Hunt the Moon (Cassandra Palmer 5)

He was silent for a moment. “I have had . . . difficulty . . . with this season, ever since.”

“Perhaps you need a good memory in place of the bad ones.”

A corner of his lips quirked. “And where would I obtain such a thing?”

I buried my head in his chest. “I think we can figure something out.”

Chapter Thirty-nine

“You brought that thing?” I asked the next morning, sitting up in bed. I was looking at a battered old suitcase with a burn scar on its bum that was hovering near the foot of the bed.

“I could hardly leave it, dulceat?a?,” Mircea said, pouring coffee at a little table by the window. “The charm still works.”

“Sort of.” It was drooping like a week-old bouquet or a half-deflated balloon. I pushed it with a finger, and it bobbed a little in the air, giving off a nasty smell. I wrinkled my nose, wrapped a sheet around myself and went to see what was for breakfast.

Watery sunlight was leaking in through the glass, gleaming off white china and solid silver, and a wire basket that was leaking mouthwatering smells. Fresh scones. Yum.

Mircea handed me a cup of coffee. “And I thought you might want to keep it, as it belonged to your mother.”

“What, the suitcase?”

He nodded.

I shook my head, mouth full of scone. “It was the mage’s.”

Mircea raised a dark brow. “Not unless he used her perfume.”

I swallowed and pulled the little case over. I didn’t smell anything but charred leather and smoke, but I trusted Mircea’s nose. And sure enough, there was a pile of lingerie and a few obviously female outfits inside. A pair of shoes a size too big for me. And tucked into a pocket along the side, a bunch of old letters.

“But . . . how would she have had time to pack?” I asked, sorting through them. “It’s not like she knew she was being kidnapped!”

“If that was, in fact, what we saw.”

I looked up. “What do you mean?”

“Dulceat?a?, I have seen many people under a compulsion, and without fail, they are blanks. Almost robotic in their movements, their speech . . . they do not make decisions; they wait for orders. And they do not tell their captors to hush.”

“You’re saying . . . she went with him on purpose?”

“It would seem the only answer.”

“But . . . why? How would she even know someone like that? She was the Pythian heir!”

“Perhaps the letters will tell you.”

I shook my head, opening one after another. “No. These were all written by my father. It looks like he’d been writing to her for a while and she’d kept them. . . .” I frowned. “But that doesn’t make sense, either. Jonas said that my parents barely knew each other a week before they ran away together. And these . . .” I checked a few more. “They go back more than a decade.”

Mircea hesitated. I wouldn’t have noticed, but I was looking right at him. And he definitely started to say something and then stopped.

“What?” I demanded.

“I could be wrong,” he said carefully. “It has been many years, and I had no reason to pay particular attention at the time—”

“Attention to what?”

“To your father’s individual scent.”

I frowned harder. “What does that have—”