Ilsa found a use for Alitz’s damned calming exercises; she needed to clear her mind, to think her thoughts one at a time. So she counted her breaths until she felt her heart rate slow, and focused on what was in front of her.
For a start, it must have been under the mattress as a way of keeping it hidden, and it was under Gedeon’s mattress, so she would do the sensible thing and assume he wrote it. It must have been here since before he disappeared. He left it behind, so he must not have needed it anymore, and he had hidden it, so he didn’t intend it for anybody.
Ilsa lost her calm and methodical train of thought. This was a secret. A thing perhaps only Gedeon and Ilsa knew. She couldn’t tamp down the thrill it gave her, to hold a small piece of her brother’s story, a piece the likes of Cassia and Eliot had never seen. But why? Because Gedeon hadn’t trusted them? If she took this slip of paper to Eliot, or Cassia, or Fyfe, would her brother have thought she was making a mistake?
Perhaps it wasn’t that type of secret. It could be something innocuous, like a prop for a game. Or something intimate, like a thing he scribbled down in the night when it came to him in a dream.
Or perhaps it could tell her where her brother was.
Even as the possibility danced in her mind, Ilsa didn’t truly believe it. Gedeon had been gone for weeks. There was no telling how long it had even been there; perhaps it had been years. Perhaps it was good for nothing but kindling.
But that didn’t mean Ilsa couldn’t discover what it meant.
If she took it to one of the others, and they explained it away with some memory or story of Gedeon, Ilsa would only be reminded of how everyone knew her brother but her. And perhaps it was childish that that had started to hurt, but she couldn’t help it. She wanted a secret of Gedeon’s that was only hers to know.
So when someone knocked on the sitting room door and entered, Ilsa hastily folded the diagram again until it was about the size of a playing card, and, with an unnecessary but nonetheless perfect flourish, she secreted it up her sleeve just as Fyfe appeared in the bedchamber.
He looked from her hands to her face and back again, expression blank with confusion. “What did you just do?”
“Magic.”
Fyfe narrowed his eyes, the natural investigator in him unsatisfied.
“Stage magic,” Ilsa conceded with a shrug. Hoping she could fool him, she did the trick in reverse. “See, nothing up my sleeve,” she said in her stage voice, and with a little sleight of hand, her handkerchief appeared between her fingers.
Fyfe’s face lit up. “Remarkable! Can you show me?”
Ilsa crossed her arms. “Not if you ain’t going into the business. Magician’s code. But I can show you something else. Want to learn to make yourself invisible?”
Fyfe’s scepticism returned, but it was mixed with curiosity. “No one can make themselves invisible. Not even Wraiths.”
Ilsa flicked a curl over her shoulder. “Well I can. Come here.”
She took him by the hand and led him out into the hallway – away from the scene of her snooping – where she let him in on the secrets of being a good magician’s assistant that she had shown Eliot; like how to hold yourself so you appear unremarkable, and how to move without attracting attention. They pretended the hallway was a street, and Fyfe practised following Ilsa while looking like just another pedestrian when she turned around.
“But you need to make yourself shorter too. And plainer.”
He smiled at her and puffed up. “I knew you thought I was handsome.” Ilsa punched him in the arm. “Shorter. Plainer.” He shot her a sheepish look. “You might want to stand back.”
Fyfe shifted like he was being attacked by bees. He flinched and jerked like every changing muscle was a nasty sting. Ilsa had never imagined it could be necessary to move so much. It was like the form Fyfe was searching for was a suit of overalls three sizes too small, and he had to thrash to concertina himself in. His features cycled through a hall of mirrors, no face quite right and each wearing a frown of concentration. Ilsa let out an involuntary yelp when his limbs elongated and he shot up by two feet, arms windmilling for balance.
She smothered a giggle with everything she had. “Wrong way, Fyfe.”
“I wasn’t finished.”
He almost fell again in the pandemonium of shrinking, his hair flashing alternately bright orange and silver blonde. He kept muttering something that sounded like ouch, and Ilsa couldn’t blame him. It was uncomfortable to grow too extremely short – or too extremely anything – and Fyfe was now no more than four feet. With another dangerous flurry, he stopped shifting at around Ilsa’s height, planting his feet and holding his arms out like he couldn’t be sure his body was through with its games.
For all his face had been put through, it looked the same. His nose was rounder where it had been pointed and his forehead had shrunk so that his black curls fell into his eyes, but that was it. He was wincing, and Ilsa worried he was still in pain, but on closer inspection, it was just several severe, incessant twitches.
“Well,” said Ilsa, tapping her lip to hide her smile, “it’s the sneaking bit what’s more
