Revenant

EIGHT

We talked less than I would have liked on the trip back to Lisbon, but we each had things we didn’t really want to say. Finally Quinton stopped playing with the brim of his hat and asked, “What do you think about the bone flutes?”

“I’m not sure what they’re for, but I keep getting directed to those bone mages Carlos mentioned last year—the Kostní Mágové. The flutes seem like something that might be connected to them. Given his reaction to said mages, that worries me.”

“You were a little . . . hard on Sam.”

“She was being stubborn and hardheaded about the idea of anything paranormal, and I don’t want some little girl—and especially not your niece—to go through the sort of horrors my father went through because other people didn’t believe what he experienced.”

“Do you really think she’s . . . Grey?”

“It sounds like it. But I’m more convinced by your father’s gifts and his taking her at what appears to be a period of increasing activity for him. It makes no sense for him to kidnap his own granddaughter unless she’s useful to him in a specific way. Otherwise, he’d find some other child—some poor immigrant kid no one is watching out for or some drug addict’s kid, or any of hundreds of children he could find a way to grab without having to go all the way to Carcavelos and take a member of his own family. It’s got to be significant.” I shook my head in frustration. “I wish Mara were here. She’d have a much better idea of what might be going on with your niece. I really miss Mara.”

Quinton frowned. “Because she could be useful.” He hated that I leaned on my friends for help that often got them hurt. I’d made myself break that habit, but the memory of it was still there and it rankled that he thought I might fall back into that pattern.

“No. Not because she’s a witch,” I said. “Because she’s a mother. I’m not. I know I bullied Sam a little back there. I am not proud of that. I just don’t know any other way to talk to professionals except to give it to them straight. I treated your sister like a doctor who wasn’t reading the whole chart. Because I’m not any good at being gentle to a mother’s feelings about her kids. I’m a moose in a mouse factory where that sort of thing is concerned. Mara would have done much better. And she would have had a reasonable idea of what Soraia’s talents are and why your father might have snatched her. And that’s why I wish Mara were here. That and I miss her—I haven’t seen any of the Danzigers in, what . . . four years? Brian must be in school by now.”

“He’s Soraia’s age.”

I peered sideways at him. “Oh really?”

He nodded, blushing. “They’re in Spain. I saw them once, from a distance a few months ago.”

“No wonder you quit the spy game—you’re sentimental!”

“No. I’m just . . . concerned about my friends when they might be in the way of trouble.”

“And are they?”

“As it happens, no. Mara and Ben seem to have good instincts for when they should move on. But . . . they are just over the border about a hundred miles.”

“Which is nothing to an American, the way a hundred years is nothing to a European. Are you suggesting we call them into this?”

“No. Or not yet. But as you say, you’re not a mother and Mara is, so maybe when we’re closer to getting Soraia back, it would be a good idea to get the Danzigers in on the act. Sam and the kids will need a safer place to stay until this is all over—with someone who can protect them from the paranormal as well as the usual threats—and I don’t think that getting Soraia back from Dad is going to put his plans on hold for very long.”

“Unless he’s dead.”

Quinton shuddered. “I can’t—”

“I’m not asking you to. But your sister was right about that, and you know it. He won’t stop. So yeah, even if we get Soraia back, he’s going to have a plan B and he’ll put it in motion as soon as he can. You know we’re going to have to find some permanent way to neutralize him or this is never going to be over.”

Quinton sighed and leaned his head against the back of the seat. “I know. God, I know.”

We both fell silent and looked out the window until we reached the Cais do Sodré again. It was a little after six in the evening and Quinton asked to walk instead of taking the metro back to Rossio station where we’d started. He seemed to need to move, to burn off the red anger that had been building around him since we’d left Carcavelos. We had more than an hour until Carlos would wake up, so I agreed. He put his hat on and kept his head down as he went, shadowing his face. I did the same, just in case.

We walked a zigzag track through the straight streets of Lisbon’s downtown—the Pombaline downtown, Quinton called it, named for the Portuguese nobleman responsible for the rebuilding after the earthquake of 1755. The ruler-straight roads and rows of aesthetically similar buildings reminded me a little of Seattle’s downtown core that had been forced to be flat and geometrically pleasing by tearing the hills down and throwing the dirt into the gaping hole that was now South Downtown. It didn’t look the same, but the shadows of what had been before were as persistent. We passed through misty walls as easily as ghosts and the specters of the long-dead stepped suddenly in front of us, running from destruction on roads that had vanished two centuries before. I tried to think more about the resurrection of the city than its destruction, and that seemed to help with the feelings of pain and panic that threatened to overwhelm me in the presence of the endless repetition of Lisbon’s collapse.

