold boy that his father would admire. Vain hope; it took so long to understand such feelings just were not in the man.

***** Had he slept? It was hard to know. There were far more intermediate states between waking and sleep than most people have reason to know. A day, a night, most of another day, passing. Plans made, collaborators briefed ... Sarah smoothed down the dress. “It’s a little formal, surely?” “Just a touch,” Kieran said. “It’s deliberate. You are meant to stand out a little. To be a bit aloof, above the rest of the crowd.” “Well, of course it’s deliberate. Is anything with you not deliberate? And you know how I despise all those stage directions you give.” “You despise them, but you follow them. That’s why I use you.” “And it’s why I charge you time and a half.” Sarah was a classy natural blonde with high cheeks that meant she carried her age well enough to lie about it. Her accent was lost somewhere between Norway and Toronto, but the overall effect was pleasant. She fit into the slip dress very well; he’d chosen it to suit her height and bring out what curves she had in a subtle way.

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“I bet you were the kind of boy who liked dolls,” she said, holding out her arms and turning under his appraisal. Kieran didn’t reply. Sure, he’d have liked dolls, but any business like that and his father would have pounded him all the way dead. He was never quite sure why Sarah flirted with him and made allusions to his homosexuality at the same time. She obviously knew he wasn’t inclined towards women -- but then, some women liked that sort of thing. She stepped in decidedly too close for casual acquaintance. “So draw him into conversation. Get everything I can on the lumpy thing.” “The heartstone.” “But I don’t know that,” she teased, patting his chest. “I’m getting into character. You look like hell, by the way. I do hope you haven’t developed any expensive habits since we last met.” “Hardly -- you know me better than that. It’s just work. So get this done, and we can both get back to doing something more enjoyable.” He stepped back from her and opened the door. “I’ll drop in myself a little later to try and get something from his associates and acquaintances, the ones I can find through records. But be sure to ignore me. Fill me in on what you get tomorrow. Or after the show tonight, if it isn’t too late.” “I’ve done this sort of thing before, you know. And maybe we should make it tomorrow -- I think you might need some sleep.” Kieran made shooing motions. “Call me. I’ll probably be up. Unless you have somewhere you need to be. Like bed --” The words just slipped out. “-- I’m told some people do that.” She hovered in the doorway. “Not sleeping well.” “Ah. Get going.” She seemed stuck in that doorway. “If you asked, I’d come over and give you a reason to stay awake. You know, explore new horizons. It’s good for a man.”

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“You want to speak up? I think a man’s neighbors should know exactly which horizons he’s exploring. And those ones I’ve got covered, as it happens. Not in your particular case, of course, but I suspect the architecture is largely the same. But either way, we have a working relationship here.” She finally released the doorframe and walked away. “So I’ll charge you money,” she quipped as she left. “Or you could charge me. I’m open to suggestions.”

***** There are some women who like to seduce gay men. The point is presumably to prove what a hell of a woman they are -- not that that made a lot of sense. Not that Sarah was in that category. She probably just liked to yank people’s chains. She was standing in front of the heartstone screen-print, which was larger and brighter than he’d expected from the photograph -- almost glowing under the gallery’s directional lighting system. Sarah had successfully nabbed Joshua, and they were speaking together with some animation. Kieran was dressed casually, different enough to make him hard to instantly recognize, but not something that would look like a disguise. The gallery was built into a number of linked rooms, so it was not that difficult to keep Joshua from spotting him. It did take some effort, though, knowing where Joshua was and ensuring that he was somewhere else. So he wasn’t paying all that much attention to the man standing behind him. Stepping back to be out of Joshua’s line of sight, he trampled the bystander’s toes. “I do beg your pardon,” Kieran said automatically. The man was young, dark-haired, with darting eyes and stubble across his round, pale face. “It’s all right,” he said in clipped tones. “The show is going well. Miss Shu’s work is bound to be a big hit.” “Yes.”

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There was a grudging edge to the young man’s voice that set off a whole row of alarm bells in Kieran’s head, albeit for no real obvious reason. Although Kieran was largely a man for hard facts, he had a certain amount of trust in his intuition in one area -- people who were up to no good. It was always what he was best at, and his job had given him a wide and varied experience of people and the no-good they got up to. “She’s got a lot of talent,” Kieran ventured. “Yeah, she’s going to go far. She’s my girlfriend, you know. I’m very proud of Jen.” “Then you’re a lucky man.” Kieran offered his hand and guided the man subtly toward one of the smaller side rooms that was not dedicated to the main show but instead was filled with a mixed bunch of watercolors. While he was here anyway, he might as well satisfy his curiosity.

***** The crowd had thinned. Kieran stayed well out of the way, debating whether he should even be there at all. Sure, he wanted to look at the work, maybe approach the artist, but was he really there just to get another look at Joshua Brassington? He really ought to get the hell out of there and track down some other opportunity to speak to Jennifer Shu. But instead he stayed over in a small side room at the back part of the connected suite of display areas that made up the gallery. There was a watercolor hung there amongst a collection of landscapes. It was almost monochrome, depicting a cloudburst over water -- clouds, choppy waves, and beams of stormy light. He found there was something in it that held him. Sarah came up beside him, silently looking at the same piece. “Way to ignore me, Sarah.” “I was ignoring you just fine. You didn’t say avoid.” Sarah leaned in to him. “Like that one, do you? Figures.”

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“Push off, Sarah. Come see me tomorrow.” She was brimming with smugness that rather suggested she had something to report. With one flashing glance and a snort, she left him. There was a shuffle at the door, where she almost bowled over someone coming in. It was Joshua. Well, at least Kieran had been doing a good job staying out of the man’s sight, Joshua looked totally surprised. Sarah apologized reflexively and kept going. Joshua looked after her a moment, bemused, and then came on over and occupied almost exactly the spot Sarah had left. “You know the show is out there.” His voice sounded a little brittle, but not totally closed off. “I don’t really take to Ms. Shu’s work,” Kieran said quietly. “You like this?” “I told you. I’m not the sort to hang art, let alone spend money on it.” “Yes, so you said. But do you like this one?” Kieran just shrugged. “I lost my tie pin somewhere on your front stoop. Tell me if you come across it.” “What about the half-mill worth of Victorian icon you left in my office?” Kieran shrugged again, irritated at his own truculence, but unable to muster much in the way of speech. “It’s just a painting.” Joshua seemed to think that over for a while. “So tell me about your mother.” Kieran looked around. “Don’t you need a couch and a notebook for that sort of question?” Joshua smiled, wanly, but it was a smile. “It’s just that you said you wore it for her. Sentimental value obviously counts for a lot with you -- all appearances aside.”

