Page 24 of Demon Loved
Perhaps he was underestimating Brianna’s strength. He had to admit to himself that she did not seem like the sort of person to be afraid of something just because it was alien to her.
However, he also knew they were of two different species, utterly unlike one another, and therefore he could not allow himself to indulge these new and strange feelings…even if he very much wanted to.
So he had turned away, pretending to be interested in an unusual mineral specimen displayed in the shop window behind them.
But he hadn’t turned quickly enough to miss the confusion and disappointment in her eyes.
Brianna hadn’t said anything, of course. No, she’d only told him about the store and its collection of rocks and minerals, and how he should take a look when he came back tomorrow after it was open.
He was good at guarding his emotions — he had to be, considering his reasons for being here in this world — but he thought she might be even more skilled than he.
Afterward, they’d walked back to the parking lot where she’d left her oversized vehicle, and then she’d driven him back to the Grand Hotel. They’d promised to meet a little before noon so they could get lunch from one of the food trucks that would be servicing the festival, and that appeared to be that.
Was there something else he could have said or done?
Probably not…unless he wanted to lead both of them down a path he knew they should never travel.
Now he sat in his hotel room and stared at the picture of Sedona’s red rocks that hung on the wall opposite the bed. It was a painting, not a photograph, and Belshegar could only think that the artist Connor Wilcox, who’d painted the landscape they’d hung over Helen Doyle’s fireplace, would have done a much better job.
What was it about Connor Wilcox? That name still seemed to hold some deeper significance than merely belonging to an artist who specialized in northern Arizona landscapes, even if Belshegar didn’t know what it might be.
Well, the voice had supplied him with a phone, since it was unheard-of that any citizen of the world in the twenty-first century would try to exist without one.
And Elena had shown him how to search the internet to discover those pieces of information that one wasn’t able to unearth on one’s own.
Unfortunately, an internet search didn’t reveal anything of much use. Connor Wilcox appeared to be an ordinary man in his fifties, someone who was inspired by the natural beauties of northern Arizona to create some truly outstanding landscapes. There was absolutely nothing in his online biography to show he was anyone except who he seemed to be.
Clearly, intuition didn’t seem to be of much use at the moment.
Annoyed, Belshegar set his borrowed phone down on the bedside table and leaned against the pile of pillows on the oversized bed. It seemed that so far, he had very little to show for his efforts.
Except for several enjoyable evenings in Brianna’s company, with the promise of more to come. They hadn’t made any plans for Friday night, and he guessed that was probably because she had to perform at some tasting room or another, perhaps one as far away as Sedona. This begged the question as to why she hadn’t invited him to that performance, just as she’d asked him to come see her play at the winery called Alcantara, but perhaps that was because her Friday night venue wasn’t nearly as picturesque.
Or perhaps she’d decided that being with him every single night was a bit too much, even leaving aside the very real attraction that had begun to grow between them.
Difficult to say since, despite the time they’d spent together, he still knew very little about her thought processes, or why she would proceed one way in a certain matter and an entirely different direction when it came to the next one.
What he did know was that he was spending entirely too much time thinking about her and not nearly enough pondering how to track down the artifacts he was supposed to find.
He picked up the phone again, this time to study the online map of Jerome and do his best to determine where the prima’s house might be located. It certainly wasn’t in the neighborhood he’d explored earlier today, so he focused his efforts on other areas that seemed promising.
The problem was, even though this “Google Maps” promised street-view images of any given area, there seemed to be some streets in Jerome that hadn’t been mapped in such a way. Was that because the residents had made sure none of those cameras would infiltrate their quiet neighborhoods, or was it simply that those included other areas where structures had slid down the hill like the Cuban Queen and were now off-limits to street traffic?
Weighing all the facts he had in hand, he thought either scenario was equally plausible.
But just because Google hadn’t provided the information he wanted, that didn’t mean Belshegar couldn’t set out on foot to see what he could find.
Now that he’d analyzed the map of Jerome, he had the town’s layout firmly fixed in his mind and could access it any time he liked. And, even though he had no concrete evidence that the voice or those who might work for it were watching what he did, he still thought it best to make it seem as if he was doing whatever he could to locate the artifacts rather than spending far too much time wining and dining Brianna McAllister.
Deep down, he didn’t believe he could ever spend too much time following those pursuits, but he doubted the voice would have the same opinion of the situation.
It was too late to set out to investigate those other sections of Jerome — not because he couldn’t see what he was doing just as easily at night as he did during the daytime, but because he guessed that the people who lived in those neighborhoods wouldn’t be too pleased to see a strange man wandering around and sketching their homes after the sun had gone down.
And although he could make himself invisible and undetectable if he put away this borrowed human appearance, he didn’t know for sure whether he would be able to assume it again without the voice’s help.
Better not to risk it.
He’d wait until morning…and then he would see what he could find.
