I eased back. “I don’t see any sign of watchers—paranormal or otherwise—but there’s a remnant of something I’d like to get a closer look at. Do you see anything?”
“No. Dad must be very confident.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
“No, it really isn’t. I hope Sam’s all right. It’s been a couple of days. . . .”
“The house looks otherwise normal, but we’ll know more up close,” I said.
We walked down the street toward the house, hand in hand like a couple of lovers out for a stroll. Nothing was interested in us, except a cat that sat on the top of a wall and watched us with a show of indifference. We crossed the street toward Sam’s house but leaving enough room to approach at an angle without going straight through the front gate. I stopped again to drop into the Grey and look more closely at the tracks of magic someone had left behind.
Correction: two someones. The two strands of energy residue weren’t identical, though they were very similar. I hadn’t seen magical signatures quite like them before. They weren’t a spell, but the residue itself was shaped into knotted and jagged lines that resembled gouges in wax or clay more than calligraphy—they seemed incised on the surface of the Grey, though they didn’t react magically to my inspection or prodding in any way. It almost seemed as if the people who’d caused them trod more heavily on the Grey than other creatures of magic, whose usually thin and fluid tracks faded swiftly. The black threads felt cold and smooth, but with an edge of grit to them, the twining white more angular and brittle. I closed my hand around one and pulled a little. It snapped and crumbled away, leaving a fading dust on the silvery surface of the mist world. Once broken, the rest of the line began to fade as well. I touched the other one, finding it a little warmer to the touch and rougher on the surface, though it was equally fragile when crushed in my hand.
I stepped back from the Grey and leaned my shoulder against the wall outside Sam’s house for a moment, thinking as Quinton watched me.
“So . . . ?”
“I can’t figure it. Two magical people have been here and they walked around the house like they were casing it, but the traces they left seem to be magically inert and fragile. And those traces are weird in their own right, being two colors that twine together—black and a creamy white color I’m not familiar with. Compound energy rarely remains in such distinct strands—it tends to blend. But these are more like . . . threads of disparate energy twisted together. Really odd.”
“Sam said our father had two other people with him—a man and a woman—whom she didn’t feel good about and who didn’t speak or come close,” Quinton said. “I’d assume the marks belong to them.”
“I can buy that—I never saw anything like this from your dad, but I can’t figure out these people’s intention or what they may have done.”
“These traces don’t seem to be a trap or a spell or anything like that?”
I took off my hat and paused to smooth my hair back into the scarf tied at my nape as I thought about it. Then I shook my head. “No, they don’t feel like anything active or even lying in wait. They shatter easily, too, and I don’t feel any movement of magical energy when I break them, as I would with a spell, ward, or trap of any kind. It’s like snapping a burned twig and getting a bit of charcoal on your hand, but nothing more.”
“That sounds a lot creepier than you may think.”
I had to shrug. I’m no longer sure what’s creepy to someone more normal than me. “I think it’s some sort of deliberate residue—like graffiti—but it can’t be meant for us, since neither of us recognizes it. But I don’t believe there’s anything here to cause us concern. Let’s go in and talk to your sister.”
Deciding we had nothing to lose, we went to the front gate and pressed a button on a call box mounted to the faded stone wall. Through the iron gate I could see a small slice of the front of the house, which was built of the same material as the wall. The upper story was plastered, but the lower was not and the tawny stone had the mellow, soft look of rock that’s been in the weather a long time.
I heard something mechanical move and looked up to see a small camera in a steel housing turn our way from the top of the gatepost, sheltered by palm fronds. The gate buzzed and fell open a half inch. We glanced at each other and walked into the yard, closing the gate behind us.
The front yard had been cultivated into a neat lawn bounded by the palms and a close-growing row of prickly pink rosebushes that hugged the wall. The perfume of jasmine drifted on a breeze from the sea that snuck over the wall behind the house. We got only a few steps up the laid-stone path before the front door opened and a young brunette stepped out with a baby in her arms.
“Jay!” she shouted, running toward us as fast as the jiggling weight of the baby would allow. I had to remind myself that only I and my lover’s underground friends called him “Quinton”; to most of the rest of world he was either James Jason Purlis, deceased, or Reggie McCrea Lassiter, depending on whom you asked.
Sam was slim and short—her head wouldn’t have come up to my cheek. I stood still and watched her in silence as she closed the distance to her brother, and I thought that they looked more alike than I would have expected even of siblings. She moved awkwardly, as if her knees and ankles didn’t work quite right, and yet her demeanor was confident, the energy around her predominantly cool and calm with only threads and occasional sparks of orange anxiety and scarlet anger.
“Hey, short-stuff!” Quinton replied, removing his hat, his face alight at seeing her even in these circumstances.
She stopped short in front of him and raised her eyebrows—the expression was exactly like one of her brother’s. “‘Short-stuff’? Just for that, you get to hold Martim—he’s wet. You have spectacularly bad timing, big brother.”
