Revenant

ELEVEN

Carlos looked his usual self—no sign of the disordered and hungry state I’d found him in less than an hour ago. He strode to the window and glanced down, then turned aside and found a bit of naked stone wall to lean against. He crossed his arms over his chest and glared around the room in annoyance. “A shambles,” he muttered. “What a state my house has fallen into.”

The tower room wasn’t round, but rectangular, narrower at the front and rear where the windows broke the wall with tiny mullions of thick, wavy glass in lead and iron frames. A tiled mantelpiece took up the center of the left wall and surrounded a deep fireplace that currently flickered with an eerie yellow light that gave off no heat. A large map of Lisbon as it had been before the earthquake hung above the mantel. Candles in sconces and many-armed candelabra added a more-normal firelight to the room. The flames swayed in the currents of air we made as we moved to a long wooden bench set in front of a table opposite the fire. There were two heavy chairs next to the hearth, but I had no desire to sit in either of them, tangled as they were with remnant threads of red and black energy. There was not a single ghost to be seen and the temporaclines lay in cold, compacted strata against the floor, shimmering like ice, shot through by a hot pillar of dark red energy that rose straight from the floor and spread a network of smaller lines like blood vessels across the ceiling and walls.

The fireplace was large and had a pot hook, but no pot, hanging over it, though there were several dusty, cobwebbed iron vessels piled near it on one side. Half of the walls were covered in bookshelves laden with moldering books, their leather spines cracked with age or eaten away by beetles. A carved, dark wood desk stood among the shelves, also scattered with tomes, dust, and spiderwebs. Old, dark stains the color of dried blood marred the pages of one open book. Stains of a similar color crossed the floor and vanished under the moth-eaten carpet. I closed my eyes a moment and concentrated, feeling the slightest tremor of lingering magic and death beneath my feet. A row of skulls occupied the top of one of the bookshelves, their empty eye sockets and grinning teeth unpleasantly white and gleaming, as if the former residents still hovered near their bones in forms of transient light. The right side of the room was mostly occupied with worktables, cabinets, and equipment I couldn’t—and didn’t want to—name. An odor hung in the air, a blend of melting beeswax, crumbling books, and dire experiments.

Beside me on the bench, Quinton hunched his shoulders and leaned a bit forward, unconsciously keeping his back from touching the worktable behind us.

“I hadn’t thought I’d be gone so long,” Carlos said, “or I would have worked a different ward over this place. It kept people out, perhaps too well, but had no effect on filth or vermin. I had expected the house to have changed in two hundred and fifty years, but I foolishly left this room exactly as it was. And thus . . . it is exactly as it is.” He made a sound of disgust and gestured at the hearth, wiping out the illusion of a fire and dimming the room enough to induce shadows in the corners and under the tables. He plucked a bit of blackness from a shadow and whispered to it, “Venhais, minhas sombras,” spinning it between his fingers and then crushing it into his fist, which he then flicked open underhand, scattering the glittering dust of shadow into the murk beneath the chairs and tables. Something black crept there, where there had been nothing before.

I had rarely seen him work magic so casually and I wondered if it was the place—in spite of his discontent with it—that made it easy, or something else. I thought the creeping thing beneath the table was one of the nevoacria I’d seen at Carlos’s Seattle house—shadow creatures that skulked along the ground of the former graveyard. I knew that calling them any great distance would have been wasteful and difficult, so I assumed this one was created on the spot, as easily as most men button their cuffs. Neither summoning nor creating is a simple cantrip, so I was impressed and a little disturbed by his trick. As I stared at it, the nevoacria seemed to grow, like the darkness of rising night, deepening until there was no light to show any feature, only the strange, slithering movement of the shadow-thing as it multiplied and spread in the gloom.

Carlos turned his gaze back to us and leaned against the wall. “What developed while I slept?”

I started with, “James Purlis has kidnapped his granddaughter—Quinton’s niece—and I believe I saw some kind of drachen today. Quinton saw one of them as well, just down the hill from here.”

