Moon's Rite

Part 2: Tony

Tony settled back in the chair she had claimed at the little cafe on the busy Paris street. She sipped her matcha latte and ruffled another page in the fashion magazine she wasn't actually reading. Her gaze slowly slipped over the other patrons at the cafe, eyes not at all hidden behind her rose-tinted sunglasses, but anything darker and she thought she would stick out for wearing sunglasses in the waning twilight.

Her attention caught on a dark-skinned man who had been doing his own survey and their eyes locked for a moment. Tony let her mouth quirk up in a smirk. The man was certainly attractive, and oh so very much her type. Broad and built. Warm eyes and a kind smile. She licked her lips at him and watched the smile grow wider at the obvious flirting.

Sadly, the moment was broken as her contact sat down across from her and demanded her attention refocus to work. The young man was largely unassuming, with a forgettable face and a quiet demeanor. Both made his occupation as an informant easier. And she was going to guess he was a Fae of some sort. They really liked information and deals as a general rule.

He was on her fathers' payroll instead of her own so she didn't know his name. He obviously knew enough about her to make her cringe.

"Antoinette."

"Tony, please. Less of a mouthful for you and more comfortable for me." She pulled her glasses off and repositioned them on top of her head. "I hope you've got some solid intel for me?"

He nodded, digging into a messenger bag and withdrawing a file. The papers were slid across the table towards her and she set aside the magazine in favor of flipping through the file. The lines of text and graphs that covered the papers were absolute bunk. Nonsense. A misdirection.

As soon as her fingers had brushed the file folder there had been a ripple of magic. Probably some sort of detection spell to be sure she was who she said she was. And because she passed that particular test, opening up the folder and flipping through allowed her to see the real images and text magically layered beneath the benign junk.

Her gaze flicked briefly up to the young man across from her as he quietly summarized what she was reading.

"Your father gave me what information he could, in addition to the list he wanted investigated. I took the liberty of organizing them most to least likely suspects. Your uncle struck me as the obvious choice to be staging a coup."

Tony sighed, her gaze taking in the scant information and no accompanying picture. She knew of him. But she couldn't recall ever meeting the man. Or anyone else on her fathers' side of the family. Both her aunts on her fathers' side were dead, done in by their own machinations for the Vampire throne. The supposition was still a good one except for one detail.

"Vampire lineage passes through the women. My uncle would require a daughter or some other eligible female candidate for the throne if it were his plan to usurp. A wife or a niece. And I'm pretty sure he knows my sisters and I wouldn't do a thing he wanted of us if he were to try to take the throne from us."

Her eyes flicked back up to the contact for verification and he nodded in understanding. "He has no wife or children. Honestly, no one has seen him in at least fifty years, so I can't tell you definitively if he's even still alive. In which case the next best place to start is this one." He reached over the folder to turn a page and tapped at it. "Your cousin. Sonya. She has multiple lovers and a daughter. Ambition. A taste for the high life. Not afraid to get her hands dirty. And her Siren Kiss trick can get her just about anything she wants."

Tony let a predatory smile flash across her face before it faded again. There had never been much love between cousin Sonya and the Le'Roy sisters. They were well aware Sonya was jealous of many things they had. Power. The right to the Vampire throne. She had no need of more wealth, but she had made it quite obvious on more than one occasion how much she coveted Arthur, the soldier who had pledged his life to Tony's elder sister.

Tony was under the personal opinion that Arthur was too good for Sonya. Not to mention he and his new boyfriend were absolutely adorable together, but that was just her personal opinion.

She refocused on the task at hand, flipping through the rest of the pages and skimming them. "Any candidates who aren't my fairly immediate family?"

The young man shrugged. "The council members. All of them are old enough, and close enough to power to potentially want to take a little more." Tony nodded along, but decided she would investigate them if the other leads went nowhere. She was almost certain Sophia wouldn't bother with designs on the throne. She was happy on her French homestead with her recently returned lover.

Zachariah and Anton were probably capable, but her gut instinct on the both of them was that they wouldn't bother. They were well taken care of in their positions and had never shown anything but absolute loyalty to her family. They were practically honorary uncles. Tony had learned to trust her gut. It hadn't failed her yet.

She nodded and closed the file. "Job well done. I think I'll start with Sonya. She's never liked me anyways."

The young man gave a slight smile of acknowledgment and stood. In no time he had melted back into the evening crowds and disappeared. Tony stacked the file on top of her magazine and finished off her latte. Glancing across the seating area, she looked for the handsome man she had been flirting with, but he was already gone.

The lost opportunity was regrettable, but she had a job to get started.