There were a few of them wandering about, but even after Carlos picked up the box and muttered over it, the ghost didn’t appear.
“It’s not at home,” Quinton said.
“It is somewhere nearby. But it resists coming to me or cannot come directly. If we wait, it will make its way here.”
“We could just destroy it and send the spirit on its way,” I suggested.
“But then we would not know what it has told our enemies.”
“I think we can guess most of it,” I said.
Nelia came out from the kitchen with glasses of chilled wine on a tray and set them on the table nearby. “You are all looking very upset. I thought you might like a cool drink.” She paused and looked over Quinton’s shoulder at the photo of the dolmen. “Have you been to Anta Serrinha?” she asked.
“What?” Quinton asked.
Nelia pointed at the photo on the laptop screen. “The rocks—Anta Serrinha. It means ‘the Little Sawtooth Dolmen,’ but some people call it ‘the Devil’s Pool.’”
“You’ve been up there?”
“Yes. I’ve ridden or walked over every mile of Alentejo. There are dozens of those stones and other places like them, full of magic. Old places that they say open to fairyland or to hell itself. That one, they say, is where Lucifer first fell to Earth and wept in his fury at God, his tears turning to sand and stones as hard as his heart. When the pool was wide enough to drown in, he threw himself in and swam to hell where he became king of all that is evil and damned. The stones turn red when the sun is just right, as if they were bathed in blood. They say that if the stones ever are covered in blood, the mouth of hell will open there and belch out demons and minions of the Devil to set the earth on fire.” She shrugged. “I say why should they come to Alentejo—it’s already hot as hell and no one cares what becomes of us.”
The rest of us exchanged glances but said nothing, wary of the possibility that the spy was near enough to hear the tale also.
Nelia looked at us and gave a sly smile. “Dinner will be served in an hour. You should drink your wine. Wine calms the soul,” she added, giving Carlos a look that would have melted glass.
“Not this soul,” Quinton said, glancing at the box.
“Blast Eladio!” Nelia said, instantly angry and coming to glare at the box. “I told him to put that in the storage shed, but he opened it up, and then he didn’t even put it away! Oh, I’ll beat him with a stick for this!”
Carlos caught her by the wrist, turning her to him and tilting her head up with one finger so she would be forced to meet his gaze. His eyes blazed with banked fury, but his voice was soft. “Eladio opened the box. Are you certain?”
“Of course, Carlos,” she replied, her voice melting and soft, her body swaying toward his. I could see the dark, sparkling twists of his glamour wrapping around her and she responded as if to a caress. She looked like a doll beside him, almost a foot shorter, black hair falling around her shoulders like a storm cloud, and brown eyes wide and liquid enough to drown in.
“What was inside the box?”
“Nothing but a bundle of twigs and a cloud of dust.”
“When did he do this?”
“This morning. While you were out.”
I noticed that her answers were precise, with nothing volunteered that wasn’t asked. She was enthralled. I’d never appreciated what the word really meant until that moment.
“Where is Eladio now?”
“In the vineyard on the hill.”
“Will he return to the house with the others for dinner?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I told him to leave me alone, not to come back if he couldn’t.”
“Thank you, Nelia. Go back to your work,” Carlos added, letting go of her arm and dropping his glamour as he dropped his hand from her chin.
She seemed to become smaller as she stepped back, letting out a held breath and blinking very fast. She turned without saying any more and went back into the kitchen.
“At least I have not diminished completely,” Carlos said as if to himself. “We have discovered our spy and know where it is.”
“We have?”
He turned to look at Quinton sharply. “Yes. The spirit from this box is attached to Eladio—or has moved to one of the other vineyard workers for the moment. It cannot observe us, for now.”
“Shouldn’t we banish it as soon as possible?” I asked, remembering the long, difficult process of releasing Sergeyev years ago.
“Soon, but not yet. Now we should lay plans while we know it cannot hear or observe us. This,” he added, kicking the box, “explains how Rui kept ahead of us. But he’ll learn nothing more. So long as the ghost has not been banished, he will believe his spy is still here, gathering information.”
“But the last time was not quick or easy. . . .”
“This shall be. You could do it yourself just by tearing the box and its contents apart and banishing the spirit as you already know how to do. You are no longer a stranger to the Grey and this isn’t the work of Lenoir or even Griffin. It’s the construction of a raw apprentice with insufficient time to lay the spell.”
I hesitated to agree. “Are you sure . . . ?”
“Yes. It would fall to you in any event. My own powers beyond death are weak—that is why I lost Rui and his apprentice today. This state between mortality and undeath is ending, and I am neither one nor the other, no stronger than I was before Becoming, mortal and weak until the sun goes down again on Saint Jerome’s Day, taking the last of your gift with it.”
“And after that . . . you return to being a vampire?”
“Yes.”
“What are you now?” Quinton asked, truly puzzled and frowning.
Carlos surprised me by answering without rancor. “Something between. Part of each, most of neither. The only power I now can be sure I command is that which I was born with and trained to while I was still alive. But necromancy is a complex magic, ill-suited to quick work. I am, or will be from the moment the sun goes down, unable to touch the power without death on my hands.”
“And that would kind of ruin the dinner party,” Quinton said.
Carlos chuckled. “It would. But we can plan now, before the time comes, and I will simply . . . withdraw until tomorrow night. As you saw, the drachen are weaker in sunlight, so Rui and his mages will summon their Inferno Dragão after dark. They’ll use the Devil’s Pool—what better place than one reputed to have a doorway straight to hell? That is why the young dreamspinner was practicing there. He wishes to prove his mettle tomorrow night. Casting a smaller spell in the same location would give him a feel for the ley lines and flow of power there.”
I nodded. “It sounds likely to me. So . . . we need to be at the Devil’s Pool tomorrow before they can get started. But how are we going to disrupt the spell? You said the timing had to be perfect and the spell dissipated quickly. Could we use Rui’s bone flute?”
“Perhaps, but the risk is high,” Carlos replied. “The flute sings only to his bones and that would also require excellent timing. If you cannot remove the bones before the spell is begun, the song of the flute will reinforce the song of the spell, making it stronger until the bones are out of place. If you call the bones, you must assume them, or they will pull you into the construct instead.”
“Assume? You mean . . . take them as my own?” I felt sick at the idea. I’d embraced a ghost once and held its struggling energy captive within my own flesh for a little while. It was an agonizing ordeal and one I could sustain for only a short time. I was better at this business now, but I doubted I could stand what he was implying. “What happens to my bones?”
“Usually they would take the place of the bones you had assumed from the spell, but they could also return to the matching bones’ original owner. It’s a difficult action to predict. Using the ghost bone, you could control it, but with both elements to manage, it would be extremely difficult.” He looked thoughtful. “But you wouldn’t need the flute to call a bone you have an affinity to—such as the finger bone you sacrificed—so long as the ghost bone is functioning.”