Never underestimate our own children’s ability to get under our skin, regardless of age.

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Now, don’t get me wrong. Yes, he’s my son. But beyond that, there isn’t much in the way of familial bond. His mother had been a full-blood elf, and eventually she’d grown bored of playing at being a human and gone back to her clan and left me with the elfin equivalent of a pre-teen son. Naturally, without her, we’d gotten along about as well as a couple of hard-headed mages. That is to say, things exploded literally and repeatedly.

Unable to stay in a stable home and allow him to grow with parental guidance, I sent him off to a boarding school in England, only to have near weekly reports that he’d run away. Of course, he was always found within a day and dragged back to the school, but after the third month of this behavior, I had to retrieve him.

Some difficult months passed in which I attempted to raise him myself but eventually I sent him to the woman who had raised me. I couldn’t bring myself to return to Ireland personally, so a letter was drafted from my legal office and sent along with him. Periodic communications indicated he’d grown to adulthood and flourished under her care. Now, forty years later, here he was, standing in my living room looking almost the mirror image of myself, but with elfin features.

“So, Tristan. I know how you found me, but I suppose it is more of a matter of why.”

“This is shite brandy, you know that, right? And do I have to have a reason?” He put the glass down and shoved his hand through his hair in a movement that gave me the chills.

“Watch your language.” My reply was almost instinctual, and I shook my head. “Usually, people don’t track me down unless they need something, or they have a message to deliver. And given that neither of us have a particular interest in the other, I’m inclined to figure it’s the former over the latter.” I looked back to him and found that I’d been talking to myself as he’d wandered off to the hallway to look at the art on the walls. “Hey! Did you come here to talk, or sightsee?”

“Both.”

I hadn’t even been the one to raise him and he’d turned into a smartass. It had to be genetic. Too bad I had no-one on which to blame mine. “Right, well, tell you what: we’ll have breakfast, and you can tell me why you’re here. Then, you can sightsee to your heart’s content, hmm?” He was staring at the charcoal of Suzu that was on the wall, an image I had sketched years ago and hadn’t had the heart to remove after she’d left me.

“Damn, she’s hot. That your new thing?” He jerked his thumb towards the portrait. “Her legs look as good as her ears?”

Christ, I was going to kill him. “Watch your mouth.” I caught him by his upper arm and began to steer him to the door. “Have you transportation? Never mind, I don’t care. I’ll meet you at the Grill on Rutledge at eight. If you’re not there, I’m eating and getting on with my day.” My magic opened the door and I put him on the doorstep. “Eight.” He looked bemused as I closed the door on him.

The first thing I did was take a shower. The second thing I did was call Suzu. She didn’t answer her phone, so I left a message warning her that my son was in and that if she encountered him to keep her human illusion in place. I barely knew my son and yet I knew entirely too much already.

The third thing I did was call across to Charleston PD and touch base to see if there had been any updates. Of course, there hadn’t been; they would have called, but I intended to check back in as the day progressed. Tonight, I’d be on the streets hunting this guy, come Hell or high water, both of which were conceivable in Charleston. By half seven, I was on the road, and I pulled into the last parking space next to the Grill. If Tristan was driving, he’d have to park and walk. Maybe it would cool him off a little.

He was already inside and flirting with the waitress when I walked in the door, and I apologized to the blushing girl as she seated us. She waved my concerns off, and I looked at him from over the top of the menu. “Please tell me you didn’t say anything that will have management out here.”

“I do know how to present myself in public, Teimhean.” Well, I’d give him that; he’d brushed his hair out of his face and hidden his ears. It only made his relation to me all the more evident. “Sorry about earlier, Aunt Maggie put me up to it. She wanted to yank your chain a little since you never talk to them directly.” He gave me my own fragmented smile and half-shrug before looking back to his menu.

I should have known my estranged sister was behind it. “Oh. Well then. That explains a good bit. She… sent you with that explicit reason, didn’t she?”

“Pretty much.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose, putting my menu to the side. “Well, since you’re here, may as well make the most of it. I’m working a missing persons case tonight, but I have a few hours spare. Just… do me the favor of not saying anything flip around my companions? That woman in the portrait you were ogling earlier could do things to your mind that neither you nor I could dream of and unless I miss my guess, she’s very much taken.”

“No doubt, she’s beautiful.” He folded the menu and set it atop mine, and the waitress appeared at his side. We ordered, and when I passed on the option of meat, Tristan tilted his head. “No meat? Vegetarian, then. Well, I suppose if it works for you. You won’t be offended if I have meat at the table or anything, will you?”

