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“Hey, are you doing okay? You’re not upset about what Lord Hades said, are you?”

Enda glanced up at his mate. He was feeling a lot of things, but Lord Hades’ lecture was way down the bottom of the list of things he was thinking about. The god had been right. Enda should’ve been able to control his shift better, despite it being only the second time his phoenix had ever been free. Personally, Enda thought seeing his mate get shot was justification enough, but he knew that was a weak excuse.

They were back in Giorgio’s house in Tuscany. Lamont and Damon had been hoping to track down the shooter, but there was no need. The man had already been detained by police. “We’d been keeping an eye on your party because your client seems to attract large crowds,” one of the officers had told Lamont. “Just as well we were here, right?”

“Definitely. Thank you.” Lamont had agreed because he couldn’t do much else. “Did he give any indication what his motives were, or if he was paid…?”

“That guy won’t be saying anything,” the officer confided. “He’s completely mute.”

“He’s refusing to talk?” Damon had asked.

But the officer shook his head. “He can’t talk. Somewhere along the line, your shooter lost more than two-thirds of his tongue.”

Enda had told Giorgio he was going to go and have a nap after he heard that, reassuring his mate he’d be fine on his own and leaving the three men to talk among themselves. He had thinking to do.

It was a lot easier in a way that Giorgio was being distracted by his packmates because it gave Enda a chance to think about their situation from a totally different angle.

He was relieved that because of the shooting, Coda had agreed to shut his social media experiment down, not that Enda was inclined to go out anytime soon anyway – not for crowds to take photos of him.

Coda had also been severely reprimanded by both Lord Hades and Lord Zeus, including a stern missive from Lord Hades personally that told him to stop focusing on social media numbers and provide the information that the experiment was supposed to gain in the first place - namely the name and contact details of anyone who might be trying to gain their contact information.

Apparently, Coda hadn’t done anything about that, so caught up with the experiment and its apparent success. But the entire team of Zeus’s godly network was apparently working on it now. Unfortunately, because of the success of the social media experiment, they had absolutely reams of information to go through. They’d have to check every comment, they had to check back on people’s social media accounts, and while Enda didn’t have much of a working knowledge on how those accounts worked, he could imagine it was something that was going to take a lot of time, even with godly resources.

Which means we need to think of something else , Enda decided. Giorgio and his friends could laugh off getting shot like it was just another day, but Enda didn’t think his heart could take it, seeing his protector hurt again and knowing it was partially his fault.

Enda hadn’t just been quiet because he was being anti-social. He had already spent numerous hours trying to remember anything he could about his father from back when he was a child.

Unfortunately, the more Enda thought about it, the more he realized – in hindsight, which was never much good – that it was as if his father deliberately made it really difficult for Enda to get to know him.

In the first ten years, his father had barely spent more than ten minutes with him at any one time. When Enda was young, there was also a language barrier, as his father only spoke English and Enda’s first language was Japanese. Enda’s understanding of English had improved drastically in his teenage years, but that was after his father had killed his mother. My grandmother insisted on me learning, and Enda never knew why.

Then there were the various houses Enda visited in America as a kid. Again, it was as if his father had deliberately made sure Enda would never learn anything about the man who’d contributed half his genetics. New house every visit, new staff, not even the furniture was the same. Curled up on a bed in Tuscany, Enda realized his father had been deliberately trying to keep who he was and where he truly lived hidden.

Thinking back on it, Enda figured there was a good chance that the moment he’d been put on the plane to go back to Japan, the house that he’d been staying in was probably emptied out, sold off, or whatever it was his father did. I wonder if I’d ever been in one of his true homes at all.

The only people who could’ve possibly told him more about the man were his mother and grandmother. Hour after hour, Enda racked his brain trying to remember if there was anything his mother or grandmother said about him in the years when he was growing up.

When he was in America, his father never talked about his mother except for that one incident that led to her death. When he was in Japan, it was as if his mother was determined not to talk about his father, either. She was always glad to see Enda when he got home, greeting him with hugs and chatting about how much he’d grown. But she never asked what he did or where he’d been while he was away. Life would go on as it normally had in Japan.

After his mother died, Enda had been completely heartbroken, and his grandmother was terrified. He still remembered the frantic packing, the hurried move, and how she started making it almost impossible for him to go out anywhere alone.

