Revenant

by Kat Richardson

  “Yes. And no. The spell-transfer effect would occur only if the bone were moved after the spell was fully active—which has never been done, if, in fact, it can be done.”

  “Never?”

  Carlos gave Quinton a curious look. “How often do you imagine anyone has tried to raise O Dragão do Inferno?”

  “I’m sure someone’s tried it once or twice,” Quinton replied.

  “Fewer than a dozen times in human history—and most attempts have not been effective.”

  I frowned. “What’s the spell-transfer effect?” I asked.

  “As it sounds. With the bones out of place once the spell is in action, the full animation of the drache fails, but the other effects would continue for a time.”

  “So . . . with this drache . . .” I started, unable to finish describing the grotesque image that my mind was conjuring.

  “He would burn with the fire of the spell until the bone was consumed,” Carlos replied. “But as fitting as such an end might be, the danger in it is too great. A small miscalculation of location or timing would kill you in the same manner. It would be better to stop the spell before it’s cast. The timing would still be delicate—if the bones are moved or the spell disrupted too soon, Rui will simply destroy us and begin again—but I know the moment where the casting is irretrievable. The song of the spell rises to a sustained chord that ignites the flesh of the drache, and the breath of the fire then sings the song of the bones and sustains it. For our sake, the spell must break as it weaves the bones together—making them unsalvageable—but before the chord resolves.”

  “It’s a good thing that’s going to be your job,” Quinton said, “because Harper can’t sing.”

  Carlos scowled. “A dancer who can’t sing?”

  “It’s not that unusual,” I said. “Have you ever heard Fred Astaire sing? Flat, off-key, imprecise, but right on the beat. I’m tone-deaf. I can dance. I can count time. I can tell you a touch from a shuffle and a heel tap from a toe by sound. I can syncopate with the best of them, but I can’t carry a tune in a bucket. I might feel where the chord is resolving, but I couldn’t anticipate it without knowing the song well enough to dance to it first.”

  “Then it is as well that you won’t have to.”

  “It’s too bad there isn’t more dancing magic around—I’d probably be brilliant at that.”

  “You are brilliant now.”

  I felt myself blush, taken off guard by Carlos’s flattery, but he could also just have been alluding to my aura.

  Quinton smiled at me, his eyes alight with love, but sparkling with amusement as well. I smiled back. I was lucky to be in love with a man who had a sense of humor.

  “Hey,” Quinton said, “couldn’t we just arrive early and steal their bones or something? Dad and his corps of creeps are going to have to do some setup first, aren’t they?”

  “Yes, but there are many of them and only two of you. I will be nearly useless to you except as manual labor until the sun is fully set.”

  “Damn. And here I was thinking I was having another genius idea to keep up with my brilliant girlfriend.”

  I smiled a little in spite of the situation ahead. Then I picked up a glass of wine, enjoying the feel of the condensation as it touched the skin of my hand. “So, it’s tricky, but we have a plan?”

  “We do.”

  “How do we manage the clan of bone-waggers and spies?” Quinton asked.

  “I will kill Rui as soon as the casting breaks. The disarray and destruction caused by the unresolved spell and his death will affect the other mages involved. They may or may not survive, but they will be too damaged to be any danger to us. Bystanders who are not mages may die, but they will certainly be confused and frightened even if they are otherwise unscathed. Given the state of health Blaine reports for your father, he may not survive any effects reflected by the bone he gave up.”

  Carlos paused to watch Quinton’s reaction, but Quinton only tightened his mouth into a grim line around whatever he might have said. “It will be his own hubris and folly that bring him down, not one of us,” Carlos said, “but he is still your father, in spite of what he’s done and would have done. This won’t be easy.”

  “I didn’t expect it to be.” Quinton stood up and folded the laptop closed to tuck it under his arm. “I need to go upstairs for a few minutes. I’ll come back down for dinner.”

  I put my glass down, stood, and started to go with him.

  He put his free hand out to stop me. “Please don’t. I need to . . . put my thoughts in order. I’ve been thinking about this for a while, but it didn’t feel quite real until now.”

