“It’s alright. I know I’m an awful shifter,” said Fyfe, breaking into a grin. “You can laugh.”
Ilsa did. She laughed like she hadn’t done since Martha had died, until her stomach hurt and she was crying. She did impressions of Fyfe shifting until he was laughing through tears too, and begging her to stop.
It turned out Fyfe didn’t need his magic to master Ilsa’s trick. For a conspicuously tall and frenetic boy, he was a natural talent at being invisible. He had tricks Ilsa had never even thought of; a faraway look to appear lost in thought; a way of holding his hands that made an onlooker forget they were useful for anything. Where Fyfe fell behind, he changed the game to make up the difference.
When Ilsa had nothing left to teach him, they wandered in the direction of his lab. There was a question threatening to bubble out of her, and she knew it wasn’t entirely about finding Gedeon that she was compelled to ask it.
“Fyfe, what d’you think of Eliot?”
He caught a blush so quickly Ilsa wondered if he had lost control of his shifting altogether and was becoming a flamingo. “What do I think of him?”
“You know, d’you like him? D’you think he’s a good person?”
Fyfe’s shoulders were suddenly very tense and Ilsa’s suspicions were piqued. Had she discovered his tell? The thought of Fyfe being untruthful with her was so much worse than Eliot or Cassia; he had always seemed so unguarded.
“Yes, I think he’s a good person. Being reserved doesn’t make him a villain.”
“Reserved is generous,” said Ilsa, even as she thought of the flashes of warmth and playfulness she’d seen when the façade cracked. There was a side to Eliot the others didn’t know, and it gave her a peculiar jolt of happiness to have what felt like a particularly precious secret. Ilsa hadn’t even known secrets could be happy.
“Well, Gedeon’s disappearance has been difficult, but especially for Eliot. You would never guess, knowing Eliot and knowing Gedeon, but—” Fyfe cut off, forlorn. “Oh. I suppose you don’t know Gedeon. But they’re unlikely friends to say the least. Gedeon is outgoing and easy with everyone. He’s likeable. But being likeable isn’t the same as being good. I mean, of course Gedeon’s good. I just mean that Eliot…” He noticed he was rambling and his blush spread to his ears. At least Fyfe had seen the good in Eliot too. That part didn’t feel like it should be a secret. “I know the others think he’s in on this Gedeon business, especially Cassia, but… well, even I’m not sure I believe Gedeon would do something like this without telling Eliot. He leans on him. He always has. All Gedeon’s best ideas are Eliot’s. But if it’s true, if he does know where Gedeon is and he’s not saying… well, I believe he has his reasons.” He seemed to think better of himself, and added quietly, “I don’t mean any disrespect to Cassia. She’s entitled to her opinion of him. But I think she’s wrong.”
Sweet Fyfe, who would protect Cassia against the feeblest of harsh words. Perhaps there was nothing suspicious about the same boy going out of his way to be kind about Eliot too, but his discomfort was strange.
“What ’bout Hester? She think he knows where Gedeon is too?”
Fyfe held the door of his room open for Ilsa. “She must. She made him give up command of the wolves. And she’s been particularly frosty towards him since the attack. And whenever I mention him her face does this—” He did an impression of Hester’s sneer that, while uncannily true to his sister, was twice as unpleasant to see on him.
“But she’s always making that face.”
“Well.” Fyfe scrubbed absent-mindedly at his hair. He was still hurting over Hester’s pain. A perverse part of Ilsa wanted to prod and poke at him until she understood the feeling exactly, until she knew just what it meant to love a sibling, but instead she changed the subject.
“What d’you remember ’bout the attack?”
“Ah, well.” He hopped the arm of his oversized chair and dropped down, his nervousness over Eliot and melancholy over Hester gone. “It was early in the morning. The smash of glass woke me. I ran to Eliot’s room but he was already downstairs in the fray.”
Ilsa studied the desk full of holes where Fyfe’s pocket forge had lived. “And they came for the lab?”
Fyfe threw up his hands in a dramatic shrug. “They came for everything. In one of the raids they turned the greenhouse over. In another they slashed the upholstery in the library.” His shoulders dropped. “A couple of weeks before that attack I told Hester I was losing sleep over the lab and everything they might destroy, but it never seemed like a target, until…”
“’Til the pocket forge got took.” Fyfe nodded. “Who knew ‘bout it? Anyone outside the Zoo?”
“I share ideas with some Sorcerer contacts of Aelius’s sometimes. When my experiments go beyond Cassia’s purview.”
Ilsa straightened in excitement. “Then p’raps they’re with the rebellion!”
Fyfe grimaced. “I don’t recall mentioning the forge.”
She deflated again. Aelius – and probably Gedeon too – believed the raiding Sorcerers had come looking for something, and on their last break-in, something had been taken. It wasn’t a complicated chain of events to follow, yet nobody was convinced it was that simple.
They both jumped as the door burst open and Eliot stalked in without knocking.
With a jolt, Ilsa thought against reason that he must have heard them talking about him, and she found herself rifling her memory for anything she wouldn’t wish for him to know. But Eliot registered the pair of them with nothing more than a moment’s glance. His cold gaze swept the lab like the room had displeased him somehow.
Fyfe shot out of his chair and started to say hello at the same moment Eliot’s attention snagged on something across the lab, and he stalked past Fyfe towards it. It was the map with the
