“Why?” Sam asked.
“It’s magical and whatever type of magic it has is all too eager to attach itself to me. That’s a bad sign, since it has no interest in either of you or the baby, so my best guess is that what it’s after is a person with a touch of the Grey. I’m guessing Soraia is a little . . . unusual. Is she prone to seeing things that you can’t see? Does she have imaginary friends?” I asked.
Sam nodded. “She does, but I thought that was just the sort of thing all little girls do when they suddenly have a little brother to compete with.”
“I didn’t do that,” said Quinton.
“I’m not a little brother,” Sam replied. “Besides, you had all those fun camping and hunting trips with Dad. You didn’t need an imaginary friend.”
“Do I hear some resentment there?”
“No. It’s simply a fact that your every waking hour that wasn’t spent in school or in front of some bit of technology was spent on what were, in essence, training missions with our father. If you had time for an imaginary friend, it would have been at night, in your sleeping bag, while you devised ways to escape from Camp Purlis.”
Quinton’s face looked as if she’d punched him in the gut. “Sam . . . I’m sorry.”
She closed her eyes and took a long breath before opening them again. “Don’t be. I was mad sometimes, when we were kids, but, really, I got the better deal. Just look at our lives. Look at us. I am so much better off. I have a family I love and can be with every day, in the open, like a normal person. I have a wonderful job—when I’m not chasing toddlers—a wonderful husband who works normal hours when he’s home, and a wonderful house whose front door isn’t camouflaged to blend into the landscape. It’s taken you years to find Harper and be together, and you still have to sneak and hide and live in the shadows. It may be a life you like, but not me.”
“I don’t like it. And I don’t want it. But until this business with Dad is over—”
“I know. But will this be the end of it? What are you going to do once you find him and Soraia? Kill him?”
“No!” Quinton was aghast.
Sam shook her head, her eyes once again suspiciously red and wet. Her aura jumped with sudden scarlet sparks. “Then it will never be over. Dad will stop plotting and maneuvering and manipulating when he’s in his grave and not one minute before.”
“You think I should . . . ?”
“I’m not saying you should kill him. But I’m not saying you shouldn’t, either. He’s a monster. He took my child. He tried to give her that thing your girlfriend won’t even touch. He used you, and when you resisted, he almost killed you. He had our mom locked up in a psychiatric hospital. He is not a person who should be running loose in the world, but you can’t lock him up and be sure he’d stay there. The only other choice is to keep hiding. How do you want to live, Jay? That’s the only thing I’m saying.” I took note of everything she said, but I didn’t interrupt—this wasn’t my conversation.
Quinton put the flute on the table and rubbed one of his hands over his face and into his brown hair. “There has to be some other solution. I almost shot him in Seattle—I did shoot him, but I mean I almost shot him dead and Harper stopped me. I don’t want to be a murderer, no matter how terrible he is. I just . . . It was something I couldn’t live with at the NSA and I won’t bring that back down on myself. I don’t want to kill people, not even by remote control, through blinds and cutouts and a dozen layers of protocol that turned an elegant little programming problem into a weapon. I don’t want . . . that. That is no better a life than hiding and skulking. I don’t want to start a new life waist-deep in blood—anyone’s blood and especially not my father’s. He’s a villain, but killing him would not make me a hero.”
Sam threw her arms around him, catching Martim as well in her embrace. “Oh, Jay! I’m sorry, that’s not what I mean at all. I don’t want that, either. I am so sorry. I am . . . I’m. . . . I just want it to end! I want my daughter back. I just . . . want her back so much. . . .” It was as close to a breakdown as I had seen from Sam, although still very contained, and I wondered if being “a brick” was really a good thing for the brick. The baby didn’t seem to care for it, either, making squeals of protest at being squashed between the two adults.
Quinton clung to Sam with his free arm, saying, “I know. I know . . .” over and over.
I noted that Sam had avoided any further discussion of the idea that her daughter might be in touch with the Grey and I shifted my own focus to something productive. I used the stuffed toy to shove the flute back into its box and then put the lid on it while the siblings cried on each other’s shoulders. It wasn’t that I wasn’t affected by the scene and had no stake in it—I had a big one—but there was nothing I could do or say. It was their moment, and interrupting it to say, “Your daughter is probably psychic or some kind of magic user” wasn’t appropriate. I found the horrible flute increasingly disturbing, so I dealt with that, instead. I felt better once the flute was back in its box, and Quinton and Sam both sat back, looking a little relieved themselves.
As I put the package on the table, a tapping came on the front window. We all looked toward it, but only I saw the old vineyard manager standing on the other side, waving for me to come out to the yard. I stood up. “I think there’s something that the resident ghost wants us to see.”
SEVEN
Brother and sister followed me out of the house, Sam carrying Martim on her hip as he gurgled happily about going outdoors. I walked around to a shaded spot next to the wall where the ghost was waiting. He pointed to the ground. “Can you hear the noise?” he asked.
I concentrated on listening and, in the somber song of the Grey, I could hear an odd thread of melody, thin and high. Like a bird or a piccolo.
I stooped and looked around in the Grey, trying to locate the sound. I closed my eyes and moved my head until I heard the sound more clearly. Then I opened my eyes. The wall was directly in front of me. I humphed in surprise. How could a wall make sound?
The ghost knelt down next to me and pointed to the bottom of the wall, obscured in the prickly canes of the rosebushes. “There. It doesn’t belong here.”
I had to lie down to see the chink in the wall. It passed all the way through the wall and was wide enough for me to slide my forefinger into with plenty of room to spare. A current of magic jolted me like an electric shock, but rather than knocking me back, it seemed to pull me forward. I yanked my hand away, pushing myself violently out of the edge of the Grey.
I knocked into Quinton’s legs. He reached to pull me back to my feet, giving me a quick once-over. “You all right?”
I nodded, brushing soil and grass off the front of my blouse and skirt. “Just shocked. There’s something in a chink in the wall down there, but I can’t get it—it’s very powerful.”
“Could I try?”
“I’m not sure that’s wise. . . .”
But he had knelt down and was already stretching himself out on the ground. “I see it. Just a sec . . .” he said, pulling a tool from his pocket and unfolding it into a pair of narrow pliers. Even in much nicer clothes than his usual jeans, T-shirt, and coat, he still had pockets full of useful things.
In a moment, Quinton got to his feet and held up another small white cylinder. “It’s the twin to the one Dad gave Soraia.”
He held the tiny flute out, clasped in the pliers’ jaws. It was very similar but not actually a twin. The mouthpiece was a little different and the tone holes were not in quite the same placement. I thought the slight bend in the tube went the opposite way, but without opening the box, I couldn’t be sure. I’d not only left the box in the living room; I had no intention of opening it again without Carlos around. This flute was also dirty, and it was the dark, rubbed-in soil that made the difference, revealing a grain I hadn’t seen on the clean specimen.