Catching my breath at last, I muttered, “Out of the frying pan . . .”
“And into the pissoir,” Quinton added.
But ahead I could see the freestanding arch I’d walked under as I came down the steep road from the castle. “I know where we are,” I said.
“Oh, good, because I’m lost.”
TEN
I put my hand over Quinton’s bag and rubbed the surface, pressing just hard enough to feel the rough shapes of the objects within. Most were rectangular, flat, or tubular. One wasn’t. He watched me with a wary look.
“So,” I said, leaving my hand over the odd shape, “is that a gun in your bag or are you just happy to see me?”
Quinton’s expression grew more tense. “Better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it. At least with my dad and his creeps in town. Does it bother you?”
“No. I’m just not sure how helpful it’ll be. And they’re a liability here, aren’t they?”
He shook his head. “Not really. Unless someone searches me, then I might be in trouble.”
I was still out of breath, so I took a step away from him and leaned against the wall, far enough away from the outdoor urinal to avoid anything that might have splashed, but still too close to avoid the smell. It did bother me a little—usually I’m the one carrying while Quinton relies on his brains and ability to adapt. I wasn’t sure the reversal was comfortable, but there was no reason to object that I could see. “We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.”
“OK. My turn: You have any better idea what that thing was that fell from the sky?” he asked.
“No. It’s familiar, but I’m not sure about it. Another thing to discuss with Carlos. He should be up by the time we reach the house.”
Quinton nodded and I walked to him to put my arm back around his waist and start up the hill.
Even without Rafa’s map, I remembered the route back to the house below the castle and we made it up the steep, twisty streets in the swiftly falling dusk with no further trouble. The problem arose when I didn’t have the gate key. There was no light, camera, or intercom box and the gate was locked, but there was a very old-fashioned bellpull of the sort that looks like an ornate handle on a stiff iron rod. I yanked on it, leaving Quinton to stand peering in through the iron vines of the gate.
“I think someone’s coming,” he said after my third try.
In a few minutes, a man with a flashlight approached the gate and shone his beam on us. “Boa tarde. O que é que você quer aqui?”
“Rafa?” I asked. “Is Rafa here? I lost my key.”
“Rafa? The old housekeeper?” The man scowled. “She retired in 1992 and died in 2000. She was eighty-five. When did you receive a key from her?”
“Will you think I’m crazy if I say this morning?”
He seemed to consider it, but decided I wasn’t. “Is your name Harper?”
I nodded, disturbed and frowning.
“Then, you had better come in.”
I looked at Quinton, knowing he’d heard the conversation.
He shook his head. “I’m not much help if it’s a ghost thing and I don’t get along with that timey-wimey stuff if it’s not. It’s better if I wait here until you’re done.”
“All right,” I said, feeling reluctant to walk away from him but sure I didn’t have a lot of choice. I put my hand into my purse and held on to the other key, knowing how it must work and hoping it would help me find the right temporacline through which to reach Rafa or Carlos. I followed the man with the flashlight toward the house.
“I was concerned when your box was empty,” he said.
“Rafa helped me out.”
He grunted. “I’ve never heard of the ghosts doing much here before. They break things once in a while, but otherwise, you’d never know the place was haunted.” He gave me an odd, sideways glance and amended, “Well, you might.” Apparently someone had told him more than my name.
The female ghost I’d seen on the stairs that afternoon rushed me as I stepped into the entry. It was much darker now, and only a small lamp near the stairs was lit, so I hadn’t seen her before she was on me. She shoved me backward and then dragged me forward again, leaving my guide to stand, openmouthed, at the doorway as the ghost whisked me up to the gallery. She pulled me up the stairs and I could hear the man coming along behind us, shouting, “Where are you going?”
The ghostly woman dragged me up the last flight, to the door of my room. I put the key in the lock and twisted. . . .
The sound of the man behind me ceased and the formerly dark hallway was illuminated with dim bulbs in distant lamps from another decade. Rafa came down the hall toward me from the back of the house. She didn’t look like a ghost, but they never do when seen in their native temporacline.
“I feared you were lost.”
“I was. My gate key was stolen and I couldn’t get back in the right way.”
“But you have found another. Dom Carlos will be asking for you in a few minutes, I think.”
“I have a friend downstairs at the gate. He needs to come in, too.”
“Oh. I shall have to find more keys,” Rafa said, and turned to go to the stairs and walk down.
She left me at my door without another word. I stared after her, then turned my head to see the ghost who had dragged me upstairs still standing by my side. She had a thin face framed in elaborate dark braids and curls, and her clothes were easier to see now—something like an elegant nightgown with a wide, scooped neck that barely covered the hard line of a long corset, and a voluminous silk robe thrown loosely over it all. She looked grave and pale, even for a ghost, as she studied me.
“Who are you?” I asked. “What do you want from me?”
“Amélia. I do not forget,” came her thoughts into my head, not really words, but the meaning as clear as if spoken. She vanished like a blown-out candle, leaving only a curl of mist to mark her place.
