Cuckoo's Egg

      The boy's face and hands were somewhere near clean--probably easy enough to wash those in a public lavatory--but when Ethan peeled the unconscious boy out of that filthy denim jacket Bran was struck by the ancient grime that stained the back of his neck and his knobbly wrists a nasty grey. "Euch," Bran said in disgust, nearly dropping the boy's legs.

      "Steady," Ethan said, distracted. Bran obediently stilled, although now he was far too aware of the grease-shiny patches and the dirt ground into the seams of the boy's tattered jeans. His trainers were a size too big for him, too, and one of the soles was already coming loose.

      Ethan dropped the jacket straight into the bathtub, rubbing his fingers together afterwards. It made Bran feel a little better--even Ethan knew this little sneak was filthy--but not much better. "Get his shoes, would you, Bran," Ethan said, tugging the sweat-stained once-white now-yellowy-grey t-shirt free of the boy's jeans.

      Hooking one arm under the boy's knees Bran yanked off one clown-sized shoe, then the other. One of the knotted laces broke again. "Won't touch those socks," Bran said, pitching the trainers into the tub. "I'd catch some sort of disease, I would--euuugh!"

      "Bran, that's enough," Ethan said, painstakingly working the t-shirt up and over the boy's head.

      Bran's lip curled in horrified disgust. The boy's bare torso was ribby-thin and filthy, spotted over with bruises in all stages of healing, a spray of little round red sores mottling one side of his lower belly. "What if what he's got's contagious?" he said, hearing the whine in his own voice, unable to control it, hating it.

      Ethan sighed, pitching the t-shirt into the tub. "Go down to my room and get a pair of my pyjamas, would you, Bran," he said. "I'll take care of the rest."

      "He's disgusting, he is," Bran said in horror, but--seizing any opportunity to escape--he ran down to Ethan's room and pawed through Ethan's drawers, selecting the oldest pair of pyjamas that he could find.

      Ethan's faded pyjamas were far too large for the boy (and far too nice, in Bran's opinion) but they hid a multitude of sins. The unconscious boy in the spare bed looked almost normal, as long as Bran didn't look at his stringy, overlong hair or at the grey shadow of grime on the back of his neck. "There we are," Ethan said, pulling up the covers in a businesslike manner.

      "Now what, then?" Bran asked, regarding the apparition in the bed with apprehension.

      "Now we leave him to wake, and see what he does," Ethan said. "I'll run those things down to the wash, I think."

      "Leave him?" Bran said, his voice cracking into a squeak. He flushed red and rubbed the back of his hand over his mouth. "Aw, but he'll just steal something else!"

      Ethan nodded, absently scrubbing his palms against his trousers. "Possibly," he said. "What I'm really interested in is what happens after that."

      "Well... he'll fuck off, is what'll happen," Bran said.

      Ethan sighed. "Language, Bran."

      "He will," Bran insisted. "See if he doesn't."

      "With the house's security systems on?" Ethan asked, raising both eyebrows.

      It startled Bran into silence for a tick. "Oh," he said. Glancing at the unconscious boy, he couldn't help but snicker. "That'll teach him, aye!"

      "Mm," Ethan said neutrally. "Go on and get back to your studies, Bran. Full systems on, I think, so do take all precautions, and I'll let you know if anything happens."

      "Teach you to try and steal from us," Bran told the unconscious figure.

      The yowl of shock and the attendant thudding jerked Bran's bored attention away from his maths text not twenty minutes later. Something that sounded like a bag full of shoes had just gone arse over teakettle down the back stairs, and Bran was already snickering as he leapt from his chair and rounded the corner of his desk, heading for the door.

      In his haste to see the aftermath for himself he forgot all about the house's security systems, despite having just heard some of them go off; he ran right past the all-seeing eye of one of the house's motion detectors, recalling it just a heartbeat too late. The door to the servant's stair in front of him slammed itself shut, its bolts shunting home with an ominous finality. Behind him, in Ethan's rooms, he could hear the low squeal of an alarm. "Aaw, piss on it!" Bran cried, embarrassed. "Ethan!"

      "A moment, Bran," Ethan called from the bottom of the back stairs. A few seconds later the alarm shut itself off and the bolts withdrew; Bran pushed open the door and bounded down the stairs, remembering to skip over the fourth step down. It wasn't hard to remember, since the riser already slanted alarmingly downwards, its trap tripped.

      Ethan knelt at the bottom of the stairs, patiently disentangling a small pyjama-clad figure from the stair railing. The boy was limp and unmoving, unsurprisingly after such a fall. "Is he dead?" Bran demanded to know, coming to a halt a few steps up.

      "No, no," Ethan said. "Nor has he got any broken bones, near as I can tell, although I imagine after a spill like that he might have an concussion. Go and reset the stair riser, would you, please?"

      "Aye, sure," said Bran, retreating. The step clicked neatly back into place once Bran pushed it up, and held under his weight when he tested it. He trotted back down the stairs. "Awright, it's set."

      Ethan rose to his feet, the newly-unconscious boy hanging limp from his arms. "Thank you, Bran," he said. He mounted the first step, carrying the boy; Bran fell back a step, then spun around and preceded Ethan back up the stairs.

      "So now what'll you do with him?" Bran asked.

      "Put him back to bed," said Ethan, as if that should have been obvious. "I'd appreciate it if you'd sit with him until he wakes, this time."

      "What? But..." Bran flapped his hands, his wrists crackling. "I've got my maths..."

      Ethan nudged open the door to the guest suite and carried the boy in. "There's a desk in here," he said, sanguine. "I expect you could use a bit of a break in any case, couldn't you."

      Bran scowled, then thumped into the guest suite's desk chair and folded his arms. "Fine, then."

      Ethan, unaffected, carried the boy back to the rumpled bed and put him down, pulling the covers back up. "Call for me when he wakes, please, Bran," he said, pausing for half a tick to brush a bit of the boy's lank hair out of his eyes. Bran redoubled his sulk in answer. Ethan let himself out.

      This time the boy was out for barely five minutes before blinking his eyes open. Immediately he cringed into a little ball in the bed, clutching at his head. "Aaaaow," he said, his voice an odd smoky rasp.

      Bran froze, for a long moment uncertain of what to do, and in that moment the boy in the bed spotted him. They stared at each other in mutual fright and dislike for a few seconds before the boy's eyes winced shut again. "Well, what d'you want?" he demanded to know, grinding the heels of his hands into his eye sockets.

      Refusing to dignify that with an answer, Bran stood up and yanked open the door. "Ethan!" he yelled. "He's awake!"

      "There in a flash," Ethan called back, his voice muffled by distance and closed doors. Bran slammed the door again and threw himself back into his chair, waiting. The boy on the bed paddled his bare feet, gingerly kicking his way free of the covers.

      Ethan let himself in a few seconds later. "Thank you, Bran," he said, fetching a second chair from the corner and sitting down by the side of the bed, his hands on his knees.

      The boy glared truculently at him, still drawn up into that tight protective huddle. Ethan's answering smile was small and vague and patient. The silence stretched for a few painful seconds. "I'm nicked, then," the boy finally said.

      Ethan pressed his lips together, then gave up and started laughing. Bran jumped a little, startled; the other boy only contracted into an even tighter ball, radiating sullen embarrassment. "No, no," Ethan said, waving one hand, still chuckling. "I don't believe the police will be necessary."

      Oddly, this bit of information didn't seem to reassure the boy on the bed. He edged back a few inches and sat up, the expression on his face now wary. "Quit laughin' at me," he said uncertainly.

      "I'm sorry, it's just--" Ethan waved one hand "--well, you were doing so well!"

      "What?" said Bran.

      "What?" said the boy.

      "Let me see," Ethan said, ticking points off on his fingers. "You noticed and disarmed the downstairs window--quite neatly, by the way, bravo--you managed not to make any discernible noise until you actually touched the doorknob, and, might I add, you have excellent taste in bibelots." Ethan shook his head, almost admiringly. "And then when it came time for you to take your leave, you avoided the front stairs despite the front door being openly visible--"

      "--path's too long," the boy muttered. "Too much garden, like."

      "--and you spotted both the alarm wire and the motion detector on your way to the back stairs," Ethan concluded. He paused, still smiling. "In a way, I'm sorry. Had you set off the motion detector, you wouldn't have got far enough to take a fall down the stairs."

      The boy grunted. His cheeks were red with embarrassment. Remembering the motion detector Bran looked away, scrubbing one hand over his own burning cheeks.

      "Now, then," Ethan said. "Tell me. When did you notice the wire across the windowsill?"

      Drawing his knees up to his chest the boy fell utterly, sulkily silent, glaring at Ethan out of the corners of his eyes. Ethan waited a few moments, then repeated himself: "When did you notice?"

      The silence stretched out until Bran thought he might scream. The longer the silence got, the more the boy on the bed squirmed; finally, just before Bran could crack, the boy muttered, "I was in the bushes by th' back wall."

      "Reconnoitring?"

      "Eh?"

      "Ah. My apologies." Ethan coughed. "Hiding and watching? Looking at things?"

      "Yeah, I guess." Confused, the boy added, "You've got to, right? Sit for a few and see what you can see? Sometimes people come home or summat."

      Ethan nodded. "Fair enough," he said. "And I expect you stuck to the outer perimeter of the room once you were in."

      "Well--" the boy floundered "--that's where all the little things were, like. On th' shelves."

      "True. However, for future reference, floors and stairs alike tend to creak less often if you stick close to the edges, where they're supported by the walls." Ethan's little smile was as vague as ever.

      "Why're you tellin' me that?" the boy burst out, after a confused moment. "What d' you care?"

      Ethan held up a hand. "Hush," he said, kindly. "Consider it critique. Has it occurred to you yet that if you'd only left after filling your pockets, you most likely would have got away clean?" The boy ducked his head, his face flooding with colour. Ethan nodded as if that were an answer. "You were curious, I expect. Looking for more to steal, yes, but curious as well."

      "What's it t' you anyway?" the boy grumbled under his breath.

      "What it is to me," said Ethan, and there, finally, was the steel under his amusement, "is that I hate to see a job done poorly, even a job at my expense. You pushed your luck, and you paid for it. Never push your luck unless you're more than prepared to see it through. A thief's job is dependent enough on circumstance as it is." Bran huffed in agreement, his folded arms tight over his chest; Ethan darted a glance in his direction and almost smiled.

      "Aaw, fuck's sake, just go on and kick my arse or whatever it is you plan," the boy wailed. "Didn't run away from home just t' get lectured by someone else, now, did I?"

      That only set Ethan off laughing again. Unsettled, Bran bit the inside of his lip. "Too bad," Ethan said, settling. "Consider it your punishment for wasting such an excellent effort. Now, then, as to your attempt to leave: did you actually see the wire across the threshold, or did you only avoid it through luck?"

      Too rattled to do otherwise, the boy admitted, "It flashed a bit when I opened the door, like."

      "Did it?" Ethan twisted around in his chair, contemplating the closed door. "Tch. I'll have to see to that, then. And the motion detector?"

      "What, that little black camera?" The boy twisted his knobbly fingers together. "It's just... well, it's right there, innit? I put my back to the wall and went under it."

      "So you saw it behind the vase, then."

      "Well. Not behind, like. Sort of beside."

      "Mm." Ethan considered for a moment. "And then you went down the stairs."

      "Too right I went down the stairs!" the boy said, wincing again. "Nearly broke my bloody neck!"

      "And yet you managed to go all the way down without actually breaking anything at all," Ethan said. "Well done, that."

      "You're havin' me on," the boy said.

      Ethan smiled. "No, no," he said. "Speaks well of your reflexes." He paused and glanced over his shoulder at Bran before looking back at the boy. "What's your name, then?"

      Whatever lessening of the boy's attitude the conversation had wrought, the question destroyed it. "I don't have t' tell you that," the boy snapped, hunching his shoulders.

      "No, you're absolutely correct, you don't." Ethan paused, considering the boy for such a period of time that Bran shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "My name is Ethan," he finally said.

      "So? What, you want a medal or summat?"

      Bran spat a disgusted little 'tch' out through his teeth. The boy's eyes snapped to him, then returned, inevitably, to Ethan. Ethan waited until they were both once again still before adding, "I'm a thief."

      And that made Bran yowl out a wordless sound of dismay, but Ethan never looked away from the boy. "A much better thief than you are, to be sure, because I've had both proper training and practise," Ethan went on. "There. Now we're on proper equal footing. Will you tell me your name now?"

      The boy's eyes went narrow. He studied Ethan for a long moment, then switched over to staring at Bran. Bran stared truculently back, unwilling to look away--"Jeremiah," the boy said, still staring at Bran. "Don't much like it, but it's what I've got." It came out quick and pat, as if he were accustomed to introducing himself that way.

      "It is rather Biblical, isn't it," Ethan murmured sympathetically. "Is there something you prefer to be called?"

      That made the boy--made Jeremiah--finally look away from Bran, confused, like he didn't quite understand the words. He chewed on the question for a few moments. "No."

      "Ah, well." Once again Ethan glanced at Bran (to Bran's continuing bafflement) before looking away. "Well! In any case, your things are downstairs being laundered, so I'm afraid I can't let you go just yet, Jeremiah. I'm sure the household can spare you at least a bath and a good meal before you go."

      The gracious offer--which Bran thought that Jeremiah ought to jump on with both feet and be properly grateful for--only prompted another suspicious narrowing of Jeremiah's eyes. "Oh, yeah," he said sarcastically. "And I expect you'll want t' be repaid for it somehow, then."

      "Well, perhaps," said Ethan. Jeremiah sneered in answer. If Ethan noticed the sneer--or understood it--he gave no sign. "In return, I'd like to make you an offer."

      "Course you would," Jeremiah said in disgust. "Figures, bloody old ponces, all alike."

      "Mm? Oh. No, no, nothing like that," said Ethan. He only frowned, rubbing one finger over his lower lip as he thought. "I'd like you to come and live here," he finally said.

      He got no further than that before both boys erupted. "What?" Bran squawked, nearly strangling on it, just as Jeremiah barked out a cynical laugh and said, "Oh yeah, nothing like that--"

      "Boys," Ethan said patiently.

      "--nothing like that at all, save for the fact that it's exactly that--"

      Ethan sighed. "Jeremiah."

      Jeremiah subsided, lip still curled. It was Bran who picked up the complaint where Jeremiah had left off: "Him? Live here? You can't fuckin' trust him, he'll bring the law down on our heads or just be off down the road with everything he can damn' well carry the second you take your eyes off him--"

      "Bran, language," Ethan said, but Bran was far too exercised to stop now. "--filthying up the place, right enough, you saw those bloody sores he's got--"

      "Bran," Ethan said, his voice severe. Bran choked on the next word. Ethan turned back to Jeremiah. "The reason I ask is that I'd like to try and teach you my trade," said Ethan. He hesitated, then went on. "You've amply demonstrated that you have some raw talent for it, and, frankly, the challenge appeals. I can just as easily teach two as one. If it turns out you haven't the knack, I'm certain I can put you onto some other trade. Whatever you decide, I can promise you'll be taken care of."

