After the War: A Novella of the Golden City (8 page)

Mariona whispered something into Serafina’s ear, the two of them making a very vivid picture. Serafina’s sister shared her fair skin and black hair, startling against the deep red velvet of the banquette on which they sat. And they were dressed nearly alike, Mariona in a stylish peach-colored dress, and Serafina in the same color but with an overlay of ivory lace.

Serafina smiled at whatever her sister said, her dark eyes laughing. “Mariona and I are going to visit the shops, if you don’t mind. Can you find your way home alone?”

Serafina didn’t realize it, but he wasn’t alone. Now they knew the threat to Alejandro was more than just words scrawled on paper. Now they knew what someone didn’t want him to talk about. There were diamonds involved, and people would kill for that. The footman Roberto sat at a table out on the street, close enough that he could keep an eye on Alejandro. Pressed into guard duty by the duke, Roberto had expressed his relief at the chance to spend a few afternoons beyond the butler’s watchful eyes. And although Roberto hadn’t trained for guard duty, he’d seen battle.

“I’ll be fine,” Alejandro told his wife. “You two enjoy yourselves.”

Smiling, Serafina kissed his cheek and went on her way, Mariona in tow.

“I must say, she’s every bit as pretty as you claimed,” a voice said in English . . . with an English accent.

He knows me. No . . . he knows
Old
Alejandro
.

Alejandro shifted to regard the man standing at his table. With blond hair slicked back from a rectangular face, he’d been distinctive enough that Alejandro had noticed him sitting on the far side of the café. The man’s body language didn’t betray any hostility, a good sign. “Why don’t you join me?”

The Englishman settled on the velvet banquette Serafina had vacated. He crossed his legs, set his hat atop his knee, and regarded Alejandro with pale blue eyes that tilted up at the corners. “You neglected to mention the gills, though, Jandro. She’s a
sereia
. You told me she trapped you into marrying her,” he said. “Now I know how.”

Had Serafina
trapped
him into marriage? Apparently he’d thought so, a strange thing since everyone had been aware he intended to marry her for years. Surely he hadn’t simply volunteered that information to this man, not unless they were friends. Alejandro did his best not to let the man see any reaction. He didn’t want the newcomer to know his needling had hit a soft spot.

“Personally,” the man went on, “If
my
wife looked like that, I wouldn’t care. Is the younger one unattached?”

“Not as far as you’re concerned,” Alejandro snapped automatically. “What do you want?”

“Of course, you don’t remember me, Jandro,” the other man said with a sad smile. “We knew each other back in the war.”

You don’t remember me.
The certainty in the man’s words said he knew the hex on Alejandro was holding. “You’re the man who hexed me. I expected you to look more . . . Russian.”

The man laughed dryly. “So Phillips has already gotten to you, has he? That lying prick.”

And the other unknown man was named
Phillips
. “I haven’t spoken with Phillips.”

The blond man snorted. “No, I didn’t expect Phillips to dirty his hands by finding you himself. How does one get a drink in this place? I’m parched.” He waved over a waiter and placed an order in passable Portuguese.

“Why are
you
talking to me, then?” Alejandro asked.

“Phillips has been hunting me, you know,” the man said. “He wants the stones. His henchmen have tried to kill me five times in the last four months. I must say, I’m getting rather tired of it.”

What henchman would be stupid enough to try killing a witch who could curse him?
Most likely a henchman who doesn’t know that fact
. “They haven’t been successful so far, I see.”

“No,” the Englishman said, “but the government is tiring of cleaning up the mess when it happens.”

The mess?
Alejandro cringed. “What
have
you been doing to them?”

He opened up a silver case, offered a cigarette to Alejandro, and lit his with a match once Alejandro had duly refused. “The first four, I just stopped their hearts,” he said, and blew out the match. “Not too difficult to pass off as bad men whose fate had caught up with him. The last one, though . . . I panicked and turned him inside out.” He took a drag from his cigarette. “Right outside Whitehall, too, on Queen Mary’s steps. Quite embarrassing, that incident.”

