“I didn’t see it before,” Gilbert said. It didn’t sound as though he was arguing; he sounded very slightly guilty. “I must have fallen asleep…somewhere else.”

  “Yes, sir; you were in the hallway earlier this morning. It seems that you sleepwalked there after you tried to wait up for Master Jonno to come home.”

  “Oh, it was his room I couldn’t get into,” Gilbert said, reviving a little. “That explains it. I wondered who’d locked my door on me.”

  “Next time, I hope you will remember that you can call me, sir,” Gorman told him. There was that twitch of the brows together at the top again; his forehead said sorrow although his mouth was pressed tight.

  “Yes, I keep forgetting that,” said Gilbert. “But it was so late and I didn’t want to wake…everybody up.”

  Who was the everybody? wondered Viv. So far, she had only seen Gorman and Gilbert; she could also assume Jonno in the mix. The way Gilbert shifted his position made her think that he had been actively fearful of waking someone—a specific someone.

  Gorman said firmly, “I am always at your service, sir,” and left them alone in the room with Gilbert.

  Into the silence that then fell, Gilbert took the small decanter off the table, uncorked it, sniffed it, and then made a face and put it back on the table. He didn’t pour it into the glass.

  “It’ll make you feel better,” Viv told him.

  “It’ll make me feel worse first,” Gilbert said, as though agreeing.

  Jasper’s phone rang, and that made him jump and flinch in a way that was almost childish, which stirred up the brisk, motherly side of Viv that was never very far beneath the surface. She crossed the room, poured the dark liquid from the decanter to the glass, and gave it to Gilbert, who took it quite meekly.

  “I have to take this call,” Jasper said, glancing at his phone. “Why don’t you speak with Gilbert—make sure he takes his medicine.”

  Gilbert made a small scoffing noise as he left the room. “He’s always bossy,” he said. “Do you know, they called him the Metre Ruler at school? Stiff as a rod and just as uptight.”

  Viv had to fight very hard not to laugh. “That does sound like Jasper,” she said, and took the glass from him to put it back on the tiny gold platter it had come from. “Better?”

  “It never tastes good,” he told her in a hushed voice. “Don’t tell Gorman. He thinks he’s the only one who can make medicine I’ll drink.”

  “I would never,” Viv told him, solemnly. “Does your stomach feel better, though?”

  “Yes,” he said, making another face. “What a traitor. Why are you here with Jasper? Why did you want to talk to me?”

  “You said there’s something interesting about my face,” Viv said, without answering either question. She had wondered at the time if he could somehow see that she wasn’t, perhaps, fully human—and she hoped now, perhaps ridiculously, that if so, he could tell by looking at her exactly what she was.

  To her astonishment, Gilbert looked down, his cheeks darkening. “I just said that because you’re pretty and I wanted to talk to you,” he said. “None of the other girls look like you.”

  Highly amused, Viv asked, “What other girls?”

  Gilbert gestured around, then seemed to take in his surroundings properly. “Oh,” he said. “I’m not really very sure. I think I’ve been making a mistake again. We’re at home, aren’t we?”

  “Yes,” Viv said gently. “We’re at home, in your room. You’ve had a bit of stomach trouble so Gorman gave you some medicine.”

  “I don’t usually have stomach trouble,” he said.

  “Yes, but you don’t usually get poisoned, either,” pointed out Viv. She hesitated, and then asked, “Do you remember getting poisoned?”

  “My memory isn’t bad,” he said anxiously. “I promise you! I remember everything that happened this year! It’s just sometimes I get confused about before that. I remember Jasper.”

  “What about last week?” Viv asked him. She had the feeling that this was Gilbert as awake and aware as he could be; it would be wise to get as much from him now as she could. Perhaps it was early-onset dementia that plagued him; perhaps it was something else—something Other. At any rate, she would take advantage of windows of clarity. She added, “Before you went to the hospital. You were having lunch with Jonno.”