“In the daylight?” Carlos asked, scowling.

“Yes, though it was sunset. Others saw it, too. It didn’t last long or seem to do anything but fall apart, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we saw something like this at Purlis’s Seattle lab more than a year ago and again here when he’s obviously in town and up to no good.”

“Hmm,” Carlos rumbled, the resonance of his voice making the old house shiver. “It’s unlikely to be coincidence and it could be a different creature entirely, but it may mean more once I’ve heard the rest. Go on.”

Between us, Quinton and I told him about Soraia’s abduction by her grandfather and those who’d been with him. When I told him I suspected she had a touch of Grey to her, Carlos stopped me with an upraised hand.

“How old is this child?”

“Six.”

“That is quite young to display a talent.”

“I don’t think she’s manifested a particular talent yet—she might not ever. But she sees ghosts, claims to see fairies in the garden, knows the answers to questions she has no reason to know, experiences strange events without any idea that they’re unusual, and charms birds. There is also the rather odd collection of presents Purlis and his two companions left for her.”

I got the gifts from my purse, handling them with care so I didn’t touch anything but the boxes and wrappers containing them. I laid them on the nearest table and stepped away to let Carlos examine them. “The white box contains both of the bone flutes. I get a sort of shock when I touch them, so you’ll have to open the box yourself.”

“Bone flutes are hardly an oddity on their own account,” Carlos said. “The bones of birds and cattle or deer shins have been used in musical instruments for eons.”

“These gave me the impression of human bones.”

Quinton stood beside me and we watched Carlos unwrap and study the objects. He picked each up, muttering, looking it over, then closing his eyes and cocking his head slightly as if listening to each in turn.

Carlos set the flutes aside with a delicate touch as if they might shatter in an instant. Then he picked up the crystal on its chain in one hand and the doll in the other.

“Quinton, were you a Boy Scout?”

“I was a Purlis scout. Why?”

“The wood is very old, but I hope you can build a fire with it.”

Quinton eyed the dusty, cobwebbed chunks of wood beside the fireplace. “They might burn a little fast if the bugs have gotten to them, but, yeah, I can make a fire with those.”

“Do so. Please.”

I made a face as Quinton busied himself with the logs. “I wasn’t a Girl Scout, but I do know how to make a fire.”

“I have no doubt, Blaine, but I need you to hold this,” Carlos said, handing me the chain. “Let the crystal dangle without swaying and take care not to touch it.”

I did as he instructed, letting the smoky, black-stabbed quartz hang straight from my fist with the excess length of chain wrapped around my hand. It was an uncomfortable object, making my hand prickle with cold as if it had fallen asleep.

Kneeling at the hearth, Quinton struck a spark from a small metal object with the back of his pocketknife, and the fire caught immediately on the dry tinder he’d placed under the wood. As soon as the fire had begun to consume the logs, Carlos told him to stand aside. Quinton, looking nervous, retreated to the corner of the desk.

Carlos drew his arm back and flung the doll into the fireplace with sufficient force to shatter its porcelain head. A vile black shape like a spider with too many legs fell from the broken doll and burst into flame with a shriek. The necromancer stepped closer to the fire, muttering rapidly and reaching forward as if to catch the black smoke that curled from the burning thing. The wisp of darkness bowed toward him, flowing against the natural current of air, which should have gone up the chimney but bent, instead, into Carlos’s hand. “Mostre-me onde ela é,” he said, sweeping the smoke toward me.

The black fume curled and flowed toward the crystal, then into it, swirling through the network of rutile that cut through the quartz. The crystal twitched and swung in a circle, then jerked north, the pendant wavering between two points for a moment until the crystal cracked with a harsh sound. A sudden rush of black smoke poured from the crystal in two directions until all the darkness had fled the room, leaving a nauseating stench like burning creosote in the air.

Carlos opened the window at the front while Quinton hurried to do the same at the rear of the room, letting the night’s cool wind sweep the stink away on the weeping song of Lisbon. I stood still with the broken crystal dangling from my hand, not sure what Carlos wanted me to do with the thing.