  I glanced at Carlos, but he was blank. “I’m sure something could—”

  “No,” Quinton said. “His survival is not an option. You know all the reasons why. But I need to resolve it in my mind, myself. By myself.” His breath was growing ragged and his face was paler than it had been the night before in Campo Maior. His expression implored me to understand and say nothing.

  I took half a step back from him, offering a nod, without speaking.

  He kissed my cheek and I turned my head to brush my lips against his. As he broke away, he gave me a thin, stumbling smile, then turned and left the courtyard.

  Carlos was still watching me, his arms crossed over his chest and his head cocked down so he looked up from under his brows. “He is a remarkable man. You two are well matched.”

  I sighed as the moment broke. “I know. And I know I haven’t answered his question yet. I tried yesterday, but it doesn’t seem right to talk about the Happily Ever After when we’re in the midst of plotting the deaths of others.”

  “Death is incidental. Putting an end to madness that would kill millions is what we are after. If it could be done without bloodshed, then it should be, but I see no way to accomplish that.”

  I didn’t, either, but I let the words I might have said dissolve into the air. Instead, I turned back to look out at the river valley again, the light across the stubbled fields and dusty trees turning golden as the sun moved to the west. I thought how appropriate it was that Sunday evening, as the demands of the harvest waned and the fieldworkers began to trudge back up the hill to dine and rest, was the moment for contemplation that Quinton had chosen to take for himself. A day of rest in which there had been no rest for us, a day of peace in which we plotted destruction. I hoped he would resolve his emotions as easily as Amen, but I doubted it.

  I saw the long communal tables under the trees being laid once again for dinner, the food brought out as the workers drew near. Nelia ran up and down, smiling and laughing as if this were any other Sunday dinner. Days turned like a wheel, each seeming like the last, yet each different and as inevitable as time itself.

  The gate from the driveway creaked, the sound startling me from my melancholy thoughts. I turned a little and raised my head to look toward the gate that lay beyond Carlos’s back as he stood near me.

  I recognized the sound of the dragging limp before the light fell on Eladio’s face. He emerged into the waning sun on the terrace with his hands fisted at his sides, his face set in lines of cold resolve and his aura bloody red. He walked toward Carlos as if there were no one else.

  We both turned toward Eladio. I took a step and Carlos stopped me with a barely raised hand.

  “It’s the ghost. It rides him. Banish it while he’s distracted with me. The rest will resolve itself.”

  The box was still on the ground where Carlos had kicked it. I was a foot or two away, but it was only a step to return to it. I bent down and grabbed the wine crate, carefully turning it so as to scoop up the contents with it.

  I glanced over my shoulder.

  Eladio had drawn closer, and the golden sunlight glinted on a knife in his hand. Carlos shifted slightly as if looking for a way around the pool that didn’t force him to shorten the distance betwe
en himself and the advancing man. The only other route was past me and while I was working on the box, it wouldn’t be wise for Carlos to be too close to it or me.

  I hurried and put the box on the table Quinton had been using, shoving the sweating wineglasses aside so they tumbled and smashed on the ground. I couldn’t give Carlos more room, but I could try to give him more time. I tore the lid away in my haste and grabbed the bundle of bones within, tied with sinew and bound in the ivory and black strands of bone magic.

  “Come to me,” I said, feeling the spirit resist my demand and the barbed bone magic cut into my hands like blades.

  I snapped one of the bones in two, clumsy with my bandaged finger, and a burst of shimmering light blinded me for a moment, but even dazzled, I could see Eladio still advancing. Carlos had barely moved, his head cocked to the side as if he saw something odd. While I appreciated that Carlos didn’t want to harm the man if the ghost was the real problem, I wished he’d at least . . . do something. “This is not right . . .” I heard Carlos say. He moved away from me, but I was focusing on the box of bones again and didn’t spare a moment to look up.

