Miss Vladimirova was unnatural and clearly her mind recognized that fact. Oriana took a few deep breaths in an effort to quell her panicked reaction as Anjos greeted them politely. The man looked even more tired than the last time she’d seen him, a couple of weeks ago at the Carvalho house.
“Now, shall we get this in the open?” he asked, his eyes on Gaspar.
Gaspar gestured for them all to follow Officer Gonzalo. Inside the same back room where Felipa Reyna had lain only two days ago, two tables were set up side by side, and on each lay a fabric-draped body. Oriana pressed her finger under her nose again. Officer Gonzalo went to the first table, cast a quick glance at Anjos as if to ask permission, and then carefully folded back the sheet. A young woman lay there, her dark hair still pinned up and her eyes closed.
Gaspar crossed to that first body, gesturing for Anjos and his black-draped companion to approach.
Duilio laid a hand over Oriana’s on his sleeve and whispered, “Stay here.”
No need to worry. She had no intention of going over there.
Anjos led Miss Vladimirova to the table. Oriana couldn’t make out the petite woman’s features since she went so heavily veiled, but she didn’t recoil from the sight of the body. Miss Vladimirova reached out one black-gloved hand and touched the dead girl’s bare shoulder.
“You think I did this, Gaspar?” Miss Vladimirova asked. No emotion tinged her voice, reinforcing her strangeness.
“Did I say that?” Gaspar asked.
Anjos lifted his gaze to Gaspar’s, accusation in his tired eyes. Apparently Gaspar believed Miss Vladimirova was involved in the deaths, but Anjos didn’t agree.
“You wouldn’t have brought me to see a corpse otherwise,” she went on. “There are no marks, but I can feel it on her. She was killed by a healer. Her life didn’t drain slowly away as it usually does, but was taken all at once.”
“So our killer is a healer?” Duilio asked.
“There are things other than a healer that can do this,” she said, “but this has the feel of a healer about it. A signature, more or less.”
“I’ve talked to every healer I could find in the city,” Gaspar said. “None of them had enough strength to do this.”
“Then you haven’t found her yet,” Anjos said, a hint of irritation in his normally civil tone.
Gonzalo covered the body and moved to the other table to reveal a second woman, older than the first. Miss Vladimirova confirmed the second had died the same way. Then she walked back in the direction of the receiving area. Oriana tried not to draw back as the woman neared, but a chill went through her anyway. She caught the scent of river water when Miss Vladimirova passed, strangely out of place in this room.
“You should know,” Duilio said as the others moved away from the two tables, “that the doctor who did the autopsy for us last week apparently died in his sleep Thursday night.”
Anjos paused at the threshold of the anteroom. “When did you learn this?”
“We went to speak with another doctor this morning about our case,” Joaquim said. “He was leaving to attend the funeral.”
Gaspar indicated that Anjos should go on into the anteroom, and they all followed. There were only two chairs—one on each side of Gonzalo’s desk—so Oriana remained standing while Miss Vladimirova sat. She didn’t want to approach the black-veiled woman anyway.
Anjos lit a cigarette and turned his gaze on Joaquim. “Can I assume you suspect the same killer was involved?”
“It could be a coincidence,” Joaquim began.
“But my gift tells me we’ll learn it’s not,” Duilio finished for him.
“If our healer has been killing nameless women”—Gaspar held up one hand to forestall Joaquim’s protest of that terminology—“women with relatively no status in society, I should have said, why suddenly switch to the doctor? How could she have known that he performed the autopsy?”
“I spoke to a healer I know afterward,” Duilio said reluctantly, “although I don’t recall mentioning either the doctor or autopsy to her.”
Gaspar leaned forward. “Which one?”
Duilio sighed, but said, “Mrs. Rodriguez, on Fonte Taurina Street.”
“It’s not her,” Gaspar said quickly. “I checked her off my list.”
Oriana saw the tension leave Duilio’s shoulders. He would have hated to have gotten his source in trouble. “Could the doctor have told someone himself?” she asked.
