After the War: A Novella of the Golden City (2 page)

“Alejandro,” she whispered, laying her webbed hands against his cheeks. “I knew you weren’t dead. I knew when they told me that . . . it was a lie.”

If she’d been alone, he would have thought her insane, but the man with her
—
surely her father
—
seemed to believe her claim. A father wouldn’t support her in madness, would he?

João glanced up, suddenly aware of the commotion all about them, people staring and someone with a camera trying to take a photograph in the darkened café. He raised his hand to shield his face just before the brilliant flash.
I need to get out of this place.
He drew away from the young woman’s grip, but she grabbed his lapels again. “Miss,” he insisted, “if you want to talk to me, it should be
elsewhere
.”

“Alejandro,” she began.

“I don’t know you,” he said firmly. “I don’t recognize you.”

Her expression went stricken.

“Jandro,” the older man said, reaching past his daughter to grasp João’s elbow, “come with us backstage. We can talk privately there.”

He could toss off the man’s grasp, but something in the older man’s face pleaded for him to stay, to talk to them. Ignoring his instincts, João went with them, behind the stage where someone from the café’s staff was apologizing to the crowd for the interruption. Down a small hallway, a single door led into a sitting area.

The room was shabby compared to the rest of the café. João felt less out of place there. The young woman, Serafim, clung to his arm fiercely as if she never intended to let him go. João found himself gazing at the webbed fingers on his sleeve and realized he’d been staring. “Pardon me,” he said quickly, flushing.

She didn’t seem to grasp why he’d apologized.

“Please, sit down,” her father said.

João complied, and the girl surprised him by settling on the floor next to his knees. She laid her head on his lap, weeping softly again. João set his hand atop her head, the black curls under his fingers not familiar at all. Her hair wasn’t short after all, he noted, but pinned up in back. He wondered what it would look like down around her shoulders. His heart beat harder at that thought, but he forced his attention back to her father. “Sir, I don’t know either of you.”

The man dragged over a wooden chair and sat facing João. Apparently the sight of his daughter draped over a stranger’s legs didn’t concern him. João kept his surprise to himself. He was the one at a disadvantage here. There
was
a chance these two were exactly who they claimed.

If only his mind would supply an answer . . . yet it remained annoyingly blank.

“My name is Marcos Davila,” the man said. “And this is my eldest daughter, Serafim Palmeira. Do you not recognize either of us, Jandro?”

“No,” he repeated. “I was wounded in the war. I have no memories.” Why did he have to keep repeating that?

“We were told you were killed at La Lys,” Davila said, “but the body returned to us could not have been yours. We hoped . . . Joaquim was sure they’d made a mistake.”

Serafim rubbed her face against João’s thighs, distracting him. It was an innocent gesture, yet appallingly familiar. Then again, she thought she was his wife, didn’t she?

“Why do you say it could not have been my body?” he asked Davila.

Davila shook his head wearily. “The body was terribly burned all over, save the bottom of the man’s feet. Those feet were human.”

João licked his lips. Davila didn’t have webbed hands. That didn’t necessarily mean he was human. “Are you claiming that I’m
not
human?”

“You’re
half
human, Jandro,” Davila said, “like me. You have the markings of a sereia, though. That alone should have told the army they were wrong; but, apparently, it wasn’t on your records.”

João took a deep breath. Suddenly the chance that this man was telling the truth rose. Unlike Serafim, Alejandro had no webbing between his fingers and no gill slits on the side of his neck. He’d decided to keep the inhuman coloration of the lower half of his body hidden, secret since it was one thing that
would
help him identify his family. That wasn’t difficult, as he merely needed to keep his clothes and shoes on.

“Please, Alejandro,” Serafim begged, “please say you know me.”

He gazed down at her, his lips pressed together. He desperately
wanted
to recognize this beautiful girl. “I’m sorry, Miss Serafim. I don’t.”

She pushed herself away from him and rose to her feet, crossing her arms over her chest. “No. I won’t accept that. You
know
me, Alejandro. You came back to me, and I will not let you go again.”

Her sudden vehemence startled him. She didn’t stamp her foot, but he suspected she was close to that point. “Miss, I . . .”

“Father, will you leave us for a moment?”

Davila opened his mouth, but shrugged and walked out of the sitting room, leaving João at his daughter’s mercy.

As soon as the door closed, the girl flung herself into João’s arms, her lips pressing hard against his as if she intended to devour him. He didn’t know what else to do, so he set his hands on her waist and held her away from him.

“You cannot say you don’t know my kiss,” she said, chin firming as she met his gaze.

Actually, I can.
That had been no more familiar than anything else about her.

She was lovely, though, and he liked the feel of her in his arms. There hadn’t been a woman since the war; he hadn’t known who he was and feared he had a wife and five children somewhere. He certainly wouldn’t
dislike
it if Serafim Palmeira turned out to be that wife.

“Should I prove it?” she asked tartly. “Your dorsal stripe turns dark blue at the edges, not like mine, which is pure black. The edging is darker than mine, too, almost a navy blue, and its point extends right up underneath . . .”

