“Because it wasn’t Forex that paid to have me killed,” he said. “It was my dad. He was trying to get rid of the evidence that remained after the beer didn’t work. I don’t know how Luca knew it was me in here, but he did; he came to see me that night, back when I didn’t know who he was, or who I was. He said that he was going to apply the letter of the contract to achieve the spirit of the law, and that I should tell you that when you came here.”

  Viv couldn’t help smiling a little, even though there was nothing really to smile at. “Yes, that sounds exactly like Luca,” she said. “Things might have been easier if you’d told me earlier.”

  “I know,” he said. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t myself.”

  “It’s not your fault!” she said swiftly. “Nothing that happened was your fault. Nothing that is the way it is today is because you did anything wrong.”

  The brown eyes that gazed at her filled with tears for a moment before Jonno looked down and blinked the tears away. He cleared his throat and said, “That’s not the only reason I’m telling you. I’m putting all my cards on the table because I need you to keep it a secret.”

  “Of course!” she said. “I’m not going to tell anyone. Yours isn’t the only secret I’m holding.”

  “I thought it might not be,” he said. He added, more seriously, “Viv, Dad supplied a lot of money when he was asked for it—if he approved of what was being done. You know I’m not going to be able to help the Tea House any longer, don’t you?”

  “Because you’re not really your father?” she hazarded. “I thought you had access to everything now that you’re…well, where you are, I suppose.”

  “I do,” Jonno said. “But Jasper knew it was me in here all along. I still have my memories from when I didn’t know who I was, or who he was, or what was happening—and he was helping Forex. He didn’t help me. I wouldn’t have gotten my memories back at all if it wasn’t for you, would I?”

  “No,” said Viv, shocked into being baldly honest. “You saw him give it straight to the agents; they weren’t even paying attention until he told them about it. You say he knew you were yourself? He can’t have—he wouldn’t have sacrificed you to Forex!”

  “No, he knew,” said Jonno. Now that she knew it was him, the slight hesitations in his voice—the gentleness that was nothing like Jasper had described of Gilbert—were at odds with the settled, mature appearance of his face. “He found the brand on the inside of my wrist—he knew to look for it, too.”

  “So you don’t trust us anymore,” said Viv slowly. She hadn’t thought that her stomach could sink any more when it came to Jasper, but she had been wrong. “That’s understandable. Have you told Jasper?”

  “Yes.” Jonno hesitated, and added, “He expected it, I think. I’ll always be ready to help you personally if you need me, though. Please believe that.”

  “I do,” she said, smiling in spite of the dread in her stomach. “Thank you. I’m sorry that I couldn’t help more.”

  “You gave me my memories back,” he said. “That’s enough. I am grateful, Viv. I don’t want you to think that I’m not.”

  “I understand. You just want to make sure that you’re not using Gilbert’s money in the way he was using it.”

  “Yes,” he said, his eyes lingering on her face as though to read either the truth or the lie of it there.

  Viv couldn’t help laughing. “Were you expecting me to try and convince you? I don’t really think that Jasper should be given access to more resources than he currently has, right now. Not until he’s had a chance to…reflect on some of his decisions and make better ones.”

  The smile that came out then was unforced and completely genuine. “Thank you,” he said. “I don’t think I could argue very well, today. I need some time to discuss things with Gorman and figure out how we’re going to manage this.”

  “Will you be all right?” she asked. “I know you have Gorman, but…”

  “I miss my magic,” he said, so softly that Viv almost didn’t hear it. More loudly, he added, “But I’ll be all right. I don’t think Dad understood what a good, strong body he had. It could have been a lot worse. Maybe I should have tried to find someone who wanted to swap instead of just accepting it, but⁠—”

  Viv understood in a single flash of hot, shocking fear, that of course Jonno knew where the information and research on the soul-swapping magic had been. He was the first person to be affected by it, and until his memories were taken, he knew his father best.

