Shadow Aspect Read online

  I straighten up and slid my free arm around Tarin’s waist and kept smiling like I’m a bimbo who doesn’t know how to do anything else. My cheeks are going to hurt from this.

  Peyton glares at me and throws a disgusted look at Tarin. “Really Tarin? A human? You’re standards have officially slipped. Enjoy the party.” She says at him before gathering up her dress and walking away from the three of us.

  We all watch her leave. When Peyton is out of earshot, Tarin turns to look at me. “What did you say to her?”

  I shrug my shoulders and sip my champagne again. “Just girl talk. No idea what she could’ve found so offensive.” That makes Shaye burst out loud laughing at us. “You do not know Peyton, clearly.” He says to me. “Back me up here Tarin, she has a wicked temper.”

  “It’s true.” Tarin remarks.

  “You do not want to be on the receiving end of, ever.” Shaye finishes as he calms down again and just kept smiling at me, shaking his head and wiping at his eyes. “Oh that was brilliant. Thank you.” He says grabbing a beer bottle of a circling waiter with drinks. We hold up our drinks and connect them before downing a mouthful as Tarin looks at me suspiciously. “Well brother, Katelyn,” Shaye says nodding his head at me “Do enjoy yourselves, I know I intend to.” And with that, he walks away, leaving just me with Tarin again.

  I look at him, he seems rather tense again. “So does this change anything about the job?” I ask him. He gives me a hard look of annoyance.

  “Why would you ask that?”

  “That wasn’t the happiest family reunion I’ve ever seen. And you seem to be a bit thrown by it. Are we good here or do we need to abort?”

  “There is no backing out here Katelyn. This is my best shot at getting everything I want. It has to be tonight. We just have to, wade through the interactions of things like that to get it.” I sip my champagne and watch couples dancing like they are in a grand ballroom of old. A thought occurs to me that I’ve never really considered until now.

  “Are you sure what you want will be here tonight? I mean, you said to me you don’t even know who it is.” I ask in a low voice at him.

  “Trust me, anyone who is anyone in our world, is here tonight.” He says returning a wave at another man across the way who waves at him. “And this is rather important, so there is no way those involved in it, won’t be here.” He finishes his red wine. “And if those involved in it are here, then it’s highly likely they’ll be some talk between them. And that my dear Katelyn is where you come in.” He says with his hand lightly on the small of my back. “Let’s mingle.” He says as we walk over in the direction of the man who has waved at Tarin.

  12

  I abandon the rest of my drink and we headed towards Tarin’s friendly face. The man who appears to be in his late forties or early fifty’s is Birnie Seacombe Tarin informs me. Whilst he is also dressed appropriately for the black tie affair, he has a pot belly and a warm, charming face. He is flanked by three women. Each of them hovering off his arm. “So what is Birnie?” I ask Tarin as we get closer.

  “Bunyip. If he’s here, then you can guarantee there’s something regarding land exchange going down.” Tarin says quickly before I can ask if he is serious. Of course he is serious. His whole body language and sudden pick up of our pace in walking towards Birnie is serious.

  I am valiantly trying to keep up with his strides in my ridiculous heels and keep smiling even as I practically ran along with Tarin’s strides until we reached Birnie.

  “Tarin Armadel!” Birnie says heartily shaking off his dates and throwing a hard hug onto Tarin before he knows it. I move out of the way quickly as Tarin is slapped on the back hard.

  “Birnie Seacombe, how long has it been?” Tarin states as they break apart from their manly greeting.

  “A few years, at least.” Birnie says before noticing me and turning towards me. “Hello.” He says in a different kind of voice. Like the voice of someone who has just target locked me as a gift to steal out from under Tarin’s nose.

  I try to look brightly at him, like I am just the damn sweetest, sexiest woman there and aren’t offended by his seemingly lecherous nature that I pick up on just from the one word he’s said at me. “Who do we have here?” He asks reaching forward to shake my hand as he glances over at Tarin.