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Kieran looked at him blandly, trying to stuff his reaction to this man down. What was it, anyway? Excitement, pointless lust -- nothing real. “I bought the pin with my own money. The painting belongs to my client.” Joshua’s gaze flickered. Like he was really hoping for more of an opening. And this after chucking him out on the footpath in a fit of pique. They were posed there, like some kind of soap opera diorama, when the artist herself arrived. “Should I be offended?” she said with a beaming smile that made it clear she was anything but. “I would not tear myself away, except that I had to renew an acquaintanceship with Mr. Small, Dark, and Handsome here.” Jennifer laughed. Kieran stifled a rather offended reaction to the ‘small’ part of that description and wondered just what it was meant to cover. “Miss Shu, there is one thing I meant to mention to you,” Kieran said. “Well, certainly.” “You need to get rid of Aaron.” Jennifer’s face froze a little, but courtesy won over. “I think we have the beginnings of a beautiful love triangle here,” she quipped uneasily. “Before you decide I’m crazy, you might want to consider this. That dog of yours went missing. Aaron was rather jealous of that dog. He’s building up to something, and he’s been doing a bit of gardening lately. Promise me, if you have a good look in that new rose-garden and find a Shi Tsu in there, get rid of Aaron.” There was really no easy way to get this kind of information across, and having Joshua as a witness wouldn’t hurt in keeping the suspicion uppermost in her mind. “That’s a horrible suggestion.” Jennifer’s face was fixed and stricken. “Aaron had a few drinks; I had a talk with him. It’s called morbid jealousy, and it can escalate to homicide very rapidly and with very little warning. Write me off as a crank if you

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want. But have a look in the new garden and think very carefully about whether that young man really is as ‘happy for you’ as he always says. A normal man will be able to admit to just the tiniest Neanderthallic bit of jealousy when his girl is more talented and, as of your latest tax return, more wealthy than him. But he won’t be able to. He’ll be oh-so-emphatically happy for you, right up until the point he kills you.” Jennifer backed away, the glow gone from her face. “Joshua, this guy’s the crazy one. I think perhaps you’d better find someone else to hit on while I get security over here.” Kieran watched her go. “Are you a psychiatrist or something?” Joshua said quietly. “I think she’ll look in the garden,” Kieran said with satisfaction as he buttoned his jacket and prepared to leave. Joshua visibly pulled back, tilting his head to regard Kieran down his long, elegant nose. Kieran looked back at him, feeling detached, calm, and relaxed. Jennifer might not listen right away, but he had planted a very specific idea, and she was the sort who wouldn’t be able to resist knowing for sure. Morbid jealousy was a distinctive condition that escalated almost inevitably to homicide. Even a small note of suspicion would be enough to save her, but her boyfriend’s rambling drunken story might even furnish enough proof to prompt a crisis while she still might survive it. Kieran’s gaze floated down Joshua’s elegant form, shown to best advantage by fitted bootleg trousers and a vintage polo-neck. Joshua seemed nonplussed to the point of speechlessness, so Kieran supposed he would have to make the farewells. Although, perversely, he found he didn’t like the idea that they might never meet again. He pulled out his business card case and snapped it open. The cards on the left included his home address and phone number. He pulled one out and passed it over -- annoyed at the impulse even as he gave in to it.

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“Call me up and tell me I got it wrong. I could use being taken down a peg or two,” he said before walking away and turning his back on any potential reply.

***** Why the hell had he made that opening? A disguised opportunity to gloat? To retake control after that embarrassing ejection from Joshua’s house? Just wanting to know if he was right? Wanting to know Jennifer was safe? Because he wanted to see Joshua again at any cost ... “Earth to Kieran?” Sarah sat next to him on his apartment’s small balcony. Even on a still day there was always a wind that swirled up around the corner of the building and over his makeshift outdoor table. It was actually a plastic tub weighted down with a breeze block -- the table that used to sit there was somewhere out in the pacific now. They sat on plastic chairs he stored in the closet and drank the bottle of fume vert he’d had in the fridge for over a month. A gift from a grateful client who probably assumed Kieran either got out more, or drank alone. The latter was more plausible. “Sorry, what?” “You paid a chunk of change to get this gossip, kid. You might want to pay more attention.” Sarah adjusted her unfashionably, and rather unfunctionally, small sunglasses and sighed theatrically. “You’re taking the long way around to getting to the point.” “What, you want ten words or less? Here you go.” She counted it out on her fingers. “The stone must be given away, not sold ... and two words in change.” She threw the imaginary difference in his direction. “Given away? Why.”

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“Tradition, superstition, whatever. It’s something you have to agree to, to get the thing. It’s some real secret-handshake, secret-society mojo with evil outcomes for those who break the rules. He was dead serious about it. I really think that all you need to do is ask for it.” Kieran leaned back, feeling his flimsy chair bend. “I already tried that. But I suppose that if something’s worth trying, it’s worth trying twice.” And in a way less suggestive of

overt prostitution. Kieran had not slept at all last night, nor the night before. His usual dour mood was blending into a sort of blithe indifference to the world entirely. Sounds seemed to follow him as he moved about his apartment. Harsh breathing and a chopping, tearing, rhythmic beat. Through the barrier of the sliding glass door, he heard the muted buzz of the doorbell, but it took him a moment to realize that he needed to do anything about it. “Hold that thought,” Kieran said as he levered himself to his feet and padded barefoot into the apartment and over to the front door. He wasn’t expecting anybody, but it was still rather dull of him to be so surprised. “You get to keep the peg,” Joshua said. Kieran held the door and wracked his brain for anything coherent to say in reply. Kieran was blocking the doorway and that wasn’t entirely accidental, but Sarah had come up behind him. With a sharp nudge from her elbow, she levered him aside. “I’ll fill you in later,” she said as she edged through the door sideways. The look she cast back at them was more speculative than jealous. Joshua took the opening, stepping into the apartment. He looked around the utilitarian expanse. “You know, they usually paint these places white to give the owner free reign in implementing their own decor.” Kieran didn’t respond the cue for amiable chitchat. “You could have let me say ‘I told you so’ over the phone,” he said from the doorway. “Is that what you wanted?”

