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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.”
