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Damn the witch. She has left me with more questions than answers. I get up from the chair I am sitting in and move around my desk to my chair, where Cassandra was sitting just moments ago. She shouldn’t have been able to teleport from inside my home, not with all the wards and blessings that I have had placed on it over the years, but she did so with ease. I can almost still hear her cackles hovering in the air. But that’s not really that surprising. A witch that has lived millennia must be able to treat most magic as if it were child’s play.

Sitting down in my chair, I fume. Must I really make Andi fall in love with me? No, that’s not quite right. What did the seer say? That I needed to let Andi “feel safe enough” to love me. How do I do that? I have never wanted anyone’s love. Their loyalty, yes. Their devotion, certainly. But their love? Never.

Horribly, as I sit with the idea of Andi loving me, only me, romantically, I am not filled with panic or disdain. Instead, I feel . . . longing. A strange mix of yearning and peace, unlike anything I have felt in centuries. Like a swooning schoolboy in the blush of first love. I do not feel like myself, but I also do not mind not feeling like myself. I am all mixed up. It is the witch’s fault, I am sure of it.

To distract myself from my inner turmoil, I turn to the file on my desk that the witch was thumbing through. I open it and start flipping through Garnet’s report. Cassandra, or Granny Jean, or whatever she wants to be called, is right. As always, Garnet has done excellent work. Andi’s whole past is before me in tidy rows and numbers. There’s very little, however, that I didn't already know. Andi, it seems, is a truthful creature. I see the report from the night that she was abandoned at the firehouse and all her subsequent foster homes. It seems that she was almost adopted a few times as an infant, but the families complained of excessive, unbearable crying, and she was returned to the state. There were neglectful homes and one abusive home, the thought of which fills me with rage, and then Granny Jean when Andi was ten.

Then I flip to a police report in the back and pause. A report from the same night that Andi was abandoned in the same town: an apparent suicide. A Jane Doe, apparently young and pretty, was found in a back alley, a gun in her mouth. The crime scene photos are gruesome. The officers at the scene noted bruises all over the body and the broken heel on one shoe, like she’d been running from something, but found no signs of anyone else at the scene. Gunshot residue was found that confirmed a self-inflicted wound, but the medical examiner also made a note of the excessive amounts of blood under the body, which they could not explain. Looking at the report, I know that I have found the fate of Andi’s mother. The police never made the connection between the foundling and the Jane Doe.

Who was she? Who was hunting her that night? The hunters or the Order of Ares, most likely, but which member? It seems that she took a page from Helen’s book and died rather than be caught. But not before she left her baby somewhere safe and hidden. If sirens can only have children if they are in love, then where was her love? Her siren-bound? Andi’s other parent? Were they already dead, her last line of defense gone?

I shut the dossier with a frown. Again, I am left with more questions than answers. I will not tell Andi about this, though, I decide. Not until I have more to go on. Right now, I could only give her tragic news and not even her mother’s name.

“Garnet!” I snap loudly. The door opens, my private eye enters. She looks around in confusion.

“Commandant? Where is the old woman?” Garnet asks.

“She’s gone,” I mutter. “That’s not important right now.”

I lift the police report. “I want more information on the Jane Doe. You did well to find the case and make the connection, but I need more. Her name, where she came from, her romantic partners, anything, everything.”

“But Commandant,” protests the PI, “I scoured the police station, they had nothing else—”

“I don’t care what kind of resources you use,” I interrupt sternly. “Pour money on the problem. Beg, borrow, steal. Wake the dead if you have to. But find me more information. No excuses.”

Garnet stiffens at the command in my voice before nodding. “Alright. It will be done, Commandant.”

“Good. Now send Gaspard in here on your way out,” I dismiss.

Garnet nods, backing out of the room and closing the door. I lean back in my chair, pinching between my eyebrows. If vampires could get headaches, I would have one. I am to meet Haynes today, and I am, for the first time in dealing with my enemy, feeling out of my depth. The Circle of Nightshade is not what I thought they were. I thought my Fraternity old and storied, an established threat, but the Circle is the heir to an even more ancient order. It means they have powers and resources that I don’t know about. I dislike not knowing everything about my enemy. An ignorant man is a dead one in this world. I have not been ignorant for a very long time.

There’s a familiar knock at the door.

“Come, Gaspard.”

The door opens, showing my second. “You called for me, Commandant?”

“Enter, Gaspard, and activate the silencing spell on the room. We must talk.”

The hulking vampire enters and shuts the door behind him. He runs his fingers along some ornate runes carved in the doorframe, which begin to glow. Now no one outside can overhear what we are speaking of.

“Sit,” I command. “We have much to speak about. Threats to neutralize.”

Gaspard obediently takes a seat across from me, the same chair I sat in while speaking to Granny Jean.

“What is the threat, Commandant?”

I quickly summarize what Granny Jean told me. I leave out all the disturbing talk of love and the potion and making Andi fall in love with me to unlock her power, but go through the real story of Troy and the Order of Ares.

Gaspard grasps the issue quickly. “It sounds like you were right about the negative effects on you if Miss Smith is killed. We need to make sure she stays out of their hands.”

“Not to mention, they probably want her power to destroy the Fraternity, as well as the other power players. She is like a nuke, and they want to use her, which makes them more dangerous than we previously thought.”

“What can we do?” Gaspard asks, looking to me for direction, as usual.

I put my elbows up on my desk, steepling my fingers and leaning forward, considering my next move, like I am playing chess. I am a proficient player in this game of power. More proficient than most. It is how I have survived this long and stayed at the top of my organization.

“Where is the meeting of the families taking place?” I ask.