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“What I want is to get you out of my system,” Kieran said as he slammed the front door closed. Okay, they were going to talk, going to whatever. Let’s get on with it. “You found the dog, I take it.” “Buried in the new rose-garden with its poor head cut right off. Jennifer called the police, and they didn’t seem very sure what to make of it. Animal cruelty isn’t high up their list of concerns, even if there was any direct proof he did it. If he told you what he did, they might want to talk to you about it.” Kieran shrugged. “I’d rather not. That found out about him; that is the main thing.” “But he’ll just do it again.” “Probably not, actually. He had a pretty, poor artist girlfriend. There was no problem until she suddenly began to eclipse him, her success threatening and emasculating him. It’s unlikely to happen again.” “So then, case closed. You know, I almost talked her out of looking, but once the idea was in her head she had to know. It was certainly a memorable evening.” “Are you just going to let what I said go by without a comment?” Kieran asked acerbically as he went out onto the balcony to recover what was left of the bottle and save the glasses from an unfortunate fate in the high winds. Conversation won’t get you out of my

system, my angelic Joshua. So let’s move this along. “That’s all right,” Kieran added. “It’ll be good for my ego, a way for you to get that peg after all.” He was muttering low enough that Joshua probably wouldn’t hear, except Joshua was standing right in the doorway to the patio behind him. He was looking real fine now, with a pale grey suit and his hair wafting in the wind. There was something about his face that meant his eyes always looked sad, just the way he was put together, but even that was sexy. Still, how were you meant to know how he really felt? “Tell me, what’s it like having me in your system?” Joshua deadpanned. “As far as I know, I don’t have anything catching.”

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“Distracting, that’s what it’s like. It probably is my ego, getting thrown out the door that way. It’s a real irritant, being treated like that, I can tell you. So how about we try it again here at my place? Then I can throw you out and we’ll be even. That would probably be enough to clear the pipes.” “Well, that’s a real romantic proposition.” “But what do you say?” Joshua reached out and took the wine for Kieran’s right hand and drank right out of the bottle. “Sure. What do you think it would take exactly? I wouldn’t want to miss any important pipes.” There was something brittle in his voice, but Kieran didn’t have it in him to take it back. He’d been speaking out of some kind of spite, but enough of it was real, too. “You could be wearing a few less clothes. That would be a start.” Kieran crowded up close to Joshua, meaning to make him step back into the apartment, but Joshua just stood his ground. He stooped and set the wine bottle on the floor, then reached up and undid the top button of his shirt and started working his way down. The late morning sunlight hit him like white gold, and the doorway framed his every move like a preRaphaelite painting come to life. It was a transfixing sight. Kieran couldn’t back down. He stood, still holding the two glasses clinking in his left hand, their dregs spilling out onto the concrete patio. Finally he just opened his fingers and let the delicate glassware fall with a splintering crash, then pushed Joshua bodily back into the apartment, leaving the door open behind them. Joshua reached the last button as Kieran thrust his jacket and shirt back over his shoulders and down his arms onto the whitecarpeted floor. Kieran seized Joshua’s waistband and all but tore off his trouser and underwear. He wanted intensity, passion, force. He wanted every ounce of experience. He wanted this to be enough to bowl him over, possess and intoxicate him. While in the back of his head a silent

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observer knew he had never been in love, he would never be in love, it wasn’t in him to feel that emotion -- he barely believed it existed. Oh, how badly he wanted to prove that dispassionate naysayer wrong. He pulled Joshua close. “You want to do your part in this?” “What part did you have in mind?” said Joshua in a dispassionately obliging voice that was as smooth and convincing as very, very thin ice. Kieran looked him in the eyes, feeling every inch of hope, despair, and desperation in his soul. “Overpower me,” he said. For one long, still moment, Joshua thought it over. Then the impulse seemed to swell up within him. Joshua’s larger frame tensed. He reached out one hand and clutched Kieran’s hair in a grip hard enough to hurt. He crushed his lips to Kieran’s and then pushed him away hard enough that he stumbled and fell back on the carpet. Joshua took to his role with alacrity. He tore at Kieran’s clothes so that seams ripped as he pulled them off. The carpet scratched against Kieran’s back as Joshua descended onto him with rough, wet kisses, his hands possessive and a hint of anger beneath his efficient movements. By slow degrees, Kieran let himself surrender. His instinctive resistance made his body tense, but he held it back. His grudging passivity seemed to drive Joshua further, as if he sought to get some reaction. His knee drove up between Kieran’s legs. His mouth descended, brushing Kieran’s chest, biting his nipple almost hard enough to hurt. But not that hard; there was an innate gentleness to Joshua that only became clearer when he tried to suppress it. His panting breath skated off Kieran’s neck. It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t nearly enough. “Is that all you’ve got?” Kieran whispered.

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Joshua took his arm, pulling him, pushing him facedown on the floor. Grabbing the cushion from the easy chair, he thrust it under Kieran’s stomach. “If that’s what you want,” he said coldly. “I’ll give you what I’ve got.” He pulled Kieran’s legs apart. The carpet close in front of him as he craned up, the dim view out the sliding door and over the ocean seemed somehow unreal. “Come on,” Kieran urged sarcastically. “Show me.” And I’ll show you. This is all I have to offer. Empty sex, no

matter how you play it. It’s not going to be enough for a man like you. This wasn’t really Kieran. Role-play, power-play, that wasn’t his thing. He was just trying to reach inside himself, trying to feel something, trying to be touched and knowing that the effort was doomed from the beginning. As Joshua pushed one spit-slicked thumb against him, he pushed back against it. Joshua’s hand clasped over his ass, pushing him down firmly, pinioning him as Joshua eased the way. Wordless, firm, in control yet never callous. Joshua worked him firmly, pragmatically with his thumb, then two fingers, taking his time before pulling back. There was an audible sound of him spitting; then his cockhead pressed and slid through the tight bands and into Kieran’s body. Joshua’s hand grasped Kieran’s hip as he ground his way in with barely enough wetness to reconcile the intrusion. Kieran welcomed it, pressing back, seeking urgency, craving it. He heard Joshua grunt, a small sound that seemed more from exasperation than from pleasure. Joshua responded to Kieran’s urging, heaving against him hard enough that his balls slapped against Kieran’s ass as he pushed forward in harsh thrusts. Kieran reared back against each push, his fingers clutching at the deep carpet. He felt Joshua’s fingers grasp his hip, capturing and commanding his movements. Pulling them together deep and sure, like pounding machinery. The depths of his body ached and parted, burned and answered every demand. He felt hot and faint, frantic, and deep down inside ... unsatisfied. Joshua’s cock drove into him, his

