Jack knew he had to save Heath from whatever the Elvors were planning to do to him. He cursed under his breath --- of course it had to go this way. He'd mentioned his fear, the other student hadn't taken it seriously, and now it was too late.

Luckily, it seemed that the Elvors were simply escorting Heath to a temple nearby. The boy hadn't put up a fight --- actually, he was trying to act cheerfully, asking the supernatural creatures if perhaps they would be interested in buying some of his hair or nails.

Jack hoped he didn't mean it, and that he'd never asked anybody else. He couldn't begin to comprehend the disgust he'd feel if he knew one of those transactions had taken place before.

Of course, Jack was very skilled. The Elvors had told him to go back to school, and weren't aware that he was, in fact, following them.

He supposed he could have gone back to school, and wash his hands of the Laoch. Mister Tenney would have picked him up, eventually. Probably. But Heath had agreed to be a team, and this is how a team should have worked. Besides, Jack hated Elvors even more than he hated Heath, so he didn't want to give them any satisfaction, momentary as it was.

Would the Elvors eventually notice his presence, or were they already aware of it? What if they expected to make a Deal? Something in exchange for his friend's freedom? 

Jack tried to stop thinking. It usually worked, and it was better than going down the dark path of his thoughts. He'd become accostumed to shut up the annoying voices in his head.

It was too bad he didn't know how to shut up Heath's annoying voice, though.

"I just can't understand why my magic is so draining and yours isn't," he was teasing them now, though it was common knowledge that the Elvors' magic was full of secrets, and they wouldn't reveal how it worked to anyone.

Jack had to refrain from rolling his eyes. Mister Tenney himself had slapped him once for doing it every time the Laoch opened up his mouth. The man had said that, while Jack had a point, 'mature adults did not react so pettily to those who annoyed them.'

To which Jack had almost rolled his eyes, but had decided not to.

"First of all," one of the Elvors, the youngest-looking of the bunch half evaded the question. "We don't use magic to get high."

"Because you're already high on power," Heath muttered.

In the meantime, the Elvors had entered the temple. Jack had to change his pace to match their footsteps --- concrete floors were not like the forest, where leaves muffled his sounds, as long as he didn't step on a tree branch. The temple was eerily silent, and every sound would echo.

The Elvors guided Heath to a smaller room Jack had never seen --- not that he'd seen so much of the temples' before --- where there were things Jack recognized because they belonged to some of the religions of the Corporation of the Kingdoms. Altars, oils, bones.

He wondered why the Elvors needed them. Those things had nothing to do with their Deals, but maybe they powered up their magic. He vaguely entertained the notion of telling so to Heath, just to see if he would have chewed a bone.

"You wait here," the blonde Elvor who'd spoken in the forest said. "We have to go to the main hall to make the Deals. After that, we can talk."

Her cold voice made Jack shiver. Surely 'talk' couldn't have any hidden meaning. They wouldn't go as far as to strip the Laoch for pieces, would they? They'd have to answer to the people, and to Caladium.

But what if the Laoch had been reborn in a stupid, reckless, junkie? Perhaps the people and Caladium would have agreed that it was better to wait that the role would pass into somebody else.

As soon as they left the room, Jack came out of his hiding place. Heath made a surprised sound that flattered him --- he had been good enough to hide among the shadows that even a fellow student hadn't realized he was there.

"What are you doing here?" Heath asked, without bothering to keep his voice down. The walls were sound-proof. How to check their surroundings to notice those kind of things had been one of the first lessons they'd learnt.

"I'm saving you," Jack said. He put on a smug smile. "Obviously."

Jack expected any kind of reaction. Most probably, Heath would say he did not need saving, or not from him, or one of the other thousand of unpleasant remarks they usually conjured up for the other.

Instead, Heath lowered his eyes to the ground, and his voice sounded pretty rough when he said, "thank you. You were right. The Elvors are scary."

"You shouldn't have interrupted Leo's Deal," Jack commented soberly. "But I'm impressed that you did."

"If you ask me, more people should stop Leo from making Deals," Heath replied sternly.

"Obviously," Jack said, as he unbound Heath from the chair he'd been strapped on. "But Elvors wouldn't like that one bit. They think of us humans, yes, even you, as their playthings. Sometimes I think they don't even expect us to feel things, let alone voice our opinions."

"You seem to know a great deal about them."