We wove and turned until I wasn’t sure where we were or what direction we faced. Then Quinton turned through a doorway into a bookshop. It was small and smelled dusty, but it was well-ordered and the strange, warm light of Lisbon fell through the windowpanes to touch the books with gold. I wandered among the stacks while Quinton went to talk to the proprietor. Passing the occasional ghostly customer, I was relieved at the insulation that the shop seemed to have from the worst of the memories outside. Old Possum’s—my friend Phoebe’s used bookstore at home—had a similar effect. I wondered whether books somehow collected the intellectual joy of their readers and let it back out, subtly, when they were gathered in a critical mass. The idea charmed me, even if it wasn’t likely to be right.

Most of the books were in Portuguese, but there was also a section of books in English. I was poking through an aging hardcover edition of Daphne Du Maurier’s The House on the Strand—and feeling entirely in sympathy with the discomfort and distress of the time-traveling hero—when Quinton came back to find me.

“I have a present for you,” he said, holding out a package wrapped in a loose bit of green cloth.

I took it, curious, and flipped the cloth open to find a set of ID—including a British passport and driver’s license in the name of Helena Robinson-Smith. I thought the name sounded far too posh, but the photos were of me, nonetheless. Under the cards was a small pile of money in euros.

“Oh, you shouldn’t have,” I said in mock surprise.

“Well, you can’t go around with no ID and no cash.” He held up his own ID, which was in the name of Christopher Marlowe Smith.

I raised an eyebrow. “Really.”

“It’s not my fault the guy’s parents had a queer literary bent. Honestly, that’s the name that came up—I had nothing to do with it. I will only admit that I didn’t say no to being Kit Marlowe for a while.”

“So long as you don’t get killed in a tavern brawl or decide your taste suddenly runs to men, I guess I can live with it.”

“Unlikely on both counts. You should put those away in your purse before we go outside. Remember the pickpockets.”

“Are they really that bad?” I asked as I tucked the ID and cash into my little straw bag. As my hand brushed the bottom, I felt only one key.

My heart lurched and I knelt down to turn the purse out onto the floor. The ID and cash were there, of course, but only one key, and it didn’t look like the big, old iron house key Rafa had given me. “Oh . . . Damn it! The house keys are gone!” I picked up the remaining key—a boring modern door key in appearance—and it weighed far too much. I stared at it, cocking my head to the side to look through the edges of the Grey.

The key looked as it had inside the house—a large, old skeleton-type key that would fit the lock on my suite door, but not the larger lock on the gate. “What the hell?” I puzzled with it for a moment as Quinton knelt down beside me.

“What happened?”

“Well, someone did pick my pocket, but all they got was the gate key. And it won’t look like much to them, so with luck I can get the housekeeper’s attention and get in without it. I still have the key to my room.” I held it up.

“Doesn’t look like much, but I take it from the way you’re staring at it, that there’s more to it than that.”

I nodded. “When she handed it to me, it was a big old-fashioned key, like something from a castle dungeon. It still feels the same weight, but I can only see the real shape of the key in the Grey. There’s something very interesting about that house. . . .”

“I’ll bet. Do you have any idea where the key was taken from you?”

“No. Could have been at the train station or in Rossio Square, or on the metro. . . . I was jostled a lot. If I were guessing, I’d say the train station on the way out to your sister’s place, but that’s only a guess.”

“I don’t think we’re going to find it, but we can walk back to the station and ask. . . .”

I shook my head, replacing the contents of the bag and getting to my feet with a sigh. “No, there’s no point. I could identify it only if they show me the key, since it would look like this nondescript one to anyone who couldn’t see it in the Grey. Somewhere there’s a very confused pickpocket—he grabbed something that felt big and heavy and impressive and got what appears to be an overweight house key. He probably threw it away in disgust.”

“I hope this isn’t going to cause you problems.”

“I hope not, too, but I’ll deal with that if it happens.”

“Ah, that’s my Helena. So pragmatic as well as beautiful.”

“Helena? Oh,” I said, remembering the name on my new ID.