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pace a frantic rutting, his fingers driving in so his short nails scratched and dug into Kieran’s skin. Kieran rose to his knees, bracing himself and taking everything Joshua had down to the root. He leaned down on his elbows, with his head near the dusty carpet, having to claw his fingers into the deep pile to meet each rutting thrust without being driven forward. Joshua’s sweaty fingers reached round and seized Kieran’s cock, working it till it swelled hard and ready, rolling back the hood and cupping over the head. Joshua pressed deep in and stopped, one hand resting on the floor and the other continuing the rhythm, rushed, rough, and almost too dry over Kieran’s cock. Kieran gasped as he came with an involuntary moan. Joshua released him. With a few short, compulsive jerks, he finished, too, pausing only a moment before pulling out. Kieran collapsed forward, his eyes closed and his mind momentarily blank of all thought. But it wasn’t enough; it was never enough. Each of his fleeting lovers stayed just long enough to fuck a time or two and realize there was nothing more, no grand passion or tender love. Nothing in the darkness after the orgasm but the awkwardness and excuses and going back to their separate homes. Just sex wasn’t worth it for Kieran and would never be enough for a man like Joshua. Best he know now. He heard Joshua walking about the room, recovering his clothing, and with the rattle and click of the door he was gone. Kieran felt foolish, frustrated tears in his eyes. Well, that should satisfy his goals. That should be the last he saw of Joshua Brassington.

***** It was growing dark, and a cold wind swirled in through the open patio door. Kieran rolled wearily to his side, sat up, and distastefully regarded the wet stain upon the cushion beneath him. His apartment, so unchanging and familiar to his eyes -- it took no longer than an instant to notice an element out of place. He levered himself upright and went over to the

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keyboard tray, which waited thrust out of his way. Upon it, next to the mouse, sat a small, familiar lumpy shape. It was the heartstone. Kieran stood and stared down at it for some time, bemused. It can only be given away. So, his client would not be disappointed after all. He tried to tell himself that was what mattered. Or at least that was as much as he could have.

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Chapter Four

As Kieran reached out, the one thing he was not thinking about was the stone’s reputed powers. He was trying to think, quite coldly, about a job contracted and completed. The stone was small and hard, but surprisingly warm beneath his fingertips as he raised it for closer inspection. It seemed at first like it was just weariness fogging his vision. He blinked and tried to get a good look at this vainglorious pebble people got so worked up over. But in the darkness, shapes emerged -- and sounds, for the first time clear enough to discern. The pounding sound, the feeling, the glimpses of bad dreams and waking nightmares flash up and into perfect, lucid focus. Kieran’s cold, tightfisted center opened, and finally, he had to see ...

The shouting was nothing new. Kieran lay on his side on the bed, facing the wall, with his thumb in his mouth like the baby Dad always called him. His mother’s voice was quiet, pleading. He normally couldn’t even hear her at all, barring the gaps in his father’s tirades as he paused only to gather strength for his endless outrage at anything life presented him. The smack of hand on flesh was less common, the thud of closed fists. Then the silence. At least it was over now; maybe he could finally sleep.

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He lay still, waiting to hear the usual soft epilogue to violence -- his mother crying, his father’s muttered rebuttals or excuses. But there was only the continuing silence stretching on and on. No footsteps, no weeping, no drunken, mumbled apologies or door slamming as his dad went out. Finally there were a few ambiguous, heavy thuds, scrapes, and slams. Strange sounds that his child’s mind could find no explanation for. He had no framework upon which to build comprehension, but as the night progressed and the irregular sounds went on and on and on, he started to feel numb and cold. The thuds, muted, tearing, uneven ... He knew it was a bad thing, bad enough to become a landmark in a short life not remarkable for its pleasures. If he could have escaped into sleep, he would have, but fear made the darkness no refuge. Stunted and curious fear that wanted to see the monster it knew to lie in wait. When it grew quiet again, Kieran continued to wait, frozen. Then he heard his father’s car rumbling down the driveway and off along the road into town. Kieran crept down the dingy, carpeted stairs, terrified of still -- somehow -- being caught ‘sticking his nose in’, one of the things his father most despised in anyone. There was dirt tracked all through the kitchen, and the back door gaped open. The house lights were all turned off, but the porch light threw the scene into chiaroscuro. Dark soil was churned up just a step or two out from the back stoop. The old, rusted shovel leaned against the wall. Kieran stood in the open doorway and looked at the turned soil, a ragged area about as wide and long as the sofa. He stood there a long, long time. Then he turned off the porch light and went back upstairs.

Kieran’s fingers trembled as he put the stone back down. His whole arm felt weak.

My heart’s desire? My heart’s desire was to see that again? Surely anything else, anything else in the world.

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He’d forgotten a lot of the details. The daisies on the linoleum on the kitchen floor, the way the grass had been mostly yellow from a dry summer, the irregular coughing sound of his father’s old Fiat as it drove away. The sound of a shovel breaking the dry turf and chopping, tearing at the ground. But could he really say that he’d forgotten what was almost certainly his mother’s murder? He’d never seen her again after that. His father had been uncharacteristically industrious, creating a concrete patio out back. He made it out true and square right over that patch of turned soil -- even buying wrought-iron furniture, a table, chairs, and a big umbrella to put on top of it. For the first months, nothing was said at all. Then Dad started with the story. Over and over. Mother’s boyfriend, how she went away -- making him repeat it back, over and over, until he got it ‘right’. Kieran, as a child, had no notion but to keep living in the world his father had created for him, a world of cringing fear and mute obedience. The best he could hope for was to avoid the old man’s notice as much as he could. He didn’t remember ever thinking about his mother being under the suffocating concrete. It was like he’d never really thought about it at all; his thoughts slid off it like rain on a windowpane. But for all that, could he really say that he’d forgotten? So what would a ‘heartstone’ show a man who never really had a heart? Who lived his life with cold calculation, using sex only as a means to an end, having friends of a sort only when work caused familiarity that could not be avoided? Perhaps it would show that sort of a man the moment the heart he had been born with died. Maybe that’s what it would do. And Kieran knew what he had to do. He had to go and see his father after all. It was too little and far too late, but at least one person should look that man in his face and damn him for what he did, before he died. He should know his cowardly son was going to stop living that oft-repeated lie, stop cowering under a shadow that had for so long been larger than the wheezing, desiccated old bastard that cast it.