  As I concentrated on the ghost, I broke the rest of the bones into pieces as fast as I could, panting with effort and the pain from the spell and my hand. “Go,” I ordered. “Go. You’re free. Get out of here.”

  The silvery shape of a young man—the same thin, quivering, addicted man from whom I’d retrieved the priest’s wallet in a Lisbon alley—coalesced before me. He looked terrified. I ripped away the last lingering bits of the binding spell, kicking the box apart and letting it all fall, glittering, to the ground to dim and die away. Then I plunged my throbbing hands into the ghost’s shape, groping for the burning-hot sliver that held him in the memory of himself.

  From the kitchen door behind me, Nelia screamed, “Não, Eladio! Não!”

  I grabbed the core of the ghost and pulled it free, letting his tangled strands unwind and fall away.

  The shivering phantom vanished with a sigh and I turned, breathing easier, too.

  But Eladio didn’t stop coming forward and Carlos started walking toward him with his hands out. “You have no need to harm me,” he said. “Her heart is not mine.”

  But Eladio wasn’t listening. Now the fury and jealousy in Eladio’s face burned hot instead of cold, and the color of his aura was no longer simple red, but dripping around him like visions of running gore and flashing with bolts of green and crimson.

  “Oh no,” I whispered, starting to move toward Carlos.

  His head came up sharply and then he looked back over his shoulder at me. He held up one hand as if to stop me running toward him. “Blaine, I’ve thought of a better way.”

  Nelia had run halfway around the pool, but she was still too far away to stop Eladio any more than I could, on Carlos’s other side. We both shouted at once, “No!”

  Carlos took one more step, turning his head back to face Eladio as the other man lunged forward, closing the gap between them. Clutching Carlos’s arm with his free hand, Eladio stabbed the knife upward into the necromancer’s chest, just below the arch of the sternum—upward, just like another blade had cut into Carlos’s heart ages ago.

  I felt it in my own chest and gagged on the sensation as I reached for Carlos and he staggered back.

  Eladio spoke the same words Amélia had shrieked at Quinton: “She is not for you.” He jabbed the knife into his rival’s chest again and Carlos doubled over, collapsing.

  Nelia gave a wordless shriek and threw herself at Eladio, clawing and kicking at him while other members of the family began to run into the courtyard from the kitchen.

  Carlos fell on his back, curled around the gushing wound in his chest, his hands clutched over it as if he could stanch the bleeding with the pressure of his fingers, an expression of shocked surprise on his face.

  He convulsed and rolled to his side, his lips moving and his fingers scrabbling across the stones soaked in the blood that ran from his wounds. I fell to my knees beside him, feeling the gash in his chest as if it were in my own, and feeling a breathless choking sensation of blood rising in my throat.

  Red foam bubbled from Carlos’s mouth and he choked, gasping for breath he couldn’t catch. His body shuddered with every beat of his heart as it pumped blood to spurt onto the courtyard slates in a widening swath of red. Black needles of magic sparked a moment at his fingertips and then fell away, failing, fading. . . .

  The family converged on Eladio and Nelia, pulling them apart, surrounding Eladio—who gave no resistance now—and holding Nelia back as she howled her grief.

  Carlos fought for air and I leaned over him, racked with his agony. His eyes turned to me and I knew he could see me there, but no sound escaped him other than the choking rattle of his borrowed life flowing out on his breath.

  The pang of his death shook me, and I convulsed over him, gasping and choking for a moment before being taken by a quick-fading dizziness that left me shivering with sweat as his life passed swiftly. It was over so fast, I thought he must have been closer to death all along than I’d ever imagined. Shaking, I struggled to my feet and backed away from his still body where it lay on the edge of the drop into the valley. His blood ran into the pool, making red swirls in the water Eladio had skimmed clear that morning. I stared, panting, at Carlos’s face, his eyes and mouth open, blood and foam at the corner of his lips.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Quinton had been at my side in moments, pulling me to him and away from the terrible scene in front of me. My clothes were soaked in blood, my legs red with it and my arms smeared in gore to the elbow. I looked more like a murderer than Eladio, who turned white and sank to his knees, huddling in silence and shivering as we waited for the police.

