Revenant

by Kat Richardson

  “How?” I started.

  Quinton interrupted. “None of this conversation is going to matter if we get captured,” he said, taking a step away from the bench and the window near it. “Look out the window, discreetly, and tell me what—or more to the point—who you see across the street.”

  Carlos leaned his head to one side and peered down. I turned my gaze sideways through the Grey, looking for energy signs that were familiar or dangerous. There were three distinct and unpleasant forms outside in the Grey and a fourth, weaker one, farther down the road. The first was a violent tangle of colors tightly contained in bands of white that rose from the cold lines of the Grid in the street below—I knew the shape of it, but the colors weren’t as I remembered them. Beside it were two shorter shapes: One was a brittle black and bone-white with towering spikes of blood-red erupting from it; the other was a less-complex black-and-white I recognized from two nights earlier as Maggie Griffin. I couldn’t tell much about the fourth one—the colors were strange shades of aqua, violet, and marine blue, their curling, calligraphic shape unfamiliar. I stepped away from the window also and pushed myself back into the normal plane, casting only a glance out the physical window to confirm what I thought.

  Well down the road, a skinny teenager crouched at the edge of the sidewalk, looking around with strange, dreamy eyes as he chalked something on the stones. I wasn’t sure if he was part of the party closer to the house or not. Across the street, at its widest point, where the road turned and flowed around a huge old tree that was now in the center of the lane, Maggie Griffin stood with her back to us, dressed as before in her narrow black dress and heels. She stood just in front of two men as if arguing with or being chastised by them. One I recognized instantly: Quinton’s father, James McHenry Purlis. He leaned heavily on a cane and his stance was awkward, his left trouser leg falling unevenly over the clumsy shape of a badly fitted artificial leg. Beside him stood the old man I’d seen with the priest and again at the bone temple with Griffin. He was short and slim, but age hadn’t bent him and where his wavy hair hadn’t gone gray, it was the lusterless black color of soot.

  “Rui Araújo e Botelho de Carreira,” Carlos said. “When we both labored under Lenoir—the mage who imprisoned Sergeyev—he was called O Anjo do Dor.”

  Quinton scowled. “The Angel of Pain? That seems kind of anticlimactic. Why not the Angel of Death? It has more gravitas.”

  “That is what he called me when his education passed into my hands.”

  “I should have guessed.”

  Carlos only lifted an eyebrow.

  “And of the others, one I don’t know, one’s Griffin, and the other’s your father,” I added. “And like Sam said—his left leg is missing from the knee down and his energy color is . . . way off. That can’t be good.”

  Now Carlos scowled. “This presents a complication, but possibly an advantage to us. Rui cannot leave Portugal and plainly he is the master at work here. Whatever else they need to complete the Dragão do Inferno, it must be in Portugal and they will set it aflame here.”

  “That’s nice. In the meantime, we need to get the hell out of Dodge,” said Quinton.

  “There are tunnels—” I started.

  “Those will only take us into the castle,” Carlos said. “With Rui and Griffin this close, that would be an insufficient distance. We can buy time, but with no safe harbor to flee to, time is not enough.”

  “Let’s start by getting out of this room where they can see us,” I suggested. “Apparently, Rafa’s temporacline doesn’t operate here, since we see the contemporary world through the windows, and not the world of her time—as we did in the salon last night.”

  Quinton looked to Carlos. “My dad’s a hell of a tracker. What about this Rui?”

  “Only fair, without recourse to the bones, but he has the scent of us from our visit to their circle. He knows we are here as well or better than your father does.”

  “Would he be able to detect our presence when we’re in Rafa’s time frame?”

  “Yes, but it would be confusing, even with Griffin’s assistance. If they were in the house and we were outside it, however, the difficulty would be greater, since the house traps magic and contains many temporaclines that scatter and dissipate spells attempted by those unfamiliar with the building’s peculiarities. I could also ensure that they have difficulty leaving. . . .”

  “Then we should get into the kitchen, where Rafa’s effect is strongest. That will buy us a little time right now to figure out where to run and how to get them stuck in here when we do.”

  “I have no doubt that they will enter on their own if we leave any opening. You trust our mysterious Rafa’s effect more than I,” Carlos said, but he started for the door with us right behind him.

  “It’s not that I trust it—or her,” said Quinton as we began down the tower stairs, “but that I’ve been stuck here more hours than either of you and had the chance to study her more. There’s something very strange about Rafa.”

  “What, aside from being dead?” I asked.

  “Yes. She’s aware of the passage of time since her death, and yet she really isn’t. It’s as if events happen in a vacuum and they all occur simultaneously.”

  “Ghosts lose their sense of time and chronology,” I said. “They have no reference for events outside their own lifetimes. Or at least most don’t.”

  “I’ve been trying to figure out how she’s connected to this house, aside from having been the housekeeper. She seems to know Amélia, and yet, their lifetimes have no overlap. Ghosts aren’t usually aware of other ghosts, are they?”

