The old man spat a curse.

“Yeah,” I said.

Most of my support in the Senior Council was getting sent away at exactly the same time I was given a high-profile assignment providing security for the peace summit. Meanwhile, of the wizards who actually did know me, Ramirez and his bunch were the ones who would probably speak on my behalf—and they’d been sent to the summit, too.

“I’m being set up.”

“Hngh,” Ebenezar agreed.

“Was it the Merlin?” I asked. “Kind of feels like his style.”

“Maybe,” my grandfather said. “On the other hand, Cristos is throwing around a lot of orders these days, too. Hard to say where it comes from.”

I flipped the pancake. If I hadn’t spent years with the old man, I wouldn’t have noticed anything in his tone, but there was a peculiar shade of emphasis to his phrasing that made me glance up at him. He’d said Cristos, but what he meant was …

“The Black Council,” I said.

He grimaced at me and then at the walls.

The Black Council was secret stuff. Some unknown folks in the wizarding community had been causing a great deal of mischief in my life over the past decade and more. Their goals were no clearer than their identities, but it was obvious that they were damned dangerous. Wizard Cristos had ascended to the Senior Council under odd circumstances—circumstances that seemed to indicate that the Black Council was exercising power within the Council itself. A White Council that was bumbling and fussy and not interested in anything but its own politics was a fairly terrible but normal thing—but a White Council that was being directed by the kind of people I’d run into over the years was a nightmare that barely bore thinking upon.

A few of us had gotten together to see if we could stop it from happening. Because secret societies within the White Council were seen as evidence of plotting to overthrow it, we had to be really, really careful about our little cabal. Especially since we were kind of plotting against the White Council, even if we were doing it for its own good.

“I sweep it three times a day and have the Little Folk on the lookout for any possible eavesdropping,” I said. “No one is listening in on us.”

“Good,” Ebenezar said. “Yes. Whether Cristos is an open servant of the Black Council or just their puppet, I think it’s safe to say that they want you gone.”

“So what else is new?” I asked.

“Don’t be cute,” Ebenezar said. “They’ve been running operations and sometimes you’ve interfered—but they’ve never come at you directly.”

“Guess I was a headache one time too many.”

“My point is,” he said, “whatever’s happening here … your removal has become a priority to them.”

I flipped another pancake. I bobbled it. Some of the batter splattered and smeared. I wasn’t scared, exactly … but the Black Council had done some scary stuff.

“What do you think?” I asked him.

“I think that these people aren’t going to announce themselves,” he said. “They aren’t going to come at you directly, they aren’t going to be obvious, and they aren’t going to give up.” He squinted at me and said, “This vote that’s going—that’s just the storm they’re brewing up to distract you.”

“So we ignore it?”

“Storm can still kill you, whether you pay attention to it or not,” he said. “We still have to deal with it. That’s what makes it an excellent distraction.”

“Then what do we do?”

“Don’t get too focused on the situation that’s being set up. They want you locked in on that so that you never see the real problem coming.”

I finished another pancake and brought the plate of them over to the table. I divided them out, and my grandfather and I ate in quiet.

“Good,” he said.

“Thanks.”

We wrapped up breakfast and my mentor shook his head. “I’ll see what I can do about this vote. Meanwhile, you do whatever you need to.”

“To do what?” I asked.

“To survive,” he said. He squinted at nothing in particular and said, “You’ve had it easy so far, in some ways.”

“Easy?” I asked.

“You’ve had troubles,” he said. “But you’ve gotten to play Lancelot at all of them. You’ve ridden forth to do open battle and you’ve won the day.”

“Not all of them.”

“More than most would have,” he said. “I was like that once. Like you, now.”

Silence stretched and I didn’t try to fill it.

“You’re getting into deeper weeds now, boy. The stakes are getting higher.”

“Meaning what?”

“The past few years have shown them that you aren’t someone who is easily removed the direct way. They’re going to start trying alternate methods.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“The old way,” he said, his voice weary. “The way it always happens. I think someone you don’t expect is going to stab you in the back, Hoss.”

4

There was a very soft sound from the back of the apartment and the old man came to his feet with the speed of an alley cat. Before he’d even gotten there, he’d hissed a word, and his staff flew across the room and into his hand.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I said, rising, my hands spread. “Would you relax, please?”

“Who is that?” he demanded. He shot me a hard look. “Who?”

“I just fed you pancakes,” I muttered. How tense were things in the old man’s world that he would react like that? “Stars and stones.”

“Don’t say that,” he said, his tone slipping into a more familiar, grouchier cadence. “You don’t even know what it means.”

“The guy I learned it from wouldn’t teach me,” I said back. “Would you relax for five seconds, please? Please?”

He glowered at me. He lowered the staff only slightly. “Why should I?”

“Because I’d rather my daughter didn’t have her great-grandad scare her to death on their first meeting,” I said.

At that, the old man blinked. Twice. He lowered his staff abruptly. “What? She’s here? She was here? This whole time?”

“She has trouble with new people,” I said quietly. “It’s hard on her.” I looked down at Mouse and jerked my chin at the door to the bedroom. The big dog got up obediently and padded over to the door to be a reassuring presence for the girl.

“You let the vampire around her?” my grandfather whispered, his expression shocked.

“Maggie?” I called quietly. “Please come out. There’s someone I guess you should meet.”

The door opened only a little. I could see a sliver of her face and one brown eye peering out warily.

“I want you to come meet your great-grandfather,” I said quietly. “I hadn’t actually pictured it quite like this,” I said, with a glance at the old man. “But I guess we’ve got what we’ve got. Come on, punkin.”

The door opened a little more. She reached out and felt around with one hand until her fingers found Mouse’s fur. She curled them into his mane and then, very slowly, opened the door. She faced Ebenezar without moving or speaking.