She nestled inside her dead husband’s old coat, teasing out the faint smells lingering in the fabric. Wine. Cheese. Beef. Sea salt.
They had followed Shifrah and Kenan through the dark corridors of the Temple as far as the cellar, almost certain that they had not been noticed. They had seen Shifrah and Kenan leave through the shop upstairs, but at the cellar Salvator had insisted that they wait for a daylight crowd outside rather than try to escape as two running figures in the deserted streets in the night. With her injured leg aching and her arm throbbing, Qhora had agreed. The Italian had proven a deft field medic in dressing the gunshot wound, which was only a graze, and as she lay in the dark, the pain had faded.
Qhora sighed for the tenth time.
“Trouble sleeping?” a woman asked.
The nun again.
Qhora swallowed. “Enzo always said you had a bad habit of appearing behind him, back before you were trapped in the medallion. He said you scared him half to death, popping up behind his back in the dark with no warning. I hope you don’t plan on doing the same to me, Sister.” She rolled over and looked at her visitor.
Sister Ariel stood at arm’s length, her hands folded demurely in front of her, her dress and habit as immaculate in death as it had been in life. “I’ve been afraid for you nearly every minute of the last two days, Dona Qhora. Hm. And I thought Lorenzo was reckless. He gave me more than a few frights over the years, but he was only as reckless as a little boy who refuses to believe he can be hurt. You, on the other hand, are an entirely different sort of lunatic. Charging in blindly, surrendering to your enemies, leaping into the darkness.” The ghost stepped closer. “I’m scared for you, Qhora. And I’m scared for your son.”
“I know.” Qhora lay flat on her back and stared up at the cobwebbed ceiling of the cellar. She wrapped her fingers around Enzo’s old triquetra medallion on her chest. Its warmth sank softly into her flesh. “So am I.”
“Did you mean what you said before?” Ariel asked. “That you no longer want to find Lorenzo’s killer? That you’re ready to go home?”
Qhora nodded. “Yes. I miss my baby. And that old man was right. Javier will need a father. A living father. And one day I may even be ready to take another husband.” She paused. “I can’t imagine that. Even now, when I think about going back to Madrid, I keep thinking that Enzo will be there, as always. And now…I can’t remember the last time we didn’t spend the night together. Not since Cartagena. I think we’ve spent every single night together. Except for this one. And last night. Two nights without him. Tomorrow will be another, I suppose.”
Ariel nodded. “There were others, you know. There was a certain evening in a jail cell in Zaragoza, for one.”
Qhora glared across the room at Salvator’s sleeping form.
I can’t believe I’d already forgotten that.
Then she looked away. “I was stupid,” she said. “I was angry, and that made me stupid. I gave Javier to Alonso and just left them behind so I could kill some filthy idiot. And now I might die before I see my baby again. Mirari might never see Alonso again. Taziri might never see her family again. Even Tycho lost his foster father because of me. Because I was angry and stupid.”
“That’s hardly fair. Philo was killed by men. It was their fault, not yours,” Ariel said. “So what will you do now?”
Qhora yawned. “In the morning, we’ll find the others and go home. And then when we’re safely home, maybe I can hire someone to find this Aker El Deeb and his sword. I don’t know about that part yet. I can’t save Enzo. But I can still save everyone else. So I will.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” the ghost said. “And Lorenzo would have been glad to hear it, too.”
Qhora nodded. She felt the slight rise in temperature that signaled the ghost’s departure and she closed her eyes and slept.