      Bran spluttered. Jeremiah's mouth was still stretched into that half-disgusted sneer, but above it his eyes were narrowed and calculating, somehow ancient. "Yeah? And what else?" he said.

      "Nothing else," Ethan said.

      "This is bloody mad," Bran groaned, flapping his hands in negation. "He'll only take advantage, Ethan, you know that!"

      "Bran, please, that's enough," Ethan said, still mildly. "If he takes advantage it's only because I've let him."

      "But you are letting him!" Bran wailed. His voice cracked again. "That's what you're doing right this minute, letting him take advantage!"

      This time Ethan's sigh was a long, drawn-out affair. "Well," he said, once that was done, "perhaps that's so, but in a way I'll be taking advantage of him in return."

      "Hah," said Jeremiah, almost smug now. "Bloody well knew it."

      "But--it--he--augh! You could have at least told me what you were plannin'!" Bran was whining again, he knew it, but he was too exercised to care. "You never gave me so much as a chance t' say yea or nay, it's only my bloody life too, fuck's sake--"

      "--Bran--"

      "--oh, do as you please!" Bran cried, hurt, baffled, and angry. "You damn' well will anyway!" It was almost a sob. Jabbing two fingers in an upraised 'v' at the boy in the bed--Bran didn't quite dare flip off Ethan--Bran threw open the door and stormed out, only narrowly avoiding the flat metal wire stretched a hair's width above the threshold. He slammed the door behind himself, for emphasis, and shut himself up in his own room, putting a CD in his stereo to drown out even the slightest incidental noise.

      Two changes of CD later Bran wasn't precisely calmer, but his thwarted, helpless rage had turned into a baleful sulk. He'd gone so far as to finish his maths (for some reason he thought that might show Ethan, although what, exactly, it would show Ethan he wasn't entirely clear on) and to read about twenty pages of Shakespeare without really seeing the words.

      The brat would have to be mad to turn Ethan down, was the problem. Even with the CD on Bran had heard the water go on in the other suite and go off again a while later, and there had been a bit of thumping; here for only a few hours and already taking advantage of Ethan's generosity, and if Ethan had his mad way the brat would hang off that bloody teat forever. And for what? Wasn't Ethan already teaching Bran--what did he need another student for? And, for that matter, how did Ethan expect to teach a teenager anything, when Bran had been at it since he was six bloody years old and still wasn't anywhere near done? Bran hunched his shoulders and glared unseeing at his copy of Julius Caesar, his mind harrowing itself around in that same track, over and over.

      The knock on the door startled him out of it, eventually, making Bran jump. He eyed the door with suspicion, weighing the possibility of just not answering, or of telling the person on the other side to piss off--Ethan opened the door before Bran could decide on a course of action, negating all of Bran's dim plans. "It'll be time for dinner soon," Ethan said, his voice carefully neutral. "I'd appreciate it if you'd join us."

      "Aye, whatever," Bran muttered, staring down at his book.

      "For the time being, Jeremiah is only our guest," Ethan went on. "He hasn't yet decided if he intends to take me up on my offer. So I expect you to treat him with the courtesy due a guest, please, Bran."

      Bran scowled down at his book. "Changed my mind," he said. "I'm not hungry."

      The pause from the doorway was short, but telling. "That's a shame," Ethan said. "Very well, you needn't eat if you aren't hungry, but I still expect you to come down and sit at table with us."

      "Fuck," Bran spat, hurling his book against the wall. It hit with a thud and landed upright on the floor, a few pages detaching from the spine and fluttering down after. Bran grabbed two handfuls of his own short hair. "Can't believe what you've done," he groaned.

      "Yes. Well. I've done it," Ethan said. "And I hope that you'll find a way to learn to live with it, in time."

      "You could at least say you're sorry!" Bran cried, his voice cracking in desperation.

      Ethan closed his eyes. "I am sorry that I've apparently hurt you so," he said. "But so far I've been given no cause to regret making the offer. Quite the opposite, in fact."

      "Oh, well, that's fuckin' brilliant," Bran said, subsiding.

      "Do you know, I think it might be?" Ethan said. He glanced away from Bran, looking down the hall--"Ah, there you are," he said.

      Bran went still. A moment later a scrawny shape nearly lost in a different pair of Ethan's pyjamas bobbed uncertainly up in the doorway. The difference was startling: Jeremiah's once-overlong hair had been shorn off close to his scalp, so that only a thin fuzz of brown remained. His face, thus revealed, was narrow, almost skeletal, pink from prolonged scrubbing and nearly free of grime; his cheekbones were high and far too prominent, his chin sharp, his ears like jug-handles. His brown eyes were enormous, set deep in bruised-looking sockets. His new image was both vulnerable and oddly hard, like a Roman centurion turned Christian monk or like someone in the terminal stages of a nasty wasting disease, and it made Bran's chest hurt in a weird, constricted way.

      Jeremiah looked around Bran's rooms with frank curiosity and ill-concealed envy--probably only cataloguing what he'd steal when he left--then looked uncertainly up at Ethan. Ethan put a hand on Jeremiah's shoulder. "Jeremiah, this is my son, Bran," he said.

      "Hullo," Jeremiah said diffidently. The smoky rasp from earlier was muted, almost gone; for all that he looked older, he sounded younger. "You've a wicked room, here."

      "Don't get any ideas," Bran said. "I'm not nearly so soft-hearted as Ethan--you filch any of my things and I'll whip your arse."

      "Bran," Ethan said tiredly, but Jeremiah interrupted him with a snigger. "Oh, yeah, like you could," he said, dropping the diffidence once and for all. "Better'n you have tried."

      "Bloody well could--" Bran started to say, but Ethan overrode them both: "Boys," he said, and they both automatically hushed. "Time enough for that later," Ethan added. "Come along, then. Let's have dinner. You must both be hungry."

      "Bloody starving," Jeremiah agreed, his eyes widening greedily, and after a moment Bran sighed and hopped down off his bed.

      The next morning found Bran lurking in the front hallway, waiting for his ride to Sunday mass and still sulking. The night before had been like a sideshow, Jeremiah trying to shovel in half again his own weight in food while Ethan chivvied him into holding his knife and fork properly and sitting up straight--fourteen or so and he didn't even know his table manners, oh, aye, such a proper gentleman he was going to make--and then crashing into the guest bed, sound asleep in seconds. For all Bran knew, he was asleep yet.

      "Good morning, Bran," Ethan said pleasantly from behind him.

      Bran jumped. "Don't do that, I hate that," he squeaked, thumping his chest.

      "I'm sorry," said Ethan, drifting into the foyer like smoke. Bran crossed his arms over his chest and settled back against the wall, eyeing Ethan warily. If Ethan noticed, he gave no sign. "I hope yesterday's excitement didn't prevent you from sleeping well."

      "Aye, well, no," Bran admitted, still wary. "Slept well enough for all that, once the door was locked up proper." A vague stab of hurt made him add, "So, is he still asleep or did he fuck off in the middle of the night?"

      "Still asleep," Ethan said.

      Nothing else seemed to be forthcoming, so Bran looked down at the floor, wishing with all his heart that Liam and his wife would hurry up and arrive. Even an hour with his arse going dead in a pew wouldn't be so bad in comparison to this awful business.

      "His situation is desperate, you know," Ethan said softly. Bran's head jerked up. Ethan was staring away somewhere over Bran's shoulder, his eyes faraway. "You and I, we have so much, but he's lived on the streets for years, had to scrape and steal trifles and do terrible things just to survive--I'll be taking him to see Phyllis while you're gone, I think, because he needs a doctor's care in the worst way. I worry that he might already have something incurable."

      Bran cringed back against the wall, embarrassed on everybody's behalf, but mostly on his own. "Aye, well, so what?" he said, and then stopped, unsure what to say next.

      "I know you don't like it, and I'll admit that you're not wrong to think the things that you do," Ethan went on. "Nine out of ten boys like him, in his position, they would filch the silver and run off. And if he does, well, then we'll know that you were right and I was wrong." Ethan paused, his jaw working. "But I don't think he will, Bran. I think there's some hope for him yet."

      "Ethan," Bran whined, clapping his hands over his ears. "Can we not? It's done, isn't it, and I'm sick of getting talked at about it!"

      Ethan breathed out just the faintest laugh. "Yes, I imagine you are," he said.

      "I don't like it, and I don't like him, and you didn't give me the least little bit of say about it," Bran said stubbornly. He let his hands drop again. "You can't bloody well talk me into liking it no matter how much you try. So leave off already."

      "You're right," Ethan said, sighing. "Fair enough. I'll make you a deal, then: I'll leave off with the reasonable talk if you promise to extend him a little courtesy. I don't mind if you squabble--God knows I can't stop you--but at least try to be kind. It won't cost you a thing and I expect it would mean the world to him."

      "Fine," Bran said, mostly to get Ethan to stop being so embarrassing. "All right? I will."

      "Good lad," said Ethan. "You've your keys, I trust. He and I may still be gone when you come back."

      Bran patted his front pocket. "Aye, I've got 'em."

      Ethan chewed something over for a few moments. "You know I love you like you were always my own son," he finally said, making Bran nearly fold in on himself in horrified humiliation. "I didn't do it to hurt you, no matter what you think."

      "That isn't what I think at all!" Bran squeaked. "I just think you should have asked me first--" The approaching rumble of a car caught his attention, and Bran nearly threw himself out the front door in relief.

      "Give my love to Liam and Paula," Ethan called, and that, apparently, was that.

      Bran had never been much for mass, not even when he was small and still in Catholic school. He'd have skipped it if he'd been able. His real parents had been Catholic, and they'd meant for him to be Catholic, and after they'd died Liam had stepped in to make sure that Bran went on as he'd begun, but it didn't mean much to Bran; he wasn't sure he believed in anything, let alone in God, and even if he'd been a believer, mass would have been a terrible slog.

      Still, that Sunday when the priest invited the congregation to pray, Bran rested his clasped hands on the back of the pew in front of him and screwed his eyes shut, determined to give it one last try. Make him go away, he thought, give me my life back, and, in a bravura effort of defiance, added, and I'll believe, then, really believe, I'll light candles and all.

2.

      "Again," said Ethan, and Jeremiah swiped one hand over his damp forehead, nodded, and struck at Ethan's open hand. It wasn't there, of course. It never was. By the time Jeremiah's strike reached the place where Ethan's hand had been, Ethan's hand was already blurring towards his cheek. The resulting smack was loud and clear.

      Bran, dawdling on the barre in order to watch this in the mirror, snorted. He was supposed to be practising his climbing, or at least working on the rings, but instead he kept one ankle hooked over the barre, ostensibly stretching out muscles that were long since loose and ready.

      "Aow," Jeremiah said, oddly matter-of-fact about it. He ducked his head to scrub his pink cheek against his shoulder, rucking up folds of t-shirt in the process.

      "All right?" Ethan asked, watching this.

      "Awright--"

      "All right," Ethan prompted, softly.

      Jeremiah hiccupped out a startled sound, then nodded. "All right," he said, carefully separating the two words. Bran let that leg drop and brought up the other. Jeremiah ran one hand over the bristles of his hair, just long enough to shift under his palm; in another week or so it'd be long enough to flop over again. "I'm all right," he repeated, still enunciating.

      "Good," said Ethan. He held up his open palm. "Again."

      Jeremiah struck for it with his left hand, this time. It still wasn't there--it never was--but this time there was no following smack: Ethan's wrist had collided with Jeremiah's right hand instead, not three inches from his face. Ethan raised both eyebrows. "Oh, well done," he said.

      The flushed pride on Jeremiah's face was so damned obvious that Bran was embarrassed to be a witness to it. He let his leg drop and headed for the back wall, where a little pile of Ethan's climbing gear waited for him; Bran bent most of his attention to strapping on the knee cups, listening to the training session behind him with half an ear. "Again," Ethan said, and there were a few more smacking sounds, and then Jeremiah said "Aow" again, still saying it only like he thought he ought to. Bran snorted, picked up the hand cups, and attacked the back wall.

      The thumping noise of basic sparring faded into the background as Bran concentrated. The suction cups were difficult to use under the best of circumstances: driving the cups against the wall hard enough to press out the air inside hurt his shoulders, working the thumb-release buttons made his forearms ache, and once the long muscles on the fronts of his thighs got tight enough to quiver, Bran would be forced to stop and hang until they calmed, which weakened his grip and put more stress on his forearms. The complicated series of motions was an intense workout in its own right, but Bran had the strength by now, and he had the rhythm down; what he didn't have was the speed. Ethan could swing up this wall to the ceiling in just over a minute, even now, in his fifties. It took Bran closer to three. Bran gritted his teeth and inched up the wall, more aware of the soft whock-thop-whock-thop sound of the cups attaching and releasing than he was of the thudding behind (and, increasingly, below) him.

      Whock-thop-whock-thop , whock-thop-whock-thop, whock-thop-whock-thop and suddenly the ceiling was so close that Bran could touch it, if he were willing to let go of the cup. "Two and forty, Bran, nicely done," Ethan called from behind him. "If you feel up to it--" a smack and a perfunctory "Aow" from Jeremiah "--go ahead and practise moving along the ceiling."

      "Aye, right," Bran said, only slightly out of breath. He eyed the ceiling with suspicion. He'd have to inch up half a step in order to get the hand cups attached, and there'd be that nasty moment where he was stretched thin between wall and ceiling, with no way to recover if he didn't get his legs up proper on the first try--no point just hanging about worrying about it, he thought, and shifted up the half-step, carefully settling the knee cups.

      One hand cup came off the wall with the usual thop. Bran stole a moment to shake some of the stiffness from his arm, then reached as far out along the ceiling as his arm would go and drove the cup against the plaster. Gritting his teeth he got a good grip, then released the second hand cup; thop and Bran fell away from the wall all the way down to his knees, strung diagonally between wall and ceiling. Inside his shoes his toes clenched, as if he could keep himself aloft through sheer grit. Bran shook that arm out and drove the second cup against the plaster alongside the first.

      Bringing his legs up would be the trick, it always was. It required every bit of either strength or flexibility than Bran possessed, depending on how he chose to rise, and already his arms and legs were starting to ache; he paused to hang and recover for a few moments. The sound of thumping caught his attention again, now that it could. Bran let his head fall back to take in an upside-down view of the sparring.

      The first thing he caught was yet another smack, followed by an exercised "Waow!" from Jeremiah, who dropped back half a step and rubbed frantically at his ear. "Are you all right?" Ethan asked. "I apologise. I didn't quite mean to get your ear." Bran didn't quite snicker--too preoccupied for that--but he'd have liked to.

      "I'm..." Jeremiah hesitated for a fraction of a second. "I'm all right," he said, carefully, making sure it came out as three words.

      "Again?"

      "Yeah--"

      "Yes?"

      "Yes," Jeremiah said, flushing. "Yes. Again. ... please."

      With a little flicker of smile Ethan held up his open hand again. "When you're ready, then: again."

