The raven hopped to another branch, hiding behind the trunk of the tree. Now he had a clear view of all of them. All were dressed in heavy, dark wool coats. Two were much older than the others. All were blond; the older man and woman had grey in their hair, yet their faces did not so much show age as ill will. The three at the fire all had a clear family resemblance; all had blue eyes, square chins, and sharp cheekbones. The youngest of those three wore a sullen look, as he glowered out from beneath furrowed brows. If it had not been for a uniform coldness to their eyes, and a cruel cast to their mouths, they would have been handsome.

“Those are never Romany,” Rosa said flatly. “So where did they get that vardo?”

“I very much doubt they bought it,” Giselle replied. She would have said more, but just then the one in the chair turned his head to say something in an undertone to the old woman, and she gasped with recognition.

It was “Johann Schmidt.”

“Well, Mother, my servants cannot get past her defenses either,” he was saying.

“What is it?” Cody asked.

“That—that’s the man that—years ago—” She couldn’t finish her statement, but they knew who she was talking about. “This must be his family! So that is how he escaped after he fell!”

The youngest man in the mirror snickered. “Father told you that you shouldn’t have been so overconfident.”

“A family!” Rosa exclaimed, and shook her head. “Of all the things I would have guessed it was never that our attackers would be a family!”

Between the family resemblance and the fact that the two younger men addressed the older couple as “Mother” and “Father,” it was clear what they were dealing with now. A family of magicians. Probably “Johann” was the watcher and the Air Master that Giselle had sensed. And that explained . . . everything . . . about all those years ago.

“I never would have thought that bastard had a family,” Giselle said, through clenched teeth.