“That’s our best likelihood,” Anjos said. “We’ll start with the doctor’s records, speak to his nurse, and find out if he did anything out of his normal patterns. Do you want the doctor’s body exhumed?” he asked Joaquim.
Joaquim shook his head. “We won’t gain any evidence to present to the courts.”
Anjos nodded slowly. “Pinheiro told us these cases are connected, so we should proceed as if they are. So if you’ll tell me about your dead girls, that will give us a place to start.”
Oriana leaned back against the tiled wall, content to wait while they discussed the two cases as a group. She’d heard all of this the day before, so she found her mind drifting. Her eyes landed on Miss Vladimirova’s unmoving form. The conversation went on, the gentlemen rehashing the two sets of murders. It took a few minutes before Oriana realized what was wrong—Miss Vladimirova wasn’t breathing.
No, it’s not an overly tight corset. The woman was not breathing. Her chest didn’t move at all until she was about to speak . . . then she drew in a breath, spoke, and stopped breathing again.
Oriana swallowed. The woman was supposedly a water spirit of some sort, a claim strengthened by the scent of river water that Oriana had smelled on her. She’d been interrogating officers of the Special Police, using her abilities to influence them to talk—a talent for suggestion similar to a sereia’s call—but Oriana found the idea that they might be related repugnant. She looked away, catching Duilio’s eye as she did so. One of his dark brows rose as if to ask what was wrong, but she shook her head.
“The healer who’s killing our first set of victims is letting them lie where they fall,” Joaquim pointed out. “The second killer is moving the bodies from wherever he killed them, stripped and wrapped in sheets. Why not drop them in the river instead of leaving the bodies where they’ll be found? There are plenty of places where that can be done without being seen.”
Anjos ground out his cigarette in an ashtray on Gonzalo’s desk. “Our first killer isn’t hiding anything, but the second almost appears to be making an effort to be seen. One seems to be targeting prostitutes, one nonhumans. I expect the first killer is opportunistic. The other is deliberate in his choice of victims. So far I’m not seeing a link.”
“Only Dr. Teixeira.” Duilio glanced over at Joaquim. “He said he once observed a healer while he was at the medical college. Could we track down who that healer was?”
“We can visit the medical school in the morning,” Joaquim offered.
That seemed to serve as a plan for the next day’s search. Joaquim and Gaspar worked out a few further details to assure they wouldn’t be duplicating efforts. Anjos approved their idea and suggested they all leave.
Oriana stopped him. “Sir, have your people had any luck finding Maria Melo?”
“No,” he said. “It appears that entire identity was fabricated for the purpose of infiltrating the Open Hand. We don’t know where she came from or where she’s gone.”
Oriana took a deep breath. She had no qualms about exposing the woman—not now—but it still violated years of training. “Would it help to know she’s a sereia spy?”
Anjos went still. Apparently he grasped the import of what she’d just done, revealing one of her people’s spies to the police. “That’s how she knew about your being a sereia in the first place, I suppose.”
No point in denying it now. “Yes.”
“Then we’ll
redouble our efforts to find her,” Anjos said, “but don’t count on success. We’ve never actually set eyes on her. If she’s a spy, she’s likely to have disappeared into another identity. Unless we know where to start, we have nothing to go on.”
“I can talk to some people,” she offered. Surely someone among the sereia community here in the city had an idea who Maria Melo truly was.
Anjos accepted that offer gracefully, not complaining that she’d withheld information that might have helped their search for the woman in the first place.
It was possible Maria Melo hadn’t figured out that she’d returned to the Golden City. Oriana suspected instead that the arrest of any sereia would draw attention Mrs. Melo didn’t want right now. The Special Police wouldn’t be kind to Mrs. Melo if they found her. They wouldn’t be kind to Oriana Paredes, either, but she had friends in the Special Police now, didn’t she?
“Oriana?”