      Bran released and resettled one of his hand cups, as a precaution. Jeremiah squared his meagre shoulders, then stepped forward and struck for Ethan's open hand. His wiry little biceps flexed (where had those come from when they hadn't been about two weeks ago, that's what Bran would have liked to know) but his fist was, as always, a heartbeat too late. Ethan's hand was already blurring for his cheek--Jeremiah blocked it with his left hand, but now Ethan's other hand was darting in--Jeremiah blocked it with his right hand, then drove his left hand straight down, intercepting Ethan's third blow before it could dig a knuckle into his stomach, then threw his right arm diagonally across his face to take the fourth, blocked the fifth, knocked aside the sixth--even though Ethan was obviously holding back it suddenly resembled actual sparring, like the stuff Bran caught glimpses of in the huge mirrors--and just as suddenly, it was over. The heel of Ethan's hand struck Jeremiah square in the chest, sitting him abruptly on his skinny little arse on the mats. "Whoof," he said, tentatively, blinking; then his face exploded into a grin and Jeremiah bounced back to his feet. "Brilliant!"

      "Indeed, nicely done," Ethan said, gravely. "Bran? Are you all right?"

      "Aye! Fine!" Bran said, jerking his attention back to his own matters.

      Jeremiah's room was dark and empty by the time Bran got out of the shower that evening, the hallway door gaping open an inch or so. Running his fingers through his damp hair Bran considered the gap and the darkness beyond. Technically, if Bran wanted in, it wouldn't matter if Jeremiah's door was closed, locked, and barred... but the ajar door seemed to beg for something, some trick or punishment or something to teach Jeremiah to keep his door shut and his things tidied away out of Bran's sight.

      Bran scowled at the door for a moment longer, then reached in to punch the button lock before pulling the door shut. There. Let Jeremiah explain to Ethan that he'd locked himself out. Feeling obscurely better, Bran thudded down the back stairs two and three at a time, his stomach rumbling as he anticipated dinner.

      He could hear the drone of voices underneath the clatter and scrape of cooking even before he got there. Bran paused in the hallway, what little joy he'd taken in foxing Jeremiah fading away; still, hunger trumped all, and he pushed on into the kitchen, preparing to be sullen.

      Jeremiah was leaning on the counter, watching in some fascination as Ethan shook the pan. Now that he was inside Bran could smell potatoes and onions frying, which meant a roast and whatever disgusting green stuff Ethan wanted to press on them this time. Even as Bran skirted the edge of the counters and headed for the table Jeremiah snatched a sizzling cube of potato right out of the skillet, yelping and tossing it rapidly from hand to hand. "Hot! Hot! Hot!" Jeremiah said under his breath, finally popping the bit of potato into his mouth and grinning like he'd won something as he chewed.

      "Dinner will be ready in five more minutes," Ethan pointed out, calmly enough.

      "Yeah, but I'm--yes, but I'm bloody starving!"

      "Eh?"

      "Bloody hungry," Jeremiah corrected himself, half-sheepishly. Bran snorted and dropped into his usual seat.

      "Terribly, you mean?" Ethan prompted.

      "Terribly," Jeremiah repeated, laughing now. He dropped his voice half an octave and poshed up his accent into a mockery of Ethan's that made the hairs on the back of Bran's neck stand up: "I do beg your pardon," said Jeremiah, "but I'm terribly hungry!"

      Ethan raised one eyebrow. "You may think you're only mimicking me, but still, well done."

      "Now quit talking with your bloody mouth full," Bran muttered.

      "Aaw," said Jeremiah, wrinkling his nose at Bran. "How come he gets to say 'bloody' and I don't?"

      "A good question," Ethan said, pulling the potatoes off the flame, "and if you can phrase it properly, I might even answer."

      Jeremiah wailed out an annoyed "Waaw!" sound, dropping his head to the counter. Patient as ever, Ethan set the potatoes aside and pulled the roast out of the oven while he waited. "Just a tick," Jeremiah muttered.

      "A moment, I think you'll find," Ethan said, pulling the carving knife and fork from the wood block. Bran snickered.

      "Augh! Aw--all right. Ah..." Jeremiah's brow wrinkled in thought. Slowly, bit by bit, he said, "Why is Bran allowed to say 'bloody' when I'm not?"

      "Well done," Ethan said, sawing into the roast as he spoke. "Your answer, then. While, technically, you are allowed to use the word, I'd prefer it if you used it less like punctuation."

      "But--but!"

      Ethan held up a finger, silencing Jeremiah before going back to his carving. "The reason Bran is allowed to use it as he sees fit is because I know very well that he's capable of proper English. Furthermore, Bran's speech is his own affair. I have only the raising and training of Bran; I have the moulding of you."

      Jeremiah's face scrunched up as he considered this. "Don't know that I like the sound of that," he finally said.

      "Really? Well, think on it," Ethan said, putting down the carving knife. He rapidly divided the sliced roast between the three plates, then added potatoes and... asparagus, looked like. Bran made a face.

      Dinner went the same way it always went, these days: Ethan attending to Jeremiah's manners and grammar while Bran ate, silent and disregarded, on the other side of the table. Never any actual conversation or even the cool dissection of Bran's progress, these days. As little as Bran had liked it when it went on, he liked this even less. Was he to be a ghost in his own home now?

      He escaped as soon as he could, pointedly asking to be excused before carrying his dishes to the sink. It was Jeremiah's turn to help Ethan with the dishes, at least. Bran thumped upstairs, still belching a little, to finish off his maths. Less than a year to go before his mathematics GCSE; Ethan had promised that Bran could stop with his schooling once he had five, a goal which Bran was working towards with manic anticipation.

      It took him fifteen minutes or so to finish off his maths. Bran had barely dropped into bed with Hamlet when someone thumped on his door. It opened before Bran could even call out permission to enter, and Jeremiah stuck his head in. "Need t' borrow your window for a tick," he said cheerfully.

      He was halfway across Bran's office before Bran rallied. "Here, get out of my room!" Bran cried, incensed. Scrambling off his bed he ran out into the outer room, catching Jeremiah by the back of his oversized shirt. "Nobody said you could come in!"

      "Here!" Jeremiah flailed, caught.

      Something flashed black in his hand--Bran froze. "That's one of Ethan's climbing cups!" he said, horrified. "Those aren't for you--give it over!" Using his grip on the back of Jeremiah's shirt Bran yanked Jeremiah stumbling backwards, grabbing for the suction cup with his other hand. It would have worked nicely if Jeremiah hadn't reeled back into him and knocked them both sprawling.

      They crashed to the ground in a clumsy heap, the squabble already well under way. Forgetting everything he'd ever learned about fighting Bran grabbed for anything he could catch, trying to wrestle Jeremiah into submission in preparation to pitch him the hell out; Jeremiah yelled and struggled and kicked, nailing Bran in both shins before the suction cup came sailing up in a black arc and clouted Bran on the side of the head. Bran coughed out a startled sound and lurched back, whacking his head on the leg of his desk. His skull sang with high-pitched pain. He collapsed to the rug, seeing stars.

      Jeremiah immediately landed on him in an infuriated, yelling tangle of limbs, not so much pinning Bran to the floor as keeping him down through an unrelenting ridiculous assault. It didn't really hurt, but Bran jerked up in a protective huddle anyway, just to avoid getting a flailing fist in his eye or his balls. "I just wanna use your window, I'd've been gone ages ago if you hadn't been such a cunt, whyn't you just let me," Jeremiah wailed, breathless and outraged, while Bran screamed, "Get out of my room, you don't bloody belong here, why don't you go back where you came from and leave us th' fuck alone?"

      They both ran out of breath and energy at once. For a moment Jeremiah flopped out across the tight ball of Bran, just long enough to whoop in a breath, then he planted one hand on Bran's shoulder and scrambled over him. Feet and knees hit Bran everywhere; still wheezing Bran gasped out curses and threw elbows, neither of which had much effect. His head ached.

      Jeremiah stumbled, once, as his feet hit the ground on the far side of Bran, and then he was at the window, unlocking it and prying it open. "What d'you want with that, anyway?" Bran said, painfully uncurling and sitting up.

      "Can't get into my bloody room, can I?" Jeremiah said, scowling. Shoving Bran's window all the way up Jeremiah ducked out--

      "Here!" Bran squawked, jumping to his feet and hurrying over. "Where the hell d'you think you're going, it's been raining, you'll bloody well fall--"

      "Won't," said Jeremiah, crouching awkwardly on the sloping roof of the veranda. "I come out here loads! It's nice!" His progress along the roof was slow, scrambling and hopping like a wounded crow, his trainers squeaking on the shingles as he went; Bran leaned out to watch Jeremiah's progress with horrified eyes. If he fell Ethan would never forgive either of them--Jeremiah achieved the window to his room, eventually. Bracing his feet against the roof Jeremiah pressed the suction cup gingerly against the window-glass.

      "You'll break it," Bran predicted, darkly.

      "Won't," Jeremiah said again. The suction cup belched out a little air--not a full-fledged whock but an apologetic blup--and Jeremiah stopped pushing, grabbed the handle, and pulled up, instead. His window jerked up an inch or so. "See?"

      Bran scowled. "You left it unlocked?"

      "Yeah? Who's going to break in, smart-arse?" Jeremiah worked the suction cup's release button. The little thop echoed. Jeremiah pushed the suction cup into his room through the little gap, then eased his window the rest of the way up and slipped inside.

      Bran spun around and ran for the door of his room. He got there just as Jeremiah opened the door to his, flushed and triumphant. "You didn't bloody well have to do that, it's just a button lock!" Bran said, aggravated. He jabbed his finger at the door knob. "Look, here, this little hole by the knob? All you have t' do is push something in there, like a toothpick or a stick or a straight pick, and it'll pop right up!"

      "Yeah?" Jeremiah looked askance at the little hole. Without warning, his grin bloomed. "Have to remember that, won't I?"

      "Boys?"

      They both looked up, caught with identical guilty, wide-eyed faces. At the end of the hall Ethan stood in the doorway to his room, his expression politely questioning. "Everything's all right, I trust."

      "Aye," said Bran, after a moment's frozen hesitation. They'd both been yelling and thumping around, Ethan couldn't have not heard it--

      "Yes? That's good," said Ethan, and he disappeared into his room.

      They both stared after him nervously. "You'd best go put that back right now," Bran hissed. "Right where you found it, mind."

      "I was gonna," Jeremiah muttered.

      Retreating into his room Bran slammed the door. He pushed in the button lock (even though it wasn't of much use any more) and turned the thumb-bolt (which still was, as far as he knew). A skirl of cool air blew in from the open window, ruffling the papers on the desk. Bran stalked over there and shut that, too, the window sash thudding home. The little lock on the window wasn't much of a deterrent, but Bran turned it anyway.

      He stood in the middle of his office scowling and rubbing the back of his head. It still ached, but only slightly. Hamlet still stood open on his bed, but Bran wasn't in the mood to read about someone else's problems right now; instead he flopped out in his desk chair and scowled blackly at the wall.

      The door to Jeremiah's room eventually banged shut again, Jeremiah returning from his errand. Bran, now listening for it, clearly heard the stealthy scrape of feet on the porch roof a minute or so later, followed by an odd scrabbling sound. The sounds were weirdly familiar--he'd heard them plenty of times over the past couple of weeks and he hadn't realised what they were. "Sneaky little brat!" Bran said, tiredly outraged.

      He found himself on his feet and drifting over to the window, almost against his will, like he was being pulled. Easing open the window let in more of that cool, damp air; Bran eyed the wet shingles distrustfully, then straddled the windowsill and put one foot out on the roof. The shingles had more tooth than he'd expected. Bran swung his other leg up and over the windowsill and rose carefully to his feet, standing on the veranda roof with one hand on the wall for balance.

      Standing alone on the roof, for that matter. Jeremiah's window was open to the night, but his room was dark and seemed untenanted. Bran knew Jeremiah had come out here, and hadn't heard a shout as he fell, so... Bran braced himself and looked up.

      The house's roof was steep and uncompromising, but not that far a climb from the secondary roof of the veranda; the jutting half-cylinders of dormer windows ranged along the front of the house. Jeremiah sat straddling one of these, grubby trainers propped against the roof to either side, looking down at Bran with an expression that was half amused and half quizzical. "You coming up or what?" Jeremiah said.

      If Jeremiah could get up there--"Aye," Bran said, his voice carefully casual (or it would have been, if it hadn't caught and cracked at the beginning of the word). He looked around. The signs of Jeremiah's passage were clear enough to Bran's eye: the ancient dirt of one rain gutter swiped clean in hand-sized patches, streaks on the wet shingles from Jeremiah's mad scramble from gutter to dormer. Disdaining Jeremiah's methods, Bran grabbed the edge of the roof in both hands and jumped for it. Here, at least, his training stood him in good stead. He got a leg up on the roof immediately and hauled himself the rest of the way up, pushing at the shingles for only a moment before pulling himself over the dormer next to Jeremiah's.

      Jeremiah's lips parted, honest admiration shining in his eyes. "Cor," he said. "That wasn't half brilliant."

      "Wasn't anything," Bran said, preening a little despite himself. The shingles were wet and cool under his arse, but not so bad for all that; Bran sat sidesaddle on the dormer for a moment, then allowed how Jeremiah's method was probably the most comfortable and swung astride, nearly squashing his balls in the process. He shifted, hastily, before things could get much worse.

      Jeremiah had gone back to looking up at the night sky. It was still mostly overcast, clouds bulking low and silent overhead, but a few gaps in the cloud cover showed Bran the stars. The moon was nothing but a patch of glowing cloud. "It's nicest when the breeze is up," Jeremiah said, leaning back against the pitch of the roof and tucking both hands behind his head.

      Bran only grunted, shifting uncomfortably. Straddling the dormer was more comfortable, yes, but it wasn't the most modest of positions. He hadn't meant to, but he was growing the beginnings of a useless hard-on just from the stray pressure--quickly, before it could become obvious, Bran flopped forward and propped himself up on his crossed arms. The pressure got worse (or better, a lot better) and Bran found himself having to fight against the impulse to squirm 'just a little', but his sins were hidden and that was the most important thing.

      Beside him Jeremiah was silent, and abruptly Bran couldn't shake the feeling that Jeremiah knew exactly what he was doing. He risked a glance: Jeremiah was still flopped out, gazing up at the stars, the front of his trousers annoyingly flat. Bran looked away again. "You ought t' tell Ethan you climb up here," he said, his voice a little rough. "He wouldn't give a toss, but he likes t' know things like that."

      "Yeah?" Jeremiah said. "Wish I could use those cup things like you. Nowhere I couldn't go, then."

      "Ha! Not that bloody easy, I'm telling you!" Bran rocked upright again (silently blessing the long roll of his crotch against the shingles) and pawed at the air in front of him. "You think it's all 'clop-clop-clop up you get' and it isn't, not at all. It's bloody hard."

      Jeremiah's voice went positively wistful. "Still and all, I'd like to try!"

      "Eh, some day you'll get t' use them and then you'll be sorry you ever wanted to," Bran said, flopping back down. He risked a quick, slight squirm to resettle himself, which made things better for a second and then worse.

