“We both know she didn’t use Crowley’s version or the older standard ritual.”

“She claimed to have perfected it. Altered it somehow. The order toasted her success when she gave birth to Victor, but after years of watching him catch every virus known to mankind and be shuffled in and out of the hospital, people began to wonder. And when he showed no magical aptitude whatsoever? Well . . .”

“What changed between my brother’s ritual and mine?”

“It was modified—no doubt about that. Enola told the caliph she came across the solution during one of her trips home to France. One of her secret magical partners oversaw your conception. Someone from another order—”

“Frater Blue. He showed up with my parents to oversee me being sacrificed last year. I sent him to the Æthyr with my parents.”

Rooke raised a brow. “My, someone’s been busy. I suppose there’s no point in suggesting you track him down and ask him for a copy of the ritual.”

“Dead end,” I quipped with a tight smile.

We passed an unusual tree from India known as the sleeping almond. A small metal sign identified the bark as having properties “similar to milk of the poppy” during certain years of its growth. I blinked at it for a moment; the geeky magician in me was awed. Powdered and charged with Heka, the bark of this tree was a valuable ingredient in a couple of the medicinals I made. On a few occasions, I’d ordered it from shady overseas vendors, shelling out several hundred dollars a pop for a sliver of bark the size of a fingernail. Crazy that Rooke had it here. And at the tree’s base grew a thick shrub of a rare variety of silver jasmine. No wonder this man was rich.

“You know nothing else about the modified ritual?” I said, breathing in the scent of the jasmine as we continued strolling. “How the Moonchild is supposed to manifest? What my mother hoped to accomplish?”

“Oh, she promised to give birth to the greatest magician known to the world. My grandfather would be a mere footnote, she bragged, forgotten under the Moonchild’s superior abilities. Magick would become respected across the globe, and we’d no longer be pushed to the fringes of society.”

“Yes, I heard that on a regular basis,” I said sourly.

“We all did. I’m sure it was humiliating when she realized we all knew you weren’t a messiah. Skilled with Heka, yes. But you didn’t bring about the ‘New Aeon’ that Enola promised.”

“Which is probably why she eventually snapped and went on a killing spree. Were there no rumors about her documenting the Moonchild ritual somewhere? I can’t believe she wrote all those books about magick theory but didn’t want to publish her greatest achievement.”

“That is a puzzle, isn’t it? From my perspective at the time, their Moonchild rituals were a lot of talk without substance, like everything else your parents embarked upon. No offense.”

“None taken.”

“But it wasn’t them alone. One day, I looked up and realized that I was sitting around with a group of men and women, supposedly the most talented magicians in the world, yet half of them were déclassé trash with boring middle-class lives. They got cancer, suffered through divorce and depression, lost their savings after making poor investment decisions.”

“They were only human.”

“Precisely. If they were so prestigious and talented, why couldn’t they use magick to better their lives? They should all be successful politicians or great actors, wealthy and healthy. Magical talent was a gift, and they were squandering it. I was surrounded by fools, murderers, and some of the dullest people I’d ever known in my life. So I left before their bad karma brushed off on me and my family.”

I couldn’t really argue. I hadn’t been active in the order since I left home at seventeen. Lon always joked that he wasn’t a “joiner,” and maybe I wasn’t, either.

“So my advice to you would be to stop seeking the Moonchild ritual. Whatever evil intent Enola had when she conceived you doesn’t need to define your life. My grandfather was a great magician, but he was also a loathsome human being who didn’t give two goddamns about the people in his life unless they helped him reach magical nirvana. So when it comes to my bloodline and his legacy, I try to discard the bad and keep the good. Maybe you should do the same.”

If only it were that easy.

We stopped in front of a hedgerow labyrinth. Rooke held out his hand, offering to take me through the maze. He had to be freaking kidding. No way was I going inside something like that at night. A memory surfaced of watching the snowy labyrinth scene in The Shining at Lon’s house. I remembered holding Jupe’s feet hostage and tickling him during the scary bits. I think Lon was tickling me, too, but that seemed . . . odd for him.

At that point, the memory went a little fuzzy. My temples started throbbing, so I stopped trying to force it and turned around to track Lon and Evie. Watching her flirt with him in that low-cut red top of hers made me feel like a snorting bull, ready to charge. But I still needed one last piece of information from her father.

“What is Naos Ophis?”

Rooke didn’t respond right away. He watched his daughter step off the path to pick a stem of the jasmine we’d passed and hold it up for Lon to smell. After a time, he finally said, “Temple of the Serpent.”

“What is it, and what does it have to do with my parents?”

“Are you familiar with Ophites?”