“Out that window,” he confirmed, pointing with his free hand to the back wall of the old chapter house that still stood on the sheer side of the building next to the church. “Yes. So, you see why I did not return. After a time, I closed my eyes and ears to Lisbon. I forgot what I did not wish to know. This was my city and these are my ruins.”
“It rose again, like your clumsy phoenix.”
“Under the hand of the Marquês de Pombal.” He spat the name. “Is it any wonder that my plans are frustrated in this place as if his very ghost opposed me?”
I found his almost superstitious reaction strange and disquieting. “We can leave Lisbon as soon as we know what the bone mages are up to.”
“We’ll have to leave soon, regardless.”
I frowned at him, but he said no more and led me across the bare roof to a set of unattractive iron railings that secured a short flight of steps to the edge of the curtain wall. More steps led us down by stages until we stumbled past a gate, into the Rua do Carmo and into the path of a policeman strolling along the road.
The cop called out to us, sounding suspicious but not yet alarmed. Carlos drew in a breath to reply, but I cut him off.
“Oh thank God!” I said, playing the dizzy tourist. “We got lost by the church and we don’t know how to get back to our hotel.” I even giggled like the inebriate I appeared to be. I felt a bit light-headed from blood loss, so it wasn’t a stretch.
The policeman peered at us, his English not quite up to my chattering speed.
“Nós estamos perdidos,” Carlos said, in Portuguese that made mine sound fluid and dulcet. “Nosso hotel . . . Rossio.”
I wouldn’t have believed he could sound so befuddled and foreign. The cop seemed to buy it, however, and pointed north, down the road toward a bright smudge of light one long block away. “Ah! You have luck. Rossio is there.”
We thanked him as if we really were drunken tourists and we staggered onward. A few feet from the intersection, Carlos winced and swayed and I nearly fell into him. He caught me without grace or sign of affection and we leaned against the edge of a doorway. I felt unsteady and ill from the heaving and rolling of the Grey’s constant replay of tragic history—a history the creature beside me had helped cause.
“You don’t do well,” Carlos observed, sounding rough himself.
“No,” I replied. “History is too persistent here and I’m too weak to push it back. A cab might be a good idea,” I said, swallowing bile and breathing too hard.
“That is why I chose the Rossio. If there are taxis to be found, they will be here.”
“Is that because some things never change?”
“Yes. And no.”
The driver who pulled over at our hail gave us a sideways glare that measured up the likely origins of our bloodied and rumpled appearance and found us questionable, but not bad enough to blow off. He was English and became much happier to brave the narrow twisty streets of Alfama once we started speaking English also.
“Right,” he said, “top of the hill. Hang on.”
A better piece of advice he could not have given, for he took off into the late-night traffic with a jerk and a jink that slipped us between a bus and a limousine in a cacophony of horns.
TWENTY
This time, the house was illuminated—it even looked welcoming as the taxi driver let us out at the gate. He’d barely squeezed the small car through the medieval streets of Alfama with close calls at every turn and passing. I’d been too exhausted to react and Carlos had spent the short ride brooding out the window at the city he no longer recognized.
The taxi fare was surprisingly low and even with my meager collection of coins, I was able to tip the guy to a degree that earned me a huge grin. “You’ll want to be more careful with your money around here, love. Neighborhood’s gone to the dogs since the smart set moved to Chiado and Bairro Alto. Still, it’s lovely, ain’t it? Can’t complain about the view, eh?”
“No. And thanks for bringing us up.”
“Pleasure’s all mine.”
We watched him drive away, threading the twisty streets once again with inches to spare and no apparent care for his paintwork. Carlos and I limped through the gate and courtyard to the house.
Quinton and Rafa awaited us in the dimly lit doorway.
“Look what I caught,” Quinton said, waving his arm to indicate the phantom housekeeper.
“How?” I asked.
“With the key. We’re in her version of the house right now. That’s why I left the gate and door unlocked for you. Holy crap!” he added as we stepped from the shadow into light. “What happened?”
He lunged to grab me as if he thought I’d fall at any moment, leaving Rafa to attempt an escape while he was distracted. Carlos made a gesture and spat out a word, and she froze in place as if time had stopped.
He turned back to us and, in the light, I saw a smear of dried blood on his forehead and long streamers of it stiffening the black fabric of his shirt from collar to waist. In the dark it had been invisible, but here it was plain. “You look like death,” I said.
Carlos bowed his head with an ironic smile, just out of Quinton’s sight as my lover said, “You look worse.”
“Do I?” I glanced at my arms, but the left was fine. The right was covered in small nicks and filthy scrapes that had bled and dried closed again already. My shins below my skirt were covered in worse scrapes and gouges where the stones of the broken church had cut me while they fell and my outfit was filthy and ripped in several places. I’d never taken that kind of damage in a temporacline before. I already felt weak and uncertain, and the sight didn’t improve my sense of being barely in the normal world at all.
But Quinton was looking at my face, not my body. He smoothed a warm hand over my cheek and forehead and into my hair. “You look like you’ve been in a wreck.”
I gave a rough laugh. “A ruin. But we survived.”
Quinton finally turned back to look at Carlos. His eyes widened, but he said nothing.
Carlos raised an eyebrow, but I noticed he was leaning back against the wall with more of his weight than usual. His skin was waxy, not merely pale, and he seemed smaller, thinner, or diminished. In his own lifetime, he must have seemed a giant. Now he just looked tall, broad shouldered, and worn down.
I watched his chest for a moment, just to be sure he was still breathing. He was, so the odd change in his state of existence was still operating.
“We should adjourn this discussion to a more comfortable location,” he said.
“I don’t think I can make it up the stairs yet,” I said.
“There used to be a salon in this house,” Carlos said, and led the way out of the entry and through one of the other doors at the back. The door opened into a room that ran from the front to the back of the house and had long windows on both sides to let the air through. The room was clean, if sparsely furnished, and we settled into a pair of couches that sat at right angles near the back, overlooking the small garden through tall, Moorish arches. The heat of the day reflected off the stone wall that held back the hillside and the house above to flood the room with the scent of orange trees, jasmine, and bougainvillea. It might have seemed romantic and pleasant if I hadn’t been exhausted, bloodied, and woozy. I snuggled against Quinton, feeling unseasonably cold. He put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me close, unknowingly repeating the gesture Carlos had made earlier. It gave me a chill.
“Now . . . will one of you tell me what happened? Harper bolted out of here as if you were dying.”
“I was and would have been gone from this world if she hadn’t arrived when she did. She would have sacrificed herself to save me and I was almost thoughtless enough to accept that offer.”
I felt Quinton bridle and start to lunge for him at Carlos’s implication, but he fell back as the necromancer held up his hands.