“This is her residence, but she is not here right now,” the man responded, polite but implacable.
“Well, when is she re—”
His sentence was cut off by the man opening the door. Although he remained secured behind a glass protective wall. Dariux studied him. Average height, trim and fit, but not overly muscular. Dark blond hair and handsome to the point of prettiness. He had an academic air about him.
“Who are you?” he asked, although a sinking suspicion was snaking through his gut.
“I’m Martin, Kalli’s boyfriend. Who are you?” the pretty boy asked.
Kalli’s boyfriend? The word hit him like a sledgehammer to the chest. She had a boyfriend? Had she ever mentioned him? No, she hadn’t. He would have remembered that. Was he real or a parbot? Only one way to find out.
“I’m her lover,” Dariux said with a smug smile of defiance. “The man she has spent the past month having sex with.”
There. If this man was real, he was about to have a fight on his hands. He relished the prospect.
But the other man’s only reaction was a blink and a tilt of the head to the side, studying him as if trying to figure out what to do next. A parbot then. No human would receive those words with such absolute calm and lack of reaction.
“Are you Dariux? You went on the mission to the past with her, correct? It is the only way you could have spent a month with her, because she was here three days ago.”
“I...” Fuck, what to say? He was flattered that Kalli had mentioned him. How much had she shared with her ‘boyfriend’ about the mission and her whereabouts? He didn’t want to divulge unnecessary details, but he needed to know where she was, and something told him her parbot had to know.
“Yes, I’m Dariux. I saw her this morning, and now I need to speak to her. Do you know where she is, or when she is planning to return?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t have that information.”
Dariux looked past the parbot into what he could glimpse of the house while he fought for control. Ugly emotions were swirling through him. Emotions he had not felt in a long time, and never with this much intensity. Jealousy, betrayal, rage, frustration... He very much feared if it weren’t for the protective glass, he would have his hands around the damned parbot’s neck right about now. A useless and ridiculous reaction, but he was past rational thought at the moment.
The woman he loved had a damned parbot. One who could be said was the opposite of him in every regard. Was that the type she preferred? The pretty, studious boy? He almost gagged with contempt. Well, she had liked him well enough when she was coming around his cock, and he looked nothing like this bloke.
Dariux swallowed down the bitterness to focus on the task at hand. He had to find Kalli. Talk to her. They could solve their differences.
“When was the last time you saw her?” he asked the parbot.
“Three days ago.”
Before the mission, then. That meant she had not come home after they returned. Where was she staying?
“And have you been in contact with her? Has she called or sent any messages? Anything about her whereabouts?” Damn it, did she have such a basic parbot that he didn’t even worry about her safety?
“She sent a message saying she would be away for a while longer.”
“When?”
“When, what?”
“When did she send the message?” Dariux took a deep breath, fighting a losing battle with patience.
“Two days ago.”
“What, exactly, did she say?” He was grasping at straws, but maybe there was a hint of her whereabouts in the message she sent to her parbot.
“Exactly what I told you. Now, if you will excuse me, I need to go.”
With that, the other man closed the door on his face. The damned parbot had dismissed him. And he had got no useful information. Where could she be? Why hadn’t she returned home? Why wasn’t she answering his attempts at communication? And why didn’t he know her well enough to figure out where she might have gone? This was all his fault. If he had taken the time to know her better, he would know where to look for her. He probably wouldn’t even need to look for her, because she wouldn’t have left in the first place.
He didn’t fool himself that her absence was a coincidence. No, she was avoiding him. It’s as if she had vanished from the face of the earth. If he hadn’t seen her this morning, he would be frantic with worry. But he had seen her. And she had been well enough. If a little pale. In truth, her fair skin seemed stretched thin around the delicate bones of her face. And she had dark circles under her eyes that the makeup couldn’t fully conceal. It was a knife to his heart to think he might be the cause of her distress.
Where are you, sprite?
