SOUTHERN SPAIN
PRESENT DAY
Seville’s historic Giralda bell tower was the first thing the twins and Rémy noticed when they stepped from a private gallery to the cobbled central plaza. The scorching August heat was the second.
‘Damn! It’s hot,’ said Rémy, fanning himself.
Matt looked at his phone. ‘It’s thirty-five degrees. High nineties Fahrenheit. Hot as hell, basically, and the valley is going to be worse.’
‘I knew we should have changed before we left Scotland,’ said Em.
‘We didn’t have time,’ said Matt, ponytailing his hair. ‘If we hadn’t faded straightaway, Vaughn would have locked us all up until his other agents arrived. We were lucky we got out when we did.’
‘I’ve got a little cash left from my busking,’ said Rémy. ‘I can help pay for some supplies at least.’
Em patted Rémy’s arm. ‘Keep your money. Matt and I still have most of our Orion cash. It’s not as if fading cost us anything to get here.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ said Matt, rolling his neck muscles and flexing his fingers.
After a quick shopping spree at a tourist market on the other side of the square where they bought water, a box of granola bars, a map and a splashy-coloured summer dress for Em, one that went with her black boots, they rented a locker at the train station where they locked up their phones. If they were going to investigate this without Orion’s help, they couldn’t allow their phones to be tracked.
Em spread the map of the area out on a nearby bench.
‘The village of Olivera is about 140 kilometres from here. No way are we hiking that in this heat. It’ll take us days, and we don’t have days. We need to find the painting before Vaughn or the Camarilla find us.’
‘You’re sure Olivera is the village in your mother’s journal?’ Matt checked.
‘Positive,’ said Rémy. ‘The Grand Inquisitor’s family owned all the land surrounding the village. My mom tracked the painting’s provenance to a wealthy family living near the village.’
‘A car?’ suggested Em.
‘We’re not old enough to rent one,’ Rémy pointed out.
Em pulled a sketchpad from her messenger bag and vanished round the corner. Five minutes later, she returned, waving a set of car keys in front of the two boys.
‘Our carriage awaits,’ she said.
Round the corner, in the station’s loading zone, Em popped the boot on a shiny red Volkswagen Eos convertible. The twins tossed their backpacks inside. Rémy set his guitar case next to them.
‘I’ve always wanted one of these,’ said Em, patting the car as she slammed the boot and pulled open the driver’s door.
Matt moved in front of her. ‘No way. I’m driving. You’re a maniac behind the wheel.’
‘My animation,’ said Em as she shoved him straight back. ‘I’m driving.’
‘Shotgun,’ said Rémy, quickly jumping into the passenger’s seat.
Matt had no choice but to fold himself, grumbling, into the narrow back seats.
*
If it hadn’t been for the dark reasons behind this road trip, they might have actually enjoyed the journey. They decided to avoid the motorway, so their route took them deeper into the Spanish countryside. The landscape here was stunning, the red mountains dotted with castles, churches and rugged villages tucked into the side of the hills.
Rémy kept his eyes glued to his mother’s journal, reading out bits he thought were relevant.
‘According to this,’ he said, ‘the village we want is beyond this range of mountains.’
As she drove, Em’s attention wandered away from Rémy’s voice to other parts of his body. He was wearing a pair of Matt’s Ray-Bans, and had rolled his T-shirt up to his shoulders. He was in fine shape. Em wondered if he worked out.
If you wanted to look at him instead of the road, you should have sat back here. I’ve a fine view.
All you can see are his legs and his… Get out of my head, Mattie!
‘Did you hear anything I said?’ asked Rémy.
Em blinked at Rémy. ‘Sorry, what?’
Rémy looked at her. ‘Are you guys telepathic? You both zoned out on me.’
‘Bad twin habit,’ said Matt, sitting up. ‘Sorry.’
Rémy grinned. ‘I noticed you doing it in Scotland. It must be cool.’
Em wants to ki-iss you, Em wants to lo-ove you…
‘Sometimes it’s a pain in the arse,’ said Em, a little more loudly than normal. ‘What were you saying?’
‘I was saying, there’s more about the Grand Inquisitor in Mom’s journal than I thought. Mom used a musical cipher to code chunks of what she had written.’ Rémy took off his shades and rubbed his eyes. ‘The Professor helped me break it. In the late fifteenth century Cardinal Rafael Oscuro, Grand Inquisitor to the King and Queen of Spain, bought the village of Olivera and the remains of a Moorish castle on an outcrop of the mountain. He built his palace around the ruins of that castle to give himself extra protection from his growing number of enemies. Then, around 1510, the village, the land, castle and palace, everything was all suddenly deeded to the Trastámara family for very little money.’
‘The Trastámara must be part of the Camarilla,’ said Matt.
‘1510 is around the time the portrait was painted,’ Em commented, kicking the car into a lower gear as they climbed higher.
‘Exactly. The Grand Inquisitor must have sold up and climbed into the painting to hide for a couple of hundred years.’
‘But why?’ asked Matt.
‘Something big must have happened,’ said Rémy.
Up ahead the road narrowed and got steeper. They all felt their ears pop. Suddenly the road opened up to a hairpin bend. Em braked hard, skidding the rear tyres.
‘Let’s try to get there in one piece, Em!’ Matt shouted from the back.
‘All right, that’s enough!’
After two more tight curves and a hill that forced Em to keep her fingers on the handbrake for backup, they reached Olivera.
Every building and structure in the village was white, including a small church with tiled steps leading to a massive arched door. The church functioned as the tourist centre for the area. A café, a car-repair garage, a gallery and a taverna stood in a horseshoe in front of the church.
Em pulled the car over and parked next to a row of houses, indistinguishable from each other except for the bold colour of their doors. As she opened the car door, she blenched.
‘God, what is that horrible smell?’
‘What smell?’ Matt jumped from the back of the car and stretched his arms and legs. ‘I don’t smell much of anything. Maybe the clay? Or something from the café?’
Em got out of the car and looked up at the church directly ahead. ‘It’s this place. It’s foul. It smells like death and… I’m going to be sick.’
Em gagged and threw up in the gutter.
‘Is she OK?’ Rémy asked Matt in alarm.
‘It’s a thing. She’ll be fine. She senses intense emotions from a place. Sometimes they can make her sick.’
After a few minutes, a bottle of water and a stick of gum, Em stood with the boys staring at a postcard-perfect place that was screaming in pain.