“After the first time, I was able to use the elevator,” Viv said. “I realised afterwards that Jasper was looking at me oddly the first time because he’d assumed I could access Between to make the elevator move. But I could after that. And I was able to get through Jasper’s bedroom door.”

  “Jasper was letting you in,” said Luca, as though he understood. “It’s just like him. He probably wanted to make sure that you could get around the Tea House—and also that he knew where you were all the time.”

  “What did you mean, Of course I can’t get through Between?” Viv asked him, her brow still furrowed.

  Luca blinked at her, then yawned again. “Oh. Well, you’re…human. Humanish. There aren’t many humans who can.”

  “You can, and so can Jasper.” Viv hesitated, but she couldn’t list BoRa and SooAh in the list of humans she knew who could get through the thinness of reality and into the Otherness of Between. Jasper barely fit into the category.

  “Jasper doesn’t really count as human,” Luca said, echoing her thought. His eyes were closed now, though Viv wasn’t sure if it was because he was falling asleep or because he wanted to fall asleep.

  She resisted the urge once again to stroke his hair, and rested her hand on his chest instead. Judging from the gentle, rhythmic movement of his chest up and down, he was actually asleep—and dreaming, not stuck in a nightmare. Viv didn’t think he was pretending, because he smelt very faintly of warm salt instead of cold, sharp salt, and that was enough to comfort her.

  She sat back, watching the yellow sorbet sky shifting above her with living light, and let him sleep.

  The movement of the treehouse shaking was what woke Viv the next morning. “Finally,” she mumbled, rubbing her eyes and then yawning into her hands while the treehouse roof came into focus. Her neck no longer hurt at all.

  That particular fact was no longer a surprise when she turned her head and saw that Luca was already awake, his eyes bright and sparkling, resting on her. His arm was still under her head, which meant that turning her head brought both him and his face rather dangerously near, and one more of the buttons on his shirt was open, exposing the length of his neck and some of his chest.

  That’s a display of vulnerability, whispered her thoughts. He’d tell you that he’s trusting you not to cut his throat.

  She did not have any inclination to cut his throat, but Viv was very much aware of the desire to kiss it, right up near the soft place between neck and jaw where she would be able to feel his pulse against her lips.

  She sat up as soon as she was aware of the thought, pulling away from the warmth and restorative magic of his arm. “They’re here,” she said, unnecessarily. “It won’t take them long to break through—or for whatever Gilbert did to it to stop.”

  “Are you going to tell Jasper I’m here?” Luca asked, stretching comfortably as she stood and then rolling lithely, easily to his feet.

  “You mean the Jasper-face of Forex?” Viv asked, raising one brow. “No. I don’t think you should be running around murdering people, but I also don’t think you should be in prison. I’m not going to be turned into anyone’s prison guard again, either. That window leads to the kitchen if you know how to use it—and I expect you know how to use it?”

  “I’m very good with windows,” he assured her. “Lock the door to give me a minute of head-start once the spell fails, Viv.”

  She did so, but couldn’t help remaining where she was with her back against the door, just in case the lock meant as little to magic users as her locked bedroom door had meant the other night.

  “How about a kiss for good luck?” he asked, eyes bright.

  She laid a finger on her lips, and then pointed it at the window insistently, mouthing “Out,” at him.

  Luca left, grinning, as someone outside the treehouse tried the handle of the door twice, first hastily and then impatiently, and then began to knock.

  “Viv!” said Jasper’s voice. “It’s me! Unlock the door! I’ve come to let you out!”

  She waited until he had knocked a second time, and called a third or fourth time before she allowed herself to make any noise. She moved away from the door silently, then made herself walk forward normally to unlock the door. Her hair was probably a mess, which was just as well.

  “There you are!” she said, jerking the door open with an irritation that was far more honest than it could have been. “I’ve been locked up here all night!”

