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?”