Revenant

by Kat Richardson

  “Bastard,” Griffin spat.

  Another of the ghost receptacles cracked open in the heat, sending its shrieking, burning ghost into the air in a shock of ethereal cold that made me wince and shudder. Everyone else ignored it. Quinton continued to the door, skirting the flames as he carried Soraia. He was moving more heavily than I had ever seen him.

  Carlos bowed to Griffin. “Indeed. If you’re still here when he returns, tell Rui you did your best but failed nonetheless because he’s become as lazy a master as he was a student. He’ll tell you that you never stood a chance against me.”

  “Against whom? Who are you that I should accept this . . . humiliation like a good little sport?”

  “My name is Carlos, but it will do you no good against me when we meet again—as we will.”

  Carlos turned from her and walked toward the door, apparently unconcerned for the fire that I knew could easily destroy him. He never looked to see whether we were behind him. I helped Quinton and Soraia to the door as if I didn’t want to run, screaming, from the place as fast as possible.

  Carlos paused at the threshold without turning back, letting us pass him, and then muttered a few words, pushing his hands out to the side in a sweeping gesture. The remaining candelabra exploded in flames, and the dry bones began to burn in the sudden, intense heat. He walked out of the building, allowing the door to swing closed behind him. The sparking, gleaming black energy drained away, fading as he stepped through the doorway to the outside.

  Quinton, holding Soraia in his arms, was leaning against the wall of the building, his posture revealing his exhaustion. He stumbled toward me and Carlos, then stopped to set the little girl on the ground. He knelt down, saying, “Can you walk with us, Soraia? We need to go to the car.” He looked ill and unsteady, and I hoped whatever spell Griffin had cast over him had no lingering effects.

  The girl nodded, huge-eyed and pale, but I stepped to his side and knelt down. “I can take her,” I said. I held out my arms and the small blood-smeared girl crept into them.

  I felt the sickening presence of Carlos beside us and Soraia recoiled in my arms, making a frightened, keening noise in her throat. I patted her back and stood up with her in my arms as he said, “We should go as quickly as possible. The fire will bring attention.”

  “This girl is going to need some attention, too. She’s still bleeding.” Soraia continued to hold herself as far from Carlos as she could. “And something’s not right with Quinton, either.”

  “I will assist him. Carry the girl to the car—her bleeding is slowing and we must go swiftly. I promise that neither of them will die before we reach safety.”

  I jogged as well as I could with forty-five pounds of cringing child in my arms and turned back only once to glance up, watching the flames leap as the misty forms of ghosts flooded the air above the building. Amid the smoke and ghostlight, I could see the twining, sinuous form of the Guardian Beast as it gathered up the stolen souls and herded the spirits back into the Grey.

  I turned back and continued to the car, feeling some dark and heavy thing dragging on me through my connection to Quinton. The distance to the car was grueling. I finally put Soraia down in the backseat as Carlos placed Quinton beside her from the other side. Soraia was shivering and I was shaking a bit myself. She looked more like a ghost than a girl.

  “May I see your arm?” I asked.

  She nodded, staring at me with very wide eyes. “Você é um anjo esquisito,” she whispered as I inspected the long, weeping tracks of the cuts on her arm.

  I felt Carlos behind me. “She believes you’re an angel,” he said.

  I didn’t look up. “It must be the aura. No angel here, just you and me.” I looked back to her slashed skin. The cuts were bleeding less after being pressed to the cloth of first Quinton’s shirt and then mine, but they were starting again. I looked up at her. “We’re going to take you to your mother, all right?”

  She nodded.

  “We have to do something about this first, though. Can you be very brave just a little longer?”

  Quinton put his arm around her from his side of the car and hugged her. “I know you can, Little Fairy.”

  Carlos knelt down beside the open door. She cringed away from him, squirming back against Quinton and gasping in fear while drawing her arms in.

