Eleanor is all for it, of course.

She lives in the dorms at Hecate U, so I have Adam drop me off on campus in the morning since his own classes at the community college don't start until noon, with the plan that he'll drive back afterward and we'll head straight to Eleanor's dorm when I'm out of my last class for the day.

When I finally get out of Mundane-Magician Socio-Political Relations at four in the afternoon, I find Adam sitting on the bench right in front of the classroom, fiddling with his phone.

“Adam,” I call, fighting through the tide of students flowing out the door. He looks up, smiles, and stands, sliding his phone into his pocket. People pass right by without even glancing at him. He loves coming to the campus, where almost no one recognizes him. There are plenty of students from St. Bosco's attending Hecate University; but a lot of our schoolmates went to different colleges, and there are plenty of out-of-staters at Hecate U who don't recognize Adam by sight. He told me once that he'd hated constantly being forced to go to new schools where no one knew him when he was in foster care; but that having everyone know exactly who he was, like he experienced at St. Bosco's, hadn't been much better.

I finally make my way through the crowd and give Adam a one armed hug, the best I can do with a stack of books in my other arm.

I take a shortcut to the dorms on the opposite side of campus; cutting through the Social Sciences wing, ducking Frisbees in the quad, and running straight across the soccer field while a coach shouts at us.

I eventually catch up with Adam, who, unladen with backpack and books like me, outpaced me easily.

“Merlin, I'm out of shape,” I puff, holding the stitch in my side.

Adam takes the books from me. “Maybe I should start playing soccer again,” he says, looking back out at the field almost wistfully.

“When did you play soccer?” I ask, surprised. After almost four years of dating, it's rare that I learn something new about him.

“I played off and on until I went to St. Bosco's,” he shrugs. “Never for long, since I bounced around homes and schools so much. But I liked it. Maybe I could join an indoor league or something, get back into it.”

Privately, I thought that was a much better idea than going on a quest to track down his mother's identity, which I was absolutely positive would not end well. But, I am playing the role of Supportive Felix right now, until he makes it through to the other side of this crisis-of-self he's currently going through. So I just nod thoughtfully, and we head into the dorms.

We head up to the second floor and knock on her door.

“Come in!” someone calls, so we do; finding Eleanor standing in the kitchen with her wand pointing vaguely at some dishes that are washing themselves in the sink while she flips absently through a magazine at the counter. She glances up, sees us, and her concentration breaks, sending the dishes falling with a soapy splash into the water. She winces.

“Damn, Krystal will kill me if I broke her mug...” she mutters, but the mug is apparently safe.

“Are your roommates here?” Adam asks, heading halfway down the hall to glance into the open bedroom doors.

“Nope.” Eleanor comes into the living room and throws herself down on the lumpy couch. “I told you, they're all out this time of day.”

“No Martin?” I ask, raising an eyebrow at her.

“Unlike a certain other couple I know,” she says crisply, shooting me a meaningful look, “he and I aren't attached at the hip. He does his thing, and I do mine.”

That would be her choice, not his, I'm sure. He tends to pine when he's away from her for too long.

“Besides,” she adds, looking toward Adam as he returns to the living room to join us, “I didn't want to mention it to him before I had a chance to talk to you about it, Adam. This is your thing, and it's pretty big. I figured it wasn't my place to start including every Tom, Dick, and Harry in your private business.”

“It's fine,” he assures her, dropping into the couch next to her. I take a seat in one of the Ikea arm chairs across from them. “You can tell him, I don't care. I mean, I guess we could probably use all the help we can get. I don't think it's going to be that easy, even with the three of us working on it.”

Eleanor casts me a quick look, and even though I haven't had a chance to talk with her privately about this yet, I get the distinct sense that her feelings on the matter align more closely with my own than with Adam's.

“That's true,” she replies noncommittally. “So, have you put any thought into how you're going to go about tracking down your mom's identity yet? Like, do you have a plan?”

Adam fidgets in his seat. “Uh... not exactly. Not yet. I've got a couple of ideas, but I haven't really worked anything out yet.”

