Athelas’ brows went up. Perhaps he hadn’t known that gumiho could speak in their fox form—or perhaps it was what Peregrine had said that surprised him.

  YeoWoo said scornfully, “You think that would stop me? That’s first date stuff. Change back and talk to us properly.”

  Crossly, Peregrine said, “I won’t. I’m staying like this until you leave.”

  “Coward,” said YeoWoo mockingly.

  Now frosty, he told her, “I don’t play games when someone threatens me in my own house.”

  “You’re the one who said you were going to start biting,” she pointed out. “And—”

  “You mentioned,” said Athelas, cutting through her words with the air of a man once again returning the subject to its rightful course, “that you required help with something in the neighbourhood.”

  “Yes,” Peregrine said hastily. “That’s what I was trying to tell you about. And it’s something you’ll need to do anyway, because I don’t personally have the information you need: I just know where you can find it. Well, I know who it’s with; I don’t know exactly where it is, itself.”

  “Who is it with?” demanded YeoWoo.

  “There’s a group of fae who operate from a location in Dongdaemun; they take contracts, find useful behindkind, and sell them to the highest bidder. They specialise in matching talent with need.”

  YeoWoo frowned. “The information is with a contract seller? Do you know exactly which shop? There are at least ten contract shops I know of in Dongdaemun alone.”

  “They’re selling from the café downstairs in the Dongdaemun Design Plaza—and they don’t just deal in contracts,” he said. “They have some old records and names that no one thought were still in circulation: they sell information, too, when they can. We don’t like that.”

  “You want me to go in and try to shut them down?” asked YeoWoo flatly. “If I went in and attacked a business that’s operating lawfully, the enforcers would be on my doorstep again before I could cool my tea.”

  “Not if what I’ve heard is true,” Peregrine said. Perhaps he felt as though any threat of danger had passed, because despite his earlier protestations, he did shift back to his human form, with slightly drier hair and a ruffle of Between to account for his bathrobe. “I’ve heard stories that some of their contract work isn’t strictly voluntary. The enforcers won’t care who it was doing the stirring if it brings up the sort of nastiness they’ve been specially tasked with finding lately.”

  “Ah,” said Athelas, with a dark, malicious look to his grey eyes. “So that is why the elders are interested. You have a fancy to build bridges with the new king.”

  YeoWoo interrupted him. “Even if it won’t cause trouble with the enforcers, why should I shut them down when either you or I could just raid their shop and make off with their computers or books, or however they’re storing information these days?”

  “How they’re storing it is part of the problem,” Peregrine said. “We think it’s on computers, but we can’t be sure. And if we go in too early, and without justification, we won’t be able to keep any servers or records that we do find. The paper trail has to be pristine.”

  YeoWoo gazed at him for a very long time in building resentment. “You want me to investigate and take down the whole shop from the inside unawares,” she said. “You want me to do your entire job for you just so that you can get access to their files legally.”

  “Consider it a reimbursement to society for the damage you did to it years ago,” Peregrine said.

  “The damage done to society was what happened when an entire den of gumiho took over a town and began playing with it,” YeoWoo said through her teeth. “Don’t try and take a holier-than-thou attitude with me!”

  Peregrine elevated his jaw, presenting a gloriously chiselled line that was ruined by the fact that his hair was still sending the occasional dribble of water down his neck—and that he still, from time to time, anxiously rechecked his robe to make sure it was still tied.

  “Help me, and you help yourself,” he said. “It’s up to you. I can’t do anything about the shop personally because what they’re doing isn’t illegal by our laws—as far as we can prove.”

  “Not yet,” said YeoWoo, who had heard rumours of exactly the sort of changes that the new King Behind was trying to make.

  “There are hundreds of contract shops in Seoul alone—who could police all those? It probably won’t be enforced even if it does become illegal, so long as behindkind and humans are willing to make bargains for themselves by their own will,” Peregrine said.

