I wanted to rush out but knew I needed to change out of my torn skirt and wash my face at the very least. Tovah must have applied a layer of thick makeup to make me look more corpse-like, and I could feel it cracking with every movement of my face. I looked around as I started for the bathroom.
The rooms were small by American standards, but at least the ceilings were high. All of the doorways and windows were arched—not a square frame to be seen—and all of the floors were old, dark wood, rippled with age. The first room we’d passed through appeared to be a sort of sitting room or personal office and the inner room was the bedroom. Nothing was built in—no closet, no shelves. The furniture just sat up against the dusty cream plaster walls. The various pieces all looked as old as the house—which I was guessing at six hundred years or more from the ghosts and the general style.
I wasn’t holding out a lot of hope about the bath being much more modern, but I was wrong. The toilet was distinctly old-fashioned and the taps might have been a hundred years old, but they worked. The hot water was nearly scalding, whereas the cold water seemed to have been drawn through the rocky foundations of the house, so it was icy and tasted mineral and sharp. The tub was a large built-in basin, covered in tiny, painted tiles, long and deep enough that even I could probably submerge myself in it without significant body parts sticking out. Tiled pillars rose from the corners of the bath to support the ceiling above, which was also covered in tiles that made a mosaic of the night sky. A modern handheld shower thing had been attached to the plumbing, somewhat ruining the palatial effect. The room smelled of bleach and orange peels.
A door on the other side of the bathroom led to another bedroom and sitting room, the mirror image of the suite I’d been assigned. Curious, I walked through it, past furniture shrouded by covers, to the tall windows at the back, and I pushed them open. The hinges of the windows squealed and the air stirred up a draft of old dust. The scent of oranges and lemons came from a small walled garden at the back of the house. A steep slope beyond put the first floor of the next house up the hill almost on a level with the bedroom I was standing in. Tilting my head back, I looked farther up the slope.
Stone walls with square crenellated tops rose beyond the next house and a fringe of palm trees. I couldn’t make out more of the castle looking up, but from this position there was no other building as far as I could see from side to side, just castle walls checkered with quarried stones of white, gray, and butter yellow as they caught the sunlight over the housetops. Even in the shade at the back of the house, it was warm.
I returned to my bedroom and hunted for the change of clothes my hostess had mentioned. I hadn’t been able to pack my own clothes and I was surprised to find the wardrobe half full with blouses and skirts that all appeared to be my size, though I’d never seen any of them before. My own sweater and jeans from the night I’d gone to sleep looked scruffy hanging next to them. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble, and I supposed I should be grateful, though at that moment, I felt a little creeped out.
The whole reason I’d slipped illegally into the country in the guise of a corpse was to remain below certain people’s radar by letting them think I was still in Seattle, doing what I usually do. Staying off anyone’s scope meant blending into the background, which was going to be difficult enough as an American who spoke no Portuguese. But it would be easier if I didn’t look like an American tourist. So I was grateful to Carlos—or to whomever he’d had pick up the clothes in my size—because they were lightly used and appeared to be of local or at least southern European manufacture. If I kept my mouth shut and my head down, I would at least be slightly less conspicuous and seem slightly less American. My height would be a problem, though, and there was nothing I could do about that but try to stay out of places where I’d stand out.
I didn’t have time to take a full bath, but I did wash the makeup off and put on what I hoped was a boring outfit of blouse, skirt, and flat shoes. I didn’t have my usual shoulder bag full of useful stuff—including my gun, which was locked in a safe-deposit box at my bank in Seattle. I did need some kind of purse or shopping bag to put a few items in, since the skirt—which would have been midcalf on many women but barely covered my knees—had only two shallow pockets and the blouse had none. It was much too hot to wear a jacket. I started downstairs feeling a bit naked, since I rarely wear skirts or any shoes of a lighter construction than sneakers since I gave up professional dance. I’m much more at home in jeans and boots.
On the second floor just before the head of the stairs, a ghost stood in my way and stared intently at me. She looked like the medieval woman I’d seen ascending the staircase earlier, but it was hard to be sure since I hadn’t had a good look at her before. I stopped and gazed back at her. A mist swirled and ran around her feet like a whirlpool, expanding outward and rising slowly, as if she were being swallowed up in the maelstrom. She was very young, a teenager, really, in an age before that concept existed. Her face was long and serious. Long dark hair that fell to her hips was swept back from her high forehead with a band of cloth. She studied me, saying nothing and pursing her mouth as if she couldn’t make up her mind.
I took a step toward her and put out my hand, palm up. “My name is Harper. I won’t be staying very long.”
She cocked her head as if straining to hear me. Then she turned her head aside sharply, disrupting her rising tide of mist so it blew outward and swirled away, dissolving into empty air. I walked to the stair rail and looked down, but she wasn’t on the stairs. My mysterious hostess stepped out from one of the arches along the side of the entry and glanced up at me.
“Are you all right, senhora?”
“I’m fine. Did you see her?”
“The ghost? I see them sometimes. They don’t care to show themselves to me often. Where are you going?”
“I’m not sure . . . someplace where sick toys go to get well?” The only open part of the message had used the phrase “where sick toys get well.”
She frowned for a moment as if she had to translate the phrase. “Ah. O Hospital de Bonecas. The doll hospital. It is in the Baixa—the lower town—on Praça da Figueira. It will be faster to walk than take the tram. I will draw you a map.”
I followed her back into the tiled hallway to a kitchen, which was probably of the same vintage as the bathroom upstairs but not as luxuriously appointed. The sink and counters looked to have been carved from granite and there was still a cooking hearth on one side of the room, though it had clearly not been used in a century or so. She took a pad of paper and a jasmine-scented pencil from the worktable and drew quickly. I watched her. Her hands were bony and thin, but not like an old woman’s, and they moved swift as birds, drawing little sketches of the landmarks she thought I’d need to navigate by. It was a remarkable piece of work for something done so casually. When she was finished, she tore the page off and handed it to me. I took it, blinking at her in surprise.
“Thank you. What is your name, by the way?”
She puzzled that question for a moment, then gave a small smile that vanished as quickly as it arrived. “Meu nome é Rafa.”
“Thank you, Rafa.” I looked at her map again. “This is very kind of you.”
She blushed, which seemed to take her by surprise, and she put her hands to her cheeks. “De nada. And you look very nice.” She reached up and touched my hair. “But you should wear a scarf or a hat. You are very pale.”
Even at the end of an unusually dry summer, I hadn’t gotten much of a tan in Seattle, though I wouldn’t have said I was pale. Compared to Rafa, though, I looked as white as the ghost on the staircase. “I don’t have a hat. Or a purse for that matter.”