Jack knew that the truth was a door he wasn't going to open.

"The rest of us don't have..." he gestured awkwardly at Heath's entire figure, hoping the other man would understand he meant his magic powers. "We have to take the scraps of magic we can find. There are a lot of stories about Elvors."

"You read them?" Heath seemed entertained. "Well, that is better than the erotic gay novellas you usually read, anyway... you know the ones that are sold monthly in the newspaper stands that barely have time to go through editing."

"You're hardly a judge of taste," Jack commented.

"I refuse to hear it from you. Those things you read aren't bad themselves, they are a cheap replacement for the real thing, like prostitution."

"You would know about that."

Heath thought about his mother and his eyes darkened.

"I'm sorry," Jack said, a little of his accent slipping. He usually tried to cover it up, but he wasn't always successful. Heath had already heard it. When it came out, Jack spoke slower, and used elongated vowels. He could never master a neutral one, but in the best case scenarios it was fainter.

"What are you sorry for?" Heath asked him. "We talk with each other like that all the time. You've been acting strange ever since... we've been on that mission together. Tell me the truth. Do you think I'm weak, now? As it gotten so bad that now you think I'm not even up for a good banter?"

"No," Jack was surprised at this show of vulnerability. "It's been a long time, actually, since I've thought that I could be less reckless. Not that you were right in your picture of me. But I don't want to be the kind of person that..."

Selfish, cruel, uncaring... so many things his parents had been before him. He did not want to be like either of them.

"...that others don't want around," he settled on. "So, maybe it was too much to actually tease you about your mother. It must be an awful job."

"I'm still not sure you're not making a fool out of me," Heath commented. "But, in case you aren't, yes, it is an awful job. Though, despite the rumors you might have heard, I don't know it first hand, so maybe we shouldn't knock it until we try it. Unless you've tried it already..."

"I haven't, though you must think of my hook-ups, and even my relationship, as little more than that, I'm sure," Jack bit back with all the decency he could muster. "But don't worry --- I already knew that you don't sell your body. Except for hair and nails, apparently."

Heath was about to say something, when they heard footsteps coming from the outside. The Elvors must have decided it was time to talk to Heath.

"Follow me," Jack tried to guide the Laoch. "We can go out the way I came in. There is a secret passage."

Jack found the spot, and the young men found themselves in a narrow corridor. Jack tried to find the exit, but Heath stopped him.

"Wait," he whispered. "They're talking about something."

There was a wall between the Elvors and the students, but it was very thin, and so it was easy to overhear what people said on the other side.

"Yes," Jack hurried him. "They're definitely talking about you getting away from them! Let's go before they figure out our trick."

"No," Heath commented. "They're not discussing that."

Jack listened to the voices, and had to admit the Laoch was right. The Elvors were talking about something else --- something that they actually needed to hear.

"Okay, I'm practicing my breathing in case we have to stay here a long time," Jack agreed.

He was aware that Heath was looking at him with a surprised expression. The breath exercises were only needed in case of panic attacks or actual lack of air, and they couldn't stay in the corridor for more than five minutes, if they didn't want to be discovered.

"Do you think they're looking for the Stone?" One of the Elvors was saying. Now that they couldn't make a guess looking at their faces, it was harder to tell if the speaker was male or female.

"I know the Prince asked them to," another replied. "And I don't think the old man's shameless behavior has a limit, but this would be too much even for him to pull... where does he expect for them to find it, exactly?"

"Leonard Collins came asking for it," another commented. "I made sure he wouldn't get his hands on it."

"Good job. Though that would have been hard to begin with."

"Perhaps not so hard," another one said quite philosophically. "Depending on the way you're looking at it."

"The nerve of that man," the first one shivered. "And let's not forget the way he parades the Laoch..."

"Apropros, seeing Heathcliff Corrigan hanging around with Jacob Edens Junior was... disturbing."

"They're both students of that madmen. I wouldn't worry about anything else that concerns them. Though they are both loose cannons..."

"Interesting," one of the Elvors stopped the speaker. "Let's say interesting for causes that we cannot disclose, least someone overhears us. Don't forget the Laoch has escaped us, and for all we know, he could still be in proximity."

"Let's go," Heath said, but Jack had a hard time moving his feet. He couldn't feel his body, despite the breath exercises. He was aware of the words he'd heard spoken, but he was also falling into a nightmare of his own.