      "Maybe." Jeremiah hesitated. "Ethan's not your real da, is he."

      Bran scowled at him. "None of your business, is it?"

      "I'm only askin'!" Jeremiah sat up, hands falling to the dormer in front of him. "You call him by his first name an' you don't look a thing like him, not at all! An' he hasn't got a wife, either, 'cos I asked." Jeremiah hunched his shoulders. "He laughed at me, like." Bran gave Jeremiah a narrow-eyed stare, considering. Jeremiah looked back, his expression pleading at first, then embarrassed. "Well, s'pose you don't have to say."

      "Don't have to at all," Bran said, nodding. "Legally he's my da in any case, so it doesn't matter, aye?"

      "And you've got that funny accent," Jeremiah said, bolstered by Bran's answer. "Just a bit."

      "It's not funny!" Bran said, aggravated.

      Jeremiah ducked his head. "No, no, it's pretty, like."

      Bran hesitated, chewing that over. He didn't want to feel flattered but he was, a little, all the same. "I'm Irish," he said, not without some pride. "My real ma an' da were great friends of Ethan's once, despite him bein' a Brit and all."

      "Cor, Irish," said Jeremiah, mildly impressed. "That's wicked."

      Despite his lingering resentment Bran puffed up in the face of that admiration. "Catholic, too," he said. "Not bloody easy in this country, I'll tell you that much."

      Jeremiah's eyes shone in the dark as he stared at Bran, idly scuffing his heels against the roof. "That why you go off every Sunday, then?"

      "Aye," Bran said, nodding. "Liam and Paula, they take me t' mass because they promised my da they would. Liam says--" Bran faltered "--well, Liam says that it's his job t' remind me how t' be Irish now that my da's gone. He's got a deadly accent, mind."

      "They dead, then, your parents?"

      Bran searched the statement for malice, found only curiosity, and hunkered down. "Aye, automobile accident," he said.

      "Ooer." Jeremiah seemed impressed with that, too. "How old were you?"

      "Four." Bran looked down at his crossed arms. A bit of one shingle near his hand was broken away, and he picked at it. "Don't really remember much."

      Jeremiah didn't respond to that right away, only poked out his lower lip and thought about it. "Wouldn't mind too much if it'd been mine," he finally offered.

      "Well, I bloody well mind," Bran said, affronted all over again.

      "Trade mine for Ethan in a heartbeat, I would." Jeremiah was apparently deaf to Bran's irritation. "... s'pose I did, at that."

      "Still, you shouldn't ought t' say that," said Bran. A chunk of shingle came off in his hand, startling him, and he flicked the loose bit away.

      "Still true," Jeremiah said, developing that stubborn look again. Bran couldn't think of anything to say to that, so he pulled off another chunk of the rotting shingle and chucked it at Jeremiah, lazily and overhand. Sniggering, Jeremiah batted it away.

      Again, the conversation faltered. It was pleasant enough up on the roof, despite the wet shingles under Bran's arse and the chill breeze that eddied about them both. After a minute or two Bran grudgingly allowed as to how Jeremiah wasn't so bad, as long as he was being quiet and leaving Bran alone. And not monopolising Ethan's time. And not nicking stuff--not that nicking stuff was necessarily a bad thing, Bran hastened to mentally add, except when it was Bran's stuff, not that Jeremiah had nicked anything of Bran's that Bran knew of. Only a matter of time. Breeding will out, as Liam often said, ruffling Bran's hair, much to Bran's embarrassment.

      "Here, what time is it?" Jeremiah said, knocking Bran out of his grumpy reverie.

      Bran checked his watch. "On about eight-thirty," he said.

      "Aaaaw," Jeremiah said, rolling his eyes hugely. "Got to go and take my meds--" and he slid off his dormer. On all fours he scrambled back towards the gutter, his trainers making ugly sounds as they skidded against the shingles. Catching the gutter he slid down onto the veranda roof, landing lightly enough. He ducked in through his open window. A moment later, a square of yellowish light spilled out across the roof below Bran.

      Listening to Jeremiah's thumping with half an ear, Bran looked back off into the distance. The trees were rolling in the breeze, their leaves too soggy to rustle much. A car hissed by on the road, its lights flickering. It was nice up here, wet roof and all. Bran shifted, sucked air, then shifted again. The weight of his body pressed his hard-on down against the wet shingles, almost hard enough to hurt--before Bran knew it he'd settled into a lazy rocking motion, rolling up against the wet shingles and catching his breath at the pressure of it, trying very hard not to realise just what it was that he was doing. Inside the house Jeremiah slammed the door of the medicine cabinet, ran water into a glass, and rattled capsules in their bottles, and Bran paid a little attention to that, a little attention to the trees fluttering like waves, and a lot of attention to the promising burn starting to mount in his balls.

      His eyes had drifted about halfway shut in appreciation when the light winked out below. Bran froze, his eyes flicking back open. Two soft thumps and the squeal of Jeremiah's trainers against the veranda roof announced his exit, and abruptly Bran couldn't stand being out here any more, hated Jeremiah for intruding on what had rapidly become a personal moment. "I'm goin' in," Bran announced, swinging off the dormer even as Jeremiah grabbed the gutter.

      "Aaw, you don't have to," Jeremiah said, hurt, but Bran dropped onto the veranda roof and scrambled inside as fast as he could, the climb made awkward by his sodden jeans and pointless hard-on.

      The church was still, quiet except for the low shifting hum of people trying to be quiet. Paula still had her head bent over her rosary, murmuring to herself, and Liam was perfectly still on Bran's other side. The sick feeling in Bran's belly wouldn't go away--all right, so wanting Jeremiah to fuck off wasn't Christian charity, was it, Bran couldn't help what he wanted--and in a last-ditch effort to regain some brownie points, he bent his head back over his knotted hands. All right, if you won't make him go away, at least make him stop being such a wet end, Bran silently compromised. All I ask.

      That sounded reasonable. More Christly, perhaps. Bran ran the words back again, then nodded to himself. Amen, he thought, momentarily at peace.

      "Through Christ our Lord," the priest intoned.

      "Amen."

3.

      The long hallway was darkened, the lights turned down about halfway. The walls were heavily studded with small bumps, vaguely discernible in the dimness; Bran, who knew very well what they were, found himself a place to lurk behind Ethan. This ought to be golden, it ought. Ethan settled himself tailor-fashion at the end of the hallway and snapped his fingers under Jeremiah's nose. "Look at me," Ethan said.

      Jeremiah jumped a little and stopped staring off down the hallway, turning to stare at Ethan instead. His hair (a dark reddish-brown at the moment, thanks to a lesson in basic disguise this morning) flopped heavily in his eyes. Jeremiah muttered an inaudible curse and ran his fingers through his hair, pushing it back again.

      "Did you see them?" Ethan asked. "The little protrusions?"

      Jeremiah nodded.

      "We are going to pretend that this hallway is protected with motion-detecting sensors," Ethan said, with a faint smile. "I can't justify springing for real ones for this, so what I have instead are lengths of fishing line strung across the hallway on suction cups. I assure you that should you 'break' a beam, you'll notice."

      Jeremiah glanced off down the hallway, then looked back at Ethan. "All right," he said dubiously.

      "I want you to touch the door at the far end of the hallway in thirty seconds," Ethan said, producing his stopwatch. "Without breaking a single beam." Jeremiah opened his mouth, probably to agree, but Ethan forestalled it by pushing at Jeremiah's shoulder. "Go."

      With a little yelp of startlement Jeremiah erupted from his crouch, scrambling forward the first few steps on all fours. In Bran's opinion Jeremiah evaded the first wire mostly by luck, yelping again, jerking backwards, then dropping onto his belly and eeling under it, only to pop to his feet on the far side. He jumped over the second wire, ducked under the third, wiggled between the fourth and fifth, and promptly got his big stupid feet tangled in the sixth. The suction cups popped away from the wall as the fishing line tangled itself about his ankles. Jeremiah made a noise not unlike a startled duck and went down, taking out another two wires as he fell. For a moment, everything was silent. "Aow," Jeremiah finally said, in a clumsy tangle of limbs on the floor about three metres away. Bran sniggered.

      "Well, that was, frankly, better than I was expecting," Ethan said, pausing the stopwatch. "Of course, they won't trip you in reality, only set off alarms and such, but we do the best we can."

      Jeremiah rose warily to his feet, one hand lifted to ward off any stray wires. "I can do better'n--"

      "Ah?"

      "--better than that." Jeremiah flushed a little. "I can do better than that."

      "I'm glad. Let's find out. Do you see the pencil marks on the wall? Reattach the cups there, please."

      Untangling the length of fishing line from his ankle, Jeremiah put it back in place. Once all three wires had been returned to their positions Jeremiah came back, moving slowly to avoid tripping over anything else. He crouched back down next to Ethan, scrubbing his fingers through his hair again.

      "Go," said Ethan, and Jeremiah burst forward again, this time making it almost a fourth of the way down the hall before neatly clotheslining himself on a high wire. The resulting choking sound made Bran snigger again.

      The kitchen table was covered in heavy canvas and strewn from end to end with disassembled hardware, door-less knobs and locks of all shapes and sizes. Bran curled his lip at them. He'd graduated from the basic kit years ago, but Ethan had dug them out of storage and laid them out in front of a saucer-eyed Jeremiah, who was all but rubbing his hands together in glee--to a street rat like Jeremiah, the ability to pick locks must have looked like a winning lottery ticket. To Bran, it looked like giving a toddler a weapon, but since when had anyone cared what he thought about it?

      Ethan and Jeremiah had their heads together over one of the simpler door-knobs, Ethan wielding a pair of basic picks. His voice was a soft, low, comforting drone over the click and rattle of the picks. When at last he twisted his hands and the lock popped up, Jeremiah made a single, deeply startled sound of appreciation. "Wicked," he said, craning like he might somehow see into the key-hole.

      Ethan handed him the two picks and picked up the knob. "Let's see how you do, then," Ethan said, re-setting the lock and putting it down on the table in front of Jeremiah. Jeremiah nodded and gingerly poked the torsion wrench into the lock, shifting the half-diamond rake in his fingers; by the time Ethan put his hands over Jeremiah's, Bran had had enough, and he carried his glass of water up to his room, instead.

      After the usual pause, the muffled "... aow." drifted back down the hallway towards them. "He's doing better," Ethan observed, halting the stopwatch.

      "He's just learnin' the pattern," Bran said. Halfway down the hall Jeremiah rose gingerly to his knees, hit his head on a low wire, and ducked again, swatting uselessly at the suction cups that popped off the walls and swung down to bounce off his cheeks. Bran snickered again.

      Ethan frowned at the stopwatch, then reset it. "Be that as it may, it's certainly a step in the right direction."

      "Aye, well, won't he get a shock when you move all the wires about!" Bran settled back against the door, grinning. "Wouldn't miss that for the bloody world, I wouldn't."

      Jeremiah finished replacing the suction cups and gingerly picked his way back towards them, wincing away from the taut fishing lines with a hand raised for protection. "Aw, now, how'm I s'posed to work that one?" he cried, exercised. "There's three bloody wires one on top of the other, there are! Comes up to my waist!"

      Ethan raised an eyebrow. Instead of replying to Jeremiah (or remonstrating with him about his speech) Ethan glanced back at Bran. "Bran? Would you like to show him?"

      "What?" Bran said, startled. "Well... aye, sure, if that's what you want." He rose uncertainly to his feet and bent back down, stretching out the long muscles of his legs. Jeremiah finished picking his way back to their end of the hallway, eyed Bran in confusion for a moment, then dropped onto his arse next to Ethan with a huge whoofing sigh.

      "Thirty seconds, Bran," Ethan said pleasantly.

      "Aye, aye," said Bran. "Not like thirty seconds is bloody well possible, we all know that."

      "It isn't?" Jeremiah asked, startled. "Seems like it ought t' be."

      Ethan shrugged, grandly, as Bran stepped past Jeremiah and into place. "Anything is possible," he said. "Ready, Bran?"

      Bran dropped into his own crouch. "When you are."

      "Go," Ethan said, swatting Bran's shoulder. Bran broke for the first wire, eeling under it without stopping, picking up some light rug burn on the palms of his hands and not caring. The trick was to pick a wall and watch it, Bran had discovered. Trying to see the fishing line in the low light was a fool's game; better to look for the suction cups, as small as they were. Jeremiah's presence--and Ethan's--faded to the back of Bran's mind, as did his time limit. All that mattered was the hallway, and getting through it perfectly on the first try--

      The waist-high wall of three wires that had stymied Jeremiah loomed in front of Bran, and without stopping he dove headfirst over them, throwing out his hands to catch himself on the far side. His feet slammed against the walls to either side, rubber squeaking against plaster as he put on the brakes; once he'd come to a stop Bran flipped forward, dropped into a crouch, and ducked under the next wire. Jeremiah made a sound of some sort from behind him. Bran barely heard it.

      He vaulted the last wire and slapped his hand against the door at the far end of the house, breathing a little hard. "Time!" he cried.

      "Forty-one seconds, very good," Ethan called back.

      "Here, that's never fair!" Jeremiah said, aggrieved. "I can go on my hands? You never said!"

      Bran sniggered and started picking his way back, shaking his rug-burned hands to ease off on the sting. "Course it's fair, you little wanker," he said, maybe loudly enough for Jeremiah to hear, maybe not.

      "Of course it's fair," Ethan said, like a friendlier echo. "There aren't any rules here beyond 'don't break the beams' and 'cross in thirty seconds or less'. It isn't a game, no matter how much it might resemble one."

      "But--but!" Jeremiah subsided, scowling.

      Ethan's hands hovered next to Jeremiah's hips, ready to catch him if he should fall. Jeremiah was so short that he'd needed a boost just to grab on to the chin-up bar, which had amused Bran no end. For his part Bran was showing off on the rings, really enjoying himself, partly because they were so easy for him now and partly because Jeremiah kept forgetting that he was supposed to be doing chin-ups in order to stare open-mouthed at Bran as Bran flew. "Do we need to turn you about so that Bran can't distract you?" Ethan finally suggested, mildly exasperated.

      "I'm on it!" Jeremiah said, blinking and jerking himself upwards once more. He did chin-ups in a jerky, flailing, kicking fashion, despite Ethan's remonstrances--right now it was impressive enough that Jeremiah could do ten in a row, his little pebbley biceps flexing.

      Jeremiah flung himself under the last wire, rolling on his back. He hopped to his feet and slapped the door, his crow of victory echoing down the hall. "Done it!" he cried.

      "Yes, very good!" Ethan called back, checking the stopwatch. "Sixty-eight seconds."

      "Aaaw!"

      "You'll get better," Ethan said patiently. "It's only a matter of practise."

      Supposedly Bran was doing reps with the dumb-bells, but in reality he was fooling around with the weights and watching Jeremiah and Ethan in the room's long mirror. Ethan was kneeling on the mats, holding Jeremiah's feet as Jeremiah struggled through yet another endless series of stomach crunches--it made Bran's own stomach muscles twinge in sympathy.

