Ilsa threw her hands up, though she wasn’t oblivious to the irony of letting Eliot’s words rile her. “But…”
“All we can do is try and make sense of what we have. Moorgate and that other street.”
“You weren’t listening?” cried Ilsa.
“You led us into a vemanta den,” said Eliot. “I was a little preoccupied with the three wretched souls beyond your sight lines who were looking at you like your teeth or your hair might buy them some relief.”
“Oh.” She shuddered, mumbled a thank you, and kept her complaints to herself for the rest of the journey back to the Zoo.
They were just about to step inside when Eliot stopped her. “Ilsa.” He glanced about to check if they were being observed. “We’ve been looking for Gedeon for weeks. I’ve tried to help but everything I’ve said and done has been met with nothing but suspicion from the other lieutenants. I’ve a feeling Hester’s told them not to trust me.”
“Why’d she do that?” said Ilsa before he could continue.
Eliot hesitated a moment, meeting her eye as if in defiance. “It’s just a feeling. My point is, telling them anything we did or discussed today will only end badly.”
From the way the other lieutenants were with Eliot, Ilsa could believe it. If they thought that he knew where Gedeon was, anything less than a full confession would read as misdirection.
“I ain’t gonna tell them,” she said, taking note of the way his shoulders relaxed and he smiled.
As they parted ways Ilsa wondered, not for the first time, if the other lieutenants were onto something. Whether or not Hester had warned them about trusting Eliot, nobody got that good at dodging questions without having something to hide.
* * *
Afternoon tea might have been a luxury entirely new to Ilsa, but she doubted she would tire of it any time soon. Very little had passed her lips in the aftermath of the scene in Bill’s flat, and now she was ravenous. The strawberry jam she could barely look at the day before was disappearing on scone after scone.
Fyfe had joined her, and they sat at a table in the conservatory, which was surprisingly cool despite the sun beating down. The location was Ilsa’s choice. On her tour of the house, she had been fascinated with the Zoo’s very own tropical jungle under glass. Palms and ferns and plants she couldn’t identify crowded together, climbed the walls, and otherwise vied to be more eye-catching than the next. A pond stood in the centre, with red, orange, and silver fish circling beneath the surface, among banana plants that reached to the ceiling.
Hanging low above Ilsa’s head and brushing up against her were dozens of waxy leaves bigger than dinner plates, and Fyfe laughed every time she was distracted by one.
“A lot of the specimens in here require a climate hotter and more humid than this,” Fyfe explained eagerly, “but thanks to a combination of a chemical coating on the glass – my own creation – and an enchantment on the plants, thanks to Cassia, the conservatory stays comfortable whatever the weather and the plants thrive perpetually.”
“You learn how to do that in one of them books?” said Ilsa, nodding to the stack of tomes Fyfe had brought with him.
“These?” He brushed a hand over the topmost book like he was petting a beloved cat. “These are on aerodynamics, astrology and Erropean history. I have some more classes after tea. I’m sorry to abandon you yet again.”
“S’alright. Where are the others?”
“Cassia’s negotiating dividends with the high-ranking wolves, since the militia have been working so much harder, what with the raids and looking for Gedeon. Aelius is probably pressing his contacts to try and find out who sent that messenger; the one who told us you were alive. Oren will be at the town hall. He usually hears petitions in the morning but he’s awfully busy without Gedeon to make the final decision on anything, and Hester has left him to it. And Eliot. Well, we both know Eliot was in his room this morning. And then he was out with you.”
There was a note of accusation at the end. She didn’t think he’d meant for it to come out that way.
Fyfe cleared his throat and forced a smile. “What, ah, were the two of you doing?”
“He showed me ’round, is all,” said Ilsa, taking a long sip of tea. Eliot must have been right about what the other lieutenants thought of him. “I said I wanted to see some Psi magic, and see what’s different ’round Camden.”
Fyfe nodded a little too much throughout her explanation, then became very interested in his cucumber sandwich, apparently out of things to say.
Ilsa would have steered the conversation into safer territory, but she was saved by the distraction of two wolves, identifiable as such by their red armbands, passing by the conservatory. Ilsa wondered why they were completing their patrol in human forms, until they came within earshot and she realised they were talking.
“Hester must be livid.”
“I don’t think it’s like that.”
The first wolf scoffed. “You don’t really believe she’d step down quietly, do you?”
“Oh, stars no. I meant that I don’t think they mean to give it to the girl. I hear she was some kind of street urchin.”
“Well, I’d hope they wouldn’t give it to her regardless. Some child from the Otherworld springs up out of nowhere and all of a sudden—”
Fyfe rapped his knuckles on the window and the wolves started. One man paled, the other – the one Fyfe had cut off – hid behind his comrade, giving Ilsa pause about the bravery of Camden’s militia force. They mumbled apologies and retractions before escaping at nothing short of a run.
“Something I weren’t s’posed to hear, I take it?” said Ilsa politely, though frustration was mounting. Was there something else she didn’t know?
Fyfe rubbed his hair and frowned in sympathy. “They’ve