  “Birnie, this is my uh,” Tarin pauses for a moment, he either doesn’t want to say lover or had forgotten my cover story.

  “Girlfriend,” I state putting my hand out to Birnie who encased it in two of his own, warmly. One on top and one underneath. “Katelyn.” His skin temperature is luke-warm and kind of almost sweaty but light and reminds me of something like a pond or a swamp.

  Billabong, the word comes to my mind and I ensure I kept looking at Birnie and allow him to hold my hand as long as he damn well wants. I am already reading him, ready to gather my notes for Tarin.

  “Katelyn, what a beautiful name for such a beautiful….” He widens his eyes and raises his eyebrows at me.

  There is something about Birnie that is deeply hidden. The way he is perceived by people and the nature of what he actually is, a wave of consciousness raises up to me and drops with an answer. They are two very different things. Everyone sees him as a fat, jovial, personality. No harm, no foul.

  “Human.” Tarin states filling in the gap for him. Birnie, still holding my hand, now patting it on top, looks at Tarin.

  Birnie doesn’t know how open his language, his body was to me. He isn’t a guarded personality because there is something strong in him, that tells him he doesn’t need to be. He is more than secure in himself and his abilities, despite how he outwardly appears. There is an inner ferociousness to him that is there for a reason. He feels he’d earned it because he’s lived up to it.

  “Human?”

  The thing about me being a truth-sayer is, that it is hard to detect. I don’t really give off paranormal vibes and my appearance doesn’t change like say werewolves or shifters, or appear outwardly obvious like the Dimkek we’d seen earlier on.

  As if being rare is lonely enough, my type aren’t too widely known in the paranormal community at large. Clearly Tarin has then gotten some other basic information off Henry, like what I looked like, my name, or where he’d picked me up for business and the rest, I guess he’d pieced together. It wouldn’t be too hard to do. I might not be heavily involved in society but I wasn’t living off the grid either. Not entirely. I just kept to myself.

  “We haven’t been dating all that long.” I add on as Birnie pulls me in closer to him.

  His three dates, hover around him pouting and whining at him for their attention. He throws up a hand dismissing them. “Go dance for awhile.” He states at them. “I have to catch up with my good friends here, Tarin and Katelyn.”

  Birnie, crooks his arm and slides mine through it, so suddenly I am hanging off his arm instead of my date’s. What an old smooth operator he is. I can see the annoyance on Tarin’s face, but he lets Birnie get away with it because we need it. This is our opening to finding out what we’d come here for.

  “And he bought you here!” Birnie says loudly as he laughs through his words.

  I have to get past the feelings of self worth in Birnie, but that is harder than it seems. Because unless you can guide a mark to where you want them to be, it means digging around so to speak and working through complexities of feelings that run rampant through all of us. And digging means time and time tends to make things obvious to the mark in question.

  “At least it isn’t a first date.” I throw back at him, completely charming Birnie as he smiles longingly at me. I have to somehow trigger the conversation we need to get his mind to consciously offer up a path to where I am likely to want to go. Either that or I have to somehow signal to Tarin that he needs to start talking business with Birnie.

  “I just can’t believe Tarin Armadel is well, dating..” Birnie keeps looking at me. “It’s not his usual style you know. You must’ve really caught his attention.”r />
  “I am right here Birnie.” Tarin says back at him signalling a floating waiter towards the three of us.

  “Tell me,” Birnie starts as he waits for me to pick up a glass of the waiter’s tray, I chose another champagne. Birnie, like Tarin takes a red wine. “How did he come to get on your radar, young Katelyn.”

  “He stalked me. Wouldn’t take no for an answer.” I say effortlessly, since it is the truth. Birnie laughs heartily and loud, his belly wobbling obviously at our enjoyment.

  “That sound’s like the Tarin Armadel I know.”

  I look over at Tarin. “He kept turning up outside my workplace and trying to get a date out of me. I guess in the end I just kind of admired his persistence. It was too hard to ignore, especially when he rocked up in a limo. Sometimes a girl likes to experience style.”

