She looked down. “It is a bit . . . strange to see someone talking to the air. . . .”
“You haven’t seen the really strange stuff yet.”
“I hope I won’t.”
I interrupted. “It won’t matter if we don’t get this investigation back on track.” I fixed my gaze on Sam. “Earlier I asked you if Soraia claims to see things you don’t see or if she has imaginary friends. You indicated she did. So, tell me more about what seems to be going on with her and how long that’s been the case. Your father didn’t take her because she was a convenient child he had access to. He took her for some specific reason, which appears to be something about Soraia herself, not just leverage to draw Qu—” I had to stop myself and remember to use the name she did. “I mean Jay—back into his web. What does she see, or say, or do . . . ?”
Sam shifted from foot to foot, juggling Martim in a preoccupied manner. “She told me about the man near the fireplace—the same one you described and . . . talked to. I was very startled when you said the same thing. And she said there are fairies in the yard—which is exactly what all little girls think, isn’t it?”
“Not me. I never saw a fairy in my life except in toe shoes and a tutu—and only because they made me wear the tutu.”
“Oh. Well . . . sometimes she seems to know things she really shouldn’t. . . . I mean that she has no way of knowing them, not that they’re the sort of things little girls shouldn’t know about. Where are Daddy’s missing keys or does Mommy’s patient have cancer. . . . Sometimes things happen near her that are . . . just extraordinary. She was swarmed by honeybees once, and not a single one stung her. They just flew up to her like she was a queen and buzzed around for a while, then flew away. And there’s a green woodpecker she says talks to her—she calls it Tio Pássaro,” she added, giving Quinton a significant look that was lost on me. “I think it’s one of the fairies. I’ve seen the bird in the lemon tree in the backyard, although I know they’re not tree-borers. Once in a while, Soraia wishes for things to happen and they do—which is where the woodpecker came from. We were having lunch outside one day, and she wished aloud for the bird to fly down from the tree so she could give it a bit of her bread, and the woodpecker flew down and landed on the tabletop beside her, though it wasn’t very interested in the bread. It’s been around ever since, though . . . I haven’t seen the bird since she was taken.”
“And none of these things gave you an idea that there was something unusual about your daughter.”
“They didn’t happen all in a rush. It was one odd incident at the time. Then some other time another odd incident, but they never seemed threatening—except for the bees and they didn’t harm her, so I thought it was just a fluke. They never seemed to have a pattern. My daughter is not a freak, just a gifted little girl.”
I chose not to take up the gauntlet of “freak,” but that didn’t mean I wasn’t a little pissed off by it. “These sorts of things aren’t really the usual little-girl thing,” I said. “Fairies and make-believe and invisible friends, yes. Seeing ghosts, magical wishes, talking birds, and knowing the answers to questions she can’t even formulate, no. The bee thing—definitely way out of the norm, but that could, as you say, have been a fluke of nature. But fluke or not, your daughter is a very special girl. And I don’t mean in that usual Auntie-says-so kind of way. She has a touch of something that goes well beyond the normal and I think that’s why your father took her. Unfortunately, that means that whatever he’s up to is pretty strong magic. This project of his has taken some gruesome turns, but everything he touches—and destroys or subverts—is either paranormal or closely connected to the paranormal. Governments have done paranormal research in the past—there’s always someone thinking the freaks might be the answer to some political problem—but what your father is up to goes well beyond bending spoons, trying to read cards that are in another room, or staring at goats until they faint.”
Sam was mad, which was interesting to see, her aura all streaked in red and sparking like a Tesla coil. “And your point . . . ?” she asked, glaring at me and bouncing the baby so rapidly that he began hiccuping.
“Point is: Put a lid on your disbelief. And when we get her back, get your scientific brain set on helping her and nurturing her talent so it doesn’t twist itself into something dangerous. It could be a tiny little talent that doesn’t go any further than charming birds, but if it’s a big talent, denying it and trying to make it go away will be the worst thing you can do.”
Sam ground her teeth and breathed through her nose in noisy gusts. Quinton reached over and slid Martim out of her grip as the baby started making distressed noises. She glared at her brother.
“Hey, you’re scaring him and giving him some nice bruises,” Quinton said. “Harper is right, whether you like it or not. When we get Soraia back, she’s going to need a lot of help and understanding. Just on the normal things, like why her grandfather kidnapped her. That is not going to be easy for her to get over. You’re going to have to be open to the idea that she’s more than you imagined and can be hurt in ways you never thought of. As to the rest, if you can’t help her, it’s just like parents who deny their kids were molested. The hurt won’t stop—it’ll just turn into something worse. Have an open mind, Dr. Rebelo.”
Her bottom lip trembled, but she didn’t cry. She took a few deep breaths, swallowed her upset, and put her arms out. “May I have my son back, please?”
Quinton handed the baby over and Sam hugged Martim to her chest, kissing the top of his head and holding him close. “All right. I will . . . have an open mind. Because I want my kids to have a better life than we had. I’m not sure about all of this yet, but . . . I’ll work with it. What do we do now?”