  Carlos and I exchanged glances over Quinton’s head, but it was I who answered. “If they were aware of an older ghost before they died, they might know about them afterward. But it’s rare for them to know a ghost from a different time frame the same way you and I know living people. It’s not like there’s some ghostly party going on where they discuss their afterlives with one another.”

  “But that’s the relationship they seem to have. Rafa calls Amélia ‘Avó,’ which means—”

  “Grandmother,” Carlos supplied.

  Quinton stopped at the second floor hallway and offered an expectant look.

  Carlos shook his head. “I had no children and most of my near family was executed. There were a few surviving women and children, but their descendants would be remote nieces or cousins at best.”

  “But it’s possible she is a relative.”

  “In a distant fashion.”

  Quinton looked thoughtful. “Did your family have any . . . estates or land elsewhere in Portugal?”

  “Yes, many.”

  “Any that grew olives?”

  “Probably, but they were no concern of mine since I was a bastard and would not inherit any of them.”

  “What about your wife?”

  “Her family had no title, but they were wealthy and I believe they gave her a small property as a wedding gift. It produced income, but it was in the east. I never saw it.”

  “You mean, like . . . the Middle East?”

  “No. Eastern Portugal near the Spanish border. It was an area frequently in dispute between the two countries.”

  “They grow olives in the east, but are more famous for cork, wheat, livestock. . . . No wonder she apologized. . . .”

  “For what?”

  “She said there was nothing left but olives as if that were a disappointment. If, when you were alive, the estate made its money off the cork oaks or other products but those are all gone now, she might have felt she’d let you down . . . Dom Carlos. She talks about you like you’re some kind of family legend. You’re certain Amélia didn’t . . . have an affair or anything like that . . . ?”

  “No. It would be surprising if she hadn’t. But there was no pregnancy, no child.” Carlos frowned. “But if Rafa is a granddaughter of Am
élia’s through adultery, she should have no tie to this house. It is mine alone.”

  “Well, she’s somebody’s kid. Maybe we should have a chat with Amélia before we blow town,” Quinton suggested, and turned to continue down the stairs to the kitchen.

  Outside, I heard a distant boom and a crack like that of giant wings, while a shiver of heat passed through the Grey.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The kitchen proved a difficult place to summon Amélia. It had probably been a room she rarely frequented when alive—the realm of domestic servants, not the lady of the house. Carlos was becoming frustrated, when Rafa come into the room behind us. He caught her, pinning her in place near the stove with the same word and gesture he’d used the night before. She looked alarmed but didn’t fight.

  He leaned close to Rafa. “Who is the lady of this house?” Carlos asked her.

  Rafa was confused. “Sua espousa, meu senhor.”

  “My wife?”

  “Sim. Ela é minha bisavó.” Rafa seemed to find the whole conversation odd and she frowned at him. “Por que você está tão cruel com ela? Por que você trouxe essas pessoas—”

  Carlos moved his hand in front of her as if he were brushing her speech aside and Rafa fell instantly silent. He looked at Quinton and me, standing on the other side of the old wooden kitchen table. “In Rafa’s temporacline, Amélia is the mistress of the house. She resists coming when I call her, using the power Rafa has given her as leverage. She has no such strength in other versions of the house.”

  “But we aren’t as safe,” I said.

  “True. But if we move swiftly, we can capture Amélia and escape before Griffin, Rui, and Purlis can get past the gate.”

  “That’s assuming they haven’t been busily working their way in while we’ve been hanging out with Rafa,” Quinton said.

  “They have, but I have a little control over how fast they come. It will be sufficient, so long as we are swift,” Carlos said.

  “Do you have something to catch her in?” I asked. “I’ve done this before, but I had to have a reflective container.”

  “I need no such object.”

  Carlos started to gesture as if he would dismiss the temporacline and Rafa with it, but Quinton threw up one hand. “Wait! What about the estate? If it still exists, it might be the perfect place to hide, since only Rafa ties any of us to it and she’s a ghost.”

  “Rui is not above torturing the dead for information. Though without her bones in hand, it will be more difficult for him.”

  “Then we’ll take her with us, too.”

  Carlos gave him a narrow, assessing look. “For a man who distrusts and despises me, you seem to have high expectations of my abilities.”

  “I trust you. I just don’t like you much. And I know better than to underestimate your skills. Snatching two ghosts out of the ether instead of just one isn’t going to be any sort of difficulty for you.”

  Carlos looked at me and raised an eyebrow. “Birds of a feather.”

  “Hey!” I objected.

  Carlos offered a thin, unfriendly smile. “It is not quite as simple as you believe, but, indeed, it’s no hardship. However, her temporacline may collapse as soon as I take her and we’ll have less time in which to move.”

  We both nodded. He turned back to Rafa and removed whatever magical gag he’d placed on her.

  She let out a stream of indignant words while Carlos waited for her to stop. It didn’t take long for her to wind down.

  “Where is Amélia’s estate?” he asked.