      Jeremiah had long since gone past panting and somewhere into wheezing out hoarse little shouts by the time that Ethan said "... one hundred nineteen, one hundred twenty, stop." Jeremiah's back hit the mats so hard that it jarred the breath out of him in one sharp bark, and then he was still, sprawled out, shiny with sweat, his chest heaving. Bran rolled his eyes and settled back into the long series of bicep curls.

      "Difficult, isn't it?" Ethan said, with another of his small smiles. Now that Jeremiah was at a standstill Ethan settled back, his hands on his thighs. "I'm afraid that's just how it must be. You'd be surprised how much strength you'll need in your stomach muscles just to use the cups."

      "There isn't a bloody muscle I won't be using," Jeremiah muttered.

      "Well, there is that," Ethan said, unmoved.

      Jeremiah struggled up into a sitting position, not without some effort, and jerked his sodden t-shirt off over his head. Bran's bicep curls slowed, just a bit. The half-starved waif was only an echo now. Jeremiah didn't have a tenth of the muscle Bran did, but he had the beginnings of it, mostly in his shoulders and arms. His stomach was still smooth and looked soft, but at least the bruises and virulent pink lesions had healed and vanished. The last of the grime was long since gone, and his hair had grown long enough to need another trim--Bran twitched his eyes away and focused his attention back on the dumb-bells.

      "Speed-ball next, I think, Bran," Ethan called.

      "Right, right," Bran muttered, dropping the dumb-bells back into the rack with a clang.

      "Fifty-four seconds, well done."

      "Aaw, but it feels so weird," Jeremiah said, poking gingerly at his squishy blindfold. Neat turns of white cloth bandage swaddled the top of his head all the way down to the tip of his nose; there was an odd bulge underneath, which Bran knew from experience to be a double handful of raw bread dough pressed heavily over Jeremiah's eyes. "Smells weird, too."

      "Unorthodox, I'll admit, but there's nothing better for a thorough blindfold," Ethan said, unrepentant.

      "Too right!" Jeremiah said. His hands fell away from his blindfold and patted nervously over the kitchen counter.

      Ethan watched him explore for a moment, then jabbed two fingers at Jeremiah's face. Jeremiah, blinded, didn't so much as flinch; Ethan nodded. Jeremiah frowned a moment later, turning his head from side to side. "Here, was that you?"

      "Was what me?" Ethan said, raising an eyebrow.

      "Felt something, like. Little breeze or some... something."

      "Did you? Well done, then. You'll want to pay attention to little things like that." Ethan closed the oven door--no sense in making bread dough without making bread from some of it, he always said--and leaned against the counter. "Very well, then. Go on up to my room and fetch me down a hammer from the workbench. And try not to hurt yourself or make too much of a mess."

      Jeremiah followed the edge of the counter along, inching towards where he knew the kitchen door to be. Bran briefly entertained the idea of tripping him; as if he could hear Bran's thoughts, Jeremiah turned his bandaged face vaguely in Bran's direction, frowning.

      Ethan clicked the stopwatch. "Fifty seconds, again."

      "Aaw, hell!" Jeremiah scrubbed his fingers through his limp hair.

      "Je parle, tu parles, il/elle parle," Ethan recited, drawing his finger down the small, printed chart in the French textbook. Jeremiah wrinkled his nose, crunching his eyes shut in concentration as Ethan went on, "Nous parlons, vous parlez, ils/elles parlent."

      "Fat lot of good that does me, all that parling," Jeremiah said, dropping down in his chair until he could rest his chin on the table.

      Ethan flipped the book closed, one finger marking their place. "Go on."

      Jeremiah winced, then screwed up his face with the effort. "Je..."

      "Je parle," Ethan prompted.

      "Je parle," Jeremiah repeated, relieved. "Tu... tu..."

      "Tu parles. With the 's'."

      "Aaaw," Jeremiah said, digging his fingers into his hair.

      Bran snorted. "Il ne parle pas," he said, to everyone and no one. "Il ne parlera jamais."

      It earned him a uncomprehending scowl from Jeremiah, nothing more. "Bran," said Ethan, and Bran sighed and left them to it.

      "Fifty seconds."

      At the far end of the hall Jeremiah drummed his feet against the floor, yelling incoherently in rage.

      "Whenever you're ready: again."

      Jeremiah huffed out a breath, hunched his narrow shoulders, and darted forward, to the attack. He hadn't actually managed to hit Ethan anywhere important yet, but that was all right, as it was fun to watch Ethan knock Jeremiah onto his arse over and over. The current bout went on for about ten seconds before the heel of Ethan's hand caught Jeremiah under the chin and nearly lifted him off his feet before dumping him flat on his back on the mats; Bran sniggered and inched out along the ceiling, his head spinning with the height. Jeremiah's eyes flew open and met Bran's, five metres away, straight up, and Bran had to look back up at his hands before his vertigo got the best of him.

      "When do I get to try those?" Jeremiah asked, stabbing a finger up at Bran instead of getting up.

      "The cups?" Ethan said. "When you've put on a bit more muscle. The cups require an immense amount of strength."

      "But when?" Jeremiah asked.

      Ethan thought about it. "When you've hit ten stone," he finally said. "You can try it then."

      "Right," Jeremiah said, bouncing to his feet. "I'll hold you to that."

      "Do so," Ethan said. Bran could hear the smile, even from here. "Come at me again, if you're quite done procrastinating."

      "... forty-eight seconds. Well done."

      "I think it's a bit easier, done up this way," Jeremiah said, catching his breath. "The middle bit's not so crowded, like."

      Ethan raised his eyebrows. "I could always add a few...?"

      Bran snorted, but Jeremiah, after some thought, nodded. "You're only going easy on me."

      "I wasn't going easy on you, Jeremiah."

      "You were so," Bran said under his breath. Ethan glanced back at him, then looked away without saying a word.

      The drone of a news programme on Radio 4 greeted a sleepy Bran in the doorway, unusual enough to make him stop and try to think. Had something happened...? It didn't seem likely, though. Ethan and Jeremiah had their heads together over part of the lock kit--the little electronic keypad--and were paying more attention to it than to the broadcast. "Good morning, Bran," Ethan said, pleasant but distracted, as he always was these days.

      "Morning," Bran said, scuffing towards the toaster. It was about as complicated a device as he felt capable of working, this early in the morning. Behind him the little keypad made its quiet electronic noises, almost lost under the sound of the radio. Bran's interest in current events ended more or less at the front door. He ignored the radio as best he could.

      He only picked up on the third and last sound when he drifted too close by the table: Jeremiah, mouthing along with the BBC announcer, repeating the plush words in a breathy silence. "Oh," Bran said. "Workin' on his accent, then."

      "Yes, very good," Ethan said, still mostly absent from the conversation.

      "I'm supposed to sound all posh, like," said Jeremiah, proving that, at this point in time at least, he was failing.

      Ethan blinked, then smiled a bit. "Well, yes, but that isn't the whole point. Consider the BBC to be our ambassador to the world: people from other countries want to believe the British sound like BBC announcers." Bran could almost repeat the next part along with Ethan: "In this business, so much is about showing people exactly what they're predisposed to believe already."

      "Pretending," said Jeremiah.

      "Pretending," Ethan agreed. "Exactly right. Most of the time, your job is to pretend to be someone else."

      "Anyone else would be better," Bran said.

      Jeremiah snickered and threw a half-diamond pick at him, which Bran caught and pegged back, bouncing it off the top of Jeremiah's head. "Aow!" Jeremiah said, both hands flying up in belated protection.

      "Forty-nine seconds."

      "There, see, I beat it!" Jeremiah crowed, bouncing to his feet at the far end of the hall. "I haven't beat fifty in for-bloody-ever and I've done it now!"

      "Yes, indeed, well done!" Ethan called back.

      Ethan and Bran swung back and forth across the mats, striking, blocking, and counter-striking, and Bran was definitely getting the worst of it. Not that he'd expected any different--even now Ethan could hand him his arse without much trouble at all--but the whole thing was made much more difficult by Jeremiah's half-wide-eyed stare. Jeremiah was curled up against the wall, hugging his upraised knees and nursing what would probably develop into a lovely mouse under his left eye (points for ingenuity, but one's face should generally not be used to catch an elbow, Jeremiah, as Ethan had said) so while his right eye was wide with awe and fascination, his left eye was half-shut and rapidly reddening.

      The stare kept plucking at the edges of Bran's attention. Time and again Ethan sat him neatly on the mats half a second after Bran's gaze had raked across Jeremiah's. The only real consolation was that Jeremiah was so blatantly, patently awed. "Wicked," he breathed.

      "How is the eye?" Ethan asked in a conversational tone of voice, snatching Bran's wrist out of the air and jerking it forward. Bran took one huge, drunken step forward, fell over Ethan's outstretched leg, and hit the mat, already rolling away.

      "Doesn't hurt a bit," Jeremiah said defiantly. "Bit hard to open, though."

      "I imagine so." Bran darted in and Ethan rolled into his approach, putting an elbow in Bran's stomach. Bran whoofed out a thick breath and staggered back, folding nearly in half to avoid the follow-through strike. Ethan dropped back a space, entirely unruffled. "Sing out if you start having trouble seeing."

      "Time," Bran said, half-coughing it.

      "Time," Ethan agreed, pausing before dropping his guard. The moment it fell Bran yanked his t-shirt off over his head, desperate for a bit of cool air. The shirt was sodden but still he scrubbed his face with it, then tossed it in Jeremiah's general direction, where it would be out of the way.

      "You're all red, like," Jeremiah said.

      Bran swung around, his mouth open to deliver some kind of retort that never came. Jeremiah's awed look was gone, replaced by something canny and measuring, only slightly marred by the tipsy-looking odd eyes. His smile was closer to a smirk, all twisted in on itself. It was an oddly adult expression, all out of place on Jeremiah's foxy adolescent face, and Bran was suddenly a little too aware of his shirtless state. "'S called 'exertion', maybe you ought to fuckin' try it," Bran finally said, turning away.

      Jeremiah's laugh was equally odd. "You think I don't exert myself, maybe you ought to pay attention, like."

      I do, Bran thought, but fortunately he managed not to say it.

      Ethan's own smile was faint. "If your eye doesn't hurt, Jeremiah, then perhaps you'd be so good as to indulge me in a few stomach crunches?"

      The weird adult expression fell off Jeremiah's face on the instant, replaced by childish horror. "Aaaw!" Jeremiah said, although he clambered to his feet readily enough. "Changed my mind, hurts like mad!"

      "Forty-eight seconds, very good."

      Bran was scowling at his history text and willing it to die in a fire when the door to his room creaked open. "Fuck off," Bran said, without looking up.

      After a moment of startled hesitation, Jeremiah knocked on the already-open door anyway. "Here, Bran?"

      "Oh, for God's bleedin' sake. What?"

      "Can I come read in here?" Jeremiah asked, absently twisting the door-knob back and forth. The plea on his face was naked. "Only it's too quiet in my room, like, and you've got your music on, and all." He hesitated. "I like your music. S'good, like."

      Bran stared at the apparition for a long moment, while he tried to decide if he'd actually heard that. "Are you stupid? No! Fuck off, I don't want you about!"

      "Aaw! Come on," said Jeremiah, his face screwing up into a defensive wince. "I'll be quiet, swear--"

      Bran's hurtling history text smacked into the wall next to him, spewing pages everywhere as the abused spine gave up the ghost. Jeremiah ducked back out into the hallway with alacrity. "Fine!" he shouted, hurt. "You be that way, then!"

      "Forty-eight seconds."

      The pommel horse sat in the middle of the mats, huge and heavy, leaving deep dents in the mats that it stood upon. Jeremiah circled it warily, slapping the leather of the horse's body, testing the grips, eventually slinging a leg over it and clambering up to sit on one end. "So it's a horse, then," he said, kicking his feet. "Bet it doesn't do much when you tell it to gee up."

      "No, not really," Ethan said, ignoring the weak joke. "Here, hop down." Jeremiah obligingly jumped back down.

      Bran finished dusting his taped hands, already smarting. Jeremiah's reaction to his gymnast's unitard had been... mixed, really. The laughing had been bad enough, but the second or two of unabashed, amazed staring had been worse, somehow. "Ready," Bran said, brushing his hands together.

      "Whenever you're ready, Bran," Ethan said, catching Jeremiah's shoulder and drawing him back a few steps.

      The horse had never been Bran's strongest event, but he'd always found the rhythm of it soothing. He stepped forward, then broke into a run, catching the grips on the fly and vaulting aboard (and how long had it taken him to learn how to do that without losing his momentum?). For a moment it felt amazing, all that momentum under his control, almost like flying--then the burning ache introduced itself, spreading across his shoulders and out in a wide band about his midsection, as he paid the price in strength for his motion. Bran gritted his teeth and kept going.

      Off to one side he could hear Ethan and Jeremiah, but for the most part all Bran could hear was the slap of his own hands and the hissing of his strangled, heavy breathing; it wasn't until Ethan raised his voice and said, "Bran, that'll do!" that Bran came back to himself. He dismounted with as much grace as he could (more than usual, but not much) and shook out his arms, nearly groaning as the strain lifted away from his shoulders.

      Ethan looked back at Jeremiah. "Do you want to give it a go?"

      "We-ell..." Jeremiah gave the horse a jaundiced look, his jaw working. "Haven't got a leotard, have I, or tape on my hands, like Bran does."

      "I think that, for your first try, you won't need these things," Ethan said, as diplomatically as possible. Bran tried not to snicker. "Just go and touch the rosin bag first, that ought to do."

      Jeremiah glanced back and forth, from Bran to Ethan, a little frown on his face--by now he had a good idea of when he was being laughed at--and then trotted over, patting at the bag and sending up a little cloud of white dust. Dusting his hands together in imitation of Bran, he frowned at the horse, spent a few seconds carefully lining himself up with it, and then broke for the line.

      He didn't smack belly-first into the horse and spew sick everywhere, which was what Bran had been expecting (and rather hoping for, really). Jeremiah was just barely tall enough to grab the grips, but he caught them on the first try, vaulting upwards with more momentum than control--instinctively he threw his weight to the left and let go with his right hand just in time for his legs to fly under, but then his excess of momentum caught up with him and he went sailing off the far side of the horse, ripping his left hand from its grip. He landed in a flailing tumble of limbs on the mats and rolled. A second or two after the careening Jeremiah came to a halt, he issued the customary "... aaaow."

      "Nice," Bran said, rolling his eyes. "Be a bloody Olympic hopeful in no time, he will."

      "Better than my first try, at any rate," Ethan said, trotting over to help Jeremiah up. "I seem to recall bashing my knee on a grip and having to sit out with a knee the size of a grapefruit for the rest of the day." He didn't say anything about Bran's first try (which had involved a fair amount of sick, actually) but, a fuming Bran supposed, he didn't really need to.

      Jeremiah staggered to his feet. He eyed the horse with misgiving, then went over and grabbed the grips, heaving himself up from a standing start and landing on his knees in the middle. "Huh," he said, and jumped back down.