  We were up until midnight. Everyone who had come to dinner and some who had joined the scene later to fetch their families or employees were forced to stay until the territorial police allowed them to go. The crime was so obvious and pathetic that the police barely questioned anyone after Eladio confessed, his voice calm with quiet mortification. Nelia raged at him at first and then sank into weeping grief so profound she couldn’t stand. One of the family—a burly man with cowlicked hair—carried her away. The family seemed to have agreed she shouldn’t stay at the house.

  As for Quinton and me, we followed the police back to Estremoz when they removed Carlos’s body to the mortuary. As the night grew deeper, I kept expecting him to sit up, but he never did.

  The police officer who’d accompanied us back to town knew where we could find a guest room even at such a late hour, and it wasn’t until I was standing in the bathroom, seeing the dried red-brown stains of blood on my body, that I started to fall apart. I had noticed and cataloged everything as it had happened, but it was a blur now, a nightmare of gore-soaked fragments that played over and over as I blinked in the light of the washroom: Carlos standing calmly, turning to me; the knife; Eladio’s furious face seen over Carlos’s shoulder; the shock of the blade stabbing into flesh; the touch of death, and the heart that beat only because of what I’d done at Carmo pumping blood onto the stones around the pool; Carlos’s lips moving without sound; his hands twitching in the rushing tide of blood from his body; Nelia screaming; and then the stillness; Carlos’s eyes turning to mine a moment before life ceased.

  I sank to the floor, shaking and gasping, my throat closing around my horror and grief. Quinton had to help me up and into the shower, wash me off, and put me to bed—there was even blood in my hair and covering my feet. Only the still-healing demands of my body and copious amounts of a bittersweet/sour cherry liquor called ginja let me sleep at last.

  I woke up feeling drained and sick—I preferred to blame the ginja for the latter, but the malaise was more emotional than it was a hangover.

  When Quinton and I quit the hotel, there were hours yet to kill until darkness would fall. Once again I was in his spare cloth
es since mine were unsalvageable. I didn’t want to look in any mirrors to see whether I appeared as wretched as I felt, but Quinton pointed out that I needed clothes. Even if we left Portugal that day, I still would have to dress in something other than his shirt and trousers, eventually.

  I despise shopping at the best of times, but this chore at least took my mind off half the problem. I still winced and choked in horror every time I saw myself in the mirror, reviewing grisly flashes of the night before with every piece of clothing I donned, seeing it for a moment clinging to my body, soaked in blood.

  After that, I found it almost a relief to discuss the rest of the problem with Quinton, sitting in the sunshine on a café’s patio while picking at necessary food and wanting only coffee.

  “Can we?” I asked.

  “We can’t not try.”

  “I don’t know if we can pull it off without Carlos. . . .”

  “We have a plan and we’ll do our best with it. If that won’t work . . . we’ll improvise.”

  “I can’t hear the notes. You know that.”

  “Yeah, but I can. We’ll work together. My role was basically to protect the two of you and that’s less complicated if I only have the one of you to guard. I can do more than one job, but it’s simpler if it’s all centered on one person. It won’t be easier, but it will be simpler.”

  “What if we fail?”

  “Not an option.”

  Panicked, I grabbed his hand and looked at him, imploring. “Seriously. What if?”

  He put his hands over mine and returned a steady gaze. “I don’t know. Whatever happens, we’ll find another way. I’m not kidding when I say ‘improvise.’ You’re good at it. So am I. It’s our strength. Dad and Rui have to have a plan. They don’t have the option of winging it. If we can’t make the plan we have work, we’ll force them into their weakest play and make the best of it.”

  “I’m not sure. . . .”

  He slipped his hands under mine and closed his fingers gently, pulling my hands to him across the small table. He kissed each hand and looked back to my face. “I would never lie to you. I believe we can do this. What’s breaking you up so badly? Are you worried we can’t make it work without Carlos or is it that he’s dead?”