It’s almost as if she was scared that I’d be taken , Enda thought. But then, that didn’t make sense, because when two men did appear at the doorstep just after he turned eighteen, she didn’t warn him about anything and just let him go. But why? What did those men say to her?

It was frustrating, the not knowing. It was easy for Enda to think now of all the opportunities he’d lost during his childhood to learn more about his father. But given the way his life had gone, Enda had never thought that the identity of his father was important until he realized his father was the man responsible for the pile of bodies he’d been buried in.

“I’m not sure I can sleep,” Enda said to Giorgio, who was still waiting for him to answer. “I’ve got a lot on my mind and Lord Hades was perfectly right in what he said. I should have been more careful.”

“My scratch has completely healed,” Giorgio said, stripping off his shirt and climbing up on the bed, wrapping his arm around Enda’s waist. “Hellhounds will heal from things really quickly, and there is nothing that can kill me. I just might hurt for a while, but I barely felt that piddly bullet at all.”

He laughed as if he was joking, and Enda glared at him. “I don’t find that funny,” he said firmly.

“No, you’re right.” Giorgio’s face immediately turned serious. “It’s not a joke, and I’m sorry. It’s just, I’m trying to lighten the mood and not doing a very good job. You seem shut off, even through our bond. Talk to me, Enda, maybe I can help.”

Sighing, Enda said, “I’m trying to remember anything I can about my father. Knowing what he looks or sounds like doesn’t help us find him or if there was anyone who might have information about him and the night my mother died. She was murdered. It was my father, as you already know.”

“Can you tell me about it?”

Enda closed his eyes. He’d never planned to say anything to anyone. He hadn’t even talked to his grandmother about it, although she had to have known. But considering that his nightmares had awoken Giorgio two nights in a row, it was probably only fair to tell him.

“I see it in my nightmares,” he said in a low voice. “My mother was tied to a chair. She had a dirty rag stuffed in her mouth and she couldn’t move. It was at night. My father used a flamethrower and killed her that way. All I can remember” - Enda’s voice caught on a sob - “was the smell of burnt flesh and the way the wooden chair that she was sitting on crumbled once the flame stopped. He couldn’t see me. There was no way he could’ve seen me. I was hiding in the closet. But after he’d cursed my mother to hell, he said he would come back for her offspring. He can’t have seen me, but he must’ve done. I still don’t know why he did it. The words he said didn’t make sense. I don’t know. I just don’t know!”

“It’s all right,” Giorgio soothed. “I promise, it’s all right. You don’t have to know. The workers up in Zeus’s godly network will find something soon. I mean, what’s the point of being related to gods if we can’t use them for something?”

But Enda was already shaking his head. “I don’t know that they can. Do you remember what I told you about the name of the boat?”

Giorgio nodded. “The Chameleon.”

“Exactly, and what does a chameleon do? A chameleon blends in. It changes to suit its surroundings. That’s what my father’s been doing all these years. I don’t think he can be found unless he wants to be.”

“It would help if we had a surname for him,” Giorgio said. “I’m assuming that Cochrane isn’t his name. Was it your mother’s?”

“Yes, no, I’m not sure. It was just the name my grandmother used to enroll me in school. It’s not a Japanese name, but I’m sure my mother never married. She lived with her mother when I was born. That’s how I was raised. My mother and grandmother were in one house in Japan, and my father was in many houses all over North America. I don’t think any of them were his home, but to me, that was my normal. It was years before I realized that wasn’t how families worked.

“When I was in school in Japan, I would hear comments from an occasional kid, rude things about my mother having a child with a foreigner…I’m not explaining this very well. They treated it like it was a slur on me, but for me, it was normal.”

“It’s fine, you’re doing great,” Giorgio said. Then he chuckled. “It’s a shame your mother was a good person, otherwise we could’ve talked to her in the Underworld. But I’m sure her spirit isn’t there, or Lord Hades would’ve said something.”

Enda didn’t have the bandwidth to contemplate talking to people after they died. “My mother was a very good person,” he said firmly. “All she ever did was try and keep me safe, and when she couldn’t, my grandmother did her best after that.”

Giorgio brushed a kiss on Enda’s shoulder. “Can you think back to what happened just after your mother was killed? I know it was a tragic time for you, but she would’ve had papers, wouldn’t she? A passport, birth certificate, things like that. Do you know what happened to them? Did you have any other family?”

Enda shook his head. “This is where my brain is so confused. My mother was burned in a sleep-out, out the back of the house where we lived. There were flames…but the closet didn’t burn…did the house burn down? Why did I think that it did?”