No, not a nightmare. A memory.

And it was the worst one yet.

"I guess we're even," Heath told him when he regained coscience, back at the forest. "You helped me when my magic... failed me, and I helped you getting out of there. Can I ask you what happened?"

Jack felt that his mouth and cheeks were wet. He must have cried, and bitten his tongue not to scream.

On top of that, he had fainted. He tried to see if there was something on Heath's face that could tell him that the other man would be content without an explanation.

Obviously, there wasn't.

"I have... problems," he began, his throat dry. "With darkness. We're talking complete darkness, without light that gets through the occasional cracks, or the stars in the sky. Especially if the darkness is in a restricted place."

"But you've already been through spaces like that, during the missions. You went through the secret corridor just earlier today."

"I can manage, as long as I keep moving, or stay still only for a small amount of time. One or two minutes. But anything longer than that... it feels like torture."

"Is there a reason?"

"Of course there is. And of course I'm not going to tell you."

"Why?"

"Because you must be already having a field day. I've confessed two of my fears in the last few days."

"Even if you were afraid of a thousand things, you still go through them, which makes you very brave. And I'd love to find out you're brave, because it would be infinitely better than anything else I've ever thought of you... like cheap, tasteless, immature, show-off, and the list could go on."

"Nothing I haven't heard before," Jack muttered. 

"Besides," Heath uttered more seriously. "I've also told you about a lot of things that scare me."

"Well, then you're brave," Jack commented. He had already noticed how some things made Heath flinch, and he hated when it happened. He liked to think nothing could hurt the Laoch so deeply. He wanted to be the only pain in his life, and he wanted to be no more than an annoying papercut at that.

"Freeze," an Elvor with long, gray hair and matching unnatural gray eyes told them. 

"Getting captured by Elvors in the forest? Deja vu," Jack commented.

"Who says anything about capturing you? Though I agreed with my colleagues I also couldn't let you go free. You see, Leonard Corrigan went to make a Deal with us. He wanted his great-aunt to die so that he could inherit her fortune. We asked for some of his blood, in exchange."

"You should have asked for his life," Heath commented annoyed, "that would have been fair."

"We don't care about fair. However, we care about the properties of blood. In one of our spells, it enhances our minds, and let us know things about the Universe."

"Interesting," Jack said, because it was extremely rare for an Elvor to divulge their secrets. This one must have thought the explanation wouldn't have made sense without that piece of information, but he still looked extremely sorry to have parted with it.

As if anybody else could do any of their spells, Jack thought bitterly. They just are obsessed with the concept of getting something back for every piece of them they give away.

"Well," the Elvor continued. "We are not interested in mysteries of the world or the afterlife like Caladium is. We merely sometimes ask the Universe more pertinent questions, like if there is something we should know about that we don't."

"Norma, Ken and I do it do," Heath smirked. "We humbly refer to it as 'gossipping.'"

"Well, we found out you have eavesdropped on our previous conversation and we aren't happy about it."

"Neither are we," Heath commented. "We couldn't understand any of it."

Jack felt something that was dangerously akin to jealousy. Why was Heath acting like a wise-ass with the Elvor? Didn't he tease only Jack? Wasn't that one of their things?

"Heathcliff," Jack snapped. "Don't be annoying."

"I'm not," Heath looked mildy enraged. "The Elvor was the one who was being annoying."

"And what's the point?" Heath added. "I doubt you came to kill us over something like that, or at least, I hope so. After all, we are interesting..."

"I thought you couldn't understand anything," the Elvor narrowed his eyes in suspicion. "And interesting does not mean that you couldn't be disposed of. Just ask your stepfather about it."

"Well," Jack drawled. "I'm glad I already knew about Mister Tenney, but shouldn't you guard your information more closely? What if I wanted to dig up information about the Laoch? Don't go giving it away like that."

"We Elvors are knowledgeable. I already knew that you knew that."

"So," Heath pressured him. "Are you really here to kill us? Because we won't go down without a fight... if one of you could even be taken down. I don't remember ever reading anything about it."

He cast a puzzled look at Jack, but Jack wasn't about to admit his knowledge about Elvors didn't actually come from reading about them, so he just shrugged.

"Kill you?" The Elvor laughed. "That could be done, but it would be a waste, at least for the time being you are more worthy alive than dead. But what about a Deal?"