Revenant

by Kat Richardson

  The oldest parts of Valverde looked a lot like the nice parts of Mexico City, while the industrial bits looked exactly what they were. As far as I could tell from the places we passed—including a fenced yard filled with wooden chairs piled two stories high—the area produced a lot of furniture, olives, and leather goods. We searched for the Danzigers’ address for forty minutes and found it in a pleasant public square, above an old-fashioned cobbler’s shop in a building with a front of bright yellow tile.

  Sam found a parking space for the tiny management company car—we’d decided it was better to leave hers in a long-term car park near the Lisbon airport, where tracing the plate would do no one any good. As we walked up to knock on the Danzigers’ door, Martim began fussing. Such is my lack of charm for toddlers—though it might have been that Mara’s wards around the building woke him up. The curling, vine-like magic wasn’t identical to the protections around their house in Seattle, but it was still recognizably hers in my Grey sight.

  The black door ahead of us swung open and Mara stepped out onto the landing. “Oh my! Is it past time for lunch?” she asked, looking at the baby. “Oh, there’s a hungry lad, aren’t you? Better come in, then. I’m so glad I thought to make extra. What’s this little one’s name, then?”

  Sam gazed up at the tall, redheaded woman as if she’d never seen a more welcome sight. “Martim. And I’m Samantha—Sam Rebelo. This is my daughter, Soraia.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you all. I’m Mara Danziger and you’re welcome to stay as long as you like.” Mara held out her arms and offered to take Martim off Sam’s hands, which earned her a smile of a radiance fit to blind angels. Mara wiggled her fingers at the baby, letting tiny blue stars sparkle off her fingertips as she cooed what sounded like nonsense. He quieted down at once and watched her with complete fascination.

  The apartment seemed to glow with soothing golden light, just as their house had, and I felt the brush of Mara’s magic, as warmly reassuring as a fireside after a night in the cold. I could see the tension and paranoia dropping away from Sam as she walked inside.

  Soraia also watched Mara and my friend noticed her as we straggled through the doorway.

  “Hello, there, my little love,” Mara said.

  Wavering, Soraia murmured, “Hello, Miss Witch.”

  Mara laughed her whooping, infectious laugh. “My! You’re a polite one. Welcome to my home, little witchling.”

  Soraia almost smiled. “I’m not a witch.”

  “Oh, but you might be. It’s never wise to assume otherwise.” Mara winked at her and Soraia finally smiled.

  Sam didn’t even seem upset by the exchange, though she did look a bit puzzled.

  Mara turned her gaze on me and graced me with the same beaming grin. “And you! Harper! I feared you’d never cross my threshold again. I’m that pleased to see you!” She threw her free arm around me and pulled me into a hug. “I hope you’ve not been spreading yourself too thin as usual,” she whispered in my ear. “You look done in.”

  “I’m better than I look.” I backed away far enough to see her whole face, rather than just an ear. “Rough night, that’s all.”

  “So I gathered. Oh, Ben’s in the study with Brian. They’ll be out in a bit.” She turned her attention to Sam and Soraia. “Let’s go to the kitchen. The best parties always happen there. The lads’ll be along in a moment and I’ve got fresh flan, if you care for it. Brian’s decided it’s the best food in the world, so I’ve been making it by the busload!”

  Like most boys, Brian seemed to have a well-honed radar for food, and he came scrambling into the kitchen a few minutes later with Ben in tow, chattering with glee.

  “I saw one this time! I swear I did!” Brian had grown leggy and gangly like his father, his dark hair falling in his face and a sparkle of mischief in his eyes that was pure Mara. He looked older than Soraia, but it could have been his unusual height as much as an actual point of age. “We’ll catch one next time, Da!”

  He saw all of us and stopped dead at the edge of the large painted table Mara had ushered us to. She was busy putting Martim into a wooden high chair and looked up at Sam to introduce them. “These beasts are my son, Brian, and my husband, Ben. You’ll excuse the lack of manners—they’ve been off down the alleys hunting snarks, I suspect.”

  Brian rushed forward, ignoring his mother completely, and threw his arms around my hips to give me a hug that almost knocked me down, while he shouted, “Harper!”