“For now, we take the flutes to my friend in Lisbon and see what he has to say,” I replied.
“I’ll get Martim’s things.”
“At this stage, it’s better if you stay here and wait until we have information to proceed on. If your husband or your father tries to contact you, they’ll expect you to be here. It’s the hardest job of all—waiting. But it’s necessary so we don’t miss anything.”
She looked combative, but she nodded and pressed her face against the top of the baby’s head. “I understand. But once you have information, I want to be in the loop.”
Quinton gave her upper arm a squeeze. “You will be.”
It was hard to leave, taking all of Soraia’s gifts with us—just in case. Sam was fighting the urge to throw caution to the wind and come with us, which must have caused her considerable mental turmoil, judging by the agitated colors of her energy corona. Quinton was uncomfortable abandoning her to the mind-killing tedium of waiting, but since the only safe base of operations we had at the moment was the house in Lisbon, neither of us thought it wise to bring her along until after we’d discussed it with Carlos. It’s rude to bring a guest for dinner if there’s a chance she might end up as the main course.
EIGHT
We talked less than I would have liked on the trip back to Lisbon, but we each had things we didn’t really want to say. Finally Quinton stopped playing with the brim of his hat and asked, “What do you think about the bone flutes?”
“I’m not sure what they’re for, but I keep getting directed to those bone mages Carlos mentioned last year—the Kostní Mágové. The flutes seem like something that might be connected to them. Given his reaction to said mages, that worries me.”
“You were a little . . . hard on Sam.”
“She was being stubborn and hardheaded about the idea of anything paranormal, and I don’t want some little girl—and especially not your niece—to go through the sort of horrors my father went through because other people didn’t believe what he experienced.”
“Do you really think she’s . . . Grey?”
“It sounds like it. But I’m more convinced by your father’s gifts and his taking her at what appe
ars to be a period of increasing activity for him. It makes no sense for him to kidnap his own granddaughter unless she’s useful to him in a specific way. Otherwise, he’d find some other child—some poor immigrant kid no one is watching out for or some drug addict’s kid, or any of hundreds of children he could find a way to grab without having to go all the way to Carcavelos and take a member of his own family. It’s got to be significant.” I shook my head in frustration. “I wish Mara were here. She’d have a much better idea of what might be going on with your niece. I really miss Mara.”
Quinton frowned. “Because she could be useful.” He hated that I leaned on my friends for help that often got them hurt. I’d made myself break that habit, but the memory of it was still there and it rankled that he thought I might fall back into that pattern.
“No. Not because she’s a witch,” I said. “Because she’s a mother. I’m not. I know I bullied Sam a little back there. I am not proud of that. I just don’t know any other way to talk to professionals except to give it to them straight. I treated your sister like a doctor who wasn’t reading the whole chart. Because I’m not any good at being gentle to a mother’s feelings about her kids. I’m a moose in a mouse factory where that sort of thing is concerned. Mara would have done much better. And she would have had a reasonable idea of what Soraia’s talents are and why your father might have snatched her. And that’s why I wish Mara were here. That and I miss her—I haven’t seen any of the Danzigers in, what . . . four years? Brian must be in school by now.”
“He’s Soraia’s age.”
I peered sideways at him. “Oh really?”
He nodded, blushing. “They’re in Spain. I saw them once, from a distance a few months ago.”
“No wonder you quit the spy game—you’re sentimental!”
“No. I’m just . . . concerned about my friends when they might be in the way of trouble.”
“And are they?”
“As it happens, no. Mara and Ben seem to have good instincts for when they should move on. But . . . they are just over the border about a hundred miles.”
“Which is nothing to an American, the way a hundred years is nothing to a European. Are you suggesting we call them into this?”
“No. Or not yet. But as you say, you’re not a mother and Mara is, so maybe when we’re closer to getting Soraia back, it would be a good idea to get the Danzigers in on the act. Sam and the kids will need a safer place to stay until this is all over—with someone who can protect them from the paranormal as well as the usual threats—and I don’t think that getting Soraia back from Dad is going to put his plans on hold for very long.”
“Unless he’s dead.”
Quinton shuddered. “I can’t—”
“I’m not asking you to. But your sister was right about that, and you know it. He won’t stop. So yeah, even if we get Soraia back, he’s going to have a plan B and he’ll put it in motion as soon as he can. You know we’re going to have to find some permanent way to neutralize him or this is never going to be over.”
Quinton sighed and leaned his head against the back of the seat. “I know. God, I know.”
We both fell silent and looked out the window until we reached the Cais do Sodré again. It was a little after six in the evening and Quinton asked to walk instead of taking the metro back to Rossio station where we’d started. He seemed to need to move, to burn off the red anger that had been building around him since we’d left Carcavelos. We had more than an hour until Carlos would wake up, so I agreed. He put his hat on and kept his head down as he went, shadowing his face. I did the same, just in case.