  Gilbert gave a small giggle, as though he couldn’t help it, and said, “Lunch with Jonno!” He seemed to think about it, and then grew more serious. “Yes, I had lunch with Jonno; that’s what Gorman says. Jonno was being very sour for no reason so I stole his drink.”

  “Pardon?” Viv said, so startled that she very nearly said what? instead of pardon?

  “I took his drink,” Gilbert said. His eyes were bright and clear and mischievous once again, as if he had no concept of what his words meant. “I stole his fork and his napkin, too; he didn’t even notice! He never notices things that I do, these days.”

  If there was something of a sadness to the last sentence, Viv was hard put to register it properly. She was too busy with the relieved and delighted thought that not only did they have what should be decent proof that Jonno wasn’t guilty of attempted murder, they could also rest easy in that conviction. Viv had been afraid—just a little afraid—that despite what Jasper had said, Jonno was exactly the kind of person who would turn out to have committed murder.

  It was lovely to know that she wouldn’t have to ignore that and still try to have him released.

  On the other hand, it meant that someone was probably trying to kill Jonno, and perhaps it would be safer to leave him where he was for now, despite his protestations.

  “Did you drink from it?” she asked him. “What did he have to drink?”

  “We had the same thing,” said Gilbert. “Beer, both of us. He said that his was sugar-free so I swapped it with mine because he was being sour.”

  He grinned again, pleased with his joke.

  “Did Jonno enjoy the joke?” Viv asked him.

  “I got sick before I could tell him, and then everything was confusing when I woke up because I forgot about having legs.”

  “You forgot you had legs?” repeated Viv, wondering if she had heard correctly.

  “Well,” he said, as though searching for words. “I forgot how legs work. And then I sort of panicked and tried to run away. I didn’t know that Jonno was locked up until this week; they didn’t tell me. And then they didn’t believe me at the hospital that Jonno didn’t try to kill me.”

  “They’ll believe Jasper,” Viv said. “If you’re very sure.”

  “Very, very sure,” he said, nodding. “I’m not stupid. I just…I just can’t find pieces of myself that I need to be able to walk properly in the world.”

  “I know the feeling,” Viv said, sighing a little bit. “Why don’t you have a bit of a rest? I need to talk to Jasper; he’ll know how to get Jonno out of the lockup, now that we know this. Someone else may need to ask you about it, though.”

  “Anyone may ask,” he said grandly, as though warning that although they may ask, he may not reply.

  Hopefully he would be more willing to oblige when the time came—or at least when reminded that it was for his son.

  Viv left the room because it seemed as though Gilbert might go to sleep; his activities during the night had obviously left him tired and he was already yawning and looking longingly at his bed. Jasper wasn’t in sight when she closed the door softly behind her, but she could hear his voice to her right as she stood outside Gilbert’s door, around the curve of the hallway that went deeper into the manor and further away from the balcony. She stepped softly along the carpet toward the murmur of Jasper’s voice, wondering if it was her imagination or if the sound did get suddenly much louder when she finally found herself within sight of Jasper.

  It was as though the sound had been turned down to an unintelligible murmur until that point: it was as though something other than hallway sound dynamics were at play.

  “That’s not really necessary,” he was saying. His voice sounded persuasive, and Viv wondered again, fleetingly, exactly how much of Between and behindkind influence was usable over the phone.

  If Luca had been here, she would have asked him—and he would have had an entire screed of information, some useful and some terrifying, to blurt out at her.

  As it was, Viv was left with more than enough time and attention to wonder exactly who Jasper was trying to persuade over the phone. Was he speaking with the Missus? Forex? Either of those two options gave her a chill. She didn’t like the sort of person Jasper tended to become when he was dealing with either of those options.

  She had caught sight of him around the curve as she rounded it; he was looking out a window that seemed to be blurry with rain, radiating a cold that Viv could feel even from a good ten metres away. She could have retreated and left him to his conversation, but she was suddenly quite certain that any phone call that would drag Jasper away from a case this important must also be something…very important.