Oriana realized that Duilio was holding out his arm for her to take. How long had he been standing there while she chased down the woman in her mind? Belatedly, she laid her fingertips on his arm and let him lead her out into the sunshine.
* * *
Duilio sat impatiently through dinner that night. He hadn’t had much time to talk to Oriana alone. He wanted to know what her father had said that had brought about her change of heart, but Joaquim had wanted to talk to his mother first, so Oriana had gone meekly off to her bedroom to change for dinner. That worried him.
She’d come down to dinner an hour later, dressed in a new creation in pale blue. She looked serene and distant, an attitude he recalled from her earliest days in this house when she hadn’t trusted him. Something had happened, and he desperately wanted to know what it was.
His mother didn’t miss Oriana’s distracted manner, and managed to keep the conversation moving over dinner, mostly discussing plans for the next evening’s outing. Duilio was relieved when his mother pled tiredness after the meal and took herself up to her bed early. That left him and Oriana alone in the sitting room, the first time he’d managed to speak to her alone all day.
Oriana crossed to the far window and pulled the curtain back to gaze out at the darkened street. She glanced over her shoulder at him. “What did Joaquim want to talk to your mother about?”
Well, I should get that out of the way. Oriana needed to know, and he trusted her not to discuss it with anyone inappropriate. “I don’t know if my mother’s ever mentioned Joaquim’s mother to you,” he said, “but Rosa Tavares came from Spain. She married Joaquim’s father about six months before he was born.”
“Oh,” Oriana said softly, apparently grasping the import of that number. She turned her back to the window and leaned against the wall, eyes troubled. “I didn’t realize.”
“Given his resemblance to the rest of the family, no one ever questioned his parentage.” Duilio leaned back against the beige sofa and crossed one ankle over the other. “His recent encounter with your sister made him . . .”
Her face lifted. “My sister?”
“Yes, apparently he’d seen her before, in his dreams. As long as ten years ago.”
Oriana’s brows drew together. “So he’s a seer?”
“Exactly. Because it passes father to son, that indicates he wasn’t fathered by Joaquim Tavares—the elder Joaquim, I mean—but by someone who’s a seer.”
“Your father,” she finished. “Which would also explain the resemblance between you two. Is this a problem?”
“Not for me or my mother,” Duilio told her. “I’ve always suspected, but thought I was wrong because he never showed signs of being a seer. Mother also guessed, but Father would never answer her questions about Joaquim’s mother. And Rosa Tavares took the secret to her grave.”
“Yet your mother took him in when his mother died,” Oriana said. “Why?”
He laughed shortly. “Don’t forget, my mother’s a selkie. The harem shares a male and raises the children communally. Rosa Tavares was part of the extended family, therefore to Mother it would have been the only appropriate thing to do, no matter who fathered him.”
“And how did that sit with your father?” Oriana asked.
That was a thornier issue. “Well, Father was never happy to see Joaquim and Cristiano when he arrived home. They were immediately shuttled off to their father’s house—again, the elder Joaquim Tavares—as soon as the ships arrived. Joaquim says that Alessio used to harass him about being the bastard son, which was why the two of them didn’t get along. Before Alessio went to Coimbra, he and Joaquim actually fought a couple of times. That taught Alessio to leave him alone. Joaquim never told me why they fought, though, because he didn’t want to sow trouble between me and Alessio.”
Oriana stepped away from the wall. “So Joaquim is your brother rather than your cousin. What does that change?”
“Nothing, actually,” he admitted. “He was already my legal heir. I put that in my will as soon as I returned here last year. I knew he would take care of my mother, should anything happen to me. I’ve told him a dozen times that he’s welcome to move back into this house, but he’s balked. He doesn’t want to mention this to his father, and Mother and I don’t see any reason anything should change unless he wants it to. I suspect more than anything else, he just . . . wanted to have the truth off his chest.”
“But if he’s a seer, why doesn’t he predict things like you and Pinheiro do?”