  She wasn’t aware that she had moved until she found that she had stepped forward and grabbed Jonno’s wrist.

  “You got rid of it, didn’t you?” she said, her fingers almost white. “The research? You didn’t keep it?”

  “I think Gorman would trounce me if I had kept it,” he said, smiling faintly. She heard a soft sigh from him, but she wasn’t sure if it was for himself or her. Then he said, “We’re going to be very good friends, Viv,” and she knew it had been for her. “You can ask Gorman, if you like; he saw me destroy it all. I made sure it was done before I brought the agents up to the treehouse.”

  “Good,” said Viv, and this time, she wasn’t afraid to make him worry a little. “If I’d thought you hadn’t, I would have asked Luca to talk to you again. Are you still sure you want to be friends?”

  That made him go very pale, but he still laughed. “Please tell Luca that I appreciate him taking the time to explain things. But please also tell him that I never want to see him again.”

  “I’ll tell him,” Viv said soberly, reaching for the doorknob. “Goodbye, Jonno.”

  “Only Gilbert, now,” he said, and there was a sadness to his voice.

  “Goodbye, Gilbert,” she said.

  “And Viv⁠—”

  Viv hesitated, her hand on the doorknob.

  “We’re going to be good friends,” he said. “If the Tea House ever…changes hands, you can count on my support.”

  Jasper was waiting outside in the hallway when Viv opened the door; he was so close that if the door wasn’t as thick as it was, he couldn’t have helped but overhear. She wasn’t entirely sure that he hadn’t overheard—and she was less sure that Jonno hadn’t said what he did to be overheard.

  “BoRa is here for us,” he said to her, and surprised her by taking her bag out of her hand and carrying it down the hallway without another word.

  The Tea House felt somehow cold and unfamiliar the next morning. Perhaps it was the lack of Luca’s bright, unchancy, warm presence; perhaps it was the effect of the last few days of frantic movement, discovery, and realisation. Perhaps Viv had simply felt and seen and done so much in the last few days that she didn’t have the ability to feel anything but numbness until she recovered.

  She had the feeling that Jasper felt the same way; he had not been at the dinner table last night, and he hadn’t been to breakfast or lunch. It seemed that whatever distancing BoRa had been afraid of was still in effect. Jasper had been, and still was, making space between himself and the other residents of the Tea House.

  She might have left him to it if it hadn’t been for a text message from the Coroner.

  It was a joy to meet you, Viv, read that text. Please let Jasper know that the artwork my friend produced for him will only last for another twenty-four hours; he was mistaken in the efficacy of his work due to the potency of the artwork he was replacing. I trust that he was able to appreciate it in good time.

  Ah, thought Viv, rather dazed. A dozen little pieces and things that hadn’t seemed to fit together suddenly fit together exactly right. Jasper hadn’t made off with the body to simply plant evidence on it as the Agents—and Viv herself—had assumed. He had planted evidence, certainly. But he had planted that evidence in exactly the place that would be most useful to cover up the other piece of evidence that had been there.

  Viv remembered the small, round symbol that had connected with another round symbol on the memory stick. Half of the same mark had been branded into Gilbert’s wrist, and she had seen something very similar on Jonno’s ankle. The calling card of the murderer that the Forex agents had charged with the murder was a slightly larger, but still round, series of circles and dots that would very easily cover up any such mark that had been branded into both Jonno’s and Gilbert’s skin to facilitate an exchange of consciousness.

  She gave vent to a short, angry sigh. Jasper needed to be punched. Repeatedly.

  He had let her be angry—had meant her to be angry, or at least to think that he had played along with Forex—and hadn’t tried to make her understand, or fill her in on, the fact that he had known all along that “Gilbert” was actually Jonno trapped in Gilbert’s body. He had also let Forex leave convinced that Gilbert’s research no longer existed, and had never been successful.

  “This is really annoying!” Viv said aloud, and went up to the third floor to bother the Lunch Lady for Jasper’s location while she was still annoyed enough to persist at it.