  “Wow,” I said, giving him a half hug from my constrained position mostly above him. “I didn’t think you’d recognize me, Brian.”

  “I would always rec’anize you, Harper. You’re all glowy. I missed you!”

  Mara barely turned her head to chide her offspring, “I’m sure she was after missing you, too, y’little hellion. And did you wash your hands, or will I have to dump you in the sink and scrub you like an oyster again?”

  “I washed!” Brian objected, letting go of me. “Da made me.”

  Mara laughed and turned around, having secured the baby to her satisfaction. “Brian, say hello to the rest of our guests. This is Mrs. Rebelo and her children, Soraia and Martim. They’re going to stay with us for a few days.” Sam and Soraia both looked stunned. Martim just laughed and pounded on the high chair’s tray.

  “Hello,” Brian said, nodding at Sam and Martim. Then he looked to Soraia. “Do you like flan? My mother makes the best flan in Spain.”

  Soraia nodded, biting her lip and Brian abandoned me to go stand closer to her and discuss important things, like food, instead of how much soap he’d saved.

  Mara looked at Ben who was standing where Brian had been a few seconds earlier. “And you?” she asked. “Was this one-sided washing?”

  “You can’t tell from the water stains?” Ben, tall, stooped, and still looking more like an escapee from a road show production of Yentl than he did like an esteemed scholar of things religious, linguistic, and paranormal, was wet all down the front of his shirt and his black hair hung in damp curls around his face.

  “Ah! That should have been a giveaway. You’re soaked through!”

  Ben looked at Sam and started to offer his hand, then thought better of it. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Please excuse my drips. Brian thought he saw a nixie, so we had to chase it. I say it was pipe leak, but I’ve been wrong before.”

  Mara scoffed. “Well then, dry off and sit down before our guests die of hunger.”

  Martim made a fussy gurgle as demonstration. Ben darted out of the room and returned with a towel around his shoulders, but not much drier. He looked over the kitchen full of guests and his face lit as he saw me. “Harper! You made it! Where’s Quinton? Is he coming?”

  I shook my head. “No, he’s ill. I tied him to the bed and made him stay in it to get some sleep or he’d have been here, too.”

  Ben strode around the table and gave me a hug even more exuberant than his wife’s or son’s had been. I had to gasp for breath before he put me back down—Ben being one of the few men I know who’s substantially taller than I am.

  “It’s so good to see you! I want to hear about every creature you’ve met in the past three years—any really good monsters? Didn’t you have a run-in with some merfolk and dobhr chú a while back? I’d have loved to see them!”

  “I’m sure you would, but you’d have been a lot more wet than you are now,” I said, shooting a glance at Sam to see how she was taking all this.

  Sam still seemed utterly confounded, her mouth slightly open and her eyes blinking. I wasn’t the only one to notice.

  “Oh, Ben,” Mara said. “Don’t be pestering the woman already. There’re children starving in Spain, you know.”

  He looked at her and tried to appear contrite. “Are there? Are any of them black-haired nixie-chasers?”

  “No!” Brian shouted back, dragging up a blue chair next to So
raia’s red one. “I’m not starving. But Soraia and Martim are. C’mon, Da. We want to eat!”

  Sam fell into her chair as if she were giving up all attempts at rationalizing any of the conversation so far. Ben helped Brian into the blue chair and made sure Sam and Soraia were comfortable while I helped Mara put the food on the table.

  “She’s managing fairly well,” Mara whispered to me as she handed me a bowl.

  “Who? Sam or Soraia?”

  “Well, I was thinking of the little girl, but her mother does seem a bit dazed by it all.”

  “She’s not too comfortable with the magic angle. And the kidnapping . . .”

  Mara pursed her mouth and made a speculative sound. “True,” she said, and went back to getting the meal on the table. I wondered what she was thinking, but I couldn’t ask.

  I should have realized that meals with the Danzigers wouldn’t have changed except to become more noisy as Brian got older.

  Mara surveyed the room from her position at the foot of the table and nodded. “Well, if we’re to get any peace from nixies, we’ll have to set an example ourselves. Brian?”

