“They have, but I have a little control over how fast they come. It will be sufficient, so long as we are swift,” Carlos said.
“Do you have something to catch her in?” I asked. “I’ve done this before, but I had to have a reflective container.”
“I need no such object.”
Carlos started to gesture as if he would dismiss the temporacline and Rafa with it, but Quinton threw up one hand. “Wait! What about the estate? If it still exists, it might be the perfect place to hide, since only Rafa ties any of us to it and she’s a ghost.”
“Rui is not above torturing the dead for information. Though without her bones in hand, it will be more difficult for him.”
“Then we’ll take her with us, too.”
Carlos gave him a narrow, assessing look. “For a man who distrusts and despises me, you seem to have high expectations of my abilities.”
“I trust you. I just don’t like you much. And I know better than to underestimate your skills. Snatching two ghosts out of the ether instead of just one isn’t going to be any sort of difficulty for you.”
Carlos looked at me and raised an eyebrow. “Birds of a feather.”
“Hey!” I objected.
Carlos offered a thin, unfriendly smile. “It is not quite as simple as you believe, but, indeed, it’s no hardship. However, her temporacline may collapse as soon as I take her and we’ll have less time in which to move.”
We both nodded. He turned back to Rafa and removed whatever magical gag he’d placed on her.
She let out a stream of indignant words while Carlos waited for her to stop. It didn’t take long for her to wind down.
“Where is Amélia’s estate?” he asked.
Rafa blinked as if surprised and replied in rapid Portuguese, gesturing as though giving directions I couldn’t begin to follow. Carlos scowled, but Quinton nodded the whole time. When she was done, she smiled at Carlos as if he’d just paid her a dazzling compliment.
He bowed to her. “Perdoe-me,” he muttered. Then he swept his hand through her as if grabbing a coat off a rack.
She was solid in the temporacline we occupied. For a moment her form resisted, and she gasped in surprise and pain as his hand ripped into her. Then she collapsed into a shape of silver mist and pale blue sparks that Carlos gathered into his fist, rolling the ghostly steam into a small wisp he thrust into the chest pocket of his shirt.
The house shuddered around us as Carlos collected the remnant of Rafa. The kitchen seemed to waver and grow icy, then flush into searing heat and a flash of harsh yellow light as the house settled back into the normal time frame. Cold white mist rolled across the floor. Shrieking, scrabbling, and pounding shook the front of the house, resonating through the structure and reflecting off the garden wall in waves of sound and magical force. The Grey shivered silver and green with every blow.
Quinton was a little shaken, but he looked around, assessing the situation. “That’s not another earthquake.”
“No,” Carlos said. “Our guests have grown impatient. Are you both ready to leave as soon as this is done?”
“Not quite,” Quinton said. “I can’t risk leaving the laptop where Dad can recover it. Can you do without me while I go get it?”
“We can, but bring everything you’ll need and be sure the tower door is closed and the lock engaged. Meet us in the cellar.”
“Will do.” Quinton bolted out of the room and I could hear him running at full pelt across the foyer and up the stairs.
Carlos looked at me. I shrugged. “I travel light. What I need is in my pockets. Remember—I came with nothing.” I blessed the habit by which I’d stowed my ID and cash in the pockets of unfamiliar clothes as I dressed.
“Good. Catch Amélia when she arrives. She won’t be as easy to take as Rafa. She knows me better.”
He glanced at my hand and seemed about to ask me to extend it, but then he chuckled in his throat and looked down at his own hand. He picked up one of the kitchen knives and pricked his left index finger. Very fast, he wrote something on the kitchen table in his blood and drew something from his shirt that was black and shining darkly through the Grey. It was the Lâmina que Consome as Almas—a black blade he had killed for and nearly been destroyed by, later. He let fall a single red drop of his blood onto the knife and the blade rang as he slammed his palm down on the table over the words he had scrawled there.
“Come, Amélia Maria Desidéria Leitão e Sousa de Neves Ataíde. You have no choice.”
She appeared with a screech of fury and flew at him before I could lay a hand into her energetic substance. “Monstro!”
He batted her aside and I caught a few fingers into her chilly tangle of ghost-stuff. She strained against my hold, toward Carlos as if she meant to strike him, and her words made hollow echoes in my mind, heard and only partially understood in the confusing fog of her fury.
“Monster?” Carlos said. “First you save me, then you revile me. Dear wife, you’re more interesting than I realized.”
“Deixa a minha filha em paz. Deixa!” Let my daughter go. . . .
“Your daughter? Rafa? Impossible. Many-times-great-granddaughter, perhaps . . .”
She fell back a short distance, her shade quivering in the shaking house as the tension between her energetic form and my crooked fingers eased. “Minha neta . . .” My grandchild . . .
“By whom? By whom did you have a child that begat still more children, little wife?”
“Você! Por causa de você, Carlos, a minha grande maldição, e o meu grande amor . . .” By you, Carlos, my curse, my beloved . . . Her voice trailed away and she tried to withdraw as if ashamed or appalled at what she’d said. I held her where she was, though I longed to let her go.
“You never told me,” Carlos said, the air around him waxing hot and red with his anger.
“Eu temia que você faria. . . .” I feared what you would do. . . .
“As well you should have. I took you against your will, forced you—” He seemed almost pleased to remind her of the things he’d done to hurt her and drive her away.
Amélia shrugged. “Forcei você a fazê-lo.” I made you do it.
He roared at her.
The house rattled and Quinton skidded through the door with his bag over his shoulder. “No more time, folks—the storm troopers have arrived!”
Carlos cursed, but his fury dissipated as suddenly as it had come and he drew his hand over Amélia’s phantom face. “Sleep.” Then he slipped the point of the Lâmina into the swirl of her ghostly fabric. I yanked my hands away, feeling the tool’s hunger as it cut. Carlos twisted the ghost’s substance onto the blade like thread on a spindle. The knife drank Amélia in until no sign of her remained.
I backed toward the door as he pulled a match from the box near the stove and lit the smear of blood across the table’s surface on fire.
Then he turned to us, the black blade still in his hand. “Why are you standing still? Run!”
We bolted out the door, but Carlos didn’t follow immediately. I turned to see why.
Griffin had skittered into the hall, her black heels clattering on the tiles. She stopped as she saw Carlos and gaped for a split second before making a flinging gesture at him.
A rattling swirl of ivory and black whirled toward him. Carlos flicked the Lâmina through it and the spell fell apart, littering the floor with white grit.
Griffin jolted backward, spitting, “Why can’t I kill you, you bastard? You should be dead!”
Silent, Carlos sprang toward her, the gleaming blackness of the blade thrust forward in a blur that sliced into Griffin’s chest almost faster than I could follow. Her mouth fell open in shock as his hand pushed wrist-deep under the arch of her ribs. I gagged.
Carlos leaned close, as if he would kiss her, and murmured words that seemed to settle on Griffin like dust. She writhed, smoke rising around her. He yanked his arm back, tearing something pulsing and dripping blood from her chest.