  Jasper, it turned out, was on the roof of the Tea House. Just as well it was today and not the day before yesterday, when he might somehow have noticed the entrance to Luca’s hideout on the way through. Or perhaps he had noticed it, Viv thought in exasperation, and simply hadn’t told her because he was waiting for her to do exactly what she had done.

  Who knew how deeply Jasper had been planning, after all?

  That irritated her even more. Maybe she should have brought BoRa up here to really annoy him.

  Jasper was on the far side of the roof when she stepped out onto it, his back to her and his face to the Yarra and the City. Beside him, the brickwork rose into the façade that made the top wall and roof of Luca’s old apartment, a sharp triangle of shadow that just missed Jasper’s sunlit back.

  Viv crossed the roof and jumped herself up on the ledge beside him, crossing her legs with her back safely to the decorative brick façade.

  “Gorman used to leave Jonno meals in the kitchen in a special place, so that when Gilbert didn’t allow him to eat at the table, he could still have food,” she said conversationally.

  “I’d prefer to be alone, Viv.”

  “To do what?” Viv said flatly. “Stare out at the city as though you’re a misunderstood superhero?”

  “I need the time, Viv,” he said, in a low, irritated voice, “to calculate the best way to remove the Tea House from the predicament in which your actions have placed us, yet again.”

  “I haven’t placed us anywhere you didn’t mean us to be,” Viv retorted. “You knew just as well as Gorman did when Gilbert went by instinct to the exact place he needed to go to get fed, that Jonno is stuck in Gilbert’s body.”

  “Gorman,” said Jasper, rather wearily, “is no idiot.”

  “And neither are you,” Viv said. She leaned her head against bricks and tilted her head sideways to look at him. “When did you know that only the body was Jonno’s? Because I know you didn’t take his body away just to plant evidence.”

  “Of course I did,” Jasper said impatiently. “You heard exactly what the agents said. They thanked me for doing the work so that they didn’t have to dirty their hands. Don’t try to make a hero of me.”

  Viv laughed. “I would never,” she said. “You’re nothing like a hero. You just can’t help yourself sometimes—you remember that all of this isn’t the way that either you or the Tea House started, and you can’t help doing the right thing, so long as no one knows about it.”

  “If I’m doing the right thing, I make sure everyone who needs to know about it, knows about it,” Jasper snapped. “There’s absolutely no good in doing the right thing if⁠—”

  “All right, I’ll rephrase that,” she interrupted. “You make sure no one knows about you doing the right thing if you’ve had to disadvantage yourself to do the right thing.”

  “I will point out, Viv, that I gave the memory stick to Forex, and that I would do it again. They will doubtless remember for a very long time that there was nothing left on it, as will I.”

  “I haven’t forgotten it,” Viv said. Jasper glanced at her, perhaps surprised, and she found herself smiling ruefully. “And I haven’t forgotten that you did it while knowing it had Jonno’s memories on it. I don’t think I ever will.”

  Jasper’s eyes fell, and she thought his lips thinned as he looked back out on the city. “Then this entire conversation is a ridiculous waste of time. I have always done what is in the best interests of keeping the Tea House extant, and as powerful as possible, and I always will. You can’t make any kind of hero out of me.”

  “Yes, but that’s not the only thing I realised,” Viv said, leaning her head back against the bricks. She couldn’t forget that Jasper had been willing to sacrifice what amounted to half of Jonno’s soul for the Tea House. But he had also, as far as he could make himself do it, tried to help Jonno until that help crossed paths with the Tea House’s survival. “You knew Luca was involved all along, and you knew he wouldn’t kill someone like Jonno. You also knew Gilbert very well—there’s no way he would have left himself open to the kind of thing that was happening in the manor. He was the sort of person who would have thought his son was wasting his life, his talents, and his magic, and that he’d make better use of them, though.”

