Revenant (52 page)

Casa Ribeira and the Vale de Oliveiras are fictitious, but there are real
turihabs
in that part of Alentejo, facing tiny rivers that feed into the headwaters of the Tagus near the Spanish border. By all accounts it’s a hot, dry area of rolling hills covered in cork oaks, olives, vineyards, wheat fields, and marble quarries that, to my California-girl brain, sounded a lot like the high chaparral and high desert on the extreme eastern edge of my home state. I hope I got that right.

I apologize to the residents of Monforte and its surrounding area for fictionally setting their town on fire.

On a different note, my friend Maggie Griffin asked to be in the book and after reading the first draft she said, “I love it, but people will think you hate me!” So let me reassure anyone who thinks otherwise that I am very fond of Maggie and deeply in her debt for letting me turn her into the most evil mage in history. Yes, Maggie, Carlos has your heart, but you have a little piece of mine.

I’ve tried to catch all the mistakes and clean up the messes, but I’m sure I didn’t catch them all. Any errors remaining are all mine and any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, is unintentional (except where they said, “Sure, why not?”).

And now we’re done. This is the last Greywalker novel, at least for a while. It’s been a hell of a ride and I hope I haven’t left you too upset. Sorry about the leg, but I leave it up to you and your imagination to fill in the blanks as to what Harper and Quinton got up to next (until I can come back to this bit of my writerverse). Thanks for coming along on these adventures with me. I hope I’ll see all of you on whatever creative journey I take next.

If you would like photo links or more information about the locations and research I did for this book, I’ll be posting some on my Web site:
katrichardson.com.