Alejandro tried to picture what turning an assassin
inside out
would look like. It did not sound pleasant. “And how can I get you out of this mess?”

“We find the stones,” he said with an elegant shrug, “and turn them over to the government. That’ll pull Phillips’ teeth.”

Wouldn’t this Phillips want recompense, then? Alejandro sat back as the waiter brought the man’s coffee. Once the waiter had gone, he said, “You don’t know where they are?”

“No,” he said.
“You
hid them. The idea was that I would make you forget where, and after the war we would all meet back in France to retrieve them. Then of course, everything fell apart.”

Alejandro felt his stomach sink. He’d actually gone through with hiding the stones? Had he been
complicit
in their plan after all? The story hadn’t said that. “Ah.”

“You don’t recall what happened, of course,” the man said, stirring his coffee with a little spoon. “When we met up outside Armentières, Lighter twigged you were going to snitch on him and Phillips, you being a good Catholic boy and all. He . . . well, he decided to stop you. I didn’t realize what was happening in time to prevent it.”

Lighter
had to be the man who’d tried to burn him alive, the one whose corpse lay near the Ferreira family plot. Alejandro wasn’t sure if that was a nickname or not, but it helped. “How would he find the stones, then?”

“He wasn’t the brightest of sparks.” He shook his head. “Didn’t think that far ahead. For some reason, his flames bounced right off you and back onto him, charring him and leaving a rather gruesome and smelly corpse. Can you explain that part? I know you don’t remember, but . . .”

“I was given an amulet,” Alejandro told him, “by a witchdoctor whose grandson I’d saved in Angola. He said it would protect me.”

“Apparently it did. Lighter fell on me
—
ruining my clothes, I must add. I panicked and threw the card I’d prepared at you, not realizing that I had a dying man’s blood all over my hands.” He stopped and took a drag from his cigarette, and then another sip of coffee as Alejandro waited in silence. “The blood transformed my planned curse into a hex,” he went on, “and was intense enough to physically knock you down. All three of us, actually. When I came to, Phillips was gone, and I had Lighter’s blood all over me. God, not just blood. It was horrid. He was just lying there, all burned and stinking like a rabbit fallen into a fire. I thought
you
were dead.”

Alejandro simply waited, watching the man’s shaking fingers.

“With Lighter’s blood and such all over me, I knew I would be the first suspected if the French police decided it was murder. I’ve been in similar situations before, so I fled. It took me a couple of days to figure out what had happened. From what I understand from the sanitarium, it wiped out
all
your memories. I never meant to do that to you, Ferreira.
Unintended
necromancy, yet I will probably burn in hell for it.”

The man wasn’t painting a particularly valiant picture of himself, which made Alejandro more inclined to believe him. “What
is
your name?”

“Markovich,” he said, taking another sip of his coffee. “James Markovich. I’d forgotten what you people call coffee in this place. How do you drink this every day?”

The man probably preferred tea. “The Portuguese have fortitude,” Alejandro said. “I’m surprised you arrived here so quickly.”

Markovich shrugged. “Someone influential in your government contracted our intelligence people regarding you. They contacted my supervisor, who put me on a train then a steamer. Given that Phillips keeps an eye on me, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s here too, already, planning to collect those diamonds.”

“And how exactly do you expect me to help you find them? I don’t remember any stones.”

Markovich leaned closer. “Yes, but I can remove
part
of the curse. Not all of it, but enough that you might be able to tell me where you stashed them. Once we have them, we can draw Phillips out and take care of him once and for all.”

Alejandro sipped his own coffee. Perhaps there was hope.



The police station on Boavista Avenue was under command of Captain Pinheiro
—
Alejandro’s cousin, Rafael. In actuality, it was an old house converted into a station, with white-plastered walls and a tiled courtyard in the middle. It even had a small fountain, a very Andalusian touch. Alejandro rather liked that.