  There was also the little matter of how odd the manor was here. Sudden rainfall aside, between her and Jasper there was another door on the opposite wall, deep in shadow and somehow casting that shadow to creep towards the grey light from the window. Jasper, caught between those dismal, cold patches, seemed unnaturally stiff, his back to her and his attention on the window.

  “I’m not trying to be difficult, Chris; I’m asking you to trust me and my resources,” he said. His tone was reasonable and persuasive, but Viv could see how tight his shoulders were, and the fingers of one of his hands were so taut against the spoon that had been in Gilbert’s medicine cup that he had bent it backwards. “You’ve never had any reason to doubt us before. The last couple of months aren’t indicative of our trend yearly or of our ethos in general—and you can’t expect us to control things outside our scope. We simply deal with problems as they arise, with the resources we have; we don’t make decisions for other people.”

  There was silence while the person on the other side of the phone spoke at length, and when Jasper was once more able to answer, his voice had dropped just a little—adding authority, Viv thought.

  “You know that I choose my staff very carefully,” he said. “Upper Management was behindkind-run, and it was hardly a single human that brought it down; it fell down under its own weight.”

  He’s talking about me, Viv realised. Whoever it was on the phone—and Viv suspected that it was someone from high up in Forex—she was quite sure they had just been discussing her and her habit of not doing what Forex wanted her to do. Or at least her habit of doing it in a way that pleased Forex not at all. And they were comparing her with who? A human who had brought down another establishment? What was Upper Management?

  Perhaps she would have tried to move closer and edge into the silent quietness of the closer doorway to hear more if Jasper hadn’t begun to turn around. Then she had no choice but to start moving forward so that she was in motion as he caught sight of her—as though she hadn’t just been listening in the shadows of the hallway.

  He caught sight of her when she had only taken a step or two forward, turning more quickly as Viv let her cardigan sleeve brush against the electronic button that was still, uselessly, attached to her belt loop and made a metallic sort of clatter as she did.

  “My secretary has just come back,” he said, his eyes studying her face. “And it seems as though we have something that could help. I would recommend not sending anyone over; we have the situation well in hand, and we should have Jonno out by tonight.”

  There was another, even briefer exchange before he hung up, and Viv said to him directly, “Gilbert says that he took Jonno’s beer and swapped it for his own. Nobody is trying to kill Gilbert. Or at least, if they are, they didn’t really care which one of them actually got poisoned.”

  “Ah,” said Jasper, his brows rising momentarily. “That will mean a rethinking of the situation. I’ll have to make a few phone calls, in that case.”

  “Sounds like you already had enough fun on the phone,” Viv said, without pretending she hadn’t heard. “Who were you talking to? Forex? What did they want?”

  At least this way, he might think she hadn’t heard much. And she hadn’t, not really. Not enough to be useful.

  “Forex is…concerned,” Jasper said briefly. “We’re going to remain overnight—or at least until Jonno gets back to stay with his father.”

  Viv stared at him in surprise. “They’ll let him go that quickly?”

  “No doubt as soon as Gilbert’s barrister gets to them,” Jasper said coolly. “It might not be so speedy for your average human, but the barrister has a few extra talents apart from his expertise in Australian and…Other law; he’ll have Jonno out as soon as the record is taken from Gilbert. They’ll send someone to take a statement, probably in the next few hours. You’ll need to sit with Gilbert for that; he seems to have taken a liking to you, and we want him to be as lucid and believable as possible.”

  “He’s been lucid the whole time,” Viv said. “He remembers you, at least—said you were called the Metre Ruler at school. He’s not floating in and out, as far as I can tell. It’s just that he seems to be missing most of his memory barring the last year, and sometimes he forgets he’s at home.”

  “Perhaps so, but I doubt the Melbourne Police Force are anything like educated enough to understand that if they think he’s a bit wobbly mentally.”

  “All right,” said Viv, “but I don’t have any spare clothes to spend the night.”

  “Call BoRa; tell her what you need. She’ll give it to someone to bring around. Oh, and Viv⁠—”

  Viv, who had turned to make her necessary phone call nearer to the sunny rotunda than the rainy window, aware that she wouldn’t hear anything else from Jasper now that wasn’t strictly business, paused inquiringly.