  Jasper stood on the steps easily, despite the emptiness that yawned beneath his shiny black shoes; behind him were the two Forex agents, somehow on the stairs as well now, when they hadn’t been able to reach them the night she was hiding here with Gilbert.

  Behind all three of them were Gorman and Gilbert, still in the gallery. Viv’s stomach tightened at the sight of them. What had Gilbert told them? Was his research actually here in the treehouse like the agents had thought? Had he told them that she had given back his memories instead of taking them to Jasper or the agents?

  “You shouldn’t have been out at all last night,” Jasper said, stepping up and into the treehouse around her.

  Viv backed away to let him and the agents in, and said as Gilbert and Gorman also entered, “I didn’t come here deliberately! I arrived too late for Gorman, but the door was open. When I went upstairs I found the treehouse instead of my room.”

  She could at least watch what she said until she knew what the agents and Jasper already knew.

  “Search it all,” said the first agent into the treehouse. She wasn’t sure whether he was talking solely to his co-agent or to Jasper as well. “It’s got to be in here somewhere. We don’t need his memories if we have his research.”

  Viv felt as though she breathed again, though she was no less confused. Gilbert hadn’t told them that he had his memories back. Did that mean, she wondered, in rising hope, that he had changed his mind about selling them the research he had been involved in?

  In the midst of her relief, she found that Jasper was looking at her, one of his brows up as though in question.

  “I found something,” she said quietly. She didn’t want the agents to hear; she wanted to know what Jasper would do. “You should probably look at it.”

  She took the memory stick out of her pocket and twitched it at him like it was the relay baton it resembled. Jasper stared at her, his lips pressed together and his nostrils flaring, then took the stick from her with great precision, as though he would much rather have snatched it.

  He stared down at it for barely a moment or two, his face still and unreadable, before he called out to the agents, “Gentlemen! We seem to have found what we were looking for!”

  The agents turned like hunting dogs at the remark, their eyes going at once to the memory stick in Jasper’s hands. They pushed past Gorman and Gilbert in their haste to get to Jasper and one of them immediately took the memory stick from his hands.

  Unlike Viv, the agent knew exactly what to do with it. He pressed something she couldn’t see on the side, and a small, rectangular section of the baton disappeared. Both of the agents stared down at that rectangle as though drinking in what it said, and for the space of nearly thirty seconds, there was complete silence in the treehouse.

  Then the memory stick tumbled from the agent’s hands and rang loudly against the floorboards.

  “It’s empty,” said the agent who had dropped it, his voice as close to rage as Viv had ever heard from one of them. His eyes went immediately to her. “What did you do to it?”

  Viv stared at him. “What could I possibly do to it? I’m human; I don’t even have magic!”

  “Viv is human; she doesn’t have magic” Jasper repeated, his voice hard. “But we can’t say the same thing for anyone…else who managed to get into the treehouse besides Viv.”

  She followed his eyes and saw that his sharp eyes had seen the cushion that was beside the thin pillow Viv had used last night; he knew, or at least suspected, exactly who had been here last night.

  “I couldn’t even get in or out, let alone do specific magic on whatever that is,” she said to the agents, with perfect truth. To her relief, the ever-efficient Gorman was already beginning to tidy up the bedding behind the agents. “I just came in to have a word with Gilbert because I found myself here; I don’t know who else might have been visiting before I got here. I would have left if I could; it wasn’t that comfortable to sleep here.”

  “I’m very sorry, Miss Viv,” said Gorman. “Please excuse the master, he didn’t understand that it was a dangerous trick to leave a human up here alone.”

  “I locked the door,” Gilbert offered. “She was safe.”

  He didn’t look like he had looked last night. The hardness of understanding and memory had gone from his face, and Viv might have thought that he had returned to his previous state of amnesia if it hadn’t been for the way that his sleeves were buttoned all the way down to his wrists. Whatever it was about the mark there that had matched the mark on the memory stick, he was taking good care that the agents didn’t see it, just as he had tried to conceal it from Viv. She wondered if it had something to do with the memory stick belonging to him.