“At least it’s some kind of spectacular,” he said, returning the hat to his head and accepting the squirming bundle of baby, who began to wail the moment he was no longer in his mother’s arms. “Oh boy, you weren’t kidding. He is wet,” Quinton said, holding the baby out in front of him.
Sam gave him a hard look and scooped Martim back onto her hip. “That’s not how you hold a baby.”
Quinton grinned at her. “I know, but now I’m not the one holding him.”
“Sneaky, big brother. Very sneaky. Come on inside and we’ll change him.”
“We?”
“Yes. It’s your penance.” She looked at me. “You must be Harper.”
I nodded. “I am. And I’m terrible at changing babies, unless you mean in some existential kind of way.”
Sam forced a laugh, her aura jumping a little. She was trying very hard to make the scene look good for the neighbors, but playing nice with a stranger was difficult under the circumstances. “You don’t have to change anything. You look exactly as I knew you would.”
She turned to lead us inside before I could ask what that was.
The house was old—European old, not American old—and had a thin, clinging film of history that wasn’t particularly dramatic. Sam noticed me looking around the wood-and-stone interior.
“It’s mostly restored to the original—or as close as we could get and still be practical,” she said. “It used to be the vineyard manager’s house when the estate was still producing wine.”
“It’s lovely,” I said. I really did like it—I have a taste for old things and not much appreciation for things sleek and modern—and the house was warm and cozy. It hadn’t been a perfectly happy place all of its existence, judging from the energetic colors and the ghosts, but it was now. Or it had been until a few days ago.
Quinton left our hats and bags by the door and followed Sam into another room off to the left of the main entry. The siblings fell into some chitchat while Sam changed the baby. I could hear them murmuring through the open doorway as I continued to look around the main room. It was a lofty space
that rose to the roof beams on one side and opened into a dining area and kitchen toward the back. The baby-changing room and probably a couple more rooms were hidden off to the left of the doorway and a wooden staircase with chunky wooden rails marched up one interior wall to the bedrooms above. A modest fireplace anchored the end of the main room while views of the yards at the front and back could be glimpsed through the tall, narrow windows on each side of the living room and dining area. It was a more-modern design than the house itself, but it suited the building’s current use better than the smaller, closed rooms it must have had originally. The soft yellow stone had been left bare on the fireplace and staircase walls, but it had been plastered and probably insulated on the longer exterior walls. The rear windows that faced south had been left open to the ocean breeze that came in with the scent of brine, jasmine, and lemons. One of the vineyard managers had lingered around the fireplace, pacing in perpetuity. While Quinton and Sam were still busy with Martim, I walked over to see if he was a repeater or a more-aware spirit.
The pacing ghost didn’t notice me until he walked through me. Then he stopped, startled, and looked around until he spotted me. “Eh? O que é isso? Quem está aí?”
I didn’t need a translator to get the gist of what he’d said. I sank a bit closer to the Grey, edging toward the fluttering cold current of his temporacline, but not entering the layer of time. I didn’t want to vanish from the normal world; I only wanted to chat.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” I said, hoping he understood at least my tone, if not my words. “I’m . . . an investigator—a seeker of lost things.”
He peered at my shadowy form. “Inglês? What do you want, spirit?” His English was rough and stumbling, but not inaccessible.
I worked a hunch. “Have you been bothered by a pair of mages recently?” Willful spirits and those with some awareness of their surroundings usually notice things like mages and magic in their vicinity the way normal people notice small earthquakes.
“What? Bruxos! Sim,” he added, nodding. “Two that want the little girl. They watch her until the mother took her away. I have not seen her again. What happens?”
“They may have taken her.”
The phantom man looked angry. “You will get her back? The house is happy with her here—with her family here. They do not bother me.”
“Can you tell me anything about the mages?”
“Me? What would I know?”
“What sort of magic did they use? Could you feel it?”
“Feel . . . ? The air was colder when they were near. It made my bones ache. And the smell . . . like the vineyard when the rain comes too late and rots the grapes. But magic? I know nothing.”
It was still more than I’d had before. “Was there anything around them like old burned wood, like charcoal? Brittle, black, or white . . . ?”
He shook his head. I guessed he didn’t experience the magic the same way as I had felt its residue, but it had been worth a shot. “Thank you,” I said.
“I did not help you,” he said, puzzled.
“Yes, you did. I’ll be able to recognize them, now, when I smell rot and feel cold where it’s warm and clean.”
His craggy face lit. “Bom. Bring her home. She makes us smile.”
“I will,” I promised, backing out of the Grey.
Quinton and Sam were watching me from the kitchen archway. Sam was startled and pale, her eyes wide while small, sharp sparks jumped from her aura. Quinton still looked a little tense, but he gave me a tiny smile and turned to his sister. “She does that a lot.”
Sam cut her eyes from me to him. “Do you get used to it?”
“Not really.”
She gave a nod and pulled her discomfort and fear back, smothering the sparks in her energy corona. She turned back to me. “What did you see?”
