Revenant by Kat Richardson

good idea to get the Danzigers in on the act. Sam and the kids will need a safer place to stay until this is all over—with someone who can protect them from the paranormal as well as the usual threats—and I don’t think that getting Soraia back from Dad is going to put his plans on hold for very long.”
    “Unless he’s dead.”
    Quinton shuddered. “I can’t—”
    “I’m not asking you to. But your sister was right about that, and you know it. He won’t stop. So yeah, even if we get Soraia back, he’s going to have a plan B and he’ll put it in motion as soon as he can. You know we’re going to have to find some permanent way to neutralize him or this is never going to be over.”
    Quinton sighed and leaned his head against the back of the seat. “I know. God, I know.”
    We both fell silent and looked out the window until we reached the Cais do Sodré again. It was a little after six in the evening and Quinton asked to walk instead of taking the metro back to Rossio station where we’d started. He seemed to need to move, to burn off the red anger that had been building around him since we’d left Carcavelos. We had more than an hour until Carlos would wake up, so I agreed. He put his hat on and kept his head down as he went, shadowing his face. I did the same, just in case.
    We walked a zigzag track through the straight streets of Lisbon’s downtown—the Pombaline downtown, Quinton called it, named for the Portuguese nobleman responsible for the rebuilding after the earthquake of 1755. The ruler-straight roads and rows of aesthetically similar buildings reminded me a little of Seattle’s downtown core that had been forced to be flat and geometrically pleasing by tearing the hills down and throwing the dirt into the gaping hole that was now South Downtown. It didn’t look the same, but the shadows of what had been before were as persistent. We passed through misty walls as easily as ghosts and the specters of the long-dead stepped suddenly in front of us, running from destruction on roads that had vanished two centuries before. I tried to think more about the resurrection of the city than its destruction, and that seemed to help with the feelings of pain and panic that threatened to overwhelm me in the presence of the endless repetition of Lisbon’s collapse.
    We wove and turned until I wasn’t sure where we were or what direction we faced. Then Quinton turned through a doorway into a bookshop. It was small and smelled dusty, but it was well-ordered and the strange, warm light of Lisbon fell through the windowpanes to touch the books with gold. I wandered among the stacks while Quinton went to talk to the proprietor. Passing the occasional ghostly customer, I was relieved at the insulation that the shop seemed to have from the worst of the memories outside. Old Possum’s—my friend Phoebe’s used bookstore at home—had a similar effect. I wondered whether books somehow collected the intellectual joy of their readers and let it back out, subtly, when they were gathered in a critical mass. The idea charmed me, even if it wasn’t likely to be right.
    Most of the books were in Portuguese, but there was also a section of books in English. I was poking through an aging hardcover edition of Daphne Du Maurier’s The House on the Strand— andfeeling entirely in sympathy with the discomfort and distress of the time-traveling hero—when Quinton came back to find me.
    “I have a present for you,” he said, holding out a package wrapped in a loose bit of green cloth.
    I took it, curious, and flipped the cloth open to find a set of ID—including a British passport and driver’s license in the name of Helena Robinson-Smith. I thought the name sounded far too posh, but the photos were of me, nonetheless. Under the cards was a small pile of money in euros.
    “Oh, you shouldn’t have,” I said in mock surprise.
    “Well, you can’t go around with no ID and no cash.” He held up his own ID, which was in