But they left the pretty courtyard and headed up the stairs to the offices, far plainer. Once there, Roberto settled in one corner, keeping his eye on Markovich, who wandered the office, surveying the wooden chairs doubtfully. Alejandro explained to Rafael the reason for the Englishman’s presence. Once apprised, Rafael sent an officer off to find Inspector Gaspar and his wife. They arrived a moment later and firmly closed the door behind them.

A regal woman of mature years in a police uniform, the Lady sat down in a chair pulled out by her husband, who moved to stand behind her. Pinheiro leaned back against the door, arms folded over his broad chest, and Alejandro took a seat nearby. “This is Mrs. Gaspar,” he explained to Markovich, “who is an expert on all manner of witchcraft.”

Markovich glanced between the ivory-skinned lady in her police uniform and her part-African husband, then shrugged and wisely chose not to comment. “When did you acquire so many defenders, Ferreira?” he asked instead.

“I have a lot of family,” Alejandro said. “Captain Pinheiro is my cousin, and I’ve always called Inspector Gaspar my uncle.”

Markovich glanced doubtfully at Gaspar again.

Alejandro ignored the glance. “You work for the English government. Can’t
they
stop Phillips?”

Markovich laughed bitterly. “He’s been in Ireland. You may not know it, Jandro, but we’ve got a bit of a war on with the Irish. We’re at a disadvantage on their soil.”

Ah, yes. He’d read something about that. “Is he one of the separatists?”

“Yes. And those stones would go a long way in funding his cause.”

That explained why this was happening
now
. “But why would Phillips try to kill you when I don’t remember where the stones are?”

“Either way, he wins.” Markovich finally chose a chair to sit in. “If he doesn’t kill me, it prompts me to come find you to get the stones first.”

“But if he kills you,” Alejandro countered, “there’s no way for me to remember where the stones are.”

Markovich laughed shortly. “He believes that if I die, the curse on you will unravel.”

“Reasonable,” Mrs. Gaspar said. “Curses often fade in effectiveness as the witch loses interest in the victim, and can come apart after their death. This one, though, is a
hex
. They’re horrible messy things, the bastard child of two different branches of magic, made of tangled entrails and thorny branches.”

Markovich smiled at her admiringly. “I’ve not heard it worded that way before, Madame, but that’s exactly how it felt coming out of me.”

“Address me as Lady,” she said softly, “or Mrs. Gaspar.”

Markovich inclined his head as if to a queen. “As I suspect you know, I can’t
fully
unravel the hex without resorting to necromancy again.”

She smoothed her blue uniform skirt. “I thought that would be the case. I’d like you to lay out what you’re going to try for me, first. And I want to observe your preparations.”

Because they didn’t want Markovich to make it worse, Alejandro realized.

Or turn me inside out
.

He kept his mouth shut as Markovich and the Lady
—
with an occasional interjection by Gaspar
—
talked about the hex in obscure terms, sounding almost like surgeons discussing a patient’s innards. Objects and intentions and talismans. Alejandro found his attention drifting.

He noted Roberto sitting silently in the corner, listening to everything with sharp fascination. As he’d been a farmer before the army, he was likely getting an education today. He’d had a few chances to chat with Roberto over the past few days. The young man had, like many, gone to war hoping to be a valiant soldier, a champion of Portugal. He’d wanted to have an adventure and win the admiration of his bride-to-be. Instead she’d been repulsed by his scar and refused to marry him. Roberto, however, firmly believed there was something better in his future, a woman who would love him and another cause for which he could fight.

Somehow, Alejandro believed that was true. If there was anything left of his seer’s gift, he hoped it was telling him that Roberto’s sacrifice wouldn’t be for naught. He pinched the bridge of his nose.

Why did I write about the supposed theft of the plans, but not where I hid the diamonds
?