“I’m not kidding. You’re swaying on your feet.”
“I need a bath. . . .”
“Not as much as you need to sleep,” he said. This time he did not ask permission but picked me up and carried me to the bed.
“Too much to do . . .” I objected. “Carlos—”
“Obviously thinks it’s more important for you to rest. So in you go,” he added, rolling me onto the quilt laid over the bed.
Every part of my body seemed to become heavier the moment I was horizontal and the thin blanket Quinton pulled up over us both was like a magical veil of sleep colluding with the pillows to draw my eyes closed and drown me in slumber. I barely acknowledged the comfort of his body curled around mine with a drowsy mumble before I sank away.
TWENTY-NINE
The sun was still up when the stifling discomfort of sleeping in clothes and blankets forced me awake. I wasn’t entirely rested, but the feeling that we were already pressing too close to a deadline goaded me. My attempts to get out of bed without waking Quinton were unsuccessful and he caught my good hand.
“No. Please,” he begged. “A few minutes . . .”
“There’s too much we have to—”
“I know. I know,” he said, sitting up and shaking his head in resignation.
Quinton followed me into the bath and we managed to get clean without soaking my stitches or having uncomfortable, hurried sex—my hand still ached and the timing was just too wrong, though the desire lay plain between us. We were both anxious and wound up, but he didn’t press me about his proposal and I didn’t talk about impending doom or the ghosts that seemed to peer from the walls and flow through the rooms like smoke.
The shirt and trousers I’d borrowed from Quinton were dusty and sweat-stained, and I thought it unlikely I’d be much help in the nude—though Quinton probably thought otherwise. As much as I appreciated that, I couldn’t push aside the nettling feeling that there was too much to do and not enough time.
There were noises outdoors and something thumped in the hallway outside. Quinton stuck his head out and talked to Nelia for a moment, then backed into the room with a large, heavy suitcase. He shut the door with his foot and turned around, lugging the case to the bed.
“Nelia—with some prompting from Carlos, I suspect—has unearthed a collection of things left by guests and family. If we’re unlucky, something will fit you.”
“Unlucky?” I repeated.
“Well, unlucky for me, because then you’ll stop pacing around the room in nothing but a towel.”
“I think it would be luckier, since that way you won’t have to watch the pacing part of the equation.”
“It is a little annoying.”
“Let’s see what’s in there.”
The case was stuffed with mismatched clothes and, once again, I had to make do with a blouse and skirt that were both a bit loose-fitting but long enough to cover my midriff and knees as well as all the essential bits. The outfit was comfortable enough and didn’t look too bad once we’d found a belt. The skirt even had pockets, which seemed more common with European than American clothes, the assumption of American designers being that you’d rather look slim than have a convenient place for your keys.
“I’m becoming tired of borrowed clothes,” I grumbled. “I never thought I’d miss my closet more than my truck. At least the sandals are more comfortable than they look.”
“I, for one, am not complaining. You have fantastic legs. Especially when—”
I put my hand over his mouth. “Oh no. Don’t go there.”
He pushed my hand away and kissed me, pulling me in tight to his body. I could feel the tension and desire he was trying to suppress for my sake. “I’m sorry that this is such a bad time, but no matter what clothes you’re wearing—or not wearing—you’re always going to make me feel this way,” he said. “Did I ever tell you that the first time we met, I wanted to take you to bed?”
“Yes.”
“Damn. I thought I was revealing something.”
“Oh, you’re revealing something, all right,” I said. “And if there weren’t bad guys to stop and dragons to slay, I’d be flattered flat onto my back.”
He laughed and let me go. “Then we’d better go slay them.”
I moved and my thigh brushed against him. He bit his lip. “Maybe you’d better go first,” he added.
Downstairs, the house had become busy near the kitchen and a group of long tables had been set under the cork oaks at the end of the driveway. Nelia and the children were coming and going along with several other women and a man who limped, carrying food, wine, and utensils out to the tables.
Trying to stay out of the way, I stepped out onto the terrace around the pool, which was now deserted except for Carlos. He stood at the edge of the drop and watched the bustle from a distance.
“What’s all that?” I asked.
“Dinner for the fieldworkers. The house provides for those who’ve labored during the day. Most of them are local people—about a third are family, the rest neighbors and seasonal workers.”
“Your family . . . ?”
“Yes,” he replied, sounding a little irritated. “I can see the ties, some faint, some stronger. . . . ”
“I don’t understand how you couldn’t have known, couldn’t have felt them. . . .”
“Do you feel every connection in your web of family? Even once you saw it?”
“Only Quinton.”
Carlos nodded with a slight scowl. “I had no such connection to any of them.”
“Are you sure Beatriz and Damiao-Maria were your kids?”
“Yes. While you slept, I spoke with Amélia.”
“So she’s loose.”
He inclined his head a few degrees. “For now.”
We were both quiet for a minute, watching the bustling around the dining tables as other people began arriving, walking across the fields, or driving in to park nearby on the stubble of crops already harvested near the house. Even the ghosts streamed out from the house and wove among the living, remembering the harvest meals they’d eaten under the same trees. I spotted Rafa, but I didn’t recognize any others as more than swirls of white, silver, black, and blue, and the vague mist-shapes of bodies and faces. The man with the limp paused to stare back at us until Nelia grabbed him by the arm and laughingly pulled him along with her to the kitchen. He followed her with a hungry gaze and stumbling feet.
“This is a burden I never wanted,” Carlos said, his low voice making the air near us quiver. “I had thought, as I first saw them, ‘In a very different world, might this have been mine? Might I have been other than what I am?’ But there is no different world in which any of that could be true. There is only this one, where I have descendants only because I raped my wife and I see them only because of you.”
“Me?”
“Yes. I would not stand here, now, if I had not met you. I would not be as I am now if you hadn’t come asking foolish questions and if I had not taken Cameron under my wing because of you. Because you are who you are—not what you are. I have met other Greywalkers—I knew Peter Marsden when I lived in London under the heel of my hate. He is a weak creature, compared to you, and driven mad by what he is.”
“Marsden is twice the Greywalker I am.”
“And half the man. Less than half the woman.”
I laughed a little at that, but it didn’t distract Carlos from his strange humor that seemed to balance on the razor’s edge between anger and awe.
“I saw it when you first looked at me and wanted to run away, but you didn’t because you were more worried for the safety of a foolhardy, loyal boy than you were for yourself. Your compassion, your sense of justice and righteousness, your ridiculous bravery—I’ve laughed at you over them, goaded, and pricked you about them, but they are what fascinated me from the first. They are what keep you from falling into madness and make you superior to all the others of your kind. Until that night, I would have killed a creeping, questioning fool like you out of hand. A lamb walking into a lion’s den gets eaten and I am a vicious, ever-hungry lion. But you shone like a star and I wanted to see what you would do, strange creature, if I told you the truth.”