  Rafa blinked as if surprised and replied in rapid Portuguese, gesturing as though giving directions I couldn’t begin to follow. Carlos scowled, but Quinton nodded the whole time. When she was done, she smiled at Carlos as if he’d just paid her a dazzling compliment.

  He bowed to her. “Perdoe-me,” he muttered. Then he swept his hand through her as if grabbing a coat off a rack.

  She was solid in the temporacline we occupied. For a moment her form resisted, and she gasped in surprise and pain as his hand ripped into her. Then she collapsed into a shape of silver mist and pale blue sparks that Carlos gathered into his fist, rolling the ghostly steam into a small wisp he thrust into the chest pocket of his shirt.

  The house shuddered around us as Carlos collected the remnant of Rafa. The kitchen seemed to waver and grow icy, then flush into searing heat and a flash of harsh yellow light as the house settled back into the normal time frame. Cold white mist rolled across the floor. Shrieking, scrabbling, and pounding shook the front of the house, resonating through the structure and reflecting off the garden wall in waves of sound and magical force. The Grey shivered silver and green with every blow.

  Quinton was a little shaken, but he looked around, assessing the situation. “That’s not another earthquake.”

  “No,” Carlos said. “Our guests have grown impatient. Are you both ready to leave as soon as this is done?”

  “Not quite,” Quinton said. “I can’t risk leaving the laptop where Dad can recover it. Can you do without me while I go get it?”

  “We can, but bring everything you’ll need and be sure the tower door is closed and the lock engaged. Meet us in the cellar.”

  “Will do.” Quinton bolted out of the room and I could hear him running at full pelt across the foyer and up the stairs.

  Carlos looked at me. I shrugged. “I travel light. What I need is in my pockets. Remember—I came with nothing.” I blessed the habit by which I’d stowed my ID and cash in the pockets of unfamiliar clothes as I dressed.

  “Good. Catch Amélia when she arrives. She won’t be as easy to take as Rafa. She knows me better.”

  He glanced at my hand and seemed about to ask me to extend it, but then he chuckled in his throat and looked down at his own hand. He picked up one of the kitchen knives and pricked his left index finger. Very fast, he wrote something on the kitchen table in his blood and drew something from his shirt that was black and shining darkly through the Grey. It was the Lâmina que Consome as Almas—a black blade he had killed for and nearly been destroyed by, later. He let fall a single red drop of his blood onto the knife and the blade rang as he slammed his palm down on the table over the words he had scrawled there.

  “Come, Amélia Maria Desidéria Leitão e Sousa de Neves Ataíde. You have no choice.”

  She appeared with a screech of fury and flew at him before I could lay a hand into her energetic substance. “Monstro!”

  He batted her aside and I caught a few fingers into her chilly tangle of ghost-stuff. She strained against my hold, toward Carlos as if she meant to strike him, and her words made hollow echoes in my mind, heard and only partially understood in the confusing fog of her fury.

  “Monster?” Carlos said. “First you save me, then you revile me. Dear wife, you’re more interesting than I realized.”

  “Deixa a minha filha em paz. Deixa!” Let my daughter go. . . .

  “Your daughter? Rafa? Impossible. Many-times-great-granddaughter, perhaps . . .”

  She fell back a short distance, her shade quivering in the shaking house as the tension between her energetic form and my crooked fingers eased. “Minha neta . . .” My grandchild . . .

  “By whom? By whom did you have a child that begat still more children, little wife?”

  “Você! Por causa de você, Carlos, a minha grande maldição, e o meu grande amor . . .” By you, Carlos, my curse, my beloved . . . Her voice trailed away and she tried to withdraw as if ashamed or appalled at what she’d said. I held her where she was, though I longed to let her go.

  “You never told me,” Carlos said, the air around him waxing hot and red with his anger.

  “Eu temia que você faria. . . .” I feared what you would do. . . .

  “As well you should have. I took you against your will, forced you—” He seemed almost pleased to remind her of the thin
gs he’d done to hurt her and drive her away.

  Amélia shrugged. “Forcei você a fazê-lo.” I made you do it.

  He roared at her.

  The house rattled and Quinton skidded through the door with his bag over his shoulder. “No more time, folks—the storm troopers have arrived!”

  Carlos cursed, but his fury dissipated as suddenly as it had come and he drew his hand over Amélia’s phantom face. “Sleep.” Then he slipped the point of the Lâmina into the swirl of her ghostly fabric. I yanked my hands away, feeling the tool’s hunger as it cut. Carlos twisted the ghost’s substance onto the blade like thread on a spindle. The knife drank Amélia in until no sign of her remained.

  I backed toward the door as he pulled a match from the box near the stove and lit the smear of blood across the table’s surface on fire.

  Then he turned to us, the black blade still in his hand. “Why are you standing still? Run!”

  We bolted out the door, but Carlos didn’t follow immediately. I turned to see why.

  Griffin had skittered into the hall, her black heels clattering on the tiles. She stopped as she saw Carlos and gaped for a split second before making a flinging gesture at him.