In a moment he crossed the room to face me, putting out his hand and narrowing his eyes as if he were thinking difficult thoughts. “That I did not expect.”

“What? The swinging or the breaking?” I asked, handing over the shattered pendant, glad to release it and feel warmth rush back into my hand.

Carlos took the crystal and chain with care and laid them on the table. “The inability to pick a direction. Unless the child is moving back and forth, there must be more than one ‘she’ that this device cleaved to.”

“If one is my niece, then, could the other be the mage who made this nasty bit of work?” Quinton asked, casting a disgusted glance at the wreck of the doll and its passenger, still burning in the grate. “One of Dad’s companions was female and Sam said she made an unpleasant impression.”

Carlos raised an eyebrow. “There were no female bone mages in my day—as there were no female priests, either—but there well could be now. It would explain a great deal. Let us see what else we can discover.”

“I’d be willing to bet the man with her was of the same party,” I added.

“Young or old?” Carlos asked.

“Seventy or so, Sam said, and she thought he was Portuguese, but I assume appearances can be deceiving in this case. She said he had blue eyes—she found it striking.”

He grunted, thinking, and asked, “What of the other?”

“Sam said the woman looked to be in her fifties, blond, probably American or English.”

Carlos looked intrigued and thoughtful as he turned back to the table where the two bone flutes lay. He picked up each one in turn and studied them. “An interesting pair. Made from matching bones and very similar, but not carved by the same mage.”

“I thought they looked like the same bone from different . . . um . . . donors,” I said.

“No. These came from the same human body. They are two arm bones—the radii—from the same person. Together they are a pair left and right, but not identical.” He held up the darker of the two flutes. “This was created by the master some time ago, a man I knew when he was but an apprentice”—he held up the other, cleaner flute—“and this recently by the current apprentice. Her name is Maggie Griffin, though that means nothing to me. It is strange, however, that the lesser instrument has the more difficult mouthpiece. . . .”

Quinton and I exchanged looks. “What do you mean?” I asked.

“The older instrument has a fipple—like the mouth of a recorder or tin whistle. They make sound easily. But the apprentice’s instrument is end-blown, like a quena, and has only an elliptical notch that is much harder to use. There’s no need for such difficulty, so it must be vanity. . . .”

“Vanity can be very useful from our perspective,” I said.

“Yes. In this, I think the apprentice made a mistake that will help us find her all the faster.”

“Do you think the apprentice is the woman who came to Sam’s house?” Quinton asked, scowling.

“Without a doubt. Even if her companion was the master, he would still insist on her placing the instruments herself. It was a test. The doll and crystal were lesser attempts, simpler, but less sophisticated. That there was a redundant method for luring your niece away speaks of ongoing training, though it is increasingly advanced. Perhaps not an apprentice but a journeyman, still within her master’s house, which could be why she chose the difficult mouthpiece—to show him her skill at small details.”

“To show off,” Quinton corrected.

Carlos gave him a small nod. “Perhaps. Certainly it would explain the vanity of such a piece. She has pride, which may be her undoing.”

“We can hope,” Quinton added.

“Before we can undo her, we must find her more precisely. . . .” Carlos began looking through the various equipment around the room, searching the cabinets, lifting up the pans piled beside the fireplace, and raising dust into the air. He put a few items, including the shattered crystal, on the worktable Quinton and I had been leaning against and where the bone flutes now rested. Then he went to the hearth and stooped to scoop some of the bright red coals out of the fire and into a three-footed iron bowl—some sort of small brazier, I guessed. The bowl smoked a little as the coals burned away the remnants of dust and cobwebs. Holding the smoking bowl in his bare hand, Carlos brought it back to the table and set it down, then arranged the flutes on either side of it, the mouthpieces facing the bowl of coals.

“Snuff most of the candles, being careful not to raise the dust. Leave a scattering of them alight,” Carlos ordered, scribing a circle around the brazier in the tabletop’s dust. Once closed, the circle gleamed gold.

