Choosing to go after the Ashfords instead of my father had been hard. I really wanted to find my dad, and I was afraid that if I waited too long, I’d lose him forever. But every time I thought about what going after that address in Hampstead would actually mean—breaking into that house and searching through it room by room—a wave of unease went through me. All my instincts told me that going back to that place was a very bad idea. Spying on the Ashfords felt safer.

  But “safer” didn’t mean “safe,” which was why I was keeping my distance. I still didn’t know how heavy the Ashford family’s security was, and until I knew exactly how good they were at detecting trespassers, I was going to err on the side of caution.

  The day passed. Delivery drivers came and went through those gates, as well as some women who looked like cooks or cleaners. There were also several of those ominous black minivans, their windows tinted so that I could only guess who was inside.

  By the end of that day I’d learned an important lesson about spying: contrary to what the movies tell you, it’s actually really, really boring. When I finally pulled away from the tree to begin my journey home, I felt like the whole thing had been a waste of time. I wanted to give up.

  I didn’t. I went back the next day, and again the day after that.

  If you’re wondering why . . . well, it’s hard to explain. It wasn’t as though I knew exactly what I was trying to find, and in fact, I didn’t even know for sure that there was anything to find. If I was being honest, hanging around the Ashford mansion and hoping that something would turn up really wasn’t an amazing plan. It sounded better than searching that house in Hampstead, but I knew my chances of finding anything weren’t great.

  But even so, I never seriously considered giving up. The past five months had been good ones for me—my drucraft was growing by leaps and bounds, and everything I did mattered. But there was a dark side to that—my mistakes mattered too. Several times in the past five months I’d been in real danger, not the kind where the worst that can happen is getting beaten up or losing your job, but the kind where you don’t know what the worst that can happen is, because when you start looking into that hole, you realise it doesn’t have a bottom. The attack by Diesel and Scar. The battle with the raiders in Victoria Park. The ambush in Hampstead. All three of those had had the potential to end really, really badly, and looking back on it, the scariest thing had been how little warning I’d had. At any time, the same thing could happen again.

  So at some point, at the back of my mind, I’d started wondering what I could do to make a difference. If I knew that at any point a test could be sprung on me, a test that I had to pass, what could I do about it?

  And the more I thought about it, the more I kept coming up with the same answer. Every time I’d passed one of those previous tests, it had been because of something I’d done before. Running, boxing, channelling, shaping . . . I’d put in the work day after day and year after year, and because of that, those skills and abilities had been there when I needed them. In boxing, the fight’s usually won or lost long before you step into the ring, and after the past few months I was starting to feel as though that was true for everything else as well.

  I couldn’t take on my enemies directly, not yet. But what I could do was gather information. There were too many things that I didn’t know, and right now, the best way for me to get an edge was to find out what those things were.

  * * *

  —

  On the third day, I decided to switch things up. I hadn’t been getting anywhere watching the mansion during the daytime, so I’d try the evening instead. I did some Well hunting in the morning, went home for lunch, then around four o’clock took a pair of buses to The Bishops Avenue. I leant against the tree in my preferred spying spot and got comfortable.

  Hours passed. Running both my vision and invisibility sigls at the same time was hard, and from time to time I’d take a break, letting my concentration on the vision sigl drop and standing there in pitch darkness while I recovered. It’s hard to stay focused when nothing’s happening, and as the sun dipped low in the sky, my mind started to wander. Would anyone be able to see through my invisibility? Diffraction sigls seemed to be pretty common, which meant that there were probably other sigls designed to counter them. On the other hand, the strength of the Well in the Ashford mansion would make it hard to notice the essentia from my sigl. What kind of sigls could I make if I had a Well like that? Maybe that crazy-expensive active camouflage one that a couple of the high-end Houses sold . . .

  The sight of the gate swinging open pulled me back to the present. A small figure came out of the Ashford mansion grounds, turned left, and walked away up the avenue. My blue-shifted vision made it hard to pick out details, but it looked like a girl wearing a long coat.

  I frowned, something nagging at my memory. Why did that look familiar?

  I hesitated an instant, then started following the girl. She wasn’t walking particularly fast, and it wasn’t hard to keep up with her. Every now and again she’d pause, as if waiting for someone to catch up, and a couple of times I thought I heard her talking.

  That memory was still nagging at me, a half-remembered impression from a long time ago. A suspicion was growing in my mind, but I couldn’t see her well enough to confirm it. I’d have to get a closer look.

  I stepped behind a tree, then cut off the flows of essentia to my vision and diffraction sigls. Colour flared, shockingly bright after so many hours of seeing in shades of blue. The sun was setting, casting golden light and long shadows across the quiet avenue; above, the grey-purple sky was streaked with honey-coloured clouds. I sped up, passing the girl on the other side of the street, then walked quickly up the avenue. Once I was a couple of hundred feet ahead of her, I crossed back to her side of the street, leant against a tree, and waited.