  “It’s all right, Soraia,” Quinton said, kissing the top of her head as he held her close to his side. “He’s not going to hurt you. I won’t let him.”

  Carlos asked her a question in Portuguese, and I could feel an unusual, warm swell of his glamour enfolding her, sparks of golden light shimmering between them. She still looked frightened, but she nodded, holding out her bleeding arm and shivering. He didn’t smile or attempt to soothe her any further. He only put one of his hands over her arm and bent very low over it, as if he were going to kiss her wrist.

  Quinton started to pull Soraia away, but I caught his eye and shook my head. Carlos had done too much to get her back alive to harm her now. He was a vampire—blood and death were his specialties and though we were all pushed to the limit, I wasn’t going to second-guess him.

  Soraia blinked sleepily, her head drooping, as Carlos crouched over her. After a minute, he stood, running his fingers up her arm, and stepped away from her, the golden gleam of his glamour extinguished like a candle. He looked even more fatigued than before, but there was no sign of blood on him and her arm, though still marked, was no longer bleeding.

  Carlos asked Soraia another question. She nodded drowsily, muttering something and trying to curl up to sleep against Quinton while drawing her arm in against her body. Quinton pulled her into his embrace and she nuzzled his chest, her eyes closing. Carlos and I folded ourselves into the front seats and talked in low voices while I drove.

  As I took the little car down the road, I could see the fire and the storm of ghosts above it. “All those dead . . .” I murmured. “I suspect some of them weren’t just spirits they had harvested from somewhere, but ghosts they made themselves.”

  “If I’d had more power to draw from, there would have been four more. Perhaps I should have let your spouse-in-soul shoot them. . . . Even with the deaths of two of his acolytes at my disposal, I was at a disadvantage and couldn’t have killed them all in his own temple. Rui will realize that, once he’s back in the world. We couldn’t have fooled him with such a charade, but since Griffin did us the favor of locking him—and his power—away, I was able to convince her I could have destroyed her and her master within their own bastion. She wouldn’t have let the girl go otherwise, and next time, she’ll know better.”

  “You faked all that?”

  “No. But it was not so overwhelming as it may have appeared. We were lucky that she was only a student. Her master chose to channel the ritual through his own body to control it if she should make a mistake. If he’d had more confidence in her and chosen to take part directly, we would have had to deal with him on his own ground rather than with his cocksure apprentice whose first concern was protecting him. Her shield kept him from turning the tide of this skirmish, and only the deaths of the two lesser priests gave me power enough to make such a show.”

  I wanted to curse at him, but I put my attention on more important things. “Priests . . . ?” I thought about the robed men and the perversion of a church they’d died in; I thought about the man in the clerical collar with a strange, violent aura who’d stood in the little plaza below the small white church on the hill. I shuddered, sickened to the core.

  He nodded. “Most of the Kostní Mágové are priests, nuns, monks. . . . They are religious fanatics who believe in the allegory of the bones—death in life, the transience of worldly power—but only as a conduit for their own. I am sorry for the pain their deaths caused you, but it was a necessary risk.”

  I resisted the urge to punch him for putting me through the agony of their passing—and nearly
that of Quinton as well. He gave me a measuring look. “What do you plan to do with the child? It won’t be safe for her to return to her mother.”

  “We’ve made arrangements. Quinton and I can handle it from there—if Quinton is still able, that is.”

  “I will look after him as well.”

  “I’m not sure about your variety of care, Carlos.”

  “Without it, he will die.”

  I pulled my eyes from the road only long enough to glare at him.

  “Griffin’s spell allowed the bones of the dead to draw life from him,” he explained. “I can remove that connection before it kills him. It touched you also, but you’ll heal yourself of it—being what you are. His niece’s injuries can be cured by medicine, but his cannot. We must return to the house.”

  “So long as we get everyone into your house without any interference from the ghosts, you can save him?”

  Carlos interrupted his nod to frown at me. “The ghosts have caused you a problem?”