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***** How could he still be afraid of dear old Dad? The man was near death, and it was no mystery how he got there. Cigarettes, sure, but other than that the man hated -- hated pretty much everything with a passion that all but cooked him from the inside out. Kieran saw him maybe once every year or two about one thing or another. Normally someone with a complaint or dispute with the old man who managed, somehow, to make it Kieran’s problem. Each time he seemed smaller, hair whiter, lines deeper on skin more yellow, like he was curling in on himself. His voice getting hoarser with smoke and phlegm, but the words never changed much. Kieran half expected to hear Dad’s vulgar curses from down the dingy hospital hallway. The woman at the hospital’s main reception called up some file on an archaic computer, the screen showing DOS green-on-black with a blinking cursor. Funny how big places get stuck with crap I.T.; even if they could afford the costs of upgrading, they often couldn’t afford the down time and inevitable unreliability of the new system. “Please take a seat. The doctor will speak with you as soon as possible.” A recorded telephone message could have delivered the line with more sincerity. But there was no point doing anything but what he was told. Kieran took the nearest available seat, second row back with a good view of reception. A few moments later, the receptionist reached over for an old plastic mouthpiece and paged a ‘Doctor Lambert’ three times over. Great, the guy who nagged me over the phone.

Just what I need. Mired in the boredom of her job, the receptionist’s body language was hard to read. Maybe she didn’t even know anything about his father’s condition -- she certainly didn’t seem to care much about anything as she lolled in her chair. But he could hardly judge her for that, given his own attitude about his venerable sire. He mainly resented the time this was wasting.

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As for being asked to wait, Dad would be in an intensive care setting, so no doubt visitors couldn’t just stroll in -- and they wouldn’t want to miss the chance to strong-arm him into making all those necessary terminal arrangements. God knows what kind of problems it caused not to have a co-operative next of kin. So, not having anything against the hospital or the doctors or that bored-looking lady out front, it was time to get those loose ends tied up and tidied away for good. It was almost half an hour before a man in a dingy white coat was pointed in his direction. Kieran stood. “I’m here about Mr. Harris,” Kieran said. “Certainly, if you will come with me.” When the doctor didn’t start by introducing himself or offering his hand, Kieran knew. That certainty was only confirmed by the lack of small talk or reassurances, and being directed into a small side office. Dad was already dead. Somehow he just felt cheated. Would there be any grief? Perhaps it reflected badly on him, but he doubted there would. Maybe it was time he stopped expecting emotions from himself that never came. He got tired, and annoyed from time to time, but he didn’t feel guilt or shame ... or love. And if he ever did, Dad would be last in line for any of them. “I want to see the body,” Kieran said. “So you’ve already been told --” “There will be some arrangements to make: paperwork, a funeral home. I just want to see him first.”

***** His lips were drawn back into a kind of rictus grin, like the expression he wore just before he hit you. Even laid out in a glorified refrigerator, that face was unsettling. Kieran

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just nodded as they gave him instructions and cursory condolences and reluctantly gave him the promised ‘moment alone’. Kieran folded his arm, feeling a chill that did not come entirely from outside his body.

Was I born empty, like Dad, not really caring about anyone -- or did he beat that into me? “It’s juvenile, Dad,” he finally said. “But here it is. I’m finally going to tell on you. Now that it’s too fucking late to do anyone any good, I’m going to go tell the cops what I think you did. I’m never going to stand up to you. Maybe I never could have. Maybe I’m just the cunt boy you said and it’s time I stopped trying to prove otherwise.” He stood there waiting to see if he felt anything -- that goddamned ‘closure’ they always went on about on talk shows. Should have known better. He just felt hollow, but at least now he was on his own. No Dad standing in judgment. Just the cunt boy, on his own at last, for good and proper. “All right, then, you bastard. Thanks to you I’ve got some paperwork to do.”

***** The stone was still there sitting on the keyboard tray like some beach-pebble paperweight, some remembrance of a holiday on a beautiful foreign shore. He let it sit there. Frankly, he was afraid to pick it up again. The client wasn’t following up on it either, so there was no big hurry, and he had a few other matters to tidy up. Checking his watch, he paced, waiting for a call. The cops had taken their time grappling with what he had tried to tell them. They kept bringing in new people, so he had to tell the story all over again. Send for files, muttering together as older and more senior cops came in to stare down skeptically at him. And it seemed like each one had a look in his eyes that said, Why did you wait so long? Why are

you bothering now, when everyone is dead? What kind of justice is that? It wasn’t even a cold file for them -- nobody had ever reported her missing.

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They were going to dig today. Apparently the people who owned the house now had been something less than cooperative, and that was before they were told the whole back area was going to be dug up with heavy machinery. The cadaver dogs hadn’t signaled that there was anything down there, and the detective seemed quietly unenthusiastic, but with a layer of concrete over the top and a body that had lain long enough to finish rotting ... Kieran would be willing to bet they’d checked up on him, too. A history of some mental health problems and a manner that fitted with it. Nobody would mistake Kieran for some ex-hockey star homecoming king who never let his imagination get away with him -- probably because he never had one. And could this all, somehow, be a product of his own sick mind after all? He had never believed in the supernatural. It didn’t fit in the orderliness of human behavior. More like dominoes than any game where cards could be wild or magic anything other than a fairytale. So what was that flash, that vision, he got when he’d first picked up the stone? What was more likely ... Recovered memories and all that stuff played well on TV, but Kieran knew the real psychology behind it and it didn’t work like they showed in a film-of-the-week. Like some little movie playing your memories back to you -- that wasn’t how the mind worked. A little is remembered, and the rest our consciousness makes up as it goes along. Sometimes based on the facts, sometimes from whole cloth like a waking dream. And things you dream can’t be dug up out of the earth, no matter how much you might want to have that certainty, that resolution, an end to the darkness down there -- waiting. Which would make it a hallucination. Madness. Maybe he was making the whole thing up. With a sigh, he reached for his jacket. Whatever the detective had told him, he needed to be there and see it through, one way or the other. He called a taxi on his cell phone as he headed down in the elevator. It was the middle of a weekday, so it turned up pretty quickly. Kieran gave the driver the intersection near his home -- his dad’s old house, that was -- rather than the actual address, and he spent the journey to the outskirts of the city