      An hour later Jeremiah managed to complete two entire revolutions before his degrading, spiralling momentum flung him sideways off the horse and slid him straight into one of the mirrors, which didn't break but did jump and slide sideways off its moorings. After that, Ethan called a halt for the day. "We'll get you fitted for a unitard soon," he said, patting Jeremiah's shoulder.

      "... forty-six seconds."

      "Brilliant!"

      "That's enough for today," Ethan finally said, running a hand over his face and dashing away the light sweat he'd worked up. "Go and wash up for supper."

      Jeremiah scrambled for his discarded shirt, still all red in the face and gasping. He had a couple of fat bruises on his rib-cage, purplish, in contrast to the yellowed remains of the mouse under his left eye; an older bruise on the outside of his calf was entering the green-and-brown phase. Bran was nursing a bruise or two himself, but nothing like the rainbow of Jeremiah.

      "Forty-five seconds, well done, but I'm afraid you tripped a line back at the beginning."

      "One hundred and... sixty-three centimetres," Ethan said, making a little mark on the ruler on the door-frame. "You've grown quite a bit in these past three months."

      "S'pose it's all the food," Jeremiah said. He gingerly patted the top of his head. "And the exercise and all."

      "You've definitely lost that skeletal look, in any case. Well, then. On the scale," Ethan said. Jeremiah jammed his feet into his unlaced trainers and took an eager step towards the scale, but Ethan quelled him with a glance. "Without your shoes, please."

      Jeremiah's face creased in a momentary scowl, but he kicked his trainers back off and hopped onto the scale. His fingers hung crossed at his sides. He rolled his weight forward, unsubtly, like he'd weigh more if he pushed all his weight onto the balls of his feet. Ethan stifled a smile. Bran, waiting his turn, only rolled his eyes.

      "Sixty-three kilograms," Ethan reported.

      Jeremiah sagged in disappointment, then bucked upright and started flapping his hands. "Aaw, come on, it's so bloody close, it's nearly ten stone!"

      "We'll see," Ethan said over Jeremiah's continuing objections. "Bran?"

      Ignoring Jeremiah Bran settled himself against the ruler, wriggling his shoulders until he stood just so. There must have been hundreds of little pencil marks on the right-hand side of the ruler, ranging back all the way to when he was four; in comparison, there were only four little marks on the left-hand side, evenly spaced at about a centimetre apart. Ethan leaned in and added another mark to the right-hand side. "You've missed one hundred and seventy-three by a hair."

      "I've put on lots of muscle," Jeremiah put in, unwilling to let it go. "I'm plenty strong enough to at least try!"

      "We'll see, Jeremiah," Ethan said again. "In any case, we've got to see to getting your hair cut this afternoon, so that Teddy can take your picture and finish putting your ID together."

      Jeremiah deflated. "Aw." Bran stepped onto the scale; Jeremiah scuffed over to one side and started absently kicking the wall. "What's the ID for, anyhow?"

      "Hm?"

      "Aw..." Jeremiah kicked the wall again while he thought. "Why do I need a school ID?" he finally asked.

      "Very good," Ethan said. "Seventy-one and a half kilos, Bran. To answer your question, Jeremiah, you need a school ID because you need an identity." Bran got off the scale and sat on the floor to put his own shoes back on.

      "But... I have one," said Jeremiah. After a moment's thought, he added, "Haven't I?"

      "Well, yes, but what you actually need in this situation is a different identity. Jeremiah Harbottle is another man's son, and the law states that you belong with him until you reach your majority--with a new name and identity, we can at least prevent you from being found out and dumped back in your old home."

      Jeremiah hunched his shoulders. "Oh," he said. "So... what, I'm to be your son now?"

      "Well, no, I can't quite get away with that. I can't simply adopt you legally, as I did with Bran, and to have you just magically appear... well, suffice it to say that it would raise more than a few eyebrows." Ethan frowned. "I've had a few thoughts in that direction, but for the time being... no, not my son."

      "Oh," Jeremiah said, looking down at his feet.

      "Nephew, possibly." Ethan looked away over Bran's shoulder, deep in thought. "In any case, most likely the son of one of my better-connected alter egos, just in case of emergency."

      Jeremiah looked more confused than anything else, but eventually, he shrugged. "So... does this mean I've got to have a new name and all?"

      "Oh, yes. Be thinking about that. Christian name only, however--your last name will have to match one of mine."

      A little flicker of hope lit in Jeremiah's eyes. "Never did like my name," he volunteered. "It sounds all grand-fatherly, like."

      "Unnecessarily Biblical, yes." Ethan dusted off his hands. "Bran, will you be all right here while I take Jeremiah into town?"

      "Aye!" said Bran, startled, his voice cracking. He'd been about two seconds from sneaking out, leaving yet another conversation that didn't have anything to do with him at all--he swallowed and rubbed his hand over his lips. "Uh, aye, sure. I've got to do my maths and all."

      Ethan gave him a small and tired smile. "Good, that's good," he said. "I've been neglecting you a bit recently, I'm afraid."

      Damned well have, Bran thought. It must have shown on his face, because Ethan's smile shrank to a little twist of itself. Bran cleared his throat and looked away. "S'all right. I don't need my bloody hand held all the time any more, do I?"

      "True enough." Ethan patted Bran's shoulder. "You've grown into a fine young man, and a promising thief. Now, it's just a question of honing the skills you already have."

      Bran flushed and mumbled something, mostly embarrassed but, deep down, thrilled--he caught himself scuffing his foot against the rug and made himself stop. "So I guess you can hold his hand for a bit. Since he's still bloody useless and all."

      "Here!" Jeremiah squawked.

      "What?" Bran said, scowling blackly at Jeremiah. "It's bloody well true."

      "You didn't have to say it!"

      "Why not? Ethan may coddle you but I don't have to--I'm surprised you can wipe your own arse!"

      "Boys," Ethan said, and they subsided.

      "Forty-six seconds."

      "Bran, time," Ethan called, knocking on Bran's door.

      Bran glanced up at the clock. Nearly two--"Be right down," he called back, marking his place in King Lear with some relief. Shakespeare was a struggle at the best of times; at least you knew where you stood, with gymnastics. Bran dropped his book and swung his legs out of bed, stepping back into his discarded trainers.

      The afternoon exercise session always felt better than the morning's. No matter how much sleep he'd had the night before, Bran always felt logy during morning exercises, every step an uphill climb. Ethan believed in a few hours' rest after lunch, though, and for Bran it was just the ticket. Two hours of banging out his school-work was enough to make him long for something more physical to do.

      He heard Jeremiah thump by, out in the hallway. Ethan hadn't even begun to teach Jeremiah how to walk properly--have to learn how to crawl first, wouldn't he?--and so Jeremiah went everywhere sounding like fifty kilos of meat falling off the counter. Bran found it offensive, personally, and he made a point of stepping silently down the stairs in Jeremiah's noisy wake.

      Jeremiah dropped gracelessly to the mats as soon as he hit them, stretching to grab his toes--Bran made a point of 'stumbling' over him on his way to the barre. "Aow, here," Jeremiah said, flinging up his arms to protect his head.

      "Shouldn't be sitting right bang in the middle of the room, then," Bran told him, feeling much better now. "Might get into someone's way, you might."

      "Thought you were s'posed to be some sort of terrific thief, with reflexes and all," Jeremiah shot back. "Wouldn't you be grand at it, all tripping over benches and old ladies' dogs."

      "That what you are, then? An old lady's dog?" Bran stretched one leg out along the barre and bent over it, curling his fingers around the arch of his foot. "Nah, couldn't be, could it, not a scraggly mutt like you."

      Jeremiah reflexively scraped his fingers through his hair. Truth be told he wasn't all that scruffy at the moment, not with his hair freshly cut, but he was still sensitive about it, a little fact which Bran was not above using to his own advantage. "Bran, bench presses first, I believe," said Ethan, drifting over to where they were. "Then perhaps you'll run through a lower-body workout. I don't think we've properly exercised your legs in a few days."

      "Right, right," said Bran, secretly pleased. He enjoyed weight-lifting more than he'd ever expected to.

      Ethan gave him an absent little smile and nod, then switched his gaze to Jeremiah, who was flat on his face on the mats with his legs kicked out to either side. "I've given it some thought, Jeremiah," Ethan said, stuffing his hands into his pockets. "I suppose it wouldn't hurt to let you give the cups a try--"

      Jeremiah went from prone to standing with a single prodigious bound, his face blooming into a huge smile. "Brilliant!"

      "--but just a try, mind you," Ethan said, raising his voice a little. "They're extremely demanding and I wouldn't like to see you fall because you ran out of energy halfway up the wall. I'll show you how they work and let you try a bit of climbing, but you must come down the instant I say."

      "Awright awright," Jeremiah said, bouncing in place.

      "Do you promise?"

      "Yeah, promise!"

      "Do you promise properly?"

      Jeremiah twitched, checked. "Aaw... yes, I promise." Ethan raised an eyebrow, and Jeremiah ducked his head and added, "I promise to come down the instant you say."

      "Better," Ethan said. Bran only snorted and switched legs on the barre, watching the conversation in the mirror for lack of anything better to look at. Ethan produced one of the large black cups, balanced on the palms of his hands. "This is a hand cup," he said. "You hold this handle, here--" he demonstrated "--and press down with your knuckles against this part of the handle to press the air out of the cup."

      "He knows that much," Bran muttered, not quite loudly enough to catch anyone's attention.

      "To release the air and move the cup, you use your thumb to press this button, here," Ethan said, pressing it a few times. "You mustn't reach too far or you won't have enough leverage to press out the air."

      Jeremiah took the cup and made a show of fitting his hand to the handle and working the button. "Seems easy enough," he said, puffing with bravado.

      "On its own, yes. But when you're working with four of them and shepherding your strength, perhaps not as simple as it might seem," said Ethan. He fetched a second cup from where it dangled off his arm. "Now, this is a leg cup. It straps onto your leg just below the knee, as you've seen. To fasten the cup, you push down with your knee; to release it again, you press your knee out against this lever bit. You'll see the sense of it soon enough."

      Jeremiah plucked the leg cup from Ethan's hands and picked gingerly at the straps. "Awr--all right," he said.

      Ethan held up three fingers. "There are three rules to using the cups: take your time, move in small increments, and never let yourself hang head-down for more than a second or two. If you're on the ceiling or some such, keep your head up and your chin tucked against your chest, except for when you absolutely need to look down. Never go down a wall head-first. Go down backwards, like climbing down a ladder."

      Dropping back onto the mats Jeremiah fitted the leg cup to his leg, settling the release lever against the top of his knee. The strap that fitted Bran perfectly was absurdly loose on Jeremiah's little stick leg; Ethan dropped to one knee and showed Jeremiah how to adjust the straps, then watched as Jeremiah fitted the other leg cup. "What about the ceiling?" Jeremiah asked, looking up. "Only it takes Bran a long time to get onto it, and all."

      "It's bloody difficult, you arse," Bran snapped.

      "You won't be doing the ceiling today in any case," Ethan said, intervening. "It is more difficult than it looks, and dangerous to boot. You'll need to practise on the wall several times before I'll even consider letting you try to do the wall-ceiling shift." He handed Jeremiah the second hand cup. "Come on over to the wall, and I'll show you how it's done."

      Jeremiah trotted behind Ethan, the huge suction cups bobbling ridiculously from his knees as he went. Bran followed, curious. "Go ahead and attach one of the hand cups," Ethan said, tapping the wall at Jeremiah's chest height. "Just to see how it works."

      Jeremiah nodded and drove his fist into the wall in slow motion; the suction cup dented before suddenly belching out air with a loud farting noise, which startled a nervous giggle out of Jeremiah. His knobby wrist worked as he pressed the button and made the suction cup come away with the familiar thop. "Again," Ethan said, and Jeremiah bit his lower lip and punched the wall with more authority; this time the cup grabbed the wall with the equally-familiar whock.

      "Very good," Ethan said. "Now release it and attach it at about eye-height." He tapped the wall in illustration. Jeremiah released the cup (thop) and reached up to punch the wall again (whock). Ethan nodded. "Now the other one, not too close." Whock. "There we are. Now, if you use those to keep your balance, you can bring up your knee and get that one on."

      The leg cups were always harder, as Bran well knew, and Jeremiah had to fight against it for a minute or two before he got the trick of rolling his hip into it. The cup connected with a sullen blurp and Jeremiah stuttered out another of those revved-up nervous giggles, balanced on one foot with his other limbs all hung from the wall. Ethan nodded approvingly. "Go ahead and do the last," he said.

      Jeremiah shifted his weight to his arms, edged back, lifted his foot, and swung forward again like he was Tarzan come to knee some poor ape in the groin; the last cup sucked onto the wall with a whuck-fffff sound, as Jeremiah forced the last of its air out by main strength. He hung there barely half a metre off the mats, kneeling on the wall with his arms up over his head and his arse poking out, laughing madly at Ethan's midsection. The noise of it echoed off the gym's high ceiling.

      "Yes, very good," Ethan said, raising his voice to be heard over the echoes. "Now raise up onto your knees, release a hand cup, and move it up--" thop, whock "--now the other--" thop, whock "--now shift your weight onto your arms and swing your leg out and up--" thop... whufffff "--now the other--" thop... whunk "--and there, congratulations, now you've done it," Ethan concluded, just barely smiling. "Go ahead and go up a bit more, but not too far--"

      Jeremiah's crow of joy drowned out the last of Ethan's little reminder. He lunged up onto his knees, his wrist already working, his skinny arm punching upwards to land the cup with a whock, the second hand cup releasing just a fraction of a second behind the first one's reattachment. "Jeremiah, not too fast," Ethan cautioned, but Jeremiah was somewhere beyond listening now.

      He swarmed up the wall like a farting ant. Ethan automatically checked his watch even as he called after Jeremiah--"Jeremiah, that's enough, don't overdo!"--but in less time than Bran had thought possible Jeremiah was halfway up, his manic giggles drowning out both Ethan and the sound of the cups.

      Ethan's voice went sharp. "Jeremiah, not the ceiling!"

      If Jeremiah heard the directive, though, he ignored it, swinging enthusiastically ever upwards. "Aaw, Christ, he's bloody well going to fall," Bran groaned, skipping a step back to avoid being crushed. "I'll go and get another mat--"

      "Yes, go, go," Ethan said, waving at Bran without taking his eyes on Jeremiah. "Hurry. Jeremiah! Come back down this instant, I don't want you hurting yourself!"

      Bran raced over to the high pile of extra mats and dragged the topmost one off the stack, lugging it after him. Ethan grabbed the other end and together they pushed it up against the wall under Jeremiah, who was rocking back and forth, trying to figure out the right way to shift himself onto the ceiling. Bran barely had time to fetch a second mat before Jeremiah lunged--not up, but sideways. "What in hell is he doing?" Bran said. "Going for the corner? That's no bloody good..."

      "No," Ethan said, frowning. He'd given up calling Jeremiah's name, probably worried that Jeremiah would get distracted and fall. "No, I don't think so."

      Once Jeremiah had himself running parallel to the ceiling, he paused, but only for a second. Then one of the hand cups stabbed up and attached itself--"Jeremiah," Ethan said, plaintive but soft.

