“He’s still more dangerous than six of anyone else put together. He stopped Griffin, didn’t he? She wasn’t a pushover.”
“He ripped her heart out.”
“Good for him. No one better deserved the loss of a major organ. You don’t see Carlos as others do, Harper. No one who doesn’t have a death wish is going to mess with him.”
“Those aren’t the people I’m worried about. What if Rui and your father catch him?”
“They won’t—if he doesn’t have to watch out for us, he has more options about how to stymie Rui than we do. We’re a detriment to him at this stage. Besides, who would you bet on in that fight? The apprentice or the master? Seriously.”
Even in my uncertainty and the lingering ache in my chest from Griffin’s death, I had to give him that point. “How do you think they found us?” I asked.
“Taxi driver.”
“What taxi driver?”
“You didn’t notice? Down at the end of the block where the street turns, there was a taxi parked. The same cab you and Carlos came home in.”
“I can’t believe I missed it.”
“You were both in pretty bad shape last night, so it’s not that surprising. And don’t kick yourself about not having identified the driver as a villain. Dad and Rui just did what the cops would do—they checked for anyone who fit your or Carlos’s description. My dad’s seen you both before, but we got lucky, because the old man wasn’t quite prepared to see Carlos at all, much less running around in daylight. They knew he survived, but Griffin obviously didn’t stay to see the finale. I guess Carlos was right about her vanity being her downfall.”
“I’m just afraid we’re throwing him to the wolves. And after what I did to keep him alive.” I had to trot to keep up with Quinton’s agitated pace.
“Rui and my dad won’t want any of us alive to stop them. They both know how dangerous Carlos is to their plans and Dad can’t risk having me on the loose for similar reasons. And while my father may not be sure what you are even if Rui’s told him—and he strikes me as the sort who likes to keep a few cards hidden at all times—he knows you’re not normal. With or without me, you’re a wild card far too dangerous to leave in someone else’s hands. We’re all running from the wolves, now. I’m frankly worried about whoever may be with Dad aside from Carlos’s dearest enemy. I can’t plan for what I don’t know. On the upside, Dad’s not going to be moving very fast with that leg.”
“On the downside, when we’re talking about bone mages, I’m more concerned about where his original leg is now. It happened before he took Soraia, so it’s not a substitute for her. . . .”
“I’m trying not to think about that.”
“Maybe you should.”
We both shut up and jogged on down the hill. At the first corner we came to, Quinton stopped, gave me a quick kiss, and turned aside, taking the other road and leaving me to my own devices.
I had no doubt about my ability to find my own way—strange city or not, figuring things out was my forte—but I was still worried and other bits of my mind continued pursuing the calculus of destruction and the unacknowledged weight of fear.
TWENTY-THREE
I started walking the other way, feeling the slightest pull of Quinton behind me, but knowing better than to turn around. At each intersection, I turned away from that tugging sensation, looking for some way out of town. I finally came down from the castle hill on Rua Cavaleiros at the north end of the Baixa, where the next of Lisbon’s seven hills began to swoop back upward. Ahead of me lay Praça Martim Moniz—another open plaza with trees and fountains set in a huge oval park of ubiquitous white tile. The area was scruffier than the nearby Praça da Figueira with only a few of the Pombaline Baroque buildings looking slightly down-at-the-heels here amid flat-fronted modern construction. Low-set half walls of bland concrete shoehorned an antique church between what appeared to be a commercial building coated in peeling paint on one end and a hideous 1970s apartment block on the other.
On the near side, I spotted a bus stop that was nearly a block long across the street from a sign for an underground metro station. I ran across the road, dodging traffic, to the station stairs. I figured I could find my way out of town if I could get to a train or bus station. Whatever I did, I knew the train station at Cais do Sodré lay southwest and I wanted to go northeast, so as long as I moved in the opposite direction of the trains Quinton and I had used to go to Carcavelos, I should get closer to my goal. I was less worried about catching up to Quinton once I got out of Lisbon. Though it was illogical, I knew I wouldn’t have any trouble finding him once I started trying—we always seemed to fall back together. The curious, pulling sensation in my chest that connected us through the Grey thrummed and vibrated with the nervous quivering of my heart.
Negotiating an unfamiliar transit system can be nerve-racking, but I got to do it in a foreign language while trying to stay off the radar of anyone—or anything—associated with my almost father-in-law. The paranormals were much easier to avoid than the spies—I could see them coming. The Martim Moniz metro station wasn’t very busy. With Purlis and his uncanny companion in mind, I moved with care, first finding a restroom so I could clean up a little, and then slipping into the Grey to peek at the station from that vantage point before I strolled out into it.
I saw two of the uncomfortable, rolling auras I’d spotted at Cais do Sodré and something that looked like a transparent human skeleton. My guess on the last one was some kind of ghost working for Purlis—whether it wanted to or not. I wasn’t sure if the men and the skeletal thing were looking for me at all. I have a distinctive glow in the Grey and I thought it might be better if I didn’t find out the hard way that they could see it. Chances were good the two dark auras belonged to humans who couldn’t see through walls, so if I knew where they were, I could avoid them. The skeleton was more of a problem, especially since, being a bone construct, it had to be the work of the Kostní Mágové. I had no idea how it functioned. It wasn’t close, however, so I slipped back to the normal and out of the restroom. Looking down the concourse, I guessed that the Men with Ugly Auras—I dubbed them the MUAs for convenience—were inside the gates, but it appeared that the skeleton was outside them.
I slunk down the concourse toward the ticket-vending machines, keeping my vision partially turned to the Grey until I spotted the edge of the skeleton. I looked toward it and saw one of the many art installations that seemed to be common in Lisbon’s metro stations. I shivered, realizing that the gruesome thing was embedded in an otherwise nondescript bit of construction board that covered a wall repair in progress. It faced the turnstiles I’d have to pass through to get to the platform. I guessed that there would be some similar thing at any other set of turnstiles for this station, so there wasn’t much to be gained in checking and a lot of time to be lost. I’d have to find a way through this chokepoint.
I stopped well back from the turnstiles as if I couldn’t find my ticket and pushed myself back against the tiled wall, studying the construction through the Grey. It reminded me of something I’d dealt with before—a sort of paranormal security system that had been set up by a blood mage using a dead dog. I’d been able to get around that with a combination of my skill and Quinton’s theory, but this didn’t seem to be quite as complicated. It was more like a silent alarm that looked for something specific and sent a signal to whoever was at the receiving end, by paranormal means, without alerting the subject. The skeleton probably sent some kind of alarm to the MUAs so they could converge on the turnstiles once I—or whatever they were looking for—was committed and couldn’t back out easily, since the gates were the automated stainless steel variety that took the ticket at one end and gave it back on the other side of their automated wing doors. It wasn’t a complicated system and to someone without my ability, it was undetectable and inescapable. But it had a couple of weaknesses—the skeleton used as the detector was embedded in something movable and the chances were good it saw in only one direction—forward from its hollow eye sockets.