  “If the memories from it are gone, the Sponsor must have sold them on after Gilbert wouldn’t buy them back,” said Jasper. “You’d be best looking for your research on the open market

  Both of the agents stared at him for a very long time before one of them said, “Everybody out. We’re going to search this place thoroughly, and everyone had better be prepared for questions if we find something else here.”

  Viv had wondered how the Forex agents were going to deal with the fact that the memory stick they had been looking for was empty, the place they had been attempting to invade was likewise empty, and that their entire excursion into the manor had been for nothing. She didn’t have to wait very long to see.

  By the time Gorman had bundled Gilbert away somewhere—before either Viv or Jasper could ask any questions, she noticed—and she had gone to have a shower and change before heading downstairs again, the agents and Jasper were congregated together in the room where Jonno’s body had been laid out.

  All of them noticed when she came into the room, but none of them acknowledged her. That was a pleasant change, thought Viv.

  One of the agents had Jonno’s right foot in their hands, displaying it for the other agent and Jasper to see.

  “Hm,” said the second Forex agent. “This is very clear. This calling card is included in the database; we can pass this along to the relevant authorities and have an arrest today. It’s obvious that Jonno has obtained the memory stick by a payment to the Sponsor and then tried to hire Keller to kill his father when his own plan failed. They must have fought over the payment and Keller decided to close up all the loose ends.”

  Viv might have pointed out that nothing he had said was either clear or provable, but Jasper’s eyes were on her warningly. When he seemed content that she wouldn’t say anything, he said to the agents, “Yes, that does seem to very tidily close things up. I’m glad it was useful to see the markings; I thought it likely they would be helpful.”

  “Thank you for pointing it out,” said the agent, nodding at Jasper in what Viv became aware, far too late, was a disgustingly duplicitous way. “It would have been very suspicious of us to have discovered any such thing.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Jasper agreed, smoothly. “There should be no problem with the paperwork or the evidence. I assume you’ll handle the arrest?”

  “It will be done today,” said the first agent. “I don’t think there will be any need to mention that Luca was in the building at all.”

  “Or of anything that he might have left behind?”

  “He left nothing behind,” said the second agent. “There was no sign of any research, and Gilbert has obviously none of his memories remaining. This investigation is closed; you’ll be asked for your supplemental report within a week. Your…assistant will need to supply one as well.”

  “Got it,” Viv said shortly, eyeing them all in significant dislike. There had been no such mark as she now saw on that ankle before it got to the Manor—there had been a mark, certainly; something like a small, round tattoo that she saw for an instant while the Coroner held it up. That mark had not been fresh cuts in the skin as it now was. It had been, in fact, now that Viv thought about it, similar in shape to the one she had seen on Gilbert, even if she hadn’t been close enough to look at it properly.

  That meant that Jasper—with or without the orders of Forex—had removed Jonno’s body to plant evidence on it that cleared Luca and implicated someone else.

  She was so angry with him and disgusted with the agents that she stayed deliberately, carefully quiet while they packed what little they had brought to the manor and left, with Jasper seeing them off. She didn’t want to say something that would put either herself or the Tea House in more peril; Jasper would probably take that as every reason that what he had done was fully justified.

  She saw Gilbert dangling his legs from the upper gallery as the agents left. They ignored the pistachio shells that he dropped on them—didn’t, in fact, bother to so much as look back at him. It left Viv with a savage sense of triumph that in that at least, the Forex agents had not got what they wanted. From this point on, Gilbert could make a pretence of slow improvement; whatever he was planning on that front, it evidently didn’t involve letting the agents in on his previous research.

  Gorman, his face blankly professional and his brows forebodingly beetling, opened the door for them and then hovered in the shadows by the out-facing windows to watch until the sound of a car starting up, accelerating, and dying away had permeated the manor.