      Jeremiah ignored him, or didn't hear him, or something, just freed one leg and kneed the ceiling. Bran caught himself an instant before his mouth could drop open. "Bloody hell, why didn't I think of that," he said meditatively, as Jeremiah strung himself sideways along the join between wall and ceiling, then shifted his second hand cup, then his second knee cup--

      Still laughing like a loon Jeremiah swung out along the ceiling, dropping his head to look where he was going, craning up--down--to stare at the floor, then remembering Ethan's edict and pulling his head up again. Ethan and Bran raced along underneath him, heads craned back to watch his rapid progress, dragging the little stack of mats behind them, just in case. He'd still hurt himself if he fell from this height, but perhaps the mats would keep the little idiot out of hospital.

      Jeremiah got a good third of the way across the ceiling before his swinging forward progress began to falter. "Ooer," he said, rocking to a halt. His skinny arms were quivering. "I'm not... I don't... I don't know that I can go much farther." His voice shook, too.

      "Hold on," Ethan said, his voice controlled, brittle, and overly bright. "Don't try to move any more, just hang there." His eyes snapped to Bran. "Bran, help me move the mats."

      "Aye," Bran said, something like fear kindling in his stomach. If Jeremiah fell, he'd break something like as not, there'd be screaming and blood... Bran dropped his end of the current pile and ran for the rest, Ethan on his heels.

      "That's why you've got to pace yourself," Ethan said, raising his voice to help it carry, still sounding a bit sharp from nerves. "You can't precisely stop and rest in the middle." He and Bran seized opposite ends of a mat and dragged it over, adding it to the pile.

      Up on the ceiling Jeremiah threaded one shaking arm through the hand-grip of a cup, hooking his elbow into it. A quick puff of nervous breath and he did the same with his other arm, turtling up on the ceiling, lacing his freed hands together behind his head. "Yes, good," Ethan called, lugging over another mat. "Just hold on."

      "Yeah, hang about," Bran muttered. Together he and Ethan built an untidy stack of mats nearly two metres high underneath Jeremiah. He'd still have to fall about three metres, which he'd probably survive, with some luck.

      Ethan rocked to a stop, swallowed a deep breath, and blew it back out. "All right," he said, calm as anything. "I suppose this is as good a time as any to start teaching you how to fall correctly. I hadn't meant to start you so quickly, but..." He shrugged. Bran fell back a couple of steps, still staring up at the turtled-up Jeremiah.

      "Right," Jeremiah said weakly. "I'm all ears, me."

      "When I tell you to, I want you to disengage both knee cups and let your legs down," Ethan said. "The sudden shift in weight may pop the hand cups, or you may lose your grip. That's fine. Leave them there if you need, I can fetch them later."

      Jeremiah swallowed. "Awright."

      "The trick to falling is to let yourself go limp. It's very difficult, but you must try. Don't try to land on your feet or to catch yourself with your hands--try to land on your side if possible, or on your front if you must. It's dangerous to land on your back, and if you land on your backside, you're liable to break your tailbone."

      "All... all right," Jeremiah said. "Limp, got it."

      "Can you look down long enough to see the mats?"

      Jeremiah glanced out past the bend of his elbow. "I see them!"

      "Good. Do try to land there," Ethan said, so dry as to be brittle. He took a step back. "All right. Whenever you're ready, put your hands back on the grips and disengage the knee cups."

      For a moment Jeremiah was still, a quivering lump high above their heads. His laced fingers came apart with a little slithering sound; he dragged his right arm free, then his left, putting his weight back in his shaking hands. "Fucking hell," he said, with a little rush, then gingerly broke one leg free and let it drop to dangle. Ethan hissed in a breath, but Jeremiah pressed his toes against the ceiling and managed to pop the other cup without incident. Shaking, he still managed to half-control his fall, gingerly uncurling to hang from his arms, which would go at any second--

      "Let go if you must," Ethan said sharply.

      "I got it, me," Jeremiah said, working the button to free the left cup. It came away with a sharp, agonised thop! and Jeremiah tossed it away from himself to land on the mats ten feet away, now just barely dangling from the fingers of his right hand--"Jeremiah!" Ethan said, his voice cracking, just as Jeremiah flailed above his head with his numbed left hand and managed to hit the button on the last cup.

      The actual fall was the space of a moment, a halfway-limp Jeremiah crashing onto the mats with a booming thump and an awful finality. He'd managed to land on his side, at least, but one arm had been fallen down against his rib-cage and he'd landed on it, driving his elbow up into his ribs; he brayed out an awful, choking "Waaaugh!" sound and instinctively jerked up into a huddled ball.

      "Hold still!" Ethan snapped, darting in to grab Jeremiah and pat him down. "Where are you hurt? Is anything broken?"

      "Don't think so," Jeremiah gasped, the last cup falling from his nerveless fingers. His eyes were wide and watering, and the grin that was frozen on his face was a mad and terrified rictus, bearing only a trace of his earlier lunatic joy--but a trace that was still there.

      Ethan clicked the stopwatch and sighed noiselessly to himself. "Fifty-one seconds, Jeremiah."

      "What? Come on, it was never that slow!"

      "Well, you did fall from the ceiling yesterday. I imagine you're a bit sore."

      The rest of Jeremiah's complaint vented itself as an inarticulate squeal of frustration.

      Or just make me not care, Bran prayed, his hands clasped white-knuckle tight on the railing, his eyes screwed shut. A fusillade of coughs ripped through the near-silence of the church and faded away. That'd be plenty, just make me not care about it, if I don't care then it'll all go better, please, God...

4.

      When the cleaning service was about, of course, they had to put everything away and pretend to be ordinary. It was one of Bran's favourite parts of the week, if he were to be honest about it: two solid hours of unsupervised free time. Ethan generally turfed them out of doors, to boot, so Bran enjoyed something like real freedom. All he had to do was ditch the tag-a-long, and by now, he knew just how. "I'm goin' for a run," Bran announced, as soon as the door shut behind them.

      Jeremiah looked torn, but in the end, he sighed and made a face. "Why d'you want to have more exercise?" he said. "I'll hang about."

      Bran snorted and set off down the drive, towards the road. An easy fifteen minutes' jog would take him down to the shops just as the town girls were getting out of class; Bran could feed all his various hungers in under an hour and forget, for a moment, everything else. Jeremiah was always noisily underfoot, bloody useless and absorbing ninety percent of Ethan's attention like a giant, hungry sponge when he wasn't trailing after Bran like a shadow. Bran could only suppose it was like having a little brother, not that he'd ever wanted one, and certainly not a diseased fourteen-year-old street rat. Still, it was cool out and only raining a bit, and Bran couldn't be aggravated for long, particularly not now that he was alone.

      By the time he got back, full of fish and chips (which Ethan had half-heartedly forbidden him to eat) and riding high on a brief conversation he'd had with a couple of girls in the shop, it was raining in earnest. Not that Bran cared. He was hot and sweaty, his track suit needed a wash anyway, and he was headed home. He ran down the drive to check the little asphalt lot behind the garage, between the main house and the guest cottage--empty, so the cleaning service had finished up and left. Brilliant. Bran needed a shower. He rounded the house, heading for the back door.

      He was standing at the back door of the main house, wrestling with the zippered pocket which held his keys, when the front door of the guest cottage creaked open. Bran's head shot up. "Are they gone, then?" Jeremiah called, poking his head out like a turtle coming out of its shell.

      "What--you're not supposed to bloody well be in there!" Bran said, flabbergasted. "How'd you get in, anyway?"

      In answer, Jeremiah gave him a brilliantly toothy grin and held up a small black pouch--Bran's vision misted over with terrified rage. "You great bloody idiot!" Bran snarled, nearly teleporting the twenty feet down the gravelled path and snatching the pouch of lock-picks from Jeremiah's hand. "What were you doing, standing out here bold as brass picking the lock right in front of the cleaners? Ethan'll have your head! All it would take is one nosey parker and we'll all be nicked--" Bran stormed back up the path, the pouch clutched so hard in his hand that he could feel the leather creaking, Jeremiah scrambling on his heels like a worried shadow "--he's only told you not to go in there a thousand times, and he's told you not to show off in front of ordinary people twice that! You couldn't bloody listen a bit--"

      "I didn't!" Jeremiah cried, grabbing for the back of Bran's track suit. His hand slapped uselessly off Bran's back and fell away again. "I didn't either, I went round the back, there's nothing back there but trees and rocks, no one could have seen me!"

      "You don't bloody know that!" Bran yelled, nearly falling through the back door now, Jeremiah pawing anxiously at him in his sudden fright. "Ethan! Ethan, are you about, you'll never guess what the little wanker's done now--"

      Ethan wasn't in the kitchen. Upstairs, then--Bran stomped up the stairs, yelling for Ethan, Jeremiah clutching at him like he thought he could physically stop Bran from reporting his trespass. Bran was taller, though, and stronger, and had the advantage of a lot of really good rage, so even wearing a frantic Jeremiah like an anchor couldn't stop him from getting up the stairs. "Ethan!" Bran bayed, again.

      Ethan appeared like a ghost in the doorway to his rooms. "Yes?" he said patiently, taking in the tableau with a raised eyebrow.

      Bran mashed an elbow into Jeremiah's face and shoved, peeling the smaller boy off himself like so much cling-film. "He was out there picking the lock on the guest cottage door in front of God and everybody--"

      "--the back door!" Jeremiah wailed, on his arse on the hall carpet.

      "--while the bloody cleaners were about--"

      "No one saw, I looked about for ages!"

      "--you told him not to go in there, now he's probably scratched up the lock and trashed the place--"

      Jeremiah's voice rose to a thin, insistent squeal. "Didn't!"

      "Boys," Ethan said, pinching the bridge of his nose. It was mild enough, but it cut across the ruckus and shut them both up. Mute but victorious, Bran held up the pouch and waggled it, as evidence; after a blackly sullen moment Jeremiah booted him in the ankle, nearly toppling him to the carpet. Bran staggered forward a step, caught himself, and swung about to kick at Jeremiah's ribs, somehow jarring his foot on the point of Jeremiah's hip instead--"Boys," Ethan said again, his voice sharper. They both subsided again.

      The moment of silence stretched out between them. "I didn't scratch up anything," Jeremiah said, his voice small. "I just wanted to see, like. I didn't even use the loo."

      "Bran, please go put the lock-picks back where Jeremiah found them," Ethan said, letting his hand drop. "Jeremiah, I'd like to talk to you, please. In here."

      "Me put them back!" Bran said, taken aback. "I didn't do anything--"

      "I'd appreciate it, Bran," said Ethan, suddenly and abruptly looking his age. "As a personal favour."

      Bran hesitated. "Ah, well... right," he said, taking a step backwards. "I'll just go... put these away, then."

      "Thank you, Bran," Ethan said. "Jeremiah?"

      Jeremiah rose warily to his feet and trudged past Bran, shoulders hunched, arms clamped to his sides. Bran took another step back, then another, then spun about and fled down the back stairs at top speed. The lock-picking kit was stashed away in one of the less obvious drawers in the kitchen, and Bran slapped open the drawer, flung in the picks, and slapped it shut again, already pivoting on the ball of his foot to propel himself towards the door.

      He caught himself at the top of the stairs, trading speed for stealth, padding down the hallway as noiselessly as a mouse. "--know you're not supposed to go in there," Ethan was saying, just as Bran dropped to one knee and put his ear to the key-hole. "I have told you that."

      "Yeah, but--yes, but..." Jeremiah's voice trailed off. "I didn't hurt anything. I just had a quick poke 'round, like."

      "As I've trained you to do, no doubt."

      "Well... well, yeah."

      "Jeremiah, I can't say I'm not pleased with your progress, but you know that it's important to me that we be able to trust each other."

      Jeremiah made some kind of indistinct sound. To Bran, out in the hallway, he sounded like a dog, whimpering. Probably embarrassment--Ethan had a habit of saying horrifying things like that, just blurting them out without any care for people's feelings, and Bran was embarrassed by it even out here. He tried not to squirm. "'M sorry," Jeremiah finally mumbled.

      "Apology accepted," Ethan said, and fell silent again. Bran tensed, rising onto the balls of his feet, preparing to flee if necessary. Abruptly, Ethan sighed. "I'm not angry, so you can stop looking quite so much like a whipped dog."

      "... you're not gonna throw me out?"

      "What?" Ethan said, audibly taken aback. "No, of course not. I didn't make this offer just to rescind it whenever I felt like it."

      "Oh," said Jeremiah, sounding dubious. There was a pause. "Honestly, I didn't hurt anything," Jeremiah said, just bursting out with it. "I went 'round back and looked for twenty bloody minutes to make sure nobody could see anything, and then I did it just as you said, the picks and the alligator clips and all, it was cake, and I did it for myself on a real door, like!"

      "The alarm didn't give you any trouble?"

      "Well, a bit, but it isn't a real Kawa, is it, it's just a plain number pad with a fancy case--gave me a scare, though, tell you that!"

      Bored now and disappointed, Bran rose to his feet. The chewing out, such as it was, was over, without even any good shouting--the rest was just shop talk. Bran padded back towards his room, belatedly becoming aware that he was still sweaty and rain-sodden, in need of a shower.

      "... and this is Jeremiah," Ethan finished, with a bit of a flourish. "Jeremiah, this is Teddy."

      Jeremiah flashed back on his lessons with an effort that was clearly visible to Bran, next to him. "Pleasure to meet you," Jeremiah said, standing up quite straight and holding out his hand--he spoiled the effect by rocking out onto the edges of his feet, like an abashed child, but Bran could only suppose it was what Ethan would call 'a step in the right direction'.

      Teddy blinked wetly at Jeremiah for a moment, then gingerly shook the outstretched hand. "Pleasure," he said, in that reedy little voice of his, afterwards wiping his limp hand against the front of his jumper. It was with obvious relief that Teddy turned to Ethan. "School ID, then?"

      "Nowhere too posh," Ethan agreed. "Nowhere that collects prints, either." His eyes glinted. "Won't let a child of mine attend a school where they take his fingerprints, even if it is just in theory."

      "Well, no, of course not," Teddy said, not getting it. "Of course not."

      "So, for the surname, at least, your choices are..." Ethan fanned through a pile of red-jacketed passports, frowning. The kitchen table was half-buried in a drift of documents, most of them forgeries of one kind or another. "Thomason, Archer, or Greaves would probably be best, although if you want to be a Governey I won't stop you."

      "Mm," Jeremiah said, disinterested. He was resting his chin on the table again, his shoulders hunched. On the other side of the table Bran sat scrawling 'Paul S. Greaves' over and over, accustoming himself to the new name even as he developed his alter ego's signature. Jeremiah watched the pen scratch back and forth, scowling.

      Ethan stacked the passports together and deposited the little pile on the kitchen table. "What's wrong?"

      "It's only... I won't know what's best until I know what my first name ought to be, right? And I can't think of a bloody thing." Jeremiah folded his arms over his head and shut his eyes. "It all sounds wrong, like. S'why I never--"

      "Mm?"