  It was hard to turn my mind back to the topic of the ghosts in Carlos’s house as I continued to think about Quinton and Soraia, bones and priests, and ghosts imprisoned in boxes the way my first Grey client had been. I shook my scrambled thoughts off and concentrated on the matter of the spirits that haunted Carlos’s house.

  “Not a problem so much as a . . . conundrum. When I arrived, I was let out of the box by a woman named Rafa, who used to be the housekeeper until she retired in 1992. She died in 2000. I don’t know why she’s been interfering, but she gave me keys that unlock not just the house, but a particular time frame of the house’s past—Rafa’s time frame. I lost one of the keys and had to get in the old-fashioned way—by knocking—or I never would have been sure what was going on. I haven’t seen her since I relocked the temporacline.”

  “I never knew her. . . .”

  “Which is kind of weird, because she seemed to know you. She called you ‘Dom Carlos,’ and talked about ‘the family’ as if there were others around, but the only other ghost I’ve had any contact with is another woman—she seems to want something, but I haven’t been able to ask her what. She said ‘I don’t forget,’ but I have no idea what she was referring to. Her name was Amélia. Ring any bells?”

  Carlos raised an eyebrow and leaned away from me. He seemed stunned—an emotion I’d never seen on him before.

  “Amélia was my wife.”

  FOURTEEN

  Now it was my turn to be stunned. “Your wife? You were married?” I couldn’t imagine it. “I thought your preferences ran in another direction.”

  Carlos chuckled, seeming relieved I’d pick that topic rather than Amélia herself to start with. “My preferences are broader than you know.”

  “I’m having a hard time imagining you married to anyone.”

  “I was sixteen when we wed. Amélia was thirteen. It was common for the children of important houses to marry young by arrangement.”

  “I know the history of marriage in Europe, Carlos,” I said. “I didn’t know you came from an influential family until today.”

  “They are no longer.” He glanced back at Soraia, who was asleep in her uncle’s arms as we drew closer to Alfama. “Perhaps we should continue this discussion another time. . . .”

  “Is this in the same category as showing me the window you were thrown out of?” I asked.

  “It is.”

  I humphed, but honored his desire to let the subject lie for now.

  When we arrived at the house and drove the tiny car into the courtyard for safekeeping, we found Sam waiting in her own small car just outside the gates. She ran to scoop up her daughter the moment the girl stumbled, half asleep, from the car.

  “Soraia! Are you all right?”

  Soraia nodded, looking frightened, sleepy, and overwhelmed.

  Sam was panicky. “Anjinho, say something. I’ve been so worried about you. I just want to hear your voice.”

  “Estou bem, Mamãe,” she whispered, then looked ready to cry. “Oh . . . English. I’m sorry,” the little girl said, hanging her head and breaking into sobs.

  “Oh, little angel, it’s all right. I don’t care if you speak Russian right now. I’m so glad to see you!”

  “Where’s Martim?” Soraia asked, her voice still so low I could barely hear her. “I don’t want Avô to hurt him, too. . . .”

  “What? Your grandfather hurt you?” Sam said, her eyes huge with fear. She held her daughter and looked back at her car, not knowing what to do first. “Oh God! I left Martim in the car seat!”

  Quinton walked to Sam’s car and extracted his whimpering nephew with unsteady hands. I caught up to him as he carried the baby back to Sam and Soraia. He was shaking as he held Martim out for his sister to take into her arms.

  Sam stood, accepting Martim while Soraia clung to her leg. “Thank you! I was so worried about Soraia, I forgot Martim!”

  “He’s just anxious,” Quinton said, taking a step back. Sam frowned, knowing something was wrong, but too distracted with concern for her children to fix on it yet.

  I started to put my arm around Quinton, but he closed his eyes and shook his head. “Not now, Harper,” he muttered, his aura flickering tight to his body, as if he were exerting considerable effort to remain upright and any touch would break him. I let my arm drop but stayed close, whether he liked it or not.