  “Perhaps not always their own wills,” Athelas suggested. “I believe family concerns are still being considered when it comes to slavery contracts.”

  Peregrine stared at him, and YeoWoo nearly did the same. “Who should be allowed to sell children other than their parents?” he asked. “I don’t exactly like it myself, but it isn’t against our laws.”

  “No,” agreed Athelas. “And who am I to quibble about rule of law versus moral law, after all?”

  “At least you know it,” YeoWoo said frankly. She turned back to Peregrine and said, “I’ll do your job for you. But if I get enough evidence for you to raid the place, you have to promise that you’re going to make sure I get access to the information I need when you do it. And you’re going to have to get me a lot more information about the store to start with—I also want information on the latest disappearances around Seoul that might be connected, if I’m supposed to be finding proof of involuntary commitments.”

  “I’ll promise that and more,” Peregrine said, prompting a wince from Athelas. “I’ll even promise my own help.”

  “Deal,” said YeoWoo promptly, before he could take it back or think better of it.

  He didn’t seem inclined to think better of it—in fact, his grin was boyish and satisfied, as if he’d gotten exactly what he wanted out of the exchange—and YeoWoo knew with a prickle of cold realisation that her suspicions had been right.

  Peregrine had absolutely moved the body, and he had done it deliberately to bring her to himself for his own reasons.

  CONVERSATION IN THE KITCHEN

  There was a feeling of lightness to the house the next morning. Athelas didn’t know what it was, but he was inclined to think it had something to do with YeoWoo or Harrow—perhaps both. Harrow’s absence was certainly something that was noticeable, lending some credence to his claims that he was cursed rather than simply struggling to live with an abusive family, and YeoWoo’s almost ruthless bounciness at having a direction to point the weapon that was herself was a kind of lift in the air. Camellia, by contrast, when she wasn’t impressing herself upon Athelas’ consciousness by poisoning his tea, affected the house remarkably little, and he noticed her presence most of all in the seamless way that everything always seemed to be tidy again after a mess had been made.

  That particular thought reminded him that it was barely a few days since the fight in the sunroom that had seen the place spattered with behindkind blood and remains. Both Camellia and the room had been damaged—Camellia with a slash to her arm and the room with black, bloody stains in the carpet—and both were, a mere few days later, apparently quite well.

  He could perhaps have conducted his minor investigations in a less noticeable manner, but Athelas, having found a far more dangerous opposite in the colourful Camellia than he had expected, began the day with a sparkling desire to see exactly what would come of confronting her directly.

  “A truly remarkable turnaround in just a few days,” he said to her that morning, as she deposited a pile of French toast between two dishes of cut fruit on the table she had prepared in the sunroom.

  Camellia adjusted the plate, sunlight catching warmly against the buttery top of the bread, and said, “I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.”

  “No?” Athelas took a sip of his tea, enjoying the extended and slightly unstable silence. There were two things he could have meant by the words, and he would have liked to have known which of those two things had sprung first to her mind when he said them. If he had known that, he would have been a lot closer to the answer he wanted rather than needed.

  “Stop talking in riddles,” YeoWoo said bluntly. She had been sitting at the small breakfast table before him, simmering with what she had learned from Peregrine the previous day and busy with a small pile of thin files beside her breakfast plate. “That’s what she’s too polite to say. What are you talking about?”

  “The bloodstains in the carpet are completely gone,” he said, and was quite sure that he saw Camellia nod infinitesimally, as if approving her own reply in light of the question—or merely agreeing with the statement. It was possible that he was reading too much into the situation, but little things generally did mean something, after all. “You must have a truly magical touch, my dear.”

  A faint line formed between her brows at the words. “That? We get all kinds of blood here, and I don’t like it staying in the house.”

  “No doubt understandable,” he said, helping himself to French toast and then to the myriad types of fruit that mingled on the closest fruit plate. “It has doubtless been a successful study—not unlike your study with herbs, I should think.”

