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business. I think he’ll be invaluable, even if he’s a bit obsessive and scarier than usual. Kind of like you’re being right now. Not that I blame you.”
    “What did you tell him?”
    “Only that I’d heard from you and needed to get here. He didn’t give me an option about his accompanying me and I wasn’t going to argue. He does have an interest in your father’s project and his focus on the Kostní Mágové is absolute.”
    The previous year, Quinton had nearly died trying to stop his father’s mysterious project. James Purlis had persuaded someone in the black depths of the espionage community to fund what he called “the Ghost Division”—some kind of dreadful research that involved, among other things, capturing paranormals and vivisecting them to see how they ticked and if any of their abilities were useful to Papa Purlis’s plans. He wanted to see whether they could be made to work for him, or even if the source of their abilities could somehow be applied to someone already under his control. In the mess he’d left behind when Quinton shut down the Seattle end, Carlos was able to discover that Purlis wasn’t working this angle alone: He’d enlisted the help of an ancient cabal of bone mages who probably had their own agenda. Carlos had also said these Kostní Mágové were extremely dangerous and that he’d known them since he’d lived in Lisbon before the earthquake. It was apparent, now, that Purlis had either learned a few tricks from his captured paranormals since last July or worked out a much more advantageous arrangement with the Kostní Mágové. I’d already picked up a bit from Carlos about them, but I wanted more. I hadn’t pressed for it, knowing it was likely to come out once Quinton and I were able to talk to him in person.
    Quinton made a noise in his throat. “I haven’t been able to keep as close track of my dad as I’d have liked,” he admitted, his expression growing tortured. “He gave me the slip a while ago and I haven’t seen him in the flesh since—I’ve just been following his spoor, so to speak. He’s been busy—he’s got small units all over Europe and the Near East and he’s traveled through all of them. He’s spread his resources thin, but it’s effective. I don’t think there’s any coincidence that when he arrives, shit happens—political unrest, riots, outbreaks of weird diseases. He was in Turkey right before the suicide bombings, in Greece just ahead of a series of financial riots, in Paris beforea rash of anti-Semitic violence, just ahead of an outbreak of Avian flu in northern Germany, and on and on, more of the same with me always one step too far behind, trying to stop him or at least minimize his effect. I can’t believe I missed this business with Soraia. I should have been here sooner.”
    I’d been holding his hand and now I put my arm around him, pulling him closer. “You can’t be on watch every minute—you’re just one man. Your father is a slippery scumbag who’s been in the business a lot longer than you and has a lot more resources.”
    “He’s always been willing to put others in danger.”
    “I doubt it was quite as extreme as this in the past—kidnapping his own granddaughter is a bit out there. He must be deteriorating, mentally, over time. He bailed you out a few years ago. He let your mother and your sister get away.”
    “My mother didn’t exactly escape him.”
    I turned a curious look on him, but he shook his head. “Not now. I can barely manage my rage over what he’s done to my sister and her kids. If I start talking about Mom, I’ll lose it.”
    I would have asked him to try, but as we stepped out from between the buildings and into the plaza beyond, I was struck dumb: The square ahead of us was huge, open, and flat, about three times the size of the square the doll hospital faced. It was anchored at each end by a large, tiered bronze fountain. Right in the middle, straight ahead, stood a soaring marble