She went on to describe the inhuman coloration of his privates with a level of detail that João suspected could
only
come from firsthand knowledge. For a moment it was hard to breathe, embarrassment warring with surprise for control of his reaction. If this girl was his wife, she was shockingly forward. Did he
like
that about her? Or was it not forwardness if she was truly his wife?

He took a step back, trying to think. Did all sereia have the same markings? Could she just have generalized and guessed correctly?

She pursued him and her hand touched the inside of his thigh. “Do you have a scar here? You were hit by shrapnel in Angola and were still healing the last time we were together.”

He did have a scar there, exactly where her fingers touched. And as it was close to the area she’d been describing in detail a moment before, her gesture gained his body’s full attention. Her hand moved slightly, and this time when she kissed him, he was no longer in a mood to escape. He pulled her closer. Her arms wrapped tightly around him, the kiss deepening into something
wholly
inappropriate if she wasn’t his wife.

A knock on the door warned him a second before the door opened. Her father stepped back into the room. João
—
he’d known that wasn’t his name, but it would surely take time to get used to any other
—
João turned Serafim loose and prayed to God that his arousal would subside before the girl’s father noticed. Fortunately, she stood between him and Davila.

He’d always believed that if he found someone from his past, he would recall everything. That he would
know
in his heart. Yet to know him as well as she did, Serafina must have been his lover at some point. Even so, there was nothing in him that recognized her, and he had a feeling she didn’t want to hear him say that again.

“I think we should go back to the hotel, Father,” she said. “Alejandro and I need to talk. Can you make my apologies to the manager here?”

Her father’s eyes drifted past her to meet his, as if to ask whether the plan met with his approval. João
—
Alejandro
—
nodded. Or was it Alexandre? Why would he have a Portuguese name
and
a Spanish name?

Serafim reached back and wrapped her hand around his
—
no lacing of fingers because of her webbing. A moment later she was hauling him through the main room of the café straight out onto a street where she hailed a cab. Her father joined them at the edge of the sidewalk, and soon they were at the Hotel Avenida Palace, a place far more opulent than he would have been able to afford himself.

Before her father could protest, Serafim grabbed his hand, dragged him upstairs into a room, and closed the door behind them. João
—
Alejandro
—
barely had time to glance around before she turned on him. “Where have you been?” she demanded.

Finally, she was going to listen to
him
. “I was in a hospital in France for a long time.” It hadn’t actually been a hospital, but a sanitarium for veterans, a place for those men driven past reason by the war. “No one knew who I was. They thought I must be French, but . . .”

“Why would they think you
French?”
she asked, looking offended.

“Because they spoke to me in French, and I answered them so.” It hadn’t taken him long to decide that although he was moderately fluent in it, French wasn’t his mother tongue.

“Why were you in a French hospital?”

“I assume I was in France for the war,” he told her. “I’ve no idea.”

“Then why didn’t you come home?”

Is she always this difficult?
“Because I didn’t know where home
was,
” he snapped. “If I’d known where to go, don’t you think I would have done so years ago?”

Tears started in her eyes again. She came and put her arms around him. “I’m so sorry, Alejandro.”

She raised her face to his, and this time he kissed her before she could kiss him.



I am going to hell
.

He’d woken in Serafim’s arms, feeling he’d done something illicit.

He slid away from her and out of the bed, stopping to peer down at her sleeping form. He hoped to heaven she was his wife. Evidence certainly upheld her claim, as she knew his body far better than any woman save a wife should. Even so, he felt guilty for bedding a woman he’d just met. Sighing, he headed for the bathroom. The electric lights there were startlingly bright, and he stared at his reflection, wondering who this Alexandre Ferreira actually was.

Are you Alexandre
? he asked that face in the mirror.
Are you Alejandro
?

Neither name sounded like his. But
nothing
had so far, not in two years.

He spoke Spanish, English, and French well but simply didn’t have the vocabulary in those tongues that he had in Portuguese. That was why he’d slowly made his way to Portugal. Lisbon had been his first stop in the country, and he’d found work quickly enough. Menial labor, but it paid for meals and a tiny room. He’d been comfortable. The need to flee he’d felt in other locations hadn’t crept over him yet.

Perhaps this
was
home, this or the Golden City.

He stared at his face in the mirror. He wanted this life. He wanted
her
to be his wife. It was seductive not to question his good fortune, or the sheer coincidence of running into her in a café on a night when she happened to be singing there.

“Alejandro?” Serafim’s soft voice called.

He quickly washed his hands and returned to the bedroom. Serafim held up the sheets for him to rejoin her, and he went, willingly. She came into his arms, her warm body pressing against his chilled skin. Her long hair tangled about him as if it had a life of its own. She kissed him, and whispered, “Say my name, Alejandro.”

“Serafim,” he said softly, willing to please her.

She shook her head, pulling away. “No, my
real
name.”

“Serafina,” he answered.

Her arms came about him again. “I knew you remembered.”

No, he hadn’t remembered. It had been logic, a good guess, no more. She called him by the Spanish version of his name, so he simply chose the Spanish version of hers. Why should they not both have Spanish names? But she had long since moved past talking, her hands on him again, her lips on his throat, chasing all else from his mind.

