“Give her to me,” he ordered.
Trembling, Quinton did and Carlos stooped to sit on the ground with me leaning against his side and my legs laid across his lap. “That was foolish, Blaine. You keep leaving parts of yourself in strange places.” I could feel his hands stroking down my ruptured leg. It felt cool and wonderful, and I sighed, going limp against him.
Quinton’s voice seemed to come from a distance. “Is she . . . ?”
“Dying is not dead. Yet. Be patient,” Carlos counseled him.
I decided the conversation wasn’t real and responded to Carlos’s first words to me in a whisper, because it was all I could manage, “Seemed like a good idea . . .”
“Why did you choose to do this?”
“There wasn’t one I could take. Mine wasn’t a key. I had to swap. The only one that I could move was Purlis’s. I didn’t want it . . . but it didn’t come anyway.”
“Three positions, only two bones. The spell sent the bone back to its original owner as I told you it would. Yours became part of the drache, but it broke the song and now the bone is burned to ash. I can’t restore it.”
“That’s all right,” I said, feeling much too woozy to stay awake. “Just want to sleep.”
“No,” Quinton said in an urgent whisper.
“Quiet,” Carlos whispered back. Then he returned his attention to me. “I can save you, but . . . this is too close to blood kindred and I may not be able to stop the process. You would become like me.”
“No,” I said. “Rather die than be you.”
Carlos’s laughter was the last thing I heard as I fell unconscious.
EPILOGUE
I woke in another white bed that smelled of bleach and laundry starch. No light fell through the window and the roiling nausea of vampire made Carlos’s appearance at the foot of the bed no surprise at all. Quinton was next to the bed, sleeping in the least comfortable-looking chair I’d seen in a long time. I could hear other people sleeping in the room, glimpse the nighttime glow of their auras, but no one stirred.
Carlos raised his finger to his lips, but I’d had no intention of waking anyone. He came to the head of the bed on the other side from Quinton. “Listen well,” he said, his voice not even loud enough to be a whisper, more a sound that only played in the shell of my ear. “Between us, Quinton and I have disposed of loose ends while you slept. Some explanation about terrorists has been made and the wreckage is being restored, the cholera cleaned away. The mages are dead, the spies dispersed, the Ghost Division is no more, and you, Harper Blaine, were never here. Only a couple with the improbable names of Kit and Helena Smith—tell your spouse-in-soul that he has a puckish humor and terrible taste in noms de guerre.”
I nodded. “I know.”
“Quinton knows the details of how, and as soon as you wish to leave this place, you can resume your life—lives—in Seattle. Or not, as you please.”
I watched him as he fell silent, looking from me to Quinton with a thoughtful expression. After several minutes he added, “Your leg, I fear, I couldn’t save, nor the fingertip you lost. There may be something others can do, but this is beyond my abilities.”
“I can live without them.”
“You may not dance again and it pains me to imagine it.”
“I can dance in my mind all I want. Besides, I did enough dancing to last a lifetime. Now I need the rest of my lifetime to live.”
“With him?”
“With no one else.”
“Good. Perhaps I shall see you again, then.”
“You’re not returning to Seattle?”
“Not for the foreseeable future. Cameron no longer needs me and I wish to use your gift more fully.”
“I thought that was gone. . . . You died. And I still don’t understand what happened there. I felt you die—but I never felt Rui or Purlis, or so many of the others. . . .”
“Some of those deaths I took from you, but as for the last, you were too close to death yourself to feel them. As for me, the appearance of my death was greatly exaggerated. I am a necromancer and difficult to kill with death still wet on my hands. Even my own death. I realized, in the moment, that my seeming to die would solve certain problems. I turned back to tell you, but circumstances made it impossible. I regretted that, but I knew you would continue with the plan as best you could and I would join you when I woke. It was Saint Jerome’s Day, and I’ve always been born on that date.
“As to the gift, I don’t refer to the blood you lent me. I will be eternally grateful to you for the days I spent in the sun, but I meant the curiosity, the desire to know. That I wish to honor. I will pursue it, but not in Seattle. Not for a while. Life, even mine, is transient. All bones are dust in time and I shall not further waste my hours in the sun.”
He bent close to me. “It would have been my honor to have you as blood kindred, but it would have withered you. Few have the fortitude to choose as you did. You are the most remarkable individual I have had the pleasure of knowing.” He kissed my forehead and rose, stepping back into shadow and walking away in silence.
“I was kind of fond of you, too,” I whispered to the empty darkness.
“Hmm?” Quinton stirred and sat up in his chair, blinking at me. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey, yourself,” I replied.
“I thought I heard you talking to someone. . . .”
“Carlos. But he left. Mysterious Stranger and all that.”
“He does favor a dramatic entrance.”
“And exit. He said he’s staying here awhile.”
“Yeah, I thought he might.”
“You guys still talking behind my back?”
“All the time.”
“I’ll have to catch up. How’s the family doing? Your sister and the kids, mom, all that . . .”
“They’re good. I’m still working on getting my mom back into the normal world—Dad’s death is making it easier and harder—but everyone else is moving forward. Sam’s here, and Ben and Mara—they’re with the kids at the guesthouse.”
“Not the Casa Ribeira,” I said.
“No. I’m not sure I’d ever want to see that place again. But on the family front, Piet is flying back from the Azores today, so the family will be together again by tonight. Soraia apparently is still having trouble, but she’s doing better than we could have expected. I think that’s because of Mara. And you were right on that score—she’s the perfect person to help my niece. Mara says Soraia is a witch, and not just any kind but some sort of special witch. I didn’t get it, but you might. Sam’s a little freaked, but she’s getting over it. And the funny thing is Mara says this type of witch is a once-in-seven-generations thing, so . . . somewhere in our family or Piet Rebelo’s, there’s a sort of super witch. I think it’s kind of cool.”
“I’d rather she were just an ordinary girl. It’s easier.”
“I know.”
“And why does she call you ‘Tio Pássaro’?”
Quinton blushed. “It means ‘Uncle Bird.’ You know—Jay . . . Bird.”
“Oh. That’s cute.”
Silence fell again and we both sweated it out. He glanced away and then back, his eyes not meeting mine. “So . . . the leg . . .”
“I know. Carlos said he couldn’t save it.”
“Maybe not, but Sam says she knows a surgeon who might. She’s bullying the hell out of your doctors to get this guy out here to look at you, but it still might not . . .”
“Doesn’t matter. I’ll be all right. I danced a lifetime’s worth. I can spend the rest of my life just walking—or not. With you.”
“Uh . . . is that . . . ? There was this question I asked you and you never answered. I mean, things were hectic, I know, but I meant it. I still do. I always will.”
I looked at him through the dimness of the hospital room lit with a single night-light, through years in hell, through life and death and back again, through monsters and ghosts and despair and everything between where we were and what we wanted to be.