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wondering what difference it made. Either he was screwed up enough to know his mother had been murdered and do nothing about it all these years, or he was screwed up enough to hallucinate the experience to somehow excuse his own inability to deal with his father and his own failings as a man. That wasn’t really a coin toss you could win. “Looks like there’s a bit of a to-do up there,” the driver remarked. “Oh, yes, I wonder what that’s about. Anywhere along here is fine.” He paid the fare with a twenty and waved off the change. He watched the taxi execute a U-turn and head back up the street. Crossing to the opposite side of the road to the old house, he walked up towards it. There were a lot of new houses, in-fill building between the old cottages, a couple of small apartment blocks as well. He always thought of this place as nearly in the country, but it was clearly a suburb now. And he’d been there over the years, but it seemed like whenever he was away, his memories reset themselves. Every time, he was surprised to see the changes, all of them, not just the latest ones. There was a new bus-stop next to a mature maple. Leaning on the tree, he could see down the side of the house. There was a marked police car parked in the front yard, with a uniformed officer sitting in it and the driver’s side door hanging open. There were ruts where some kind of machinery had gone across the yard and down the side of the house, but there was no sound of machinery. Kieran pulled out his cell phone and acted like he was sending a text message, glancing up casually from time to time. He saw glimpses of people in white disposable coveralls moving around behind the house. There was nothing very obvious for him to do, but he’d known that before he came. Just wait. Just be there. Time ground by; vehicles and people came and went. It was clear from the look of them that they included people involved in medical or pathology areas, and quite a few of them. Some of them glanced over at Kieran as they passed across the front of the house to pull equipment from vehicles at the curb.

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It wasn’t until the bus came and went that the glances became more frequent. Well, there was only one route that passed by, so it was obvious now that he wasn’t waiting for it. Finally a middle-aged, uniformed man came through the front door of the house and looked across the road. It was Detective Mantell, the one who had taken his report and promised to look into it. Mantell grimaced, but beckoned to him. Kieran swayed upright and crossed the road, his legs aching from over an hour of standing out there and barely moving lest he draw even more attention. “Mr. Harris, why am I not surprised to see you?” Kieran didn’t reply. He noticed the detective was holding a flat, translucent plastic bag in his hand. Mantell noticed him looking and held it up, laying the bag flat across his hand so the contents could be clearly seen. “That it?” he asked. A silver pendant hung from a broken, grimy chain. It was distinctly smaller than he remembered and the enamel work more delicate. The hinge was large and broken so that the two parts didn’t quite meet and what might have once been a photograph was now nothing more than a sliver of stained and moldering mulch. “My mother’s locket,” Kieran said neutrally. “You found her.” Mantell drew him into the house. It had been redecorated in a clean, modern style dotted with bright rugs and ornaments. They stepped into the front room, and Mantell closed the door, shutting them in together. “We won’t know for sure until there have been some tests, and they tend to take a while. But we found someone, just about exactly where you said, so it seems likely it was her.” Mantell waited, his sagging face with its bushy eyebrows and large eyes fixed on Kieran, giving him the chance to say something. When he didn’t, Mantell pulled the bagged evidence gently away from Kieran.

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“We’ll see about getting her remains released for burial, but in all likelihood it will be a few days at least, maybe a couple of weeks. That’s pretty quick, really, but there’s unlikely to be any kind of prosecution, so ...” Mantell looked over. Kieran folded his arms, his fingers locking tightly over his elbows. “If you let me know the funeral home, I’ll keep you updated. And you know, you should think about talking to someone. We, all of us, only do what we can, when we can. That’s just how life is. It’s good have an end to things. You should be satisfied with that.” Kieran tried not to show any expression. Inside he flinched to have this man say the one thing he had so much trouble believing. If he had spoken up earlier, his father would have been judged and punished. Kieran’s whole life could have been different from that point forward. God knows where he would have ended up, but it would have been better, surely? Perhaps being a cop gives someone just so much experience of tragedy, he knows what goes through a man’s mind. “You were a child then,” Mantell said. “And things we cannot do as children find their own time to come out, if they ever do. For many people, they never do.” Kieran stepped back and turned the doorknob. “Well, thanks for talking to me, detective,” he said perfunctorily. Mantell reached out and placed a hand over Kieran’s shoulder. It was too intrusive; Kieran shook the old man off. The policeman didn’t seem to bother to take any offence. “You’ll get to bury her properly now,” he added. “Get her a nice stone, and move on with your life. I’m a busybody, I know, but I’ve seen it too many times. You had this hanging over you, and this is your chance to work through it and get out from under it. Get some help; get someone to talk it over with -- you’ll feel better.” Kieran stepped out the front door and walked off down the street without even looking back. He didn’t dare. It was obviously enough, and true enough, and it felt so utterly impossible that he could hardly stand it. Most people would get a grave, take flowers, talk to

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the dead, weep and rail, and get over it. Maybe that was what he had been hoping for. But his mother felt just as not there, just as absent, just as pointlessly, cruelly gone as she ever had. A pile of bones really didn’t change that.