Duilio sighed. “I’m limited because I’m half selkie, but Joaquim is limited because he has the gift of finding. His seer’s gift merely serves to reinforce his ability to find things. Or people—which is exactly what the police have had him doing for the last several years. He specializes in finding lost people. When other officers give up on cases, they turn them over to him.”
Oriana shook her head. “But your father wasn’t a finder.”
“The gift of finding had to have come from his mother,” he explained.
“Did he not know that? Did she never tell him?”
Duilio shrugged. “She was from Spain. The Church there makes witches disavow their powers, or they imprison them. Spanish witches ignore their gift, deny it, or leave the country.”
“Should I pretend I don’t know?”
“Joaquim knew I would tell you.”
“Ah,” she said. He opened his mouth to ask what had happened with her father, but she quickly turned the conversation back to him. “So when do you visit the infante again?” she asked with false brightness. “Are you going to be able to beat him?”
“Actually, there’s something I need to discuss with you first,” he told her. “I didn’t want to bring it up in front of Joaquim, so I didn’t mention it earlier, but he’s asked me to serve him, after his brother passes, of course. I . . .”
“The infante?” She turned away toward the dark window again, laying one long hand on the sill. “Perhaps that’s for the best.”
What? Her resigned tone surprised him more than anything else. “Oriana, I didn’t . . .”
She looked back over her shoulder. “I need to go back to the islands, and I don’t know how long I’ll be gone. Or if I’ll be able to return.”
Duilio stared at her, aghast. How could she think he was going to let her walk away again? She’d done so once and nearly died. “And you don’t intend to take me with you?”
“Take you with me?” Her brows drew together. “If you’re to serve your infante, you can’t leave anyway, can you?”
Yes, there it was, the snap of anger in her voice. She was upset. Duilio grabbed her hand to draw her closer. She resisted for a moment, but then gave in, letting him fold one arm about her. She rested her cheek against his shoulder.
“I didn’t promise him anything,” he told her, stroking one hand over her tightly coiled hair. “I wouldn’t take a step like that without discussing it with you first, and I never expected we w
ould stay here forever. You’ve told me that’s not what you want. I do listen, you know.”
She pulled away, her hands clutching his lapels, which would give his valet fits if the man saw it. “It would be simpler to let me go my own way,” she whispered, not meeting his eyes.
Yes, she’s been working up to that all afternoon. She’d been stewing over whatever her father had said, and had come up with that solution, which wasn’t going to work for him at all. “Are you going to tell me what your father told you?”
Her face lifted, her eyes meeting his. They glistened with unshed tears. She licked her lips and stepped back. She walked around the sofa to sit there, hands wrapped tightly together. And there was nothing he could do but follow.
* * *
Oriana tried to decide what to say. Duilio sat down on her left, close enough that she could feel the warmth of him. He’d refused to make plans without her, yet she’d convinced herself it would be best to go on without him. She’d displayed her lack of faith in him, and now she felt ill. And yet he waited, patient enough to give her the time to sort out her reaction.
Two months ago it wouldn’t have occurred to her to want him to hold her. She hadn’t known him then, and hadn’t had anyone to rely on in so long that she’d forgotten what that was like. It was different now. She had the tantalizing prospect of having him near to support her, to care for her. She’d been certain last night that was what she wanted most, but then she’d learned one fact that had spun all of her newly formed plans out of control. She took a couple of breaths to calm herself, and said, “My father told me why he was exiled. It wasn’t what I was told before.”
Duilio regarded her with worried eyes. “You already knew you’d been lied to. Did this surprise you?”
She nodded. “Yes. I’d believed what I was told about him. I’d even visited with his mother and she didn’t tell me the truth. They didn’t want my life ruined the way his was, so they didn’t tell me.”
“Tell you what?” he prompted gently.
“That my mother was murdered. You see . . . if it all comes together the way I think it does, my mother was murdered because she knew something about a woman in the ministry. My father was exiled because he pressed for the ministry to investigate my mother’s death. That was his crime.”
The Seat of Magic Page 26