“I have,” I sigh, reaching into my book bag and pulling out a folder, which I toss across the coffee table to Eleanor.

“Really?” Adam says, raising his eyebrows at me in surprise. “When did you—”

“A little last night, after you went to bed, and then I thought about it some more during the hour break I have between Sociology 332 and Council Law.

Eleanor flips through the few pages of notes I've made, Adam sliding right up next to her so he can peer at it over her shoulder. “Online DNA test; checking hospital records; cross checking missing person's cases... Well, there are certainly good ideas here, but a lot of it is going to depends on pure chance,” says Eleanor as she hands the folder back to me. “If she didn't change her name legally, and if she was using a false first name as well as last, and if she went a while after disappearing before using her new false name on any official records we could get a hold of, then it'll be almost impossible to pinpoint her identity to one particular magician. Of course,” she adds thoughtfully, “if the DNA test pans out, then I guess you could have all your answers in a month, Adam.”

“DNA test?” he asks, looking at me with his brow furrowed. “Where would we get one of those?”

“Honestly,” I sigh, “it's like you live under a rock. There's half a dozen different sites that will analyze your DNA for you, and discover distant—or in some cases very close—family members. They've been helpful before in helping people find family members they had no other way of tracking down. Of course, we shouldn't hold our breath. The Council highly discourages magicians submitting their DNA to any place, since if the magical world is ever discovered by the mundanes, it would be easy for them to identify entire extended families, hundreds of magicians, in only a couple of clicks of a mouse, just because one person spat in a tube. But there are still a few magicians who've done it anyway.” My mom the amateur genealogist, for one, despite her usual reverent adherence to the Council's policies. “So there's a slight chance we may get lucky.”

“And how long would it take to get the results back?” Adam asks eagerly, leaning forward in his seat.

I shrug. “Like Eleanor said, about a month, I think? If it leads to any answers, great. If not, then we can spend the summer digging deeper. In the meantime, we can come up with a game plan for how best to tackle this. It'll be a lot of research, and tedious searching through old records,” I warn them. I'd watched my mom spend hours searching through microfiche images of old newspapers and photos at the public library when I was growing up, sifting through decades of material to find one tiny reference to a single person or event. And with a fake name, it would be almost impossible to trace Adam's mother's identity at all.

“Won't the foster system have information about Adam?” Elanor asks. “Documents and stuff?”

Adam shakes his head. “I already checked through them when I was getting my driver's license. I don't know if my mom avoided going to the hospital when I was born, or if she just walked out without filling out the birth certificate information, but I don't have one from my actual birth. All I have is an amended birth certificate and a social security number that I was issued once I entered the system. The birth certificate only has my name on it and my mom's last name. I didn't know her first name. I actually remember that, being really little and being asked over and over again what my mom's name was, and telling everyone that her name was 'mama'.”

Adam closes his eyes and kneads his forehead with his knuckles. A knot twists in my stomach and I have the urge to go over to him, but I resist. His moods have been so unpredictable lately, I don't want to risk upsetting him more.

“They will have a copy of her death certificate, but actually getting hold of a physical copy won't be easy. There will be red tape to navigate, forms to fill out, we'll be at the mercy of how cooperative the social workers are feeling that day; and if the original social worker who worked on his case isn't around, or didn't keep good track of his records, it could be almost impossible to actually track the original down. We're at a serious disadvantage here,” I say. “All we have to go on is your last name. We don't know what hospital your mother died at, or the date. But we have a name, even if it is a false one, and it doesn't matter how hard she tried to keep her identity a secret in life—there is a death certificate out there with her last name on it, and her cause of death, and what hospital she died at. And that's better than nothing.”

“Not a lot better,” Eleanor replies with a frown.

“No, not a lot. But it will be something we can work with.”

“How will you even find a death certificate with just my last name?” Adam asks me, his brow furrowing. “I thought records like that were sealed and stuff.”

“The internet, my darling,” I say to him in answer, “is sometimes better than magic.”