  “Don’t go wandering around the outside walls unless you have to,” he said, his face still lit by soft, rainy light from the outside window. “They lead to the older, wilder parts of the house. Stick closer to the inside walls and the rounded edges. If you have to pass through an older section, try to stay away from the windows; you never know what might come through.”

  That, thought Viv, making her way back to the balustraded area that overlooked the huge, round room at the front of the house, was another reason not to stay in the manor overnight. She was quite certain that Jasper wouldn’t see it in as sensible a way as she felt that she did, however, so it was wiser to keep to the safe areas of the house.

  She wondered, too, if Jasper was more worried about her, or himself, in the event of a Luca incursion. It seemed extremely unlikely that Luca knew or was keeping tabs on where they were, but Viv wasn’t willing to chance that anything else wouldn’t come through the windows, either.

  Tapping her finger against the curved edge of one of the marble balusters, Viv called BoRa, looking out and up into the rotunda. She could see why Gilbert liked to sit here; there was a good view straight up and out into the blue sky, a pleasingly kaleidoscopic view of the dizzyingly curved series of balustrades higher up, and a likewise pleasantly disorienting view of the chequered marble floor below.

  “What is it?” said BoRa’s voice in her ear. The words were abrupt, but her tone wasn’t—or perhaps Viv was just getting used to the other woman’s brusque ways. “Did something happen? Did your little man come back?”

  Viv had to bite her lip with some force to stop herself laughing. “Luca hasn’t come back,” she said. “And nothing has happened to either of us, but we’ve got some useful evidence that will get Jasper’s friend out of lockup, and it sounds like Forex is going to show up here soon.”

  BoRa sniffed. “It would have been better if it was the madman,” she said.

  “Much,” agreed Viv, without thinking.

  She was rather sure she could hear the grin in BoRa’s voice when BoRa said, “He makes life a lot more interesting, doesn’t he?”

  Viv refused to answer that question. “We’re going to be here for dinner, overnight, and I don’t know how long tomorrow,” she said instead. “Jasper said that you might be able to pack me an overnight bag.”

  “All right, but you have to buy me cigarettes on the way home,” said BoRa. “Have you heard from him?”

  That, too, was about Luca. Even though she had nothing to feel self-conscious about, Viv found that she felt a sudden protective instinct to brush the subject off while saying as little as possible. She hoped fervently that it wasn’t precognitive.

  “Of course not,” she said. “There’s no reason for him to contact me.”

  “That’s what I thought you’d say,” said BoRa, in a rather unsettling way. “I’ll bring you clothes and stuff. When are the Forex people coming?”

  “Don’t know,” said Viv. “Jasper has been trying to make sure that they don’t, but I doubt they’ll listen. I don’t like it.”

  “Nobody likes it,” BoRa said.

  “And yet, everybody seems to be working with them.”

  “That’s because they have a lot of money and power,” said BoRa. “Even in Korea, we’d heard about them. Maybe you should try not to antagonise them this time. Do you need anything else?”

  “There’s SooAh, too,” Viv said.

  There was a silence, before BoRa sighed. “Are you asking me to let that little wriggler sleep in my bed with me?”

  “That, or you can both have a sleepover in my room,” Viv suggested. “I have some TimTams hidden in my bedside table.”

  “You shouldn’t eat chocolate at night,” BoRa said, sounding unconvinced. “You’re going to get a puffy face in the morning if you eat late at night.”

  “I know,” agreed Viv. “But sometimes I just really need a biscuit in the middle of the night. I have some of those really nice face masks in the bathroom, too.”

  She added the last part enticingly, and wasn’t entirely surprised when BoRa demanded immediately, “What kind?”

  “Some the chollima brought me from Korea,” Viv said, grinning. She had convinced BoRa, and both of them knew it. “At least two of them have snail mucin in them and one of them has gold. There’s also a little pack of mountain ginseng masks.”