It was like his brain was covered in fog, offering only teasing glimpses of a past Enda struggled to remember. “The house couldn’t have burned down because I remember my grandmother packing our things. She wouldn’t do that if the house was burning. I remember she was frantic, throwing things into boxes, determined we had to leave the house that night. Father wasn’t there… Where did he go? Why didn’t he kill me and my grandmother, too? It doesn’t make sense. There’re so many gaps in my memory. Why can’t I remember?”

Giorgio’s arms were like a wall around him, holding him tight against his chest, but his tone was low and kind. “Enda, you were a kid, just ten years old. You’d just witnessed your father commit the most heinous act a person could do. It’s totally understandable that you would have forgotten specific details from that time.”

“But those details could be the important ones now.” Enda’s mind was working overtime trying to remember every aspect of his childhood and, in particular, what happened when his mother was killed.

“I distinctly remember my grandmother packing. Did Father talk to her first? I don’t know. I remember my mother’s body burning – the heat of the flames and the way the chair collapsed. The floor was wooden. Why didn’t the building burn down? And it was right by the house, and that was wood, too, so, why didn’t the house burn down? Why was it only my mother and that chair that burned?”

“You said you thought your father was at least part mage. He could’ve used magic to stop the wood from burning,” Giorgio suggested. “If the houses where you lived were all close together, then he might have given himself more time to get away by confining the flames to…one area.”

“Maybe.” Enda didn’t even remember seeing his father… Did I watch him leave the room, or do I only think he did? He was talking about her giving life to…to me. Why did he see me every year for ten years if he hated me or didn’t want me?

“Something might have happened when you were ten years old – something you weren’t aware of or have forgotten. You’re projecting through our bond.” Giorgio added with a smile. “I’m not sure what the developmental phases of a phoenix are, but I could probably ask the Paulie App or Coda…”

“No.” Enda shook his head wildly. “I don’t want anything to do with any of the godly network unless they’re prepared to give us useful answers.” He wasn’t going to forget seeing Giorgio getting shot at in a hurry.

“All right, think about your grandmother packing for a moment.” Giorgio stroked down Enda’s back. “I know it was a frantic time, and you were still processing the horror that you’d seen, but if you think back now, can you think of any specific box, bag, envelope, or something that keepsakes would be kept in that she insisted on taking with you?”

“Keepsakes?” Enda wasn’t sure what that word meant in English or Japanese.

Giorgio winced, although Enda didn’t know why. “Keepsakes are things that people keep because they have significance to them, or because they are important. They don’t have to be valuable, they are just important to the person who keeps them. They might also keep papers – important documents like birth records, marriage records, passports, banking information, or even cash sometimes – in a special box or a safe that would keep those things safe from fire or flooding and things like that.”

“A special box…a cash box…” Enda realized Giorgio was uncomfortable mentioning something like that when it was obvious Enda had nothing. Focusing on the idea of a box, Enda strained his memories, his mind flickering, flashing on one scene in his life after another. “There, there.” Enda prodded Giorgio’s chest. “In my head. My grandmother had a box like that. I was never allowed to see in it, but I know that’s where she kept things safe.”

“Did you see her pack that up when you moved? What would’ve happened to it once she was gone?”

“She didn’t pack it.” Enda finally had something to get excited about. “That’s what I mean.” He tapped his head. “You have to take me to the place in my head. It was a hidden box. My grandmother only took me to it once, not long after we moved. When I asked her what was in it, she said not to talk about it, and I wasn’t allowed to mention it again. But there was a box in a different place than the house. That would be a keepsake box, wouldn’t it?”

“Was it well hidden?”

Enda nodded eagerly. “No one would find it unless they knew it was there. We need to go. We have to find it.”

“Shall I get Damon and Lamont to go with us?”

“No.” Looking around the room, Enda noticed how dark it was outside of the lamp he’d put on when he had gone for his nap. “They’ll be sleeping. It won’t take long. Zap there and zap back. We don’t have to open it there, we just need to grab it. We can do that, can’t we?”

“I’d better put my shirt and boots back on.” Giorgio’s kiss on his hair felt like acceptance. “Quick zap there and quick zap back. Think hard, little bird. Focus on that place and nowhere else. We do not want to get lost.”

Closing his eyes tight, Enda trusted his mate to get him there. His hands reached out as they translocated. He could already imagine having the box in his hands.