  Tarin sips his wine and I think I see some recognition in his eyes. Hopefully he is understanding what I need him to do.

  “Oh well then I’m afraid Katelyn you might in fact be with the wrong man. For whatever Tarin Armadel is worth, I am worth ten times the amount. I could put a young lady like yourself in style, every day of the week for the rest of her life if she so wished it.” He says looking at me expectantly. I blink a few times. Did Birnie really just come onto me directly in front of my supposed date?

  I look over at Tarin utterly surprised by Birnie’s boldness. “That seems about right.” Tarin states looking from Birnie to me. “Birnie made his fortune in real estate. His investment portfolio is quite impressive.”

  I looked back at Birnie, smiling smugly at Tarin. I sense he’s screwed Tarin out of more than one of those investment properties over the past years they’d known each other. But Tarin still goes back to Birnie when it came to land deals because Birnie knows how to wheel and deal and he seems to always have the best up to date information on what is hot and what is worthwhile.

  “Birnie always has something up his sleeve and on the go, don’t you? He is the man to go to if you’re looking to get into real estate. There is no one better.” Tarin says buttering him up for me and sipping his red wine with a smirk. “I bet you’ve got something on the go now. Birnie doesn’t know the word stop. Do you?”

  Birnie’s pride and arrogance swell. That is a truth. An absolute truth as far as he is concerned, his perception of himself and the perception Tarin has just told me, match up like serendipity in him. He hasn’t been expecting a compliment like that tonight and it opened a doorway for me.

  Vanity is the key to Birnie. But it has to feel genuine, like he’s stomped all over his opposition for them to finally express their respect and gratitude to him being better than them. Despite his age and appearance. He wants to flaunt his greatness in Tarin’s face, but he refrains for some reason. It isn’t clear why.

  Its hard to tell if it is a warm smile Tarin is expressing or a taunt of some kind, that is just how Tarin comes across. Were they friends more than they were enemies, or was it the other way around? Whatever the case, Tarin wont break up our gathering with Birnie until I have done all that I can to check him out.

  “What kind of properties do you cater for?” I ask him as if seeking a business opportunity of my own.

  The doorway turns into a path within him. He wants to impress me, to make me coo at his feet with his knowledge and skills. I wander further down the path. He wants me to know how sharp he is in dealing with the business of land ownership, but the reality is, Birnie is ruthless. Not something he wish’s to give away to me. To anyone who might be interested in doing business with him.

  “There are no limits for me. I prefer not to only look at a specific area of the real estate game. If someone comes to me and says Birnie, I am interested in this type of property what do you have for me? I do a bit of recon if I don’t have anything. Mixing it up is the way to go, otherwise business gets stagnate I’m afraid.”

  There is something in that statement that catches my attention wholly. Birnie isn’t opposed to under the table dealings or screwing someone over to the highest bidder if he can get them. The path in him is practically lighting up for me now.

  I nod my head as if actually paying attention to his words of wisdom, not his sales pitch. “So do you buy property first and then flip it?” I ask him. As Birnie explains to me that he has started out that way, but is less inclined to do that these days, he continues to give me what I think I want from him.

  He is in fact more inclined to go for the rare properties, scouring all over for the land deals that not necessarily now but years into the future, would reap dividends. He is all about quality, not quantity. Which leaves the clientele he dealt with to only, a select percentage of the world.

  “What’s the most outrageous deal you’ve ever earned a commission on?” I blather on, like I’m hooked on his potential sugar daddy-ness to me. Tarin drinks his wine watching us in silence, with boredom.

  That path glows bright for me. Birnie would love to tell me about an upcoming deal to end all deals. It’s a highly prized and sought after deal by a few who knew of it’s true value and worth. But to tell me about it would jeopardize all it’s value.