  “Oh no,” she said coolly. “I’m far more advanced there than I am in my study of blood.”

  “Indeed,” said Athelas, enjoyment curling through him like tea steam. “I remember now—then that hand on my waistcoat…it was yours, was it?”

  “I thought it would be better if Harrow and I stayed as close to you as possible,” Camellia said.

  “Was that what it was?” he said. “Strange. I took it for a plea for help.”

  Camellia’s eyes met his for a bare, brilliant second; then YeoWoo sniffed, breaking the moment. “Anyone asking you for help would need to have their head seen to at the hospital.”

  “After all,” Athelas pointed out gently, ignoring her, “the teapot was out of commission.”

  “I still had the teacups,” Camellia said, but a smile curved her plum-tinted lips, delighting him. “I’m not a fighter, and I was grateful you were there.”

  “Good heavens!” he said. “Could that have been a word of thanks?”

  Camellia shook her head. “No. It was a statement of fact. Thank you.”

  The unexpectedness of it was very nearly as off-putting as the directness of the words. Athelas felt his breath still momentarily in his chest and was aware that he had been beaten at his own game. To rid himself of the feeling, he attacked once again.

  “Your arm, too,” he pointed out. “I fancy you had it in a sling yesterday, but today it seems to have recovered.”

  “It wasn’t as bad as it looked,” Camellia said tranquilly. “I moved back quickly when I knew that it was coming, so I was barely grazed. I was quite shocked, and I don’t like Harrow seeing me hurt, so I took care of it in my room. I keep my own supplies there just in case something happens.”

  “I trust you’ll recover without too much scarring,” he said. He wouldn’t have said with certainty that she was lying, but Camellia tended to brevity rather than long explanations, and it had taken her three times longer to explain her arm than it had to explain the room. He wondered what would have happened if he had asked her about her arm first and felt a twitch of regret. “You might let me look at it, my dear; I’ve a knack for healing, as it turns out.”

  That caused YeoWoo to give vent to a small huff of air again. Athelas lifted cold eyes to her, and she met them with all of the frankness and none of the charm of Camellia.

  “You said something, my dear?”

  “I didn’t say anything,” she said. “But anyone who goes to you for healing needs their head seen to as badly as anyone asking you for help.”

  “I do feel that you might perhaps be biased,” he said.

  As if feeling that she was free to go now that the two of them were speaking to each other rather than her, Camellia smiled faintly and turned toward the door.

  Athelas, who wasn’t inclined to let her go that easily or quickly, asked her over his shoulder, “Did the boy return this morning?”

  Camellia gazed at him for some few moments without fully turning back before she said, “No. Why do you ask?”

  “I don’t think he’ll be back very quickly,” he said, feeling YeoWoo’s narrowed eyes on him. “I have the impression that he’ll be discouraged from leaving the house—or at the very least from visiting this house—for some few days. Anything beyond that might be possible, though difficult. It really depends on how resilient the child is.”

  “I see,” said Camellia, and he felt that she really did see—which confused him rather more than he was prepared to be confused.

  It couldn’t have been a new idea to her; she must have known the probable outcome of her actions when she set them in motion yesterday.

  “I can’t help but feel,” he added, as she shifted her weight as if to leave once again, “that by sending myself and the gumiho along with him, you were inviting such an outcome.”

  “Outcomes aren’t my provision,” she said, and there was a pinch of sorrow between her brows. “I only deal in opportunities. But I thought you didn’t believe broken things could be fixed?”

  “They can’t,” he said. “And so I speak from time to time, even when it can do no good. Do come to me if you find you need your arm seen to, my dear.”

  Camellia grew very slightly more still. “I’d really rather you didn’t call me that.”

