Page 551 of Flirting with Darkness

Still, his caution paid off.

Despite Ghost’s fears, the invite itself ended up being the easiest part of his venture. His father’s winter parties were the event of the season. That year, rumors circulated even the Tsar would attend, along with his wife and several of his older children.

Ghost had a nice little alias set up in London.

He spent years cultivating the connections that would bring him to his father’s notice. He did it slowly, patiently, with the care and planning of a cathedral architect.

He bought himself an estate just south of Canterbury, and another on the outskirts of Paris. He deliberately made himself mysterious, intimating often of faraway lands, quasi-noble birth, connections in trade to the Far East and in India.

He spoke of the Americas, Egypt, the waters overlooked from the palace balconies of Bombay and Istanbul.

He gave himself an accent of his own invention.

Sleeping with a number of bored duchesses, politically-savvy courtesans, and countesses with good connections in London got him into the correct circles even faster.

Through all of it, he managed not to blow his cover.

The alias remained intact when the invitations to his father’s ball began to swirl, even as far west as the British Isles.

When his servant delivered one to him in the parlor of his English apartments, he laughed aloud, kissing the bit of parchment in delight.

It had taken him over ten years, but he had finally done it.

He would finally lay eyes on the man responsible for his birth.

He would finally come face to face with the man who took his mother by force, repeatedly, when she was employed at his home as a scarcely teenaged servant. Until he realized she was with child and threw her out in the snow to die of exposure. Even after Ghost’s motherdidn’tdie, after she made it to St. Petersburg, then to Berlin, then to Paris, and finally to London, the Count must have known she lived, and he still never went looking for her.

He never once acknowledged her, much less the bastard son she bore for him.

Count Aslanov no doubt wasted not a single thought on either of them, before or after Ghost was born.

And after Ghost’s mother succumbed to cholera in the epidemic of 1854, Ghost had no one at all.

He lived on the streets. He escaped from orphanages.

He worked in brothels.

He made his way as best he could.

All in all, he had done well for himself.

Better than many.

Better than most… even those of better circumstance.

Still, he was not above petty grudges.

He was no saint, nor did he desire to be.

Ghost had a few things he wished to say to the old man.

3

THE QUESTION

He took the train.

It was the fastest way across the continent, even to the furthest reaches of civilization.

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