Quinton and I scrambled to extinguish as many of the candles as we could, leaving four burning in various locations throughout the room. The light was just enough to see the room by and no brighter. Carlos dropped dried matter and powders onto the bright red coals in the brazier. Then he put his open hand palm up on the bench where shadows now gathered. Two of the nevoacria crept into it, making his hand disappear in their darkness. He lifted them to the table and they crept to huddle in the shade of the bowl.

The bowl emitted the smell of sandalwood and graveyard dust, white smoke curling upward from the embers.

“Quinton, I require a drop of your blood.”

“Mine? Why?” he asked, but still started forward.

“The familial tie should strengthen our connection to your missing niece and the woman who took her. My own blood won’t do, and I fear to think what would happen if I fed this spell a drop of a Greywalker’s blood.”

Quinton finished crossing the room faster and stopped beside Carlos. He put out his hand, looking determined, though his fingers trembled. “If that’s what it takes.”

Carlos must have noticed Quinton’s fear and discomfort, but he said nothing, picked up a measuring compass from the tabletop outside the circle, and pricked the smallest finger on Quinton’s hand with one of the points. Quinton flinched but made no sound as a single large, bright drop of blood fell onto the smoking coals. Quinton yanked his hand back as if it had been scalded.

The smoke billowed into a cloud that expanded only as far as the edges of the circle, but rose upward in a confined column. Carlos put the compass down. “Step away from the table.”

Quinton did as he was told, watching the smoking brazier with suspicion.

Carlos snatched both the nevoacria from their hiding place under the hot bowl and threw them into the brazier, one on each side. The shadow creatures squealed and writhed in the heat, but they didn’t burn or dissolve. Carlos muttered while making a pulling-apart motion with both hands over the squirming things. They stretched from the bowl until they had touched the flutes, their bodies of shade and gloom forming conduits through which I could see the smoke begin to flow.

The candles flickered and burned low. Carlos continued to speak in a low, rapid voice that seemed to rob the world of sound rather than add to it—until the flutes began to sing.

The smoke from the brazier gave voices to the bone flutes and they played a long, high chord of melancholy and pain. Carlos snatched at the smoke as it rose from the flutes and muttered into his fisted hands, “Show me where the child is. Show me Soraia Rebelo,” before he blew the smoke away.

The keening smoke coiled and seemed to resist for a minute. Then it turned, swirling trails of white vapor in the air, and moved toward the map pinned to the wall above the mantel. It wove back and forth a moment, then plunged into the map on the north wall, spinning against the dusty surface and raising a smell of burning.

In a few moments the smoke had vanished as the flutes burned to ash, leaving only a smudge and a stink of singed parchment. Carlos put a lid over the brazier, smothering the coals and the screaming nevoacria. Then he smeared his hand over the edge of the circle, wiping a clean swath in the dust all the way to the edge of the table. The light of the remaining candles flared up brighter, chasing away the closed feeling and silencing the crying sound of the city below.

Quinton and Carlos looked at the map while I stood a bit behind them. “It points to nothing, just north again. That’s more than we had, but not much,” Quinton said.

Carlos frowned at the map. “The stain lies beyond the city’s edge. . . .”

“Only when that map was accurate,” I said. “I’d be willing to bet there’s something there now. We need a modern map the same scale as that one. We can overlay the location and find out what’s there now.”

Quinton gave a harsh laugh. “We don’t need to go to that much trouble. I have a computer. All we need is to measure the distance and direction from here and then enter the two sets of coordinates into the right type of mapping program. I just need that compass from the table and I can get to work.”

Quinton was relieved to finally have something to do, rather than just marching through the collection of data and waiting through the arcana of spell casting, and he went at it with a grim determination. Once Carlos had handed him the compass, he set it against the distance scale on the edge of the map and prepared to stab one of the measuring points into the parchment. “Where are we on this map, Carlos?”

