“But . . . their child. In the hands of one of those things—”
“That’s why it was perfect. Mages stick with mages. Deliberately putting a child into a vampire’s hands wouldn’t even occur to most people.”
By Jonas’ expression, it clearly wouldn’t have occurred to him.
“And they never intended for me to stay there,” I added. “The idea was for me to hide out at Tony’s for a few years, during which time he had every reason to keep me healthy, and then to be discovered by Mircea. My father had visited him, supposedly as Tony’s emissary, but really because he wanted to get a look at him—and at his security. He liked what he saw.”
“But they couldn’t have known that Mircea would take you, or even find out about you!”
Sometimes I forgot that, while Jonas knew more about magic than I probably ever would, he didn’t know shit about vamps. “Remember how I told you that Tony already considered me his, because a human who worked for him had me?” I asked gently.
Jonas nodded.
“Well, that applies doubly to vamps and their masters. Usually, someone like Mircea won’t come swanning in and just scoop up one of their children’s toys—it’s considered poor taste. But if that toy is a valuable asset—especially a game-changing asset like a possible Pythia? Hell yes, it’s gone. And Tony knew that.”
“Yet he managed to keep you a secret for years.”
“Because I was only four when my parents died. Tony essentially lost me at eleven, when one of his own people ratted him out to Mircea. It actually went pretty much like my parents had thought.”
“Even with the Spartoi?”
“Yes. They knew my mother was all but drained, and that seers rarely see anything true about themselves. As hard as it might be to believe that a second-rate gangster had managed to kill a goddess, if they saw it happen, and verified the reason—Tony said that Dad had been cheating him—well.” I flipped a hand. “They thought it would work.”
“And it did.”
“For a while. The Spartoi didn’t know of my existence, because Tony kept my identity a closely guarded secret. He was afraid that, if anyone ever found out who I was, they’d tell the Pythian Court and he’d lose his prize. And because I don’t think they expected it. Even after I surfaced again as Pythia, it took the Spartoi time to accept that the goddess most famous for her virginity had actually had a child.”
“Still, they could have sent you to us! We’re the rightful guardians—”
“And gotten me killed? We found a Spartoi in your organization, remember?”
He scowled, but didn’t argue, because he couldn’t. One of the Spartoi, who could look human enough when they wanted, had infiltrated the Circle’s public relations office, because it got all the scandal first. They’d expected my mother’s spell to eventually unravel after her death, and when that didn’t happen, they’d started looking for a reason.
But they’d never found me.
My parents had hidden me well.
“But surely, if the Spartoi saw your mother killed, it would have satisfied them,” Jonas said. “Why did your father also have to die? He had a child—”
“Because he was the necromancer. His soul is what keeps them anchored here, just like it kept the spirits of his ghosts anchored in the crazy bodies he built for them. Just like the control crystal keeps a demon anchored inside a golem. Without him, my mother’s soul would transition beyond the confines of the barrier—”
“Which would then fall.”
“Yes.”
Jonas looked faintly amazed. “They thought of everything.”
“Except Tony taking the snare into another world. He’d been here for almost a century; there was no reason to think he would suddenly decide to leave. And if he did, that he would go into Faerie. It surprised even Mircea, who knew him better than anyone. No one expected him to suddenly join the other side in the war.”
“Why did he?”
“No idea. Like I still don’t know what my father was doing in that cellar in London, where Agnes nabbed him, if he wasn’t a tried-and-true member of the Guild. He won’t explain that, like he won’t tell me what he and Mother talked about, that convinced her to release him. There’s a lot I still don’t understand.”
“Such as who made the trap for your parents’ souls?”
I glanced at him, slightly surprised. “No, I know that. So do you.”
“I do not.”
“Jonas,” I said gently. “You just saw him working on it.”
“That—” Jonas’ eyes flew back to the house.
“When Dad said no, you can’t have my baby daughter, no, I won’t bring her to court, Tony freaked. Nobody told him no. Well, maybe Mircea, but no human. And certainly not one in his service. So he waited awhile, then told Roger he had a problem with an associate and wanted an unusual kind of revenge. He wanted a snare, one that was impossible to break out of, one like Dad had mentioned to him once, months before. He thought it would be amusing to have Roger create the trap for his own soul.”
“So your father made the snare—”
“No, my father made the talisman.” I pulled Billy’s necklace out of my shirt. “Like this. Only much more powerful. One that could sustain my parents’ souls while they waited for the gods to return. But a goddess’ soul takes a lot of feeding, even as a ghost, so the talisman had to be able to draw many times the usual amount of life energy from the world.”
Jonas finally looked like something had made sense. “That’s why Roger joined the Black Circle—to pillage them.”
I nodded. “He joined after Mother released him from jail. He needed a fantastic amount of power to create such a talisman, and didn’t know where else to get it. It worked pretty well—he got most of what he wanted before they discovered what he was up to.”
“And the rest he took from these . . . things?” Jonas gestured at the Dumpster.
I shrugged. “It’s what he knew. And how he persuaded Tony to work with him. Magic can be sold, if you’re willing to take the time and risk to extract it from what other people view as junk. And the more unstable it is, the more profit there is in it. It also gave him and Mom a reason to live separately from the main house, because of the risk of blowing it up. And since Tony knew shit about magic, Dad could siphon off a good deal of power from the stuff he was sent with no one being the wiser.”
“But why give the talisman to Tony?” Jonas persisted. “Wouldn’t it have been better to bury it somewhere? Put it in a safe-deposit box? Stick it in a wall? Why deliberately give it to that maniac?”