  His sister had already turned her attention back to her kids, holding Martim close and bending down again to look at her daughter. “What happened, fadinha? Avô hurt you? Where?”

  Soraia held out her arm, still scratched and red but no longer bleeding. She pointed at Carlos. “He fixed it.”

  For a moment, Sam was relieved it was just the little girl’s arm; then she whipped her head around to stare at Carlos, but he was already walking toward the house. She turned her gaze up to Quinton and then me. “What is she talking about? What happened?”

  “I think we should have this discussion indoors,” I said.

  Quinton, moving a little unsteadily, knelt down and peeled Soraia off her mother’s leg. “Come on, Fairy Princess. Let’s go in.”

  Soraia bit her lip and frowned at the house, then dug her heels in, shaking her head.

  “Are you afraid to go inside?” Quinton asked.

  She nodded.

  “This is Senhor Carlos’s house. He won’t hurt you.”

  Soraia’s mouth turned down and her lip trembled. “He’s a bad man, like the old man from the bone house,” she whispered. “Black.”

  Sam cast a confused look between her brother and me.

  “I think she means he’s wearing black, like one of the men who hurt her,” I said, but I didn’t believe it. If Soraia had a touch of power to her, it wasn’t unlikely that she could see his death-black aura and thought it resembled the energy of the bone mages.

  Quinton put his arm around her. “I know he seems scary, but he’s not like that man. He made your arm better. He doesn’t want to hurt you.”

  She still wasn’t convinced, hanging back.

  “Not everything that’s frightening is hurtful.”

  “Will you keep the ghosts away?”

  Quinton hugged her tight. “Yes, we will, Fairy Princess. Me and Harper and your mother and even Carlos will keep you safe. I promise.”

  Soraia chewed on her lips for a moment. Then she turned to face the house, putting her hand in Quinton’s, and nodded.

  We all filed in through the open door; I was in the rear with some of the family luggage. Carlos was waiting for me in the entry and put out an arm, restraining me from following the rest of the party.

  When they were gone, he gave me a dark look from the side and said, “You understand that without Quinton’s niece, the Kostní Mágové will have to seek the bones of another suitable child.”

  “I suppose that’s true. You’ll forg
ive me if I was more worried about rescuing my almost-niece from being flayed than about what would happen if she wasn’t.”

  He turned all the way to face me, blocking my way in and my view of anyone inside. “I do not question your motives, Blaine. But what we’ve done won’t stop them. It will only infuriate them and redirect their efforts.”

  “Are you suggesting that they would come after some other member of the family?”

  “Without knowing precisely what they intend to conjure, I can’t know what change they will have to make or who their victim will be in exchange. If the Night Dragon that Griffin produced had been her own work, I would know what they intend. But it wasn’t a true drache, and without the bones, informed guesses are the best I can do at the moment—though it pains me to say so.”

  “There were bones.”

  “Not drachen bones.”

  “Not at the church. That’s what I think fell from the sky when the dragon Quinton and I saw earlier broke down. They looked like sticks, but I didn’t see them well. They were pale green and they smoked where they touched the ground—like the ones we saw in Seattle last year.”

  Carlos scowled and I felt a stab of cold. “That bodes ill. There’s much yet for me to do before dawn, so I must rely on you to communicate the appropriate information—or withhold it as you see fit. I may be able to discover more tomorrow night, but it will be risky and I must prepare in what time remains tonight. There is also the matter of your spouse-in-soul.”

  “You’re tired. I’ll help you.”

  “You cannot. Your presence would be a liability for both of us.”

  “Then what are you asking of me?”

  “Look after him and search for news of bones—of anything bizarre or unusual that has happened recently in Europe—especially in the more superstitious corners. And make sure that the children are truly safe. If you have to take them yourself, do it. We cannot risk any of the family falling into the wrong hands. The girl’s mother cannot comprehend and your beloved is not, at the moment, clearheaded enough. I can trust only you to know the real dangers of this.”