“But how d’you know it’s Gedeon what’s robbing these chemists?”
“Because I gave him the idea.”
Ilsa narrowed her eyes at him. “So you do know where he is.”
Her expression of scorn was mirrored back at her. “It’s a years-old trick. I invented it when we were just boys and shared it with Gedeon. Create a scarcity of vemanta – block its sale, buy it up ourselves, steal it even – and win a little cooperation from some of the Oracles. We used it a couple of times, on a smaller scale, but Gedeon has gone all out this time. I’m positive this is his doing. If we can find where the vemanta is resurfacing, we can find him. There’s a chemist somewhere in this city who has cut a deal with Gedeon, and their Oracle patrons are at his mercy.”
Ilsa studied him, then the mess of research piled on the desk. Aelius thought he was sleeping past noon. “You ain’t told the others this.”
Eliot stilled. The pocket watch found its way back into his hand. Between his fingers, Ilsa spotted a fragment of an inscription: your Athena. “Do you trust them? Hester’s other lieutenants.”
Ilsa hesitated. She weighed her options, but Eliot’s gaze – patient, expectant, and unambiguous – told her there was no point being coy. He knew she’d formed opinions. He wouldn’t believe they were all good. “I think I trust Fyfe,” she said slowly. Maybe she’d been pulled in by his kindness, but she could read his every emotion too easily to believe he could deceive her. The others… I ain’t sure.”
“That makes two of us,” said Eliot, fingers tightening around the watch, and the hairs on the back of Ilsa’s neck prickled. He was lying. “I don’t need their help with this. Every strategy and scheme Gedeon has in his arsenal he learned from me, so I’m the one who knows how to react to whatever move he makes. The others… they’ll want to find Gedeon their way; the way that’s been failing since he vanished.
“Besides,” he added under Ilsa’s continued scrutiny, “there’s nothing I have to say that the others will hear from me right now.”
The last was probably true. But Eliot wasn’t telling her everything. Perhaps there was a reason for the others not to trust him, but if Ilsa was to figure out what it was, she needed more time with him.
“So,” she said, “we just got to find which chemist.”
“Very good,” he drawled. “And how, pray tell, do we do that?”
Ilsa shot his condescension right back at him. “Well, in the Otherworld London, chemists make or buy their stock in bulk and decant it into tins and bottles and that. Then they put their own labels on the tins and bottles.”
Understanding dawned in Eliot’s eyes. “Tins of vemanta are usually stamped on the base, right into the metal. If it was packaged elsewhere, we should be able to tell.” He gave her an evaluating look. But this time, when he shook his head like she was a puzzle, Ilsa thought it might be a puzzle he was starting to put together. “But there are too many chemists.”
“Then we better make a start. His chemist is probably in Camden, right?”
Eliot was pensive. “It wouldn’t be ridiculous to assume so. That’s how we’ve done it before. A few likely shops come to mind.”
“So?”
“So.” Eliot put his cup down slowly, and stood. “No time like the present.”
“Guess you’re showing me ’round after all,” said Ilsa, bouncing tauntingly on the balls of her feet.
Eliot swept up his jacket. He turned to look back as he prowled to the door and, to Ilsa’s bewilderment, smiled at her. “Would you look how that worked out.”
III
THE GREAT WHITE SHARK
Carcharodon carcharias
Of the family Lamnidae, from the Greek lamna, meaning fish of prey. Possessing a formidable sense of smell, the great white can scent its prey from a distance of up to three miles.
14
Eliot was adamant that Ilsa wear a disguise to leave the Zoo.
“But why?” she protested, arms crossed. “How are the Oracles gonna get me in Camden?”
The grand front entrance to the Zoo let them out to the north of the house, where Regent’s Canal formed a moat. Two wolves – in wolf form, and fiercely large – guarded a bridge across it. Eliot led Ilsa into the centre of the forecourt; the same spot she and Oren had taken flight from on her last excursion.
“A disguise won’t stop the Oracles from knowing you’ve left the safety of the Zoo,” Eliot said. “That’s not the point. The point is you look like a Ravenswood. You’re the image of Lyander.”
“So?”
Eliot’s scowl deepened with each of Ilsa’s questions. “I thought Cassia told you everything,” he said accusingly, like her purpose was to rile him.
“Clearly, she din’t.”
Eliot ran an exasperated hand over his face. “Ilsa Ravenswood is a rumour, like Gedeon being missing. The news of your mother’s pregnancy was guarded closely. There are no secrets in a city full of Oracles and Whisperers, but there’s no need to hand anyone proof of what they think they know. Now…”
Before she could mention that she had already walked from Westminster Abbey to Regent’s Park wearing her own face and that perhaps he was being overly cautious, Eliot shifted.
When Ilsa had passed through the portal and learned of other Changelings, she had also learned that the way each of them