I always feel a bit strange telling people their homes are haunted. Some freak out, others think I’m lying, and some claim it’s cool until something goes wrong. I studied her, the way she stood oddly poised on both feet without leaning toward me or away, the serious expression on her face, even the way she had shifted slightly toward Quinton and her son in his arms. She was a little bit afraid or wary of what I was going to say, but she wanted to hear it anyway.
“You have a significant ghost. Not a haunting, per se, just one ghost who’s at least a little aware of your presence in the house. Don’t worry, though—he likes your family.”
She looked uncomfortable and grew a little paler. “He?”
“One of the vineyard managers, I would guess, or a winemaker . . . I’m not sure which. He’s an older man and very concerned about the vines and the weather and the house. I didn’t get his name and I couldn’t tell you what time period he’s from—his clothes aren’t distinctive in that way. He doesn’t have a full manifestation. He’s more of a moving shadow I happened to be able to catch and talk to.”
She was taken aback and blinked at me. “You’re some kind of psychic, then.”
Quinton and I both shook our heads and Sam frowned. “No, I’m not a psychic,” I said. “At least not as you use the term. I go to them—they don’t come to me.”
Her frown told me she didn’t quite get the distinction, but it wasn’t worth trying to explain further. “Anyhow,” I continued, “he wasn’t much help, but he did give me a description that could come in handy.”
“Of one of Dad’s friends? But I could have given you that.”
“Not what they looked like, but more . . . the effect they had on things. It wouldn’t be useful to most people, but most people don’t talk to ghosts, either.”
She made a small dismissive gesture with her hands. “The only thing that matters to me is if it will help get my daughter back. Will it?”
“Possibly. It will help me identify the people who took her. You said a man and a woman were with your father just before Soraia disappeared.”
Sam nodded and started walking into the living room. “Yes, but I’m sorry, I really need to sit. My knees are kind of a mess.” She sat down on a sofa that faced the empty fireplace, then held her arms up to Quinton who handed her the baby he’d been carrying. “OK, so, yes. A man and a woman were with him, but as I said, they kept their distance and said nothing.”
“What did they look like?”
Sam bounced the baby in her lap as she spoke. “He was old—I’d guess about seventy—and Portuguese, wavy hair with a lot of gray, though I think it was originally black. He had blue eyes—very disconcerting.”
“How do you know he was Portuguese and not, say, Spanish or French?”
She stopped and blinked rapidly, her gaze turning inward as she thought about it. “I think because he was so dour. He had a sort of stern face with a prominent nose—very eagle-like. It gave him an austere look. The woman was American or English, very pale skinned with straight blond hair that was a bit faded, but not really gray. I think she was in her late fifties, but it’s hard to say. At first I thought she was friendly—she had this little smile that kept sneaking out—but then I began to change my mind. They both had a disquieting way of looking at me as if they were studying an insect they intended to kill and mount on a pin, and I thought she was smiling about adding another bug to her collection. It’s a very uncomfortable feeling.”
Martim whined in protest and Sam began bouncing him again. He giggled, spewing happy gold sparks into the Grey mist of the room.
Quinton asked a question of his own now, his demeanor much more focused and grim than it had been in the yard. “Did Dad introduce them? Say anything about them?”
“No,” Sam replied. Then she looked at me. “That’s not odd for our father. He never says anything more than he has to, so I assumed the people with him were associates and not concerned with whatever brought him to my home.”
“Do you see him often? Or was this a bit of a surprise?” I
asked.
“Oh, it wasn’t quite a surprise—I knew he was coming since he’d called and said so. I was almost not home, but he claimed he wanted to bring the kids some birthday presents, since he’d missed so many of those events. I should have told him to ship them. What was a surprise was his calling in the first place. I have done everything I can to stay off his radar. Our father isn’t a nice man and I don’t want my family mixed up in the things he does. I thought I had made that clear to him. This was the one time I had a moment of weakness over the possibility that Dad might have a paternal bone in his body—I’m an idiot to have imagined he’d be less of a son of a bitch after all this time. Now Soraia and the rest of us are paying for my bad judgment.”
She didn’t sound bitter; it was just a statement. Sam was the most collected, calm woman I’d ever met who wasn’t some sort of gruesome magic user. It was strange, especially when coupled with her painful gait.
“The leg made me think he’d lost his edge and might be feeling his mortality a bit,” she continued, “wanting to mend some fences now that he was disabled.”
Quinton rolled his eyes. “Playing it up, was he? Leave it to our father to pull the sympathy card for knee surgery.”
Samantha frowned and blinked at Quinton, confused. “I’m not sure what you mean. His left leg is missing from the knee down. He had a temporary prosthesis that didn’t fit very well, so his limp was quite pronounced. Worse than mine.”
Quinton was startled and stared at her, shaking his head. “No. . . . He was fine when I saw him last. The knee surgery was ten months ago and he was a model patient. He needed a cane to steady his stride on that side, but he was otherwise perfect. What happened to his leg?”
Sam shrugged. “I don’t know. He didn’t offer much of an explanation—just said he’d had an injury in the field. He acted as if it were nothing and just went on with the rest of what he’d come to say.”