  Brian became still and nodded. “Yes, ma’am.” He fell silent and put his hands in his lap, waiting for her approval, but not fool enough to take his attention completely off the food. In a moment, everyone but Mara had followed Brian’s lead—even the baby—and a calm fell over the group. I couldn’t see Mara doing anything, but somehow the lull in the noise and activity made the room seem cooler and everyone in it more serene, less worried, and less stressed.

  Mara sat down and looked us all over. She picked up her glass, which Ben had filled with water, and said, “May the hinges of our friendship never grow rusty.” Everyone but Martim got the hint and took a sip from their own glass. Then Mara took a long, slow breath and let it back out again with a satisfied sound. “Well, then. Everyone start a dish.”

  We each turned our attention to the nearest dish of food and all sense of decorum and silence died.

  Lunch was magnificent, the sort of huge, languorous meal Americans eat on holidays and at formal dinners, but in the Danziger household it was served without the stuffy manners and polite service. As I’d hoped, the kids got along like old friends and Soraia was ready to go investigate Brian’s room as soon as they’d finished eating, but Mara insisted they stay until the adults were ready to settle into postprandial conversation.

  When we finally got up from the table, Brian and Soraia took some cookies and repaired to Brian’s room. Sam went to clean up Martim and tuck him under a blanket on the sofa for a nap while I helped the Danzigers clear the table.

  “What have you been up to?” Ben asked while we washed dishes.

  “The usual—working for ghosts and fighting monsters in between pretrials and background searches.”

  “I’m serious. You seem different.”

  “Less annoying?”

  “Less annoyed.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been good at analyzing myself.”

  “You’re more calm,” Mara offered.

  “Me? At the moment I’m only calm because I’m tired.”

  “I wasn’t meaning that,” Mara said, putting leftovers into the fridge. “I meant your magical state seems more settled, stronger. You’re doing very well in that respect, yes?”

  “I guess I am. Not much comes completely out of the blue anymore, and I generally know what I’m doing—or I can make an educated guess. No more unintentional slipping sideways through the Grey, less flying by the seat of my paranormal pants.”

  “Good. So, what’s the situation with the Rebelos?”

  “I don’t know about the husband—I haven’t met him, so his personality is a blank—but Sam’s another hardhead like I used to be. She’s a doctor and she isn’t as open-minded about the paranormal as she tried to be when we met yesterday. It’s been rough on her, trying to take in so much and make the necessary mental adjustment to what her father’s done and what it’s connected to. So she’s going to need help on her own end as well as needing to help her daughter.

  “The biggest complication is that Soraia sees things. She talks to ghosts and claims to see fairies, and she’s guessed that Carlos is a vampire. We had a little chat about ‘being strange’ and how it’s not a bad thing, but she’s still confused about what she’s experiencing in paranormal terms. She’s got no context or background to help her understand this stuff in the best situation and now her situation is far from the best. She’s very tough, but I suspect this shy, calm appearance is unusual for her. What she experienced last night alone was pretty terrible and we haven’t yet discovered what she may have been through in the three days she was missing. A couple of bone mages were planning to cut her up for spare parts after they let her bleed to death so they could make something Carlos hasn’t figured out yet. In addition, we saw these mages imprisoning revenants last night in the same sort of boxes Sergeyev was stuck in.”

  Mara stopped me and asked, “So there are likely to be more willful spirits in boxes somewhere?”

  “Yes,” I said. “And like Sergeyev, they’re probably aware of their state—dead, but imprisoned and being used like slaves and spies, moved wherever Purlis and the bone mages want them—and we don’t know exactly how they mean to use them, but you know what happened with Sergeyev. The boxes on the site last night burned and the ghosts escaped—the Guardian rounded them up—but that doesn’t mean there aren’t more of them elsewhere. Quinton believes there are some already in place throughout Europe.”

