Page 129 of The Bones in the Yard

“They could be,” Taavi’s voice said from my kitchen doorway. “Aloncito is a nickname for Alonso.”

“I assume you heard that,” I said to Doc.

“Yes.”

“And you knew that.”

The orc laughed. “Yes, Hart, I knew that.”

I grunted. “So what do you wantmeto do about it?” I carefully eased my spatula under the edge of the egg, then used it to close up the omelet.

“It goes to motive.Andit might help us to think about why the Ordo might be targeting the Culhua.”

“The… fuck.”

“Why is that bad?” Taavi wanted to know.

“Aside from the fact that this is a centuries’-old blood magic feud?” I asked.

“It isn’t bad,” Doc answered Taavi’s question. “But it does help us understand what might be going on.”

“If we’re right, thatisbad because it means we’re stuck in the middle of a witches and warlocks fight, and both sides are totally willing to fucking murder people over it,” I pointed out.

“While true,” Doc agreed, “that was the situation whether or not we were aware of it.”

“And knowledge is power, blah blah fucking blah,” I muttered.

“Forewarned and forearmed, Hart.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Leaning against the counter, Taavi snorted.

“More importantly,” Doc continued, “it tells us that we’re likely to find religious conflict at the heart of this rivalry.”

“And that matters, why?”

“Catholics and Protestants have always hated each other,” Doc answered. “And, amusingly, the Ordo appears to be affiliated with the Episcopalian Church—formerly the Anglican Church.”

“Still not seeing the point,” I replied, serving up Taavi’s omelet onto a plate. I added a fresh-baked biscuit to it, then passed it over.

Taavi set it down, then hopped up tositon my counter to eat, his eyes focused on me and the phone.

“The point,” Doc explained, probably more patiently than I deserved, “is that this longstanding feud, to use your term, gives us a pretty good idea of the people and places who have historically been tied to both groups.”

“I don’t care about long-dead cultists, Doc.” I poured egg into the pan again.

“No, but it also tells us that the Vidal familywasn’tinvolved untilveryrecently.”

“So?”

“So Julian Vidal seems to have been ratherlessinvolved than we might think, given how often his name has come up recently.”

“Less involved?” I frowned down at the cheese I had just put in my omelet. “The fuck do you meanlessinvolved?”

“From what I can tell, looking through the historical links, the Vidal family are much more recent comers to Virginia, and therefore the Culhua. The Pelayo family, however, goes all the way back, which suggests that they were attempting to use the magic in the Vidal family to—let’s call it ‘reinvigorate’—the bloodline.”

“So they were after Izar?” I added mushrooms and cream cheese to my omelet.

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