“Damned capricious spooks,” I muttered. I relocked the door and the illumination instantly flickered down to just two dim night lamps. The man who’d let me in turned around from where he’d been standing farther down the hall, looking startled, and walked toward me, flipping a wall switch as he came, which turned on a newer, brighter set of bulbs in antique-styled sconces along the walls.
In the light, I could see he was an older man, in good health and with excellent posture that had made him seem younger in the dimmer illumination. He was puzzled by me, but not scared. “There you are!”
“I’m sorry to have vanished like that.”
“I guess I’ll get used to it. I just can’t keep up on those stairs. What are you doing up at this room?”
“I have the key—another one Rafa gave me that I didn’t lose.”
“Funny . . . It’s not the room we made up for you, but all your things disappeared out of the room downstairs. This is the room guests never stay in—and the room in the tower.”
“Guests?”
“Usually the house is leased to travelers—business people or long-term visitors. It’s been empty a lot recently with the economy and the EU problems. We never tell people not to use this room, but for some reason, they just don’t. The tower is locked, though. We don’t even mention it exists most of the time, since the stair is hidden. You can see it outside, but most people aren’t curious enough to try to find the way up. They assume it’s a false front, I think. We don’t lease to people with kids—they’re much too curious and destructive.”
“I see. Who else works here? You keep saying ‘we.’”
“Oh, no one really works here. I’m Gonçalo, the caretaker and handyman, and I come by every week. Everyone else works for the management company. They come when needed.”
I nodded. “And who else is expected in this party?”
“Just Senhor Ataíde. His note said he’d arri
ve tonight, but he didn’t say when.”
I nodded. “The man who came with me to the gate will also be staying, but I can take care of that arrangement. There was another box delivered with mine, wasn’t there?”
He nodded. “It’s still downstairs. I unbolted it, as instructed, but I didn’t lift the lid. Do you want to see it?”
“I do. I think I can find my way down, if you’ll go fetch my fiancé from the gate.”
Gonçalo grinned. “Oh! I see! Yes, I will do that.” He walked past me to the stairs and I followed him. He chuckled to himself all the way down to the entry.
I stopped him at the foot of the stairs. “I’ll go to the basement from here. Take Kit upstairs and I’ll catch up to him there.” I’d almost said, “Quinton,” but so long as I wasn’t sure who Gonçalo really worked for, I thought it better to keep up the fiction of Kit Smith.
Gonçalo was still chuckling as he headed to the front door, saying, “I will. I will.”
I dashed for the basement door I’d used with Rafa and clattered down the stone steps as fast as I could without falling. There were several big iron-bound doors, but only one stood slightly ajar. I pushed hard on the heavy door and walked in.
The room boiled with black and red energy, churning up the mist of the Grey like a storm at sea. Carlos was standing just in front of his shipping box. He was disheveled, unusually pale, and glowering. “I am not at my best when I wake, Blaine.”
“I guessed that. Which is why I sent the caretaker to let Quinton in instead of coming down here for dinner.”
Carlos growled at me and the sound resonated in my chest through the Grey. “I am not without restraint or resources.”
“I thought not, but there’s a lot we need to discuss as quickly as possible. I figured it would be better if I spoke to you now, rather than wait. The situation is pressing. And we saw something Grey in the sky today. We weren’t the only ones, either. I wasn’t sure, but the bits it left behind reminded me of that dragon-thing we encountered in the lab last year.”
He cocked his head and peered at me sideways, the same way I study things through the edge of the Grey. I wondered if he did something similar, trying to see what ghostly telltales might have attached themselves to me. “It will have to wait until I come back. My hunger should be of greater concern to you at this moment than drachen and the machinations of your beloved’s father—however dire. So, unless you’ve decided to offer yourself, I suggest you step out of the path between me and the door.” He made an impatient flicking gesture with one hand.
I stepped aside. He started to pass, but he stopped for just a second beside me, closing his eyes, before casting me a curious glance and going out the door. I followed as far as the hallway, but he had gone toward the back of the cellar, rather than heading for the stairs. He didn’t turn, but said, “I will see you soon, Blaine. Go up to the tower and wait for me there. Both of you.”
“The tower is locked and the stairs are hidden,” I said.
“Not anymore.” He opened one of the other doors onto profound darkness that the candlelight couldn’t penetrate, and stepped into it, closing the door behind himself. I heard the bolt snick into place and then there was silence.
Having no choice, I went back upstairs and started for the upper floors. I met the caretaker on his way down from the second floor.
“Senhor Smith is upstairs. If you don’t need anything else, I’ll go now.”
“You don’t need to wait for Senhor Ataíde?”
“Oh no. I was waiting for you. Here,” he added, taking a ring of keys from his jacket pocket and handing them to me, “these are all the house keys, including the tower key—it’s the large one—and I’ve left the staircase door open at the end of the top-floor corridor. If you need anything, the management company’s number is in the kitchen by the phone. You may want to lock the gate behind me when I drive out—unless you think Senhor Ataíde will be here soon. The area can be a bit rough at night.”