  Then he opened the door for Jasper again, as blank-faced as before. Jasper didn’t seem to notice that deliberate distance—or the way that Gorman almost immediately vanished. Perhaps he was simply used to that from staff. If he was, he was going to be sorely disappointed with Viv. Gilbert, she noticed, when she threw a glance back up at the galleries, was also gone.

  Jasper strolled back into the hallway, his tall, slender body almost imperceptibly less tense, and caught sight of her at the end of it. He was hard to see, haloed by the light of the front-facing windows beside the great door, but she could see that one of his brows had risen quizzically.

  He continued to stroll forward until he was within pistachio-shell distance, and then paused to say, “No need to worry about the report until later, I think. BoRa will be here with the car in fifteen minutes.”

  “You didn’t take the body away from the manor to have it examined; you took it away to plant evidence on it, didn’t you?” she said. “You’re helping Forex to frame someone else for the murder because you don’t want to publicly admit that they paid Luca to get rid of someone who was going to make trouble for them!”

  “He’s a murderer, if it matters,” Jasper said. He was looking down at his hands, but as he spoke, he glanced toward her for a moment. “The one they’re framing. And I have no evidence that it was Forex who paid Luca—I’m not even certain they did.”

  “Who says he’s a murderer? Forex?” retorted Viv. “And no, it doesn’t matter! If he’s a murderer, have him up in your courts! I know you’ve got them, because the skin-suits threatened to drag me there if I didn’t behave.”

  “I have asked you to be more circumspect when it comes to the Forex agents,” said Jasper, through tight lips. “BoRa will be here for us soon; make sure you’re ready to go.”

  And he left her there in the hallway to fume until she was calm enough to be able to go back upstairs for her things without stamping like a child.

  Viv was still packing her few items of clothing and toiletries back into her bag when Gilbert appeared in the doorway of her room. He was alone, which relieved her until she remembered that the Forex agents were gone, and then she felt such a rush of gratefulness that she sat down on her bed suddenly.

  “You’d better come in,” she said. “I thought you were one of the agents for a minute.”

  “They’re gone,” he said, rather uncertainly. “I mean…you already know that. That’s not what I came to say.”

  Gilbert had changed, but he also hadn’t. He was no longer carefree and immature for his age, but he still seemed uncertain and young in a way that belied his appearance.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his hands squeezed together. He jerked them apart and came into the room properly, then closed the door behind him. “I didn’t know who to trust, and I thought that you and Jasper were working together, so I had to keep you locked up until I sorted things out with Gorman. He already knew that it was me instead of Dad, you see. He started to suspect that before I knew I was me, so he left that food for me where we always used to leave it when Dad wouldn’t let him feed me.”

  “You’re Jonno!” Viv said, her breath and heart catching up with her in one huge thump. She was glad that she’d already sat down, because she felt rather faint. That was what the mark on Jonno’s body had meant! “So Gilbert’s research was real! It did work!”

  She stopped, horrified, and added, barely above a whisper, “He stole your body and put his own consciousness in there!”

  “I knew he was working on it,” said Gilbert—no, Jonno. There was a thickness to his voice that suggested tears were close. “And I knew how far along he was. I thought I’d have longer before he was ready to test—I didn’t expect him to test it on me. I was barely prepared when he started the memory extraction; I’m lucky I managed to keep as much as I did. I just…I just didn’t expect him to do it to me.”

  “No,” said Viv slowly, her stomach twisting. “You don’t expect that from your dad.”

  “I never thought he loved me,” Jonno said, through his father’s lips. “I’m not stupid! But I didn’t know he hated me. I didn’t know that he hated me so much that he could take away my memories, steal my body and throw me in his, just so that he could live life with money and magic.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. There was already so much weighing on Jonno that she didn’t think she could say sorry on Luca’s behalf as well. Jonno had gone through so much that she was surprised he was still standing and still sane; she didn’t think it would help to remind him of any of that. “Why did you come to tell me?” she asked. “I didn’t know. I might not have ever known.”