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Chapter Five

He paid for a simple half-hour service for his mother and let a few distant family members know -- the only family she had left outside of her son. When nobody but the pastor came, he was not surprised. It was a family of misanthropes that spawned them both; that was for sure. A line that must have seen its share of empty pews. The headstone was simple, pale stone with her full name and dates of birth and death. There really was very little else that he could say about a woman that he remembered only in smudged images that might easily be imaginary. His whole childhood was like that. A darkness from which he emerged about the time he got to leave home to attend a private college on scholarship. A better son might have known some snatch of song or poetry that she loved. He tried to apologize to her over the freshly dug grave, just because that’s what you’re meant to do. But it was just talking to the air. He had learned all about the critical periods in a human’s life, many of them early in childhood. His own childhood had passed as a blur of fear and avoidance. The private school he ended up in, as a weirdo and outcast, only compounded his mute isolation. By the time he started university, he had learned to feign

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some degree of normal social behavior, but deep down he had never felt all that much for any of his so-called friends. Even now, muted respect, sexual attraction -- that was about it. It had never struck him as much of a failing before. He saw through people; emotions rarely distracted him; lies were easily seen through, motivations laid bare. A little companionship was nice from time to time, but was it worth the virtuoso acting performance a normal relationship would require? Hardly. Not just for a foil to boredom, something to do with his time, a warm body on tap. Sex could be obtained with far less effort than that. So why had he sent a courier around to the Brass Building for that painting rather than go himself? It was here now, the angels. Unpacked and leaning against the wall away from the direct sunlight. He’d done some research, set the temperature and bought a dehumidifier to ensure he was doing the old painting no harm. He was rather getting used to having it around -- even though he knew it wasn’t meant to be his. His client on that job had vanished to somewhere in North America and had yet to return, so the stone was still with him, too. It sat on the keyboard tray. He never touched it; he never had after that first time, even though it was sometimes no more than a centimeter or two from his hand. He sort of wanted to know what would happen. Nothing -- was it done with him? The same vision again -- or something worse? Other work had come in. Dull jobs on the whole, fronting for a Chinese company scoping out some acquisitions, an adult adopted child trying to find his parents. Peculiar, that one, not his normal line, but some overflow work from Sarah, and he had no trouble getting it done. Just this morning Sarah had called again, suggesting they go see a new documentary showing at the multiplex. So it was official -- Sarah wanted to be ‘friends’. He’d put her off in the name of taking flowers to his mother’s grave. That wasn’t the sort of excuse that even Sarah would question. Maybe he ought to do it after all. She was beyond caring, but he didn’t really have anything else to do.

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There were a few other offers in the works, and he was doing background on an oil prospecting company who might actually just be a front, but what for? It could be anything from a developer to money laundering. It wasn’t demanding, and the outcome wasn’t going to be a big shock either way. With a sigh, he pulled over the keyboard tray and reconciled himself to acting on an impulse that had been lurking at the back of his mind for days. Who was this mysterious collector who had sent him after the heartstone but now seemed in no particular hurry to get his hands on it? It broke down what was pretty much the only taboo he lived by. He was going to find out.

***** People mostly go through their lives meeting very little to challenge the way in which they see themselves, others, and the world around them. Kieran stood in a white-painted wooden pergola near the centre of the wooded cemetery. He looked out over a small stream in a view dotted with stone and concrete headstones, ancient and modern. And he wondered what had happened to the cool complacency of his life. His hands clamped over the balustrade; it was at moments like this that a disgusting habit like smoking would be handy. Something to do to cover the entirely unwestern habit of contemplation. His childhood was on his mind. The more he thought, the more it seemed like those early years set a trajectory for his life. Alone, as a young child, he had learned not to expect love from those close to him or help from anyone. Any achievements had occurred in an indifferent academic setting. In college his awkward ways and humble origins had conspired to isolate him, his high academic achievements cementing his status as a loner. At university, his own entrenched habits had kept him from developing anything more than glancing acquaintanceships with those willing to disregard his cold demeanor. But the stresses of the clinical program and his social isolation combined to produce what most people might call a kind of breakdown. For weeks on end he suffered from a feeling that

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nothing around him was real, not even himself. He did not attend classes or his internship and was finally dropped from the program. After the intervention of Professor Clark, one of the few psychology professors who seemed at all equipped to deal with a real psychological disorder, he managed to regain his equilibrium. It was a dark time. A short period in hospital and a heavy dose of anxiolytics got him back to basic functioning. But too humiliated by his mental disintegration to return to university, he launched himself into self-employment -- an effort that drove even the prof to give up on him, convinced that he was exhibiting the mania expected of previously undiagnosed bipolar disorder. But despite that vote of no confidence, the business has found an unrecognized and eager niche in the market, quickly becoming not only viable but highly profitable. Kieran had coasted on a feeling of supreme self-justification, but now he had to admit that none of these achievements addressed the real cause of his crisis. He was alone. And no human, no matter how warped, can be an island. Ironically, his father’s death only made his plight more obvious. The old man had been buried in a ceremony even more poorly attended than mother’s -- even Kieran had not gone. The man now lay in an outlying cemetery where all the grave markers sat flat to the ground so as not to impede the passage of a ride-on mower. And that was the kind of legacy Kieran was set to leave the world. But in his heart he could find no answering warmth when people reached out to him with their occasional offers of friendship. He could not find it in himself to feign a humanity that he did not seem to harbor. There was only one man for whom he had felt a glimmer of real affection, a faint spark that his own most ardent efforts could not smother. And what could he do for such a man, the one man whose wellbeing truly concerned him? What would be in Joshua’s best interests? Not to be tied to someone whose finer feelings could barely be said to exist at all.

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Kieran stared out over the cultivated natural scene, canting trees about a crooked brook with all the grass pruned short and fallen branches gathered up. He could not quite see his mother’s grave from here, but hell, there wasn’t any real part of her buried there -- there wasn’t any real part of her that had existed at all for over twenty years. What was there to do but get that stone to Andrew Bryden Martin, the mysterious collector who seemed to have a few regrets, a few occult beliefs, of his own? Then he could put the whole thing behind him and get on with what he had in lieu of a life. With a grim sigh, he turned to walk back up the path towards the car park without even having visited the grave. A lone figure was descending cautiously where some steps were boxed up to ease the dirt and gravel path down the slope. A tall man, his head tilted down to watch his feet clad in increasingly soiled off-white loafers, little more than a mop of sandy hair showing. It was, inexplicably but unmistakably, Joshua Brassington. Kieran dithered, but finally decided to wait in the pergola. He leaned back, resting on the rail and driving his hands into the pockets of his casual jacket. He watched Joshua approach, with a feeling of foreboding. Joshua saw him and smiled, giving a vague wave. He walked the rest of the way, unhurried. “How did you know to come here?” Kieran asked. Joshua leaned up against a post a good few feet away. “I happened to meet a woman at Jen’s show. She had a certain interesting quality. Not like you, she’s more like me, an extrovert, you could say. So I kept in touch and so did she. She calls me up looking for someone to go see that new romcom with. It seems her first choice for company this evening was a young man who had a peculiar sort of prior engagement.” “You’ve got a quality in common with Sarah. You both take a very long time to get to the point.”