  Slowly the girl approached. The avenue was quiet, with few passing cars, and I could hear her footsteps clearly on the paving stones. As she drew closer, I saw that she was smaller than me, maybe sixteen or seventeen, with long brown hair, fair skin, and delicate features.

  On top of that, my essentia sight was showing me something more. She had an active sigl on her left hand, a Light effect of some kind. The really odd thing, though, was that it seemed to be targeted on a patch of air just behind her and to her side, around the height of her waist. It looked like an invisibility effect, which meant it was hiding something . . . but what?

  The more I thought about it, the more convinced I was that it was the same girl, but I wasn’t sure. It had been a long time ago, and I’d only had a glimpse.

  Well. I could think of one way to check.

  The girl kept walking, angling slightly to one side so that she’d pass between me and the wall. Her eyes were down on the pavement, with a frowning, pensive look, and she walked by me as though I wasn’t there.

  As she passed, I spoke. “Better get stronger.”

  The reaction was instant. The girl whirled, jumping away from me and back like a startled cat. She came down on her toes, eyes wide and alert. I heard a growl and felt a flash of danger. All of a sudden I had a very good idea of what that sigl was hiding, and I stepped back, bringing up my hand.

  Then the girl’s eyes came to rest on my face with a flash of recognition. “You!”

  I stayed in a ready stance, keeping a wary eye on both her and the invisible thing at her side. If she made a move, I’d have to react very fast.

  And then the girl laughed and the tension was gone. “You!” she said again, but this time she sounded happy. She made a gesture with her right hand and said, “Down, down,” then folded her arms, tilted her head, and looked at me. “It is you.”

  “Surprised?” I asked.

  “No,” the girl said, then seemed to reconsider. She put both hands behind her back, leant against the wall, and smiled. “Well, maybe. You took your time about getting here.”

  “Your family hasn’t exactly been making things easy for me.”

  “I heard.”

  “Who sent you after me?” I asked. “Tobias or Lucella?”

  “Tobias.”

  She seemed very relaxed for a teenage girl who’d just been tracked down by a near stranger with good reason not to like her family very much. Then again, if I was right about what that sigl was hiding, she didn’t have much reason to be nervous. “Why?”

  “Who knows?” the girl said with a shrug. “Tobias is always doing this sort of stuff.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “Just said that Lucella might be coming after you and that he wanted to know what you could do. But after I walked right by you like that without you noticing . . . well, I felt a bit sorry for you. You really had no idea what was going to happen.”

  Yeah, no kidding. “How do you know Tobias?”

  The girl smiled again. “Guess.”

  I looked at the girl, thinking. She had to be one of the Ashfords; that was obvious. Which one? Johanna had said something about Charles choosing between Calhoun, Lucella, and two grandchildren. Tobias was Charles’s grandson, which meant . . .

  “You’re Tobias’s sister,” I said.

  “Mm-hmm.”

  I paused. The girl looked at me expectantly.

  “And?” the girl said when I didn’t speak.

  “And what?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Don’t know what?”

  The girl gave me a disappointed look.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Never mind.”

  “All right,” I said. I still didn’t know why this girl was so interested in me, but this was my best chance in months to find out what was really going on. “Not to pressure you or anything, but this is kind of important. If I understand this right, the whole reason Tobias and Lucella went after me is because of the competition in your family about who gets to be heir. Is that going to happen again?”

  The girl thought for a second. “I’m not sure,” she admitted at last. “Right now everything’s about Calhoun. Charles has put him in charge of that new Well in Chancery Lane. You know about that?”

  “No.”

  “Charles never used to like Calhoun much,” the girl said. “Because of his parents. As Calhoun grew up and kept being so good at everything, Charles started to come around, but he’s never stopped keeping an eye on him. He’s been acting as though giving Calhoun this job is a big honour, but I think it’s another test. He wants to see if Calhoun can handle it.”

  “Not to be rude or anything,” I said, “but I don’t really care who’s in charge of your family’s Wells. Are they going to drag me into it?”

  “I shouldn’t think so? Like I said, everyone’s kind of focused on Calhoun. I don’t think they’re paying any attention to you.”

  Well, that was something, at least.

  “Tobias feels bad about what happened to you,” the girl added.

  “Then maybe he shouldn’t have pointed Lucella in my direction,” I said shortly. After how things had turned out in the spring, I wasn’t feeling very sympathetic towards Tobias.

  “He can’t really help himself,” the girl said. “He always has to have some sort of clever plan, even if they never really work. It’s because of the whole inheritance thing. He grew up thinking he was going to become heir. Then when that all went wrong . . . well, he’s been trying to get it back ever since.”

  “So what about you?” I asked. “You’re the last one of the four, right?”

  “Four?”

  “That generation of Ashfords. Calhoun, Lucella, Tobias, and you.”

  The girl looked at me for a second. “Oh,” she said. “Yes.”

  “So why are you the only one who doesn’t seem to care about inheriting?”