  Athelas felt momentarily as if the world had shifted slightly out of place. He had never had someone object to the words before, and he didn’t know quite how to replace them. My dear was a soft, unobjectionable smoothness of speech that related without tying down—in most cases, at least. He was well aware that it could be a trap, too, and had worked hard to make sure it never became a trap for him again.

  It took him another moment before he could say with any kind of indifference, “As you please.”

  “What’s comfortable for you is not something that is comfortable for me,” she said, and this time she moved away from the doorway when her shifting stance announced it.

  YeoWoo, who was watching with something of a malicious expression on her face, explained, “Camellia doesn’t like words that don’t mean anything. She’s probably been waiting for the right time to bring it up since you arrived.”

  “Words always mean something,” he said, still very faintly discomforted. “Every one of them, exactly in its place.”

  YeoWoo, far too perceptively, said, “Perhaps she doesn’t like the meaning you have on the words.”

  “A lowering yet likely scenario,” he said. “My dear, I will thank you not to adulterate the presentation of my breakfast by dipping your files in it. I have absolutely no interest in looking at files, nor of hearing more than I had to hear yesterday in your company.”

  “We need to decide which one of these behindkind we should try to find first,” YeoWoo objected. “And we—”

  “My dislike for the plural pronoun has been growing this last year,” Athelas told her, lifting one hand slightly. He was irritated at having lost Camellia so swiftly, and he was in no mood to play with YeoWoo instead. “Desist in using it.”

  YeoWoo’s eyes narrowed on him. “You’re going to have to get used to it until I finish this job. If anyone should be repaying a debt to society, it’s you.”

  “Do, I beg of you, leave me out of your schemes,” Athelas said, shaking out his napkin and spreading it over his lap. “I really have no intention of allowing my help to spread beyond the end of the previous day.”

  “If you’re asking me to release you and consider your help complete, I’m not going to,” YeoWoo said bluntly. “You did all I needed you to do yesterday, but I still want you to help with finding the people in these files. They all went missing over the last month, and—”

  “I’m sure you’ll do a delightful job, my dear,” said Athelas. “I, for one, will not be assisting with any such nonsense. I trust you will be satisfied to have made your way into Peregrine’s house.”

  “You can’t trick me into admitting satisfaction when I don’t choose to be satisfied,” YeoWoo told him. “I haven’t said anything like it, so you’d better keep being useful.”

  “I fancy you’ll find that I can be quite reasonably stubborn,” Athelas said pleasantly. “Especially when the tenor of my words could most easily be taken to apply only to an afternoon’s worth of activities. You did, after all, specify today when we spoke with the enforcers. You might remember that I have my own affairs to deal with, and I’m not inclined to involve myself in matters—such as contract shopfronts that have always been rampant Behind. I am not prepared to clean up one small section of the Behind underbelly only to have it overrun by three new storefronts a few weeks later. I’m not interested in any further exercises in futility, I thank you, my dear.”

  “Do as you please,” she said. “But if I see the enforcers, I’m going to let it slip that you’re free for work after all.”

  “You must please yourself, of course,” he said coldly. He disliked the situation in which he found himself, but although he would find it inconvenient to be at the beck and call of the enforcers at this moment, he would find it absolutely insupportable to investigate anything so sordid and unstoppable as slavery contracts—voluntary or otherwise. He had once been intimately familiar with the trade and had no intention of renewing his acquaintanceship with it.

  The gumiho looked as though she would have liked to have prodded more—whether from irritation or sheer maliciousness of character—but then her eyes seemed to shutter. Athelas had the feeling that she was holding herself back from saying anything, and that was interesting. Interesting, and potentially condescending.

  Athelas didn’t particularly care for the thought that YeoWoo might think she was doing him a kindness, and since there was nothing he could really do about it if it was the case, the irritation of that idea made it impossible for him to linger over his really very good vanilla rooibos. Mindful of the necessity of making a good impression on Camellia, and hopeful of salvaging the morning for some good purpose, Athelas took his own dishes back into the kitchen.