  “It doesn’t matter when I knew it,” said Jasper, straightening and pushing away from the brick balustrade. He didn’t quite turn to face her, but one of his feet shifted in her direction as he put his hands in his pockets. He was trying to look nonchalant. “Gilbert was the sort of man to think that he deserved what he thought others didn’t value, and he’s also the sort better gone from the earth.”

  “It does matter,” said Viv. “It matters to me, anyway. It matters that you didn’t give Forex the information they really wanted—and that you had them leave thinking it didn’t exist.”

  “I don’t think you understand what’s going on here,” Jasper said, his thin lips pressing together for a moment. “The Tea House has stood for decades until now. It may have been weak and ineffective at first, but we learned to do what needed to be done to survive, and I’m not going to let it be swallowed up now. I’m always going to prioritise the Tea House, and if that means that someone never gets their memories back, that’s just the price we’ll have to pay.”

  “I hope not,” Viv said quietly. Jasper’s rendition of the Tea House’s history differed somewhat from BoRa’s in a way that worried her. “Because the Tea house stood for helping the weakest in the worlds when it began, and that was the mission. If we let fear dictate what we do now, and sacrifice even one weak behindkind for the mission, we’ve already failed that mission.”

  Jasper turned fully to face her. “We can’t save them all, Viv,” he said. “But we can make sure we survive long enough to save as many as we can. If we disappear, there’s no one left.”

  There was a pinched sort of look to the outer corners of his eyes—thin and tight and taut—and he looked for a moment far older than she had ever seen him look before. Viv was familiar with that look; it was a look of pain that had lasted for so many years that it had made permanent marks and tracks on the face when control slipped for a moment.

  She dropped her legs down and stood on the vent to give herself more height, then reached out and hugged him. Jasper stiffened for just a moment, and then she felt his arms beneath hers, his fingers wrapping around her elbows as though he was clinging to all of the self-control he had not to cry.

  “I didn’t put any of this in my reports,” she told him, as heat shimmered in the air behind the Tea House. “I wouldn’t let it get out that you might have a bit of a heart under all that ice. I’m just hoping that you stop letting the fear squash it down.”

  Viv let him go gently after a couple more moments, and for the space of a breath he held onto her before pushing her away and turning back to the wall he’d been looking over when she arrived.

  “My childhood—” he began, rather jerkily, and then laughed in a short, savage kind of way. “Oh, why should we discuss my childhood? Picture it as bleak as you like, with both of those I considered my real parents dead and no…human foster home suitable for a child with the…issues I had. There was no gentleness and no help, and I scraped myself up an education to make sure I didn’t learn too late before I was…reunited with my birth father. You’ve been acquainted with this world for half a year. I’ve known it all my life, and I promise you that there’s no softness or light in it. There is no other way to survive between the worlds. It’s crush or be crushed.”

  Viv, who knew that she had the least experience of anyone in the Tea House—up to and including little SooAh—still knew that in those six months she had encountered both softness and light in the space between worlds. In behindkind she had met with strength that made itself gentle so that it didn’t hurt those weaker than itself, and love that deliberately put itself in danger for the good of those it loved. And in humans she had met with hatred, fear, and a savage clinging to life and power. Neither race had a monopoly on love and kindness, or fear and selfishness.

  “Are you trying to convince me, or yourself?” she asked Jasper; and when he didn’t reply, she stepped down from the vent and went back down inside, leaving him to his thoughts.

  Chapter 13

  Tomorrow Is Another Day

  The next morning, Luca was in front of the concrete landing of the Tea House when Viv went out to pick up the streamers that SooAh had been dropping from the front-facing windows in the Lunch Room, before they blew onto the road.

  Shocked, bewildered, and unable to believe the evidence of her own eyes, she froze completely. Luca, bouncing on the toes of his brown shoes, and standing in the eye of a riot of streamers, gazed at her with bright eyes that were hard to meet. Today he was dressed in suit pants of crisp, brown cotton with a matching waistcoat that complemented his compact build; and he was replete with a bunch of blue flowers.