“By all means, eat what you want, Tristan. Mine is a choice of necessity, not lifestyle.” I wouldn’t tell him why, of course. He didn’t know what I did under contract to Ravenswing, and he certainly didn’t need to. “Just don’t share your bacon and we’ll be fine.”

He chuckled and ordered his own meal and after the waitress left, he upended the sugar container over his coffee. I watched the white grains pour out for a few seconds, and then lifted my gaze to him. “Coffee here is a lot weaker than back in Ireland. You probably ought to have tasted that first.” I couldn’t call Ireland home, not anymore. Ties like that were given to men who were in exile, even if it was voluntary. “It’s more like what you’d give the children.” The look on his face at his first taste was enough to pay me back for this morning, and I chuckled softly over my own black coffee. “Right, I take it you get my point.”

I’ll give him credit; he swallowed the offensive syrup he’d made of his coffee, and then very deliberately set the mug to the side. “Dear Christ. Is it like that everywhere? Please, don’t tell me that the rest of my breakfast is going to be just as appalling.” He flagged the waitress, pointing towards the mug and confessing that he’d put too much sugar in it.

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As she promised him a fresh mug, I sipped from my own coffee. It wasn’t all that bad, considering. “No, the food is quite good, and as far as coffee goes around here, it’s the best I’ve managed to find. There’s some green mermaid-thing coffee shop chain on the other side of the peninsula but I don’t much care for them.”

“Oh, yeah… there’s a couple of them in Coleraine. Coffee’s shite, though.”

“There’s no point in asking you to stop that, is there?” It wasn’t truly a question. I was well aware of the linguistics issues that my son had simply due to nationality… namely the sad tendency to pronounce everything distasteful as some variant of excrement. It was a cultural issue I was glad I’d escaped.

“Would you rather me say it was fu-”

I put my hand up and spoke over him. “Thank you, Tristan. That will do.”

Thankfully the waitress returned with a new mug of coffee, and he took it from her with an almost irritated smile and sulked at me over the edge of it for a moment before he sighed and put it down. “You really have become quite the arse-licker.”

“Tristan!” His name escaped me in an exasperated hiss that was somewhat louder than I had intended, but I took a deep breath and forced my irritation into something quieter. “If you insist on continuing this, you will do so alone. You are perfectly capable of making your point without devolving into juvenile language.”

His lips quirked and I knew he’d had me on. “She put you up this. Of all the things that Maggie could have chosen to do, she puts you up to cat-and-mouse with me.” I took a healthy drink of my coffee, wishing it wasn’t quite so hot, and then I shook my head. “Fine, enough. I get it. She’s still mad at me and will likely be so until the end of time. But that’s no reason for you to end up looking like the prat on her behalf.”

Tristan looked away, ducking his gaze into his mug. “Actually, that was all me. Sorry.” The food arrived before he could continue, and we spent some uncomfortably silent moments preparing our food. He poured enough syrup over his pancakes that he might as well have saved that first mug of coffee for them, and I cut some pats of butter into my oatmeal and added some pepper before stirring it up to eat.

I was halfway through the oatmeal before he spoke again. “I ran away. Couldn’t take it anymore, you know? I mean… you, as damned powerful as you are, the perfect son that left and didn’t look back. That never came to check on me, that never once walked through the door like other Das. I heard from Xelander sometimes. But never you. Not even a post. So, I figured, I thought I’d come to see you. Come find the man what should have raised me; tell him what I thought, yeah? But it’s harder than that, it is. It’s a mess of emotion and I’m no good at that, and I think I understand. So, I make an ars- an idiot of myself, and cause a scene. So that way, when I have to leave, it’s okay, there’s anger. Anger’s easier than anything, and so I can deal. It’s easier on you too, so it’s okay and I understand.”

He put his napkin over his food and rose from the table, still speaking, as if the only way to get all his thoughts out was to deliver it in a fast-paced monologue that was so rich in Irish accent that anyone around us would be hard-pressed to understand it. “And that’s it, then. I’ve not much else, so yeah, thanks. I get it, I do. You and me, we’re the same in the end, trying to do what we can with what we know, and though I may not have the power you have, I’ll still manage. But yeah, that’s it.”

He left then, with me still sitting with my spoon half-buried in oatmeal, unable to follow him because I couldn’t leave the waitress on the bill for the food. If we’d been playing chess, I would have called it the neatest checkmate in history, and the only thing I could think to say was the expletive that I’d prevented him from saying earlier. Somehow, I found it fitting.

