Revenant by Kat Richardson Read Free Book Online

column with a bronze statue on top. Poking up above the buildings beyond the column was what looked like the ruins of a medieval cathedral, dripping blackness and fiery red streamers of Grey, and all the way around the square were Baroque and later buildings much more ornate than those in the Praça da Figueira. One end of the square was dominated full width by athree-story stone building with a neoclassical front, complete with columns and a pediment. At the other end was a bright yellow facade, pierced by a large stone archway leading to another smaller road, smack in the middle of a row of ornate buildings. At the end of the avenue on our side, far down the road, another impressive arch, standing at least three stories tall, spanned the whole boulevard. The entire open court had been tiled in the ubiquitous black and white stones to create a geometric wave pattern that played on my eyes so the surface seemed to be under a thin sheet of clear water, rippled by the wind. Trees lined the long boulevards that ran north to south the length of the square. Near the great white stone building on the north end, another phantom horror movie played out, but this one predated the earthquake.
    Quinton noticed my horrified stare. “What is it?”
    “I’m not sure. . . . Did Portugal have an Inquisition, like Spain?”
    “It’s a Catholic country. I’m pretty sure it did.”
    I closed my eyes and turned my head away. “At the north end of the square where the big white building is now, there used to be another building. In front of that is where they had the public trials, the penance, and the executions. They’re piled up there—the images—like overlapping film.” My knees wobbled and I swayed a little.
    Quinton steadied me, putting one arm around my waist, mirroring my hold on him. “That bad?”
    “It’s pretty bad.”
    “Let me get you out of here. We need to catch a train anyway.”
    He steered me away from the scene of burnings and beatings, to a wide staircase leading down to a subway station. “Keep hold of your purse at all times,” he warned. “This area’s famous for its pickpockets.”
    “I don’t have anything but a map and two keys,” I replied. “No money, no ID . . . nothing.”
    “I’ll take care of that later. For now, stick close to me. Oh—keep your head down near cameras. Portugal doesn’t use an on-the-fly facial recognition system, but if any of Dad’s creeps have access to the feed, they may start looking for us in the tapes later.”
    “All right,” I replied, adjusting my hat. “I was planning on sticking close to you anyhow.” I was disturbed by his lack of response. Even in the Grey, he was not quite himself, distracted from me, but focused on other things, and the energy surrounding him was dark, bleak, streaked with orange anxiety and red anger.
    He paused and looked around. “I’d better tell you the rest once we’re on the train—we have too much moving around to do here. I’m barely keeping my thoughts together and this gets complicated.”
    “The metro or the story?”
    “Both.”
    “Can you tell me where we’re going, at least?”
    “First we have to get to the train station, and then I’ll tell you.”
    I frowned at him and he saw it. “Lisbon was full of spies during the Second World War. I don’t know why, but the place makes me feel like I’m being watched, like those old, dead spies are still around, doing their work. And with what my dad does, I’m not sure they aren’t. Humor me.”
    It wasn’t hard to do so—Lisbon fairly crawled with ghosts. I nodded and followed him past a sign that identified the station as Rossio.

FIVE
    A s best I could tell, the metro station took up a large part of the space under the central square with a complex of stairs and concourses leading downward. As with the streets above, the tile work was distractingly beautiful: One bit of floor had an old-style compass rose of tiny mosaic squares. A wall had a long