Hunt the Moon

as if the plague was following him.”

I nodded. That sounded like Tony. He was paranoid even when he didn’t have a reason.

“He finally ended up in Venice, hoping to get a ship to somewhere without the disease. But he was told by the sailors he talked to that it was everywhere that year.”

“And he started freaking out.”

Mircea smiled. “To put it mildly. He was in a taverna, drowning his sorrows, when I met him. At the time, I was in dire straits myself—financially speaking. I had left my home with little some years before and had . . . someone with me for whom I was responsible. I needed money for living expenses, and also to allow me to avoid a certain first-level master who had decided to add me to her family—by force if necessary. She had tracked me to Venice, and I had narrowly avoided her twice in as many days. I wanted to get away; Antonio wanted to avoid the plague. We struck a deal.”

“He gave you money and you Changed him,” I guessed. “Because vamps can’t get the disease.”

“Yes.” Mircea swirled his wine around. “He was the first child I ever made. It came as . . . quite a shock . . . when he threw in his lot with our enemies.”

“You thought him better than that?” I asked incredulously.

Mircea snorted. “I thought him smarter than that. I also thought it out of character.”

“Because it was a gamble.”

He nodded. “And Antonio doesn’t. Not with his neck, at any rate.”

I’d thought as much myself, more than once. Tony only liked to gamble when it was a sure thing. It made me wonder what he knew that we didn’t.

Mircea finished his meal and then lay on his side, a hand under his head and the other toying with his wineglass. “Why the sudden interest?”

“I don’t know. I was thinking about my parents and how Tony is probably the only person who could tell me much about them.”

“What about the venerable mage Marsden? He must know something about the former Pythian heir. I would be surprised if he hadn’t met her on occasion.”

“He did. But all he could tell me was that she was a charming young woman. As far as facts go, all I got was the standard bio stuff they’d give to a newspaper or something. Born Elizabeth O’Donnell, adopted by the Pythian Court at age fourteen, named the heir at age thirty-three. Ran away with Ragnar, aka Roger Palmer, my disreputable father, for reasons unknown, at age thirty-four. Died five years later in a car bomb set by Tony the Bastard. The End.”

“That is . . . somewhat terse,” Mircea agreed. “Surprisingly so, considering the Circle’s intelligence network.”

I shot him a look. “Has yours done any better?”

He grinned. “Now, why would we be checking on your mother?”

“Because you check on everyone?”

“It’s Kit, you know,” he told me mournfully, talking about the Senate’s chief spy. “I can’t do a thing with him.”

I ignored that for the bullshit it was. “What did you find?”

“Little more than that, I’m afraid,” he admitted. “Your mother was extremely . . . elusive. My people even had difficulty finding a venue for tonight. She rarely went out, and when she did, it was usually to small dinner parties of ten or twelve people, which wouldn’t have allowed you to see without being seen.”

“What about her background?”

“She was adopted by the Pythian Court from a school in Des Moines, one of those for magical orphans run by the Circle.”

I nodded; Jonas had said the same. And it wasn’t too surprising. The Circle ran a bunch of those schools, and not just for kids with no parents. They also locked up—excuse me, benevolently housed—kids who had families but who also had talents of which they disapproved—necromancers, firestarters, jinxes, telekenetics, etc. I assumed the orphans got out at age eighteen or whatever; the others . . . sometimes they never did.

It was something I was working to change, and not just because it was appallingly unfair to be locked up simply for the crime of being born. But also because if I hadn’t ended up at Tony’s, I might have been in one of those pseudoprisons myself. Nobody was afraid of clairvoyants, most of whom were assumed to be frauds, anyway. But the talent I’d inherited from my father was another story.

Having ghost servants who hung around, feeding off you and occasionally doing an errand or two in return, was seen as Highly Suspicious Behavior. Maybe because my father had refined it to an art form. According to rumors, he’d had his own ghost army, which he’d used in an attempt to seize control of the notorious Black Circle. The coup hadn’t worked and he’d ended up on the run, but that didn’t change the fact that he’d been powerful enough to try. And power like that would have gotten me put away real quick.

But my mother hadn’t had it. Which made me wonder what she’d been in for. “What was she in for?” I asked Mircea, who was savaging some poor bunny, apparently with relish.

He swallowed. “Nothing. Her records merely said that she was dropped off as an infant by person or persons unknown, with a note giving her name and birth date. The administrators assumed that a teenage mother had wanted to get rid of an embarrassing responsibility.”

“And the name?”

“There were no magical families by the name of O’Donnell in the area at that time. There were several in other parts of the country, but Kit found none who fit the requisite profile. He thinks the mother might have given the child the father’s last name, and that the father might have been human.”

I didn’t have to ask why that was a problem. Humans outbred the magical community by something like a thousand to one. Even assuming O’Donnell wasn’t a wholly made-up name to begin with, sorting through the number of possible human fathers would be—

Well, it wasn’t likely to happen. Not to satisfy my curiosity, anyway.

“Okay,” I said, moving on. “So the court finds her, probably because they keep a lookout for particularly strong clairvoyants.”

Mircea nodded and stole a fry.

“And then she joins the Pythian Court. And then the record scratches, at least according to Jonas.”

“And according to Kit. The Pythian Court is a separate, self-governed entity and does not have to vet its members through the Circle—or anyone else. The court tells us what it wants, when it wants, and has traditionally been . . . less than forthcoming.” Mircea shot me a suspiciously innocent look. “I think Kit is waiting impatiently for your accession, when he will finally have a conduit to all that lovely information.”

I snorted. Yeah. He could keep on waiting. I wasn’t his freaking all-access pass.

Mircea smiled. “This should prove . . . entertaining.”

“Something like that.” I drank wine. “So, anyway, Jonas dated Agnes, or whatever you want to call it, for thirty years, yet he never got the story about what happened with my mother. He said she became angry whenever he brought it up, so he mostly didn’t. Which means the only thing I have to go on is what happened afterward.”

“When she and your father went to live with Antonio.”

“And that’s what I don’t get.” I said, swirling a rib around in the gooey sauce. “My father was some big-time dark mage, right? So how does someone like that end up working for a rat like Tony?”

He pursed his lips. “It wasn’t a bad choice. Many of the mages who work for us have needed to disappear for one reason or another. Admittedly, most of them are running from the Silver Circle, not the Black, but the same rule applies: if someone is looking for you in one world, go to another. And the Circle often forgets that our world exists.” He smiled a little ferally. “Or it would like to.”

“But Tony? He couldn’t have done better than that?”

“With his abilities, doubtless. But you forget, dulceață, a more prominent court would also have been more risky, as it might have come under scrutiny by one or both of the circles. Whereas Antonio . . .”

“Wasn’t worth their time.”

One muscular shoulder rose in a shrug. “He was to the local branch, but I doubt he so much as registered at