  “I never thought I was in the running,” the girl said with a shrug. “When I was little, I thought it was going to be Tobias, then when he got the bad news, well, it was obvious that it wasn’t going to be me, either. Besides, there are plenty of things you can do even if you’re not going to be the next head of House. I really wish Tobias would just give it up. Charles is never going to choose him.”

  “One last thing,” I said. “From what Lucella told me, this whole thing started because she went to Tobias fishing for some sort of advantage. Tobias told her about me, and she thought I might be useful. Right?”

  “I think so.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why me?” I said. “Okay, so I’m Lucella’s cousin. But from the sounds of it, your family isn’t exactly short of relatives. Why would that make Lucella care about me?”

  The girl studied me.

  “Can you stop looking at me like that?” I said.

  “No,” the girl said. “It’s fun.” She pushed off the wall. “Well, time to go.”

  “Wait! Can you answer my question?”

  “Figure it out,” the girl called over her shoulder as she walked away. An odd clicking sound followed her, like nails on concrete.

  I stared after the girl as she headed back towards the Ashford mansion. I wanted to chase after her and force her to give me an answer, but something told me that would be a bad idea. Instead I watched her go further and further down the pavement until she vanished from sight.

  Once she was gone, I turned away. Only now that the conversation was over did I realise I’d never got her name. Well, since “Bridge Girl” was all she’d left me to go on, I might as well start calling her Bridget.

  * * *

  —

  Hobbes met me at the door when I got home, twining around my leg and meowing insistently. I poured out some food into his bowl, then threw my coat on the chair, dumped out the contents of my pockets, and flopped onto the bed. Then I put my hands behind my head and looked up at the ceiling.

  Well, I’d wanted to find out more, and I had. Was it any use?

  I thought back over my conversation with Bridget, reviewing it line by line. So the competition to be Ashford heir was still going on, just out of sight. I didn’t really see how it had anything to do with me, but I couldn’t help feeling that, sooner or later, one of them was going to make it have something to do with me. After all, I hadn’t known what was going on when Lucella showed up at my door, and that hadn’t done me much good.

  Why had Lucella shown up at my door?

  I puzzled over that for a few minutes. Hobbes finished his dinner, paced over, and hopped up onto my bed. I scratched his ears absentmindedly as he leant into my fingers.

  The more I thought about it, the more it felt as though there was some piece that I was missing. There had to be some other reason Lucella had been willing to believe that I might be a threat.

  Start at the beginning. The whole reason Lucella and Tobias had come after me was because of my connection to the Ashfords. They wouldn’t be interested in me if I wasn’t related to them.

  Related how?

  Hobbes had climbed onto my lap. I lifted him off, reached for my notebook, and started writing notes, pausing from time to time to make sure I was remembering right. Once I was done, I looked down at what I’d written.

  Family Relations

  —Charles Ashford is the son of Walter Ashford, who married someone from Johanna’s family

  —Tobias & Bridget are Charles’s grandchildren

  —Lucella & Calhoun are Charles’s nephew and niece

  —Lucella and Tobias are first cousins once removed

  —I’m Lucella’s first cousin once removed

  I checked the Internet to see what “first cousin once removed” meant, then started sketching out a family tree. After several false starts and crossed-out diagrams, I sat back to look at the result.

  I frowned at the image. It seemed right, but there was one problem—there wasn’t any place for me.

  Tobias had said something about Noble Houses having “minor branches of the family” that they used to marry in outsiders, and he’d made it sound as though my mother had come from one of those. But now that I looked at the family tree, that didn’t make sense. If I was Lucella’s first cousin once removed, then didn’t I have to be related pretty closely to Charles? Unless my mother was from the other side of Lucella’s family . . . no, that couldn’t be right, Charles had said my mother was from House Ashford . . .

  What had Tobias said exactly?

  “Your mother is from one of House Ashford’s branches.”

  “Lucella’s my first cousin once removed. And you’re Lucella’s first cousin once removed.”

  I looked at the family tree again. My eyes drifted to the question mark next to “Magnus Ashford-Grasser.”

  A sudden awful suspicion reared up inside me.

  No. That couldn’t be right.

  There was one way to check.

  I reached for my laptop. My mother’s first name was Helen. I typed “Helen Oakwood” into my browser’s search bar and hit Return.

  The screen filled up with thousands of results. None looked familiar.

  I cleared the search bar and typed in “Helen Ashford.” Even more results. Helen, Oakwood, and Ashford are all pretty common names in England.

  I hesitated. There was one more thing to try, but a part of me didn’t want to. If I stopped now, I could tell myself that I’d looked and found nothing.

  I stared for a long moment at the blinking cursor on the screen. Then slowly, I typed in “Helen Ashford-Grasser.” My middle finger hovered over the Return key, then stabbed down.

  There were only a few dozen results this time. Most were from newspapers and gossip sites. I clicked on one and scrolled until a name jumped out.