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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 appears 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.