We walked a zigzag track through the straight streets of Lisbon’s downtown—the Pombaline downtown, Quinton called it, named for the Portuguese nobleman responsible for the rebuilding after the earthquake of 1755. The ruler-straight roads and rows of aesthetically similar buildings reminded me a little of Seattle’s downtown core that had been forced to be flat and geometrically pleasing by tearing the hills down and throwing the dirt into the gaping hole that was now South Downtown. It didn’t look the same, but the shadows of what had been before were as persistent. We passed through misty walls as easily as ghosts and the specters of the long-dead stepped suddenly in front of us, running from destruction on roads that had vanished two centuries before. I tried to think more about the resurrection of the city than its destruction, and that seemed to help with the feelings of pain and panic that threatened to overwhelm me in the presence of the endless repetition of Lisbon’s collapse.
We wove and turned until I wasn’t sure where we were or what direction we faced. Then Quinton turned through a doorway into a bookshop. It was small and smelled dusty, but it was well-ordered and the strange, warm light of Lisbon fell through the windowpanes to touch the books with gold. I wandered among the stacks while Quinton went to talk to the proprietor. Passing the occasional ghostly customer, I was relieved at the insulation that the shop seemed to have from the worst of the memories outside. Old Possum’s—my friend Phoebe’s used bookstore at home—had a similar effect. I wondered whether books somehow collected the intellectual joy of their readers and let it back out, subtly, when they were gathered in a critical mass. The idea charmed me, even if it wasn’t likely to be right.
Most of the books were in Portuguese, but there was also a section of books in English. I was poking through an aging hardcover edition of Daphne Du Maurier’s The House on the Strand—and feeling entirely in sympathy with the discomfort and distress of the time-traveling hero—when Quinton came back to find me.
“I have a present for you,” he said, holding out a package wrapped in a loose bit of green cloth.
I took it, curious, and flipped the cloth open to find a set of ID—including a British passport and driver’s license in the name of Helena Robinson-Smith. I thought the name sounded far too posh, but the photos were of me, nonetheless. Under the cards was a small pile of money in euros.
“Oh, you shouldn’t have,” I said in mock surprise.
“Well, you can’t go around with no ID and no cash.” He held up his own ID, which was in the name of Christopher Marlowe Smith.
I raised an eyebrow. “Really.”
“It’s not my fault the guy’s parents had a queer literary bent. Honestly, that’s the name that came up—I had nothing to do with it. I will only admit that I didn’t say no to being Kit Marlowe for a while.”
“So long as you don’t get killed in a tavern brawl or decide your taste suddenly runs to men, I guess I can live with it.”
“Unlikely on both counts. You should put those away in your purse before we go outside. Remember the pickpockets.”
“Are they really that bad?” I asked as I tucked the ID and cash into my little straw bag. As my hand brushed the bottom, I felt only one key.
My heart lurched and I knelt down to turn the purse out onto the floor. The ID and cash were there, of course, but only one key, and it didn’t look like the big, old iron house key Rafa had given me. “Oh . . . Damn it! The house keys are gone!” I picked up the remaining key—a boring modern door key in appearance—and it weighed far too much. I stared at it, cocking my head to the side to look through the edges of the Grey.
The key looked as it had inside the house—a large, old skeleton-type key that would fit the lock on my suite door, but not the larger lock on the gate. “What the hell?” I puzzled with it for a moment as Quinton knelt down beside me.
“What happened?”
“Well, someone did pick my pocket, but all they got was the gate key. And it won’t look like much to them, so with luck I can get the housekeeper’s attention and get in without it. I still have the key to my room.” I held it up.
“Doesn’t look like much, but I take it from the way you’re staring at it, that there’s more to it than that.”
I nodded. “When she handed it to me, it was a big old-fashioned key, like som
ething from a castle dungeon. It still feels the same weight, but I can only see the real shape of the key in the Grey. There’s something very interesting about that house. . . .”
“I’ll bet. Do you have any idea where the key was taken from you?”
“No. Could have been at the train station or in Rossio Square, or on the metro. . . . I was jostled a lot. If I were guessing, I’d say the train station on the way out to your sister’s place, but that’s only a guess.”
“I don’t think we’re going to find it, but we can walk back to the station and ask. . . .”
I shook my head, replacing the contents of the bag and getting to my feet with a sigh. “No, there’s no point. I could identify it only if they show me the key, since it would look like this nondescript one to anyone who couldn’t see it in the Grey. Somewhere there’s a very confused pickpocket—he grabbed something that felt big and heavy and impressive and got what appears to be an overweight house key. He probably threw it away in disgust.”
“I hope this isn’t going to cause you problems.”
“I hope not, too, but I’ll deal with that if it happens.”
“Ah, that’s my Helena. So pragmatic as well as beautiful.”
“Helena? Oh,” I said, remembering the name on my new ID.
He gave me a silly grin and said, “You remember. ‘Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, and burnt the topless towers of Ilium? Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.’”
I gave him a sour look instead. “More likely I’ll make you immortal by introducing you to the wrong vampire. I think Kit Marlowe has gone to your head.”
He gave a very small, strained laugh. “Well, so long as there’s some kissing in there somewhere, I guess I’ll be OK with it. It has been quite a while. . . .”
I laughed at him and gave him a fast kiss. And then a longer one. “You are a very odd man.”