  Tarin pays attention too as Birnie animatedly tells us about some deal with a seventies celebrity icon who had more money than sense and how he’d been jerked about too many times by the celebrity to want to play nice anymore.

  Inside the path it flickers slowly, I’d felt it before, its anxiety. I can tell that Birnie doesn’t want to be on the receiving end of anger from any one of the four of his clients that had been circling him for the deal. Especially since they wouldn’t hesitate to rip him apart in a public display like at this party if it pleased them. After all it had taken him and his resources, decades to truly track down this remarkable piece of land. All because he’d never thought to look in his own backyard, in Australia.

  The path shuts down, I realise why. His three dates have came back to step in front of Tarin who steps back from them, and they glare at me.

  “Birnie, we miss you.” I slip my arm out of his and take a step back.

  “Ladies, please, manners, remember where we are.” Birnie says giving me an apologetic look like we’d been busted doing something more intimate than talking. I move around to Tarin who puts his hand on the small of my back again.

  “Birnie, it was lovely to meet you.”

  “But we really should be a bit more social,” Tarin adds on as he starts to direct me gently away from Birnie and his harem. I ditch my untouched champagne glass on a nearby waiter’s tray and Tarin and I walk further away from Birnie into a darker corner of the main ball room. Tarin looks at me expectantly.

  “Maybe we should get some fresh air.” I suggest to him and he takes my hand leading the way out to the back of the Mansion and into the large, lush, green landscape that apparently passes as a backyard these days.

  “Did you get something?” He asks me once we’d cleared the Mansion and are out on the back patio, that overlooked the rather beautifully lit up back grounds. There is a long lap pool in the centre of the land and a white path all the way around it, surrounded with large sculptured shrubs in white large, oversized pots.

  “There are four people interested in his latest deal. They’re all here, at the party.” I say to him in low voice as we walk down the back steps, towards the bottom lit up pool of blue. Tarin helps me down the stairs carefully and slowly.

  “You sure?”

  “Yes. He practically wanted to shout out loud about how great this deal is. It’s the biggest thing he’s ever done in his entire career, his entire life.” I start as we walk the smooth stoned path. “But he can’t because bragging about it will loose it’s value and piss off his clients in the process.”

  Tarin nods his head as we walk slowly side by side together around the pool. I hold my clutch purse in both hands and Tarin walks with his head down and his hands in his pockets listening to me. “Which is weird right? I mean the more you advertise how big a deal it is, the more likely you are to get mo
re interested parties and you can start a bidding war for the highest bidder, right?”

  Tarin tilts his head to the side. “You could or you could get the wrong kind of attention in the process.”

  “Like what? I’m lost.”

  “Look around at where you are Katelyn, paranormals don’t want attention, the wrong kind of attention, it just never serves us well.” Tarin explains. I glance back at the big mansion. At a private party, all these paranormals can be themselves. Or if the wrong people knew there were this many paranormals here in one place, they might make a good opportunity to take out, grab, kill, whatever was your flavour, to them.

  I return my thinking back to the job I’ve been hired to do. “If Birnie is as big a deal as you make him sound, then this thing he is holding onto and wanting to tell me about, then I think it’s the real deal you’re interested in. His thoughts and feelings around this were intertwined and stronger than anything else when you asked him about what he had on the go. I could tell how badly he wanted to flaunt this in your face. A deal that you weren’t in on and that is somehow, crucially important to him, his portfolio or something.”

  “Interesting.” Tarin muttered in thought as we reached the far end of the pool. “Anything else?”

  “Yeah,” I smile at him as we turn to walk the narrow head of the path around the top of the pool. “The location.” I say looking at him. Tarin’s interest snaps on me with his full focus. “It’s in Australia.”

  13

  We turned again at the top of the pool to walk down the right hand side path next to the pool between it and potted over sized hedges. “Can you be more specific than that?” He asks.

  “Not at this stage. I’ve only just gotten to that piece of information when his harem returned to interrupt us.” Tarin lifted one foot and then the other slowly as he thought about what I’d just told him.