Carlos touched a small brown square on the lower section of the map. “Here.”

Quinton set one of the compass points on the square and used the spine of a book to guide him as he measured the distance, muttering to himself, before asking for something with which to write the information down. When he was satisfied, we closed the windows and extinguished the candles before we left the tower and returned to my rooms.

Quinton fetched his small laptop from his messenger bag and opened it on the tiny desk. “It’s a good thing the management company installed a data line a few years ago or we’d be screwed,” he said. He fiddled and typed for a while, entered some data, typed some more. . . .

“Carlos, tell me if I’ve got the right house.”

The vampire looked over his shoulder. “You do.”

Quinton grunted. He typed some more numbers and then hit RETURN.

We waited a few minutes and the map appeared with two red pins on it. Quinton zoomed the view in to the point he calculated the smoke had touched on the other map. It looked like a huge empty field about a half mile from the nearest major road, with only a single crooked block of shanty buildings sitting in the middle of nothing at the end of a dirt road called Alta da Eira.

“What is that?” I asked.

“The area is called Penha de França and that in particular looks like a car repair shop in an abandoned commercial development. I think the area’s scheduled for urban renewal, but until the bulldozers come and the building starts, it’s pretty depressed and there aren’t a lot of people there. A perfect place to hide a little girl for a few days.”

Carlos continued to look at the screen for a while without speaking. At last he said, “It was a pastoral hill and fields for miles in every direction around the Rock of France and its small church. Shepherds and cowherds grazed flocks under the trees. Now there are no trees, no flocks, no church. Only the emptiness of progress.”

“The church is still there,” Quinton said, tapping the screen with his fingertip on a tiny building packed tightly into a block of other buildings.

“That is not the church I recall.”

“It may have been rebuilt.”

“I have no doubt.” Carlos’s tone closed that avenue of the conversation like a tomb.

The silence lingered and weighed upon us until Quinton broke its hold. “Carlos . . . What do you think these bone mages want my niece for?”

The necromancer turned his bowed head, studying Quinton with narrowed eyes and an unpleasant curl to his lips. “For her bones, boy. What else?”

“They’ll kill her for them?”

“Yes, but not casually or quickly. They are frugal and it will be done by rite and ceremony they may have had no time to prepare yet. And they may have other uses for her before she dies.”

Quinton paled, but in cold fury, not fear. “You probably shouldn’t tell me what other ‘uses’ they might have.”

Carlos scoffed. “Nothing so profane as you’re imagining. They’re aesthetes, priests of the bones. They’d have little interest in defiling her in such a manner.”

“That isn’t much of a relief. Who would murder a six-year-old girl for her bones? What kind of monsters can do that?”

One corner of Carlos’s mouth quirked up in an ironic expression.

Quinton saw it and shook his head. “No. You wouldn’t.”

“I have. And much worse.” Carlos glanced at me and back to Quinton, adding, “But I am not what I was.”

“Yes, but . . . what do they want her bones for? What is my father up to?”

“Your father may know nothing of their purpose, or he may have convinced himself that such a sacrifice is necessary for a greater good. Either way, the Kostní Mágové are not known for subtlety. If they require the bones of a young child of the family as their price for whatever agreement they have with your father, their goal is nothing short of catastrophic. They will build something of those bones, something of magic and horrors. I don’t yet know what, though the appearance of drachen may be telling. Whatever it is, it shall be devastating.”

“How are we going to get her back and stop them?”

“Those are two separate goals. In depriving them of your niece, we will only redirect their plans, but it will buy us time to discover what they intend.”

“But how?” Quinton yelled, pounding one fist into the top of the delicate antique desk so hard it creaked under the blow.

“We attack the weakest link—we confront Maggie Griffin.”

“It’s not going to be that easy to get Soraia back.”

“No, but Griffin has the child and we have no other choices. The sooner we find your niece, the better the chance that she’ll be alive. As I presume that is your preference, we must move tonight.”

Over his shoulder, for only a moment, Amélia appeared and vanished again.