Chapter Fourteen
We reentered the
living room and I figured out what everyone had been doing over by
the fireplace. Flames danced on a row of silver chafing dishes,
which had been strung out along the hearth to keep them warm. In
front of them was a picnic area, if picnics featured silk cushions,
bone china, linen so white it gleamed and napkins tortured into
little birds of paradise. There was a single rose in a crystal vase
that reflected the firelight. It was lovely.
It was also less
interesting than the contents of those dishes, which smelled
heavenly. My stomach growled, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten
since lunch and it had been a busy night. I knelt in front of the
fire and picked up the first lid, happy and hopeful and starving
and—
“What’s this?” I
asked, perplexed.
Mircea looked over my
shoulder. “Pan-seared foie gras with cherries and foie gras
caramel.”
I put the lid back.
Duck liver had never done a lot for me, no matter what they cooked
it with. “And this?” I was staring into the second
offering.
“Poireaux vinaigrette aux grains de
caviar.”
I did a quick
translation. “Leeks and fish eggs in vinegar?”
He grinned. “It
sounds better in French.”
Yeah, but did it
taste better? Door number three had crab and artichokes in Pernod,
which would have been fine, except that I hated two out of the
three. Door number four offered up more artichokes—must have been a
sale—with gnocchi and herbed cheese. Door number five had more foie
gras, this time stuffed into a duck breast. Door number six
had—
“What is this?” I
looked up at Mircea hopefully, because the stew had potatoes and
onions and some kind of meat in a rich sauce and smelled
awesome.
“Hossenfeffer. It’s
one of the house specialties.”
“Hossenfeffer?” It
sounded familiar, but I couldn’t—
“Rabbit
stew.”
I looked up at him
tragically.
“Is there a problem?”
Mircea asked carefully.
“I used to have a pet
rabbit,” I said, seeing Honeybun’s black eyes staring at me
accusingly.
Mircea bit his lip.
“This date isn’t going so well, is it?” he asked, half-amused,
half-despairing. I recognized the look because I felt pretty much
the same way.
“It’s . . . well . .
. you know,” I said, and then realized I didn’t have anything else
to say, so I shut up.
My stomach
growled.
We regarded the last
little dish in forlorn hope.
“You look,” I told
him. I probably wouldn’t know what the hell it was
anyway.
He leaned over and
removed the lid, and some really wonderful smells steamed out. But
I wasn’t going to get excited, not this time, because it was
probably Bambi in shallots or Nemo with fennel or—
“It’s some kind of
pork,” he told me.
That didn’t sound so
bad. But then, neither had the others until I did a little
translating. I moved closer and peered inside. And
saw—
“It’s ribs and
fries,” I said, in something approaching awe.
“Amish roasted pork
loin with potatoes and apple-baked cabbage,” he said, reading off a
little menu card I hadn’t noticed before.
“It’s ribs and fries,” I said, so happy I could
have cried.
Mircea slanted me a
glance. “It does look delicious. I believe I may—”
“Don’t even think
about it.” I grabbed the dish and a plate and chowed down, while he
watched with illconcealed amusement. He started on the rabbit. I
tried not to notice.
The ribs were
succulent and falling-off-the-bone tender, the apple-baked cabbage
was a little sauerkraut in a hollowed-out apple that I pushed aside
as the garnish it was, and the fries were the English kind,
thick-cut wedges of golden potato that went great with fish but
turned out to be pretty good with pork, too. And so was the wine,
some Riesling or other that was crisp and fresh and tart on my
tongue, and oh yeah . . .
This was more like
it.
Mircea laughed, and I
looked up. “What?”
“It’s merely . . .
good to see someone enjoying their meal.”
“Bet you wish you
hadn’t had that gourmet stuff now.”
Gleaming dark eyes
regarded me over his wineglass. “You didn’t give me a choice. And
I’m surprised you don’t care for that ‘gourmet stuff.’ I recall
Antonio having quite a good chef.”
Yeah, till he ate
him, I didn’t say, because we were having a nice dinner. “How did
you end up changing that bastard anyway?” I asked instead. “I
always wondered. I mean, he was just a chicken farmer,
right?”
Mircea shook his
head. “Not when I met him. He had inherited the farm, such as it
was, when his father died, and used the money from its sale to move
to Florence. There he became . . . I suppose you would call him the
strongman for a small money-lending operation.”
“A thug, in other
words.”
“As you say. But a
thug with ambition. He eventually gained control of the
business—”
“Imagine
that.”
“—and under his hand,
it grew considerably in size. By the time I met him, he was a man
of some means.”
“That doesn’t explain
why you changed him.”
“You might say that
we had . . . complementary problems,” he said, refilling his glass
with the red wine he preferred. He tilted the bottle at
me.
I shook my head.
“I’ll stay with this one. And what kind of problems?”
“In Tony’s case, it
was the plague. The Black Death cut a swath through Italy every few
decades in those days, and at the time it was raging in Florence.
There was no cure; the only way to combat it was to flee. And
Antonio tried, moving himself and his household to the country as
soon as he heard.”
“But he got it
anyway?”
“No, but several of
his servants did and he was afraid he would be next. He therefore
moved again—and again and again. But everywhere he went, it was
already there or it broke out shortly afterward. He told me it was
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 the national level. It was why I left you
with him, if you recall.”
I nodded. After
Mircea had found out about my existence, he’d considered bringing
me to his court. But as a senator, he was watched constantly, and
he’d been afraid that the Circle might get curious about me. And
since I was a magic worker, not a vampire, he could have been
forced to hand me over.