Oh, Hell with it. I threw two twenties on the table and followed my son.

When I stepped outside, I had no idea where to look for Tristan. Charleston wasn’t a big city, but he was on foot, and that meant that he could go just about anywhere. I had an idea, though, and I paused on the front porch, closing my eyes and calming my thoughts.

I’m not a thoughtmage, but Tristan was my son, and half-elf to boot. That meant that there was a faint connection between us that I could sense. I’d unconsciously used it this morning when I’d remembered him as a child, and it only stood to reason that I could use it to get an idea of which direction he’d gone. It was simply a matter of looking for where the feeling was strongest.

Nothing to worry about, it seemed. He’d not gone far. Rather, he’d ducked around the building and was leaning against the wall when I rounded the corner and looked at him. His eyes were closed, his mouth open, he was almost panting with what must have been an effort to calm himself after his anger-fueled confessional at the breakfast table.

I gave him two more heartbeats, and then I walked up and leaned on the siding next to him. “I was always there for you, Tristan. Maybe not physically, but I was there. I know it doesn’t fix it, that it doesn’t undo the pain. But I am sorry. I am… I wish that it had been another way. I’d offer the reasons and explanations, but none of them matter, and they wouldn’t do anything but make it worse anyway. I’ll just ask you to know that I truly do love you, and I’ll always be there for you, even if it isn’t the way you might necessarily want.”

He was silent, unmoving, and I kept my sigh to myself and pushed off the wall. “I understand, truly I do. I’ll just leave it there, and if you need me, you know how to find me.”

I’d reached the corner of the building when his voice touched my ears. “I used to tell my mates that you were someone important, always travelling the world and doing spy sort of stuff. Covert operations and contracts, that sort of thing. Every kid wants a cool Da, yeah?”

My heart caught, taking my breath with it for a moment, and then I looked back to see him half turned to look at me. I paused, quirked a smile at him, and gave him a bit of a nod. “I’d say you had the way of it, then. Take care of yourself, Tristan.”

I started walking again, heading for the rental car, murky emotions swimming in my heart. I wanted to be his father, to know the man my son had become, but taking care of him was part of being a good Da. And that meant protecting him from Ravenswing… and myself, no matter how painful it was. I was doing the Right Thing. Right? Honestly, I had no idea.

As I unlocked the car, I heard footsteps behind me, and I opened the door in time for Tristan to run up and push it shut again. “Look, are you for real? Covert spy shite? Do you truly think I’m seven and will believe anything?” He ran his fingers through his hair just like I tended to do, and I felt that shiver of realization again. “Fine. You want me to believe it, then you can damned well prove it to me.”

“All right. Get in the car.”

He did, and I drove him home and showed him my badge. It was all I would do, and he could believe what he wanted to believe, but there was no way in Hell I was going to tell him about Ravenswing and my duties to him other than the normal nine to five illusion I kept.

“This is real?” He was looking from the badge to me, and then back to the badge. “You… Interpol… Christ.” He turned the leather folio over in his hands, looking at the back, and then inspected the photo identification card again. “I thought… shit, I don’t know what I thought. Sorry.” I didn’t have the heart to comment on his language this time.

“I was there when it started, Tristan, and when cases come up, I go. I’ve a flat in London that gets slept in more than this townhouse, and there’s a room held for me in Lyon. When they call me, I go, no matter when or where.” Except Ireland, but that was a different matter.

“And you couldn’t take me with you.”

“I couldn’t take you with me.”

There was a long silence, and I watched him look at the badge, watched his gaze fall through it and into some memory that I couldn’t share. “I’m sorry, Tristan. I did the best I could by you, but I know it wasn’t enough. One day, I hope you’ll forgive me.” One day, I hoped I’d forgive myself.

My cell rang, had been ringing. I hadn’t heard it until just then, but part of my brain helpfully informed me that this was the third time it had rung and that if I didn’t answer it, it would go to voice mail yet again. I answered. “Shestin.”

“They may have a witness on my missing sister. Get your ass down to Randolph Hall and talk to her.”

If there was one thing I could safely say, it was this: My life was never boring.

Tristan insisted on going with me. I warned him that ‘covert spy work’ was often tedious and mundane, but he got in the car before I could lock the doors and leave him behind. He was being a cheeky brat, but I couldn’t argue it too hard. If he wanted to see the real-world aspect, maybe it might help him understand at least part of why I hadn’t been there.