  Mara and Ben both looked sickened at the thought. They’d been in at the beginning of the Sergeyev case, though we’d barely gotten acquainted by then, and knew very well what sort of nightmares it brought to adults, much less little girls. “I am afraid of what’s going to happen as soon as Soraia has the luxury of slowing down,” I continued, “and Sam isn’t prepared to help her. That was the real reason I wanted you two to take them in. Sam’s a doctor, so she understands trauma, but she doesn’t have the mental preparation or any magical ability to help her daughter with the paranormal aspects of this, and if she doesn’t get help . . . you know how badly that can turn out.”

  Mara covered her mouth in shock for a moment—a gesture I had rarely seen her make even when we’d faced things more monstrous than vampires. “Oh . . . bloody hell. She’s a lovely child—poor thing. I’d have to test her—which won’t be appropriate now—but I suspect she may be a witch herself. And not a hedge witch like me, but something much more unusual.”

  “Like what?”

  “I’d rather not be saying until I’m sure.”

  “Is it a good thing?”

  “It can be. It can also be terrible if twisted by bad teachers and evil circumstances.”

  “Then you’re going to have to find some way to talk to her without her mother going off the deep end. Soraia knows she’s what we’re calling ‘strange,’ but she’s terrified that she’s going to be evil, as if it’s something she can’t avoid after seeing what she saw.”

  “I’ll find a way. . . . I’m glad you brought them to us. I think there’s a touch of something unusual in the baby as well. I’d like to meet their father. . . .”

  “You’ll have to hold off until Carlos and Quinton and I can put a stop to whatever his father is up to. It’s not going to be safe for Sam to contact Piet—that’s her husband—or go home until this situation is completely dismantled with no hope of a rebuild.”

  “I can see that. I only wish I’d be having a hand in serving up some just deserts to a man who’d do this to his own grandchild. The vile bastard. I’ll work it out with Sam, then, shall I?”

  “I think you should.”

  I told them the rest of the background as we finished up and then went into the more recent points once we were all seated in what Mara laughingly called “El Salón,” since the main part of the
apartment was mostly one large room broken up by the placement of furniture to indicate what each area was used for. Sam was less comfortable than ever with the details Ben and Mara dragged out of me.

  “So these Kostní Mágové are another type of necromancer?” Mara asked.

  “I’d say they’re more like a subclass. They don’t seem to have any affinity for death in general, only for bones. Carlos said it’s related to a more mainstream religious thing taken to a bizarre extreme. It’s pretty odd.”

  “It’s rather medieval,” Ben put in. “The cult of bones goes back a long way in the Catholic Church, and it’s still active in pockets throughout the Christian world. A lot of the belief turns on the principle that we are only shadows walking toward death and our heavenly reward. Our earthly lives are toil and suffering, so we shouldn’t be overly proud, materialistic, or live an ungodly life regardless of our social station, because we’re all going to be food for worms eventually. It was very common up through the plagues and later abominations like the Inquisition—the mortification of the flesh is a great excuse for all sorts of torments in the name of God. It’s one of the reasons you find these medieval ossuaries all over Europe.”

  “Ossuaries. Those are collections of bones, right?” I asked, thinking of the unholy church in which we’d found Soraia.

  “Yeah, but it’s more than that. They’re often the bones of the religious community that served the local church—the godly—and of the long-dead parishioners, buried in consecrated ground until the bones were stripped of all flesh. Then the bones are gathered into a chapel or a catacomb to make more room in the graveyard and to remind the people that in life they are in the presence and shadow of death. It’s where the danse macabre tradition comes from. In the case of ossuaries, the bones aren’t just gathered. They’re arranged or piled with great care, not so often as individual people and whole skeletons, but as parts—piles of femurs or skulls in one room, ribs in another . . . that sort of thing. Or they use the bones themselves to decorate the chapel they rest in—that’s fairly rare, but there are some spectacular examples of it around. The ossuaries of Rome, Milan, and Paris are famous, and there’s a well-known chapel in Évora, and a really amazing display in Sedlec, outside Prague. Oh, and one in Czermna, Poland, I really want to see. The chapel is built—walls, ceiling, and floors—from the bones of victims of plagues and wars that have ravaged the area for generations. The interesting thing about that one is that it was built recently—relatively speaking—in the late eighteenth and into the early nineteenth centuries by a single priest. Modern ossuaries are so rare!”