“Okay, I understand
that,” I said, chewing thoughtfully. “My parents wanted to fly
under the radar, so they hid out with a loser nobody cared about. I
just don’t understand why they chose him.”
“Ah, now, that I can
answer.”
It was so unexpected
that it took me a moment to react. I’d hit so many brick walls
trying to find out something about my parents, that I almost
expected it now. “You can?”
“Yes. Well,” Mircea
hedged. “I can tell you what Antonio told me. He said that he and
your father had had business dealings for some years before Roger
asked him for refuge.”
“What kind of
business dealings?”
“You know that
Antonio remained in the money-lending business?”
“He was a loan
shark,” I corrected. Among a lot of other things. If he could make
a buck off it, Tony had wanted in.
“As you say. In any
case, many of his clients found that they could not repay their
debts, and he was ruthless about confiscating whatever had been put
up for collateral.”
“Yeah. We always had
stuff sitting around,” I said, remembering. “Cars, boats—even a
light airplane once. And then there was all the junk from the
houses. I got in trouble for finger-painting on a Chippendale
sideboard once, but how did I know? It was just another scarred,
old table.”
“But antiques—even
finger-painted ones—are easy to move,” Mircea pointed out. “That
wasn’t true of magical devices, particularly unstable ones. They
had to be disposed of properly, and such disposal is not
cheap.”
I nodded. “You have
to call in a Remainder.” They’d occasionally come to the farmhouse,
men in stained coveralls who carted away boxes of suspicious
charms, amulets and potions before they blew up in anyone’s
face.
“And you know how
fond Antonio was of spending money,” Mircea said. “But he couldn’t
leave the items in place and risk having them burn down his
investments, and he couldn’t abandon them somewhere without
possibly coming to the attention of the Circle, which monitors that
sort of thing. For a long time, he had to pay up.”
“I don’t see what
this has to do with my father.”
“Antonio told me that
Roger contacted him offering to dispose of any such volatile
devices for free.”
I frowned. “For free?
But isn’t that work kind of . . . risky?”
“Very. One of my
cooks likes to tell the story of the time he bought a growth charm
to use on his kitchen garden. But he didn’t monitor it properly,
and it went past the expiration date. Shortly thereafter, he woke
up to a garden of giants—squash as long as canoes, watermelons the
size of small cars, tomatoes as large as beach balls—all of which
had burst because of too-rapid growth. He said the mess was . . .
astonishing.”
“He’s just lucky he
didn’t have it in his room,” I said, getting a vision of a head
swollen to the size of a beach ball.
“Indeed. Remainders
earn their money.”
“Yet my father
offered the service for free. Didn’t that make anyone
suspicious?”
“Yes. But Antonio was
not the type to turn down a good deal. After your father came to
work for him, he developed the theory that he was using the
leftover magic to feed his ghosts.”
I shook my head.
“Ghosts require human energy. Some old charm wouldn’t do them any
more good than it would you or me.” Less, really. It wasn’t like
they needed to grow hair or lose weight or whiten their
teeth.
“Then it remains a
mystery, I’m afraid.”
Like everything else
about my parents. I sighed and contemplated my almost-empty plate.
I couldn’t possibly eat another thing. Except maybe that one last
rib . . .
“You met him, didn’t
you?” I asked, slathering on the sauce.
Mircea nodded.
“Antonio sent him to court a few times as his representative.” His
lips quirked. “I think because his manners were somewhat more
refined than those of most of Antonio’s stable.”
“You mean he didn’t
drink straight out of the bottle?”
“Or use the
tablecloth for a napkin. Or lick the butter knife. Or drink from
the finger bowl, and then complain that the tea tasted just like
hot water.”
I blinked. “Who did
that?”
“Alphonse.”
“Ah.” I grinned,
thinking of Tony’s second, a seven-foot hunk of muscle who was
great with the guns and the knives and the things that went boom.
Not so much with the dainty table manners. “What was my father
like?”
Mircea thought about
it for a moment. “Somewhat reserved, as might have been expected.
But articulate, wellread, even amusing at times. I tried to steal
him away from Antonio, but he said he liked the good air in New
Jersey!”
I nodded. Tony had
business interests in Jersey. My father must have worked in some of
them. “He was probably afraid you’d do a background
check.”
“Probably. I have
employed mages on a number of occasions who were at odds with the
Silver Circle, whose punishments are often out of proportion to the
crime. But the Black . . . no. I do not deal with
them.”
I drank wine and
didn’t comment. I didn’t want to think about what my father might
have done as a member of the world’s most organized bunch of evil
mages. I didn’t know why I was curious about the damn man at all.
Maybe just because, while I knew a little about my mother, he was
almost a total blank.
For years, all I’d
known was that he’d been Tony’s “favorite human” until he refused
to hand me over. Tony had been so incensed by this “betrayal,” as
he saw it, that killing him hadn’t been enough. He’d had a mage
construct a trap for my father’s soul, capturing it at the point of
death. Tony had used it for years afterward as a paperweight—and as
a subtle reminder to anyone else who thought about crossing
him.
But as far as
memories went, I had almost nothing—just the vague impression of a
pair of strong arms tossing me into the air as a child. I couldn’t
even picture him in my head. “What did he look like?” I asked,
pushing a fry around because I was too stuffed to do anything else
with it.
“It is odd, now that
you mention it,” Mircea said.
“What
is?”
“He was slightly
swarthy, handsome enough, with dark hair and eyes.”
“Why is that
odd?”
He shrugged. “Merely
that, having seen your mother, I would have expected him to have
been a blond.”