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 something 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.”
“At least I make you laugh when things get terrible.”
“You do,” I conceded, knowing that at least part of the laughter was a sham on both our parts. “But, eww! Vampire kisses!” I gave a mock shudder.
“Some people obviously like them.”
I thought of the mark on Tovah’s wrist and the way she’d deferred to Carlos. “I would never volunteer to be a vampire snack,” I said.
“Why not?” Quinton asked, taking my book and looking it over, keeping his face turned from mine.
“How can you ask that?”
He looked up, still holding the book in one hand, and took my arm, turning me so we could make our way out of the store. “Because I want to understand it. While I know you never would, I’m not actually sure why.” As we passed the elderly man at the front counter, Quinton tipped his hat with one hand and held up the book in the other. “Obrigado, Doutor Barros.”
“De nada, Senhor Smith,” the man replied, nodding and smiling as if we weren’t stealing his book.
Outside, Quinton continued to steer me along the streets, his expression serious as he kept his eyes on anything but me, and repeated his question in a soft voice. “Why would you not? I just want to understand what makes you certain you wouldn’t give in—I mean that is kind of their stock-in-trade.”
I replied in a low voice, feeling confused by his choice of topic. “Because they’re dead and they’re power mongers. Their glamour doesn’t affect me, so as far as I’m concerned, all vampires are just upright corpses with terrible habits. And they smell bad. Also, Carlos and Cameron have let it slip once or twice that there’s more to blood in the vampire community than just cells and plasma. I don’t want to give up a little chunk of my life or be under anyone’s control—no matter how slight, distant, or seemingly useful—regardless of the upside. Bitten by a walking corpse . . . ? Does that sound like a good thing to you?”