“I expect he’ll be here within the hour and he’s not afraid of rough neighborhoods.”
Gonçalo nodded. “Bom. It’s good to have a member of the family here again.”
He started to go and I stopped him. “Wait. What family?”
“The Ataídes. The family has a tragic history and there are very few of them left. Centuries ago, they were the House of Atouguia—the Counts of Atouguia—but that title became extinct.” He took my hand and gave it a gentle squeeze instead of a shake. “I hope your business here will be better fated than theirs, senhorina.”
“So do I.”
I walked out to close and lock the gates behind him and then returned to the house—Carlos’s house. I headed upstairs to what I thought of as my room despite its being assigned by a ghost with unknown motives. I couldn’t help thinking how little I really knew about Carlos and his past.
Quinton was waiting for me on the small sofa in the sitting room. He looked over my shoulder as I entered. “Where’s the Guest of Honor?”
“Out to dinner,” I said, finally remembering to remove my hat, “but I suspect it’ll be fast food. He said he’d be back soon and we should meet him in the tower.” I untied my hair and shook it loose.
Quinton perked up and his aura sparkled with interest. “This place has a tower?”
“And secret passages, apparently, as well as cellars carved into the bedrock, and some resident ghosts who like to play games and are getting on my nerves.”
Quinton raised his eyebrows. “Oh?”
“Yes. Rafa, the woman I met when I first got here, was the housekeeper until 1992, but she died fourteen years ago. I’m not sure, but the keys she gave me appear to lock a temporacline in place within the house, so the room or the house itself reverts to that time period and the ghosts in it become manifest and solid. They look and act just like normal people. What’s strange is, it’s Carlos’s house, but I don’t think he knows about her, because he sent instructions to Gonçalo to get the house ready for us and to wait for me here. I can’t imagine he’d do that if he knew Rafa was capable of managing it for him.”
“I assume Gonçalo’s not a ghost, since I also saw him.”
I shook my head. “Not a ghost. But we might be if we don’t get up to the tower. Carlos was not in a good mood.”
A smell like asphalt and orange blossoms on a hot day wafted into the room and an object thumped to the floor in front of the desk. Two more objects followed in close order. I walked over to look at them.
“House keys like the one Rafa gave me. We must not be in her temporacline now, because she apported them, rather than coming in and handing them to us, so it is most likely these keys that operate the time phenomenon. For some reason she wants to be sure we can get to her.”
“Control fiend?”
“Too early to speculate, not to mention she can probably hear us. Let’s go to the tower. I suspect we’ll have more privacy there. Until Carlos gets back.” I glanced around the room, trying to get a fix on where Rafa’s presence might be and directed my attention to a thin column of silvery mist near the hall door. “Thank you, Rafa. I’ll leave them for now, but I’ll pick them up before we go out.”
The mist shimmered and faded away.
Leaving the keys where they lay, I took my purse with Soraia’s gifts in it and started for the door. Quinton followed and we went down the hall to the formerly hidden door at the end.
It wasn’t so much a secret door, as a why-bother-to-look-at-it door. A section of the tiled wall at the back end of the corridor stood agape from floor to ceiling. Anyone seriously looking would have found the cracks, the keyhole, and the small handle in the tiles without much effort, but the busy design of the blue-and-white tiles made it a frustrating exercise if you didn’t know what to look for. In the Grey, I could see shreds of an old spell that had broken and faded long ago, leaving only a cobweb remnant of t
he original energy and form laid over the tiles. I pulled the door farther open, and we went up the narrow staircase concealed in the wall in single file, me in front because I didn’t give Quinton a chance to go first.
The stairs ended in another door—thick, iron-bound wooden planks carved around the edges with symbols that gleamed black to my Grey sight. I moved my hand toward the twisted bronze handle and the ward stretched toward me, rising into a tangled web, twisted with sharp black barbs dripping a shining illusion of blood. I pulled back, feeling queasy and weak even without having touched the door. I took the ring of keys Gonçalo had given me out of my shallow skirt pocket and flicked through until I found the largest of them. It was almost hot to the touch and impossible to miss even in the gloom of the unlighted staircase. I held up the key and pushed it toward the lock.
“No. Don’t touch it,” Carlos said from below us, his unexpected voice making me jump.
The ward pulled back, sinking into the wood. The door swung open and illumination by fire and candle flooded out of the room beyond, drowning the thin light in the staircase behind us.
I whirled on the landing and looked back down the stairs to where Carlos stood at the bottom. “My apologies,” he said, walking up to meet us. “I had forgotten about the ward. The key alone won’t open the door safely, though I’m surprised to find my safeguard intact after so much time and change.”
“What would have happened if I’d touched it?” I asked.
Carlos brushed past both of us to enter the room. “To you? Probably only passing illness and incapacity. To our friend, here . . . ? Something unpleasant and debilitating, but not fatal. Come in and sit. We have much to discuss.”
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.”
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