“Briefly,” said Ilsa, folding her arms. “I din’t get much chance to get to know her. What with her being ’bout as pleasant as sewer rats fighting over a cat carcass.”
Fyfe’s face fell. A ringing silence sounded among them. Ilsa knew she had spoken too freely before Cassia ever cleared her throat. “Ilsa, Hester is Fyfe’s sister,” she said.
Ilsa’s stomach dropped. She felt the blood drain from her head in a dizzying rush. “Sister?”
Cassia hadn’t mentioned any other relatives. And Hester and Fyfe didn’t look at all related.
“Half-sister,” said Fyfe flatly. “I’m not a Ravenswood. Hester and I shared a mother.”
“Oh.” Ilsa bit her tongue, for all the good it would do now. She tried to stammer an apology but Cassia hastily cut in.
“Fyfe is the lieutenant responsible for” – she looked to him and frowned – “bio… magical… chemistry?” said Cassia.
“Blowing things up?” offered Aelius.
“Innovation, I suppose.” He turned to Ilsa. “Hester only made me a lieutenant because I begged to be one. She had to invent a role which required my, ah, unique strengths.”
“Well that was… sweet of her,” Ilsa said, hoping to make up for the last thing she said about Hester and fooling no one.
Aelius caught Fyfe’s eye and chuckled. “Be careful of using language like that around the woman herself, Ilsa my darling,” he said. “Accuse Hester Ravenswood of sweetness and I guarantee she’ll show you how sweet she can be. Now let us find Oren and a pot of strong coffee.”
He led the way back into the house. Ilsa followed behind, falling into step with Fyfe. An awkward silence stretched between them until Ilsa found the nerve to speak.
“I’m sorry ’bout what I said. It was awful of me.”
Fyfe shook his head and managed a smile. “I know what she’s like. It’s as Aelius said, she never minded about being liked even before she was injured and now… she’ll be back to the old cynical Hester in no time. But she does have a kind side,” he added hastily. “In her own way. She just doesn’t show it to everyone.”
Ilsa knew what it was to hide parts of oneself. Hester must have had her reasons. “Is she a good alpha most of the time?”
“Well, of course, she wasn’t—” Whatever he had been about to say, he cut off abruptly. He chewed his lip and threw a glance at Cassia and Aelius who had gone on ahead. “She’s an awfully good alpha, yes. Sometimes I look at her and I wonder what makes a person able to do a job like that. Is it something they have or something they forge themselves? If one could isolate it, what would it boil down to? I know human beings don’t work like machines or chemical formulas, but I can’t help but wonder.” He shook his head thoughtfully. “And Hester was never even meant to be alpha. She was just the only one left when…”
“When my parents died,” said Ilsa when Fyfe trailed off. That must have been what Hester meant when she called herself a last resort.
They caught up with Cassia and Aelius at a door with a plaque reading Meeting Room. As Aelius opened the door, Cassia paused, stiffening, and her gaze tracked across the entrance hall. Ilsa turned.
It took her a moment to recognise him in the light. The storm blue of his eyes was deeper. He wasn’t as pale as she’d thought. But she recognised the perilous look in his eye and the tight set of his jaw. As he came closer, so did his air of roiling irritation.
“Ilsa, this is Eliot Quillon,” said Cassia coolly.
Eliot spared her half a glance, quickly masking any surprise that Ilsa hadn’t told Cassia they’d met.
“Charmed,” he clipped, before he rounded on Cassia. That was gratitude, thought Ilsa, and she readied a contemptuous glare in case he looked again. “When I suggested you have a mercenary fetch her, Cadell Fowler is not who I had in mind.” He made to swan past them into the meeting room, then apparently remembered a further gripe. “And by the way, what time of day do you call this?”
“Before noon,” said Aelius, regarding Eliot contemptuously. “I doubt you recognise it.”
Eliot adjusted his sleeve in an impressively dismissive manner. “I don’t see the point in being awake just to be reminded that I’m not needed for anything, ever, until further notice,” he said tonelessly, before sweeping past. Through the door, Ilsa watched him pull out a chair at the end of a long oval table and sink gracefully into it, as the servants laying out a tea service scattered like pigeons fleeing a cat.
Cassia shot Ilsa an apologetic look and ushered them into the room.
“It ain’t that early, is it?” whispered Ilsa, leaning close to Fyfe.
Fyfe checked his watch. “It’s just gone eight.”
“But on the other side of the portal… it’s late, right?”
Fyfe nodded enthusiastically. “It’s eight o’clock in the evening. A remarkable quirk in the fabric between worlds.”
“Right. So if I want to know what time I got to be back in the Otherworld, I just got to—”
“Back, my darling?” said Aelius. Everyone’s gaze had snapped to her. That tiny frown between Cassia’s brows had returned.
“For the show tomorrow,” Ilsa explained. “Today’s Sunday so the theatre’s closed, but this time tomorrow I’m expected on stage.”
“That’s quite impossible,” said a voice from the doorway.
Another man had joined them, and he closed the door with a resonating wooden click.
Ilsa turned to Cassia warily. “There’s more of you?” “Ilsa, this is Oren Tarenvale,” sighed Cassia.
Oren carefully unhooked his eyeglasses from around his ears, folded them into his breast pocket and inclined his head at Ilsa. His mousy hair was greying at the temples, and exceptionally neat, like his tweed suit and starched white collar. He smiled tightly, but his eyes were kind, and his face was benevolent and mild, not that it did anything to favour Ilsa’s first