He gave me a silly grin and said, “You remember. ‘Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, and burnt the topless towers of Ilium? Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.’”

I gave him a sour look instead. “More likely I’ll make you immortal by introducing you to the wrong vampire. I think Kit Marlowe has gone to your head.”

He gave a very small, strained laugh. “Well, so long as there’s some kissing in there somewhere, I guess I’ll be OK with it. It has been quite a while. . . .”

I laughed at him and gave him a fast kiss. And then a longer one. “You are a very odd man.”

“At least I make you laugh when things get terrible.”

“You do,” I conceded, knowing that at least part of the laughter was a sham on both our parts. “But, eww! Vampire kisses!” I gave a mock shudder.

“Some people obviously like them.”

I thought of the mark on Tovah’s wrist and the way she’d deferred to Carlos. “I would never volunteer to be a vampire snack,” I said.

“Why not?” Quinton asked, taking my book and looking it over, keeping his face turned from mine.

“How can you ask that?”

He looked up, still holding the book in one hand, and took my arm, turning me so we could make our way out of the store. “Because I want to understand it. While I know you never would, I’m not actually sure why.” As we passed the elderly man at the front counter, Quinton tipped his hat with one hand and held up the book in the other. “Obrigado, Doutor Barros.”

“De nada, Senhor Smith,” the man replied, nodding and smiling as if we weren’t stealing his book.

Outside, Quinton continued to steer me along the streets, his expression serious as he kept his eyes on anything but me, and repeated his question in a soft voice. “Why would you not? I just want to understand what makes you certain you wouldn’t give in—I mean that is kind of their stock-in-trade.”

I replied in a low voice, feeling confused by his choice of topic. “Because they’re dead and they’re power mongers. Their glamour doesn’t affect me, so as far as I’m concerned, all vampires are just upright corpses with terrible habits. And they smell bad. Also, Carlos and Cameron have let it slip once or twice that there’s more to blood in the vampire community than just cells and plasma. I don’t want to give up a little chunk of my life or be under anyone’s control—no matter how slight, distant, or seemingly useful—regardless of the upside. Bitten by a walking corpse . . . ? Does that sound like a good thing to you?”

“No. But my own ideas about why turn out not to be the same as yours.”

“Oh? What was your idea?”

“I’d rather not discuss it,” he replied, blushing.

I frowned at him, thinking. “Oh. Yuck! I wouldn’t do that with a vampire, either!”

Quinton laughed. “I didn’t think so.”

“Oh, you did, too. You might not have believed it, but you thought it.”

“I blame popular fiction.”

I made a face. “When do you read pop fiction? I thought you were a politics and sciences guy.”

“I’ve spent a lot of time on trains and lurking around in public places. Having a book in front of your nose excuses a lot of just sitting around. But you have to pick a title no one is likely to ask you about. Oddly enough, few people want to pick the brains of men who read fantasy novels. Except those by George R. R. Martin—everyone wants to ask if you’ve seen the TV show.”

“And have you?”

“No. I’m more of a Doctor Who guy.”

I made a disbelieving noise in the back of my throat and let the conversation die.

I was managing the upheaval of the earthquake better now, but it was difficult until I let the sound weave into it, rather than trying to separate vision from hearing. I’d been a dancer longer than I’d been an investigator, and though I can’t sing, feeling the relationship of music to image and movement had once been a habit. The sad song of Lisbon’s magical Grid seemed to transform the events of 1755 into tragedy, instead of nightmare, drawing across the strands of my own energetic core like a bow over the strings of a violin. It urged me to slow down, to move with drooping, dolorous gestures, letting tears rise to the edge of my lashes until I had to stop and lean against a building to wipe them away.

Quinton paused and turned back to me. “Are you all right?”

“It’s this place—it makes me cry.”

“Earlier, it made you ache. Is this an improvement?”

“No. Pain I can work through. Anger I can use. Sorrow is difficult to turn into positive energy.”

“What can I do?”

“Just . . . be you.”

“I’m usually good at that, though I’ve been so many other people in the past eight months, I may be out of practice,” he replied, making his best effort not to slide back into his anger.

“Let’s keep going. I can manage better if you hold my hand while we walk.”

He smiled—imperfect and still worried, but still an expression that lifted my heart. “That will be a pleasure. It’s not as good as kissing you, but I can settle.”

I laughed a little, as he’d no doubt hoped, and put my hand in his.