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“The point was she thought I should come out here and talk to you. But she’s not going to do anything as hopelessly overt as say that. Just like she didn’t come out and say she’d been working for you that night.” There was silence that stretched out for a while with nothing but the muted warbling of water and the occasional unmusical peep of some bird. So maybe he wouldn’t be hiring Sarah anymore; she seemed to have a problem with the confidentiality clause in their agreement. “So Sarah is a matchmaker,” Kieran said. “But why did you come?” Joshua nodded. “Well, we didn’t get off to the best of starts. But the business of the heartstone is behind us now. You have been dealing with some personal tragedies, and perhaps you could use someone to talk to. And also maybe it’s time to see how crazy I am in thinking there was something else to ‘us’ to the extent that such a thing may exist.” Kieran watched Joshua. He wasn’t effusive, but he also wasn’t at all awkward like most men in talking about personal things. He stood and said it, and looking at him was almost a painful experience. His hair was a little shorter and showed evidence of some artful highlighting. His suit was linen, creased a little. His face looked more handsome than Kieran remembered, features not model perfect, but distinctive and symmetrical. There was a feeling, looking at him, a feeling that eluded any name. “You’d do better not to think about any ‘us’, Mr. Brassington. It’s not a notion with much potential.” Kieran felt an impulse to look away, but he mastered it, looking Joshua straight in the eye. “There’s something else I wanted to know,” Joshua added. “Oh, yes?” Kieran checked his watch, a deliberately rude gesture designed to move things along. “I couldn’t help but wonder what you saw when you picked up the stone. Or is it in your make-up not to even find out?”

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Kieran did turn away then. He turned his back on Joshua and looked back out at the stream. It seemed best to just tell him, and then he might understand the futility of what he was trying to do. “I saw the day my mother was murdered. What do you think of a man whose heart ‘dwells’ in such a place? Is that the myth? It shows a man his heart and where it dwells.” He glanced aside and saw Joshua, his face pale and pensive. “Perhaps we can leave our hearts behind a while,” Joshua said. “They can get buried with past hurts and losses. And if the stone showed you that, it was to give you a chance to get it back.” “You’re always so certain,” Kieran replied. “So fixed on me right from the beginning.” Joshua stepped in closer and they stood side by side. Then Joshua reached out, putting his arm around Kieran’s shoulders. Kieran kept his eyes averted. His skin twitched to push the man away, but deep inside his heart lurched and thumped so hard it was like he was feeling it for the first time. “I picked up that stone,” Joshua said, “and I saw you walking into my office like you did a week or so later. And I knew. God knows you’ve confused me a bit since, but every time I talk to you, and every time I touch you, I know it’s real. I know that even all those many things that I have yet to learn about you will only make me love you more.” Kieran could feel tears in his eyes, but the emotion beneath them shifted -- fear, embarrassment, pent-up grief, and ... what? “I don’t know that I’ve got the love in me to give back, Joshua. You have to know I can never promise you that. I’ll not say I love you if I don’t know it to be true.” “Well, you’re an exacting man, I don’t doubt.” Joshua’s hand squeezed his shoulder. “Why don’t we see how it goes? Oh, and I found this. I believe you wanted it back.” He removed has arm from around Kieran and pulled a small item from his pocket. The tie pin, topped with an onyx heart, pierce with a diamond. He held it out.

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“Yes, I did.” Reaching out, Kieran’s fingers folded over Joshua’s. He took the pin and fastened it to his lapel. “Maybe the three of us could go see that movie tonight,” Joshua said as he took a step back towards the path. Turning, he reached out one arm, making a space beside him. After one frozen moment, Kieran stepped into it, and together they walked out of the cemetery, out from under the whispering trees, and into the light of day.

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Epilogue.

“Are you sure that this is the house?” Joshua peered over him from the driver’s side, his hand coming to rest casually on Kieran’s knee. The house had the style of something from the seventies, squat, dark, and square, stretching out in two uneven wings, low to the ground. The gardens were immaculately kept and showed the hand of an expert landscaper. It was everything Kieran’s illicit research led him to expect of Mr. Martin. Expensive good taste shown through the use of proportion, good materials, and extreme restraint. Kieran covered Joshua’s hand with his own. “This is the place. I’ll go in on my own, if you don’t mind. I won’t be long.” He got out of the car and stepped out onto the curb. He opened the back door and pulled out the boxed painting, which he was rather going to miss. He tucked that under his left arm and then picked up the stone, stored in a simple cloth bag, with his right. Joshua had got out of the car and came around to him. “Don’t worry; I’m not following you in or anything. I just want to say, if you don’t think he’s the right man, you can’t give him the stone. It has a higher purpose, not just some artifact to be tucked away in some collector’s display case or safe.”

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Kieran looked up to the house crouching on the hillside. “I broke an old rule of mine, Josh. I found out a little bit about the honorable Mr. Martin. While I don’t know exactly why he wants this stone, I have a feeling it wants him as well.” Joshua reached forward and kissed him gently. Their love life had been muted for a while as they made each other’s acquaintance properly, but it was returning now -- gentler, but no less passionate for it. Joshua didn’t push, didn’t ask, didn’t even say the words himself, but Kieran prayed that some time soon he’d be able to say the words he knew his lover wanted to hear. “Well, then, I hope he gets it, whatever it is that his heart desires. Just as I have.” And Kieran got a little closer to that time as he replied, “As we both have,” before he walked up towards the house.

Emily Veinglory Emily Veinglory (veinglory.com) is an animal behaviorist currently living in scenic Indiana. She writes fantasy, romance and erotica and specialises in gay erotic romance including the Maewyn Prophecy trilogy and her popular werewolf novellas Eclipse of the Heart and Wildest Dreams (all available at Loose Id). Her first novel-length paperback, King of Dragons, will soon be published by Chippewa Press.