      "--ah, that's why I never changed it before. That and I'd always forget what I'd named myself in half an hour."

      "Well, that is a problem," Ethan said, frowning slightly. "We can't have you forgetting your own name, can we?"

      "S'not my name, though. It's just fake, innit?"

      Ethan clasped his hands together on the kitchen table. "No, in point of fact, it isn't. You'll stop being Jeremiah Harbottle entirely. Oh, you'll keep him alive--there's plenty of need for a real, legitimate, non-forged identity--but for all intents and purposes, you're about to become someone else." He paused. "In reality."

      "Someone who speaks all pretty and has manners and such, like," Jeremiah said, with a sudden and astonishing amount of bitterness in his voice. "Clean, with nice clothes on all the time."

      "Is that a problem?" Ethan asked, quietly.

      "Dunno." Jeremiah half-opened his eyes and stared unseeing at Bran's chest. "Feels like it. Like I'm lost inside this... this bugger who's got my face on."

      Ethan rubbed a hand down his face. "Mm. Well. Would it help to think of it as acting? You'll always be yourself underneath, and we'll always know that. It's only that you're... showing everyone else a false face, essentially."

      "Dunno," Jeremiah said again, despairingly. "No offence meant or nothin', I'm grateful and all, but..."

      "I know," said Ethan. "Well. There's no need to decide right this moment, is there?" With a sweep of one arm he gathered up the assorted documents and started filing them away again. "For the time being, let's try teaching you to recall a fake name, shall we? For the rest of the day, your name is... mm... Paul, what should we call him?"

      "Muppet," Bran said.

      Jeremiah snickered a little. Ethan momentarily shut his eyes in something like pain and dropped the name practise. "Bran..."

      "Dimwit?" Bran suggested, twisting the 'S' of his new middle initial into the 'G' of his new last name and deciding that he liked that.

      "Bran."

      "S'all right," Jeremiah said. "I feel half a dimwit most of the time, you want the truth."

      Ethan glanced at Jeremiah, then let it go. "Stephen," he said firmly. "For the rest of the day, your name is Stephen. All right?"

      "Right, right," said 'Stephen', sitting up.

      "Now, then, to other business." Ethan dropped a handful of passports into their folder. "The tailors will be coming on Friday, to see to Stephen's formal clothes--Paul, I think you'd best have a new suit, as well. You've put on a bit of height since last year and I won't have you looking like a gorilla in too-short sleeves."

      "Won't have it," Jeremiah mimicked.

      Bran rolled his eyes, the pen scratching on. "Be glad when I don't have to have a new one made every year."

      "So what's it for, anyway?" Jeremiah asked, propping his chin on his hand. "You never said."

      "Didn't I?" Ethan paused, looking a bit flummoxed. "How odd--it's for the Christmas party, Stephen. I host one every year."

      Jeremiah wrinkled his nose. "A fancy party, then."

      "Yes, very fancy, and I'll expect you to be on your best behaviour."

      "He can answer the door, like, since he's the youngest and all," Bran put in hopefully.

      Ethan's answering smile was fleet. "I'd like to have you both do it," he said. "You'll need to show Stephen the ropes, after all, Paul. Set a good example."

      "Aaw!"

      Jeremiah's head was swivelling back and forth, taking in this byplay. "Answer the door?"

      "Aye, it's my job," Bran said, then corrected himself. "Our job, looks like. Ethan's too mean to hire a proper butler--"

      "--that isn't true," Ethan said, mildly enough. "I just believe that Christmas is a time when everyone ought to have a family's welcome. A butler would be too cold a touch."

      Jeremiah blinked. "What, your family?" Glancing over his shoulder, he shifted uncomfortably in his chair, his narrow butt scooting around on the wood. "Won't I be out of place, then?"

      "It's a sort of family, Stephen," said Ethan. "They're all people like us."

      "What, thieves and such?"

      "And such, yes. Thieves, fair-traders, forgers, and the like. The shadow economy, as it were."

      "So they're not your real relatives."

      "Not by blood, no."

      "All right," Jeremiah said, although the hesitation in his voice made it sound a little less than all right.

      Ethan gave him a little smile. "I'm so glad you approve, Stephen. Now sit up properly."

      Jeremiah groaned under his breath and flung himself upright in his chair, then draped himself back against the seat-back in imitation of Ethan's own casual posture.

      "Here!" Jeremiah wailed, shying away from one of the tailors.

      Bran, leaning against the wall to await his turn, only snorted. Jeremiah looked especially small and lost in the midst of the circle of sharp-eyed fellows, protesting every time that they tried to touch him. "You know," said Bran, "if you'd just shut your gob, stand up straight, and hold bloody still, they'd be done in five minutes."

      "I don't like them touching me, that's all," Jeremiah said darkly, but all the same he fell quiveringly still, only his wide eyes still darting back and forth.

      Bran sighed and tuned out the fuss. The tailors had descended on them an hour ago, and there seemed to be no end to it. Bran had never liked these visits, particularly since Ethan always went into his embarrassing 'useless nob' routine while they were around. He didn't much care for fancy dress, either. Still, watching them tut over Jeremiah's terrible posture and his sloping shoulders was good for a laugh, he supposed.

      Jeremiah was visibly quaking, his hands in fists. Still, somehow the tailors managed to rein him in long enough to measure their way across his shoulders and down his arms; it was only when one of them went for his inseam that the howl went up again.

      Bran gritted his teeth. "They're not going to bloody well hurt you!" he snapped. "God's name, will you stop acting the baby already!"

      The little flash of hurt on Jeremiah's face was momentarily very clear. "I'm not--"

      "You are!" Bran threw up his hands in defeat. "At least pretend that you're not snivelling!"

      Jeremiah's jaw shut with a little click. His face went hard and his shoulders snapped into a perfect straight line, pulling him upright like someone had jammed a pole up his arse. The tailors, sensing their momentary advantage, descended on Jeremiah like a plague. A muscle in Jeremiah's cheek jumped--he was grinding his teeth--but he stood upright and still while the tape measures snapped around him. His eyes never left Bran, not even when one of the tailors knelt on the floor and did the hated inseam measurement. Even after Bran had had to turn away and look out the window, he could feel those narrowed eyes on him, not quite glaring.

      The odd thing was that Jeremiah kept it up even after the tailors were done with him. He was still strutting around with his shoulders thrown back at dinnertime, and the expression on his face prompted Ethan to ask if Jeremiah was feeling all right. "I'm fine," Jeremiah said, his voice short. "I didn't think much of those tailors, that's all."

      Ethan blinked, mildly enough. "I suppose they can be something of a trial," he said.

      "I don't care for being messed about, either," said Jeremiah. "Used to be if someone wanted to put his hands on me like that..." He trailed off there, although the grim look remained.

      "Mm," said Ethan, cutting himself another neat square of chicken. "Well. I'm glad you got through it all right."

      Jeremiah's eyes flicked to Bran and away. "Still didn't like it," he said.

      "No one likes it," Bran said, exasperated. "It's just something you've got to put up with, that's all. If you don't put up with it then you can't have your fancy clothes and you can't go to the party."

      Jeremiah glanced back at him. "I know," he said. "But Ethan asked, and I answered. All right?"

      "... right, right," Bran said, startled. He'd been expecting something more along the lines of well, maybe I don't want to go to some stupid party out of Jeremiah.

      The venom had drained out of Jeremiah by the next morning, but he was still distant, obviously thinking about something else. He kept rolling his shoulders back and pulling himself upright--Bran caught him at it half a dozen times--and he threw himself at his exercises with a vengeance that bemused Ethan into a watchful silence. "You'll need some new clothes soon," Ethan finally said, watching Jeremiah chin himself on the bar.

      "Thought I was getting some," Jeremiah grunted. His feet were locked together at the ankle instead of kicking about.

      "Well, yes. But I meant for everyday wear," Ethan said. "Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty, stop."

      Instead of stopping, Jeremiah pulled himself up three last times, on arms that were starting to shake, then dropped into a neat crouch on the floor. "So... how do I go about that, then? Can't just go down to the shops, can I?"

      "Well, yes, I don't see why not."

      Jeremiah rose to his feet and shook the soreness out of his arms. "What, really? It's just... I've only been out three or four times since I came, like, only for things like doctors and such."

      "Is that so?" Ethan blinked, then frowned. "I suppose you're right about that. Completely slipped my mind." He clapped his hands. "Well! We'll treat it as training, then. Darken your hair, maybe change the shape of your face a bit, just in case we should run into someone you know. We'll see if we can't produce a Jeremiah that doesn't look like the usual Jeremiah."

      "Jeremy," Jeremiah said, firmly.

      "Eh?"

      "Jeremy," Jeremiah said again. "It still doesn't sound right, but I like it better than most anything else--plus maybe I can remember that proper... properly... since it's two-thirds my own name, right?"

      Ethan tilted his head to the side and considered Jeremiah until Jeremiah ducked his head and developed a hunted expression. "Jeremy it is, then," Ethan finally said. He raised his voice. "Bran--"

      "I heard, I heard," Bran said. His bicep curls had slowed almost to nothing while he watched this mess in the mirrors, but now he picked up speed again.

      "Do you want to come with us?"

      "Nah, I'm all right," Bran said. "Like to have an afternoon to myself, you want the truth."

      Jeremiah sniggered. For a heartbeat of time, the brat he'd been flooded his face. "Wants to toss off in peace and quiet, more like."

      Bran flushed guiltily. "Jeremy," Ethan said in rebuke, but he was struggling not to smile.

      "Whyn't you toss off, then," Bran told Jeremiah, jabbing two upraised fingers at him.

      The bratty expression faded into something a little more evil. "Oh, you'd like that, would you," Jeremiah said, his grin twisting in on itself. "Keep you in mind next time I'm having a wank--"

      Ethan quite smoothly put his back to both of them, so that neither of them would see him laughing, although it was obvious from the way his shoulders shook; Bran dropped both dumb-bells into the rack with a clang and stalked off, maintaining what dignity he could.

      An hour later Ethan and Jeremiah--Jeremy, whatever--went slamming out of the house, Jeremiah chattering excitedly. The garage door went up and one of the cars pulled out.

      Purely out of contrariness Bran didn't bother having a wank, although he'd been considering it before Jeremiah had caught him out on it. It was just something that he usually did whenever he got the house to himself, since it was the one time that he could count on a bit of privacy. It seemed like an awful waste, especially since Bran hadn't had the house to himself but three or four times since Jeremiah moved in, but the idea that Jeremiah might somehow figure it out made Bran's skin all itch.

      Still, one thought led to another, and after an hour of dithering about Bran found himself on the rain-swept roof of the veranda with one of the suction cups in his hand. He didn't particularly want to pick the locks on Jeremiah's door--the old thumb-bolts were stiff as anything, and anyway Bran had this creeping sense that Jeremiah would know if his door had been opened--but the window seemed fair game. Bran knuckled the cup against the glass with a soft farting blup sound and hoicked the window open a few inches. Jeremiah hadn't started locking that, in any case.

      Bran popped the suction cup off and pushed it into Jeremiah's room, to land on the floor. Pushing the window the rest of the way up, he ducked on in, eyes wide against the darkness, the hairs on the back of his neck all standing on end. He knew that Jeremiah was off with Ethan, and in any case he'd be able to feel it when the garage door went back up, but it still gave him a case of the jitters. Even after he'd flicked on the bathroom light Bran was still painfully aware that he was intruding.

      The room didn't look all that much different than it had before Jeremiah had moved in, six months ago. Jeremiah still didn't own very much, and what he did own was mostly clothing and other dull, useful things. Still, the room was unquestionably his. It was the smell of it, Jeremiah's medications and soaps and, underneath it all, the weird muddy musty smell of puberty--Bran hadn't known until just now that it had a smell, but there it was, all overactive hormones and muted body stink. It made Bran wonder what his own rooms smelled like, and that, in its turn, made him shiver.

      Still, Bran was here now, so he poked about. Jeremiah's few clothes were almost all in the dresser, wedged helter-skelter into the drawers with little care for the fabric. His closet was nearly empty. A couple of jackets hung on the bar, but that was all. Jeremiah's bed was unmade, the sheets rucked up in the shape of his body. His hamper was half-full, a sweat-soaked t-shirt hanging halfway out to dangle its sleeves at the floor. Couldn't be doing much to help the smell in here.

      The bathroom was equally impersonal. A few ancient pill bottles languished in the cabinet--Bran looked at them without much interest--and a few toiletries were scattered here and there. The only real, personal touch were the few curly hairs that languished at the bottom of the tub, and Bran felt weird and ill just for noticing them.

      He wandered back into Jeremiah's bedroom and flopped out on the bed, not really thinking about it. The smell of Jeremiah was strong, here, and not completely unpleasant, since Jeremiah showered every night before bed. Bran tucked his hands behind his head and stared up at the darkened ceiling. He wasn't sure what he'd come in here to find, actually; he'd just needed to come in and make sure Jeremiah wasn't up to anything awful, like stockpiling stolen things against the day that he left. There wasn't anything incriminating in here, though. There wasn't even a bottle of hand lotion in the night-stand, like there was in Bran's room. Not even a box of tissues. Jeremiah must do all his fabled wanking in the bath--now that was a thought that made Bran's stomach flop about uneasily. He put a hand on it, to quiet it. Outside the rain pattered vaguely on the roof, and the house's massive old heating system kicked in after a while, and Bran tapped his fingers on his stomach and thought about nothing.

      He awoke out of his half-doze when the garage door rumbled up, a thing that he felt more than heard. Bran snapped back to himself in the nest of Jeremiah's sheets with his hand tented over the front of his trousers and the thing in there as hard as rock--he'd been running his hand back and forth while he lay there, not even thinking about it. Horrified, Bran leapt out of the bed and pitched himself out the window, nearly falling straight off the veranda in his semi-controlled panic. It was easier to close the window than to open it, at least, and he was back in his room with the suction cup safely stowed away by the time that he heard Jeremiah thumping heavily up the stairs. Bran wheezed out a relieved breath and scrubbed his fingers through his hair.

      "Bran, we're home," Ethan called, a moment later.

      Bran swallowed. "Aye, I heard!" he called back.

      Jeremiah had had his hair cut off short again--the hair on the back and sides of his head was so short as to be nearly non-existent--and the trip had imbued him with a ridiculous amount of energy. Only Bran's sweating sense of guilt kept him from strangling the exuberant Jeremiah at dinner that night.

      Returning the stolen suction cup to its place was a tiny odyssey all by itself. Bran waited until Jeremiah was in bed and Ethan was closed up in his workshop before picking his way downstairs, but his nerves were all so on edge that every little sound nearly made him scream. Several times he fancied he was being stalked, and he whipped around to see... nothing at all. It was ridiculous, of course. Jeremiah still sounded like a herd of elephants when he walked, and if Ethan was following Bran, well, Bran would never notice, would he? Still, Bran was breathing hard by the time he closed the suction cup up with its fellows, and he skittered back towards the stairs with his gut churning.

      Safe again, Bran threw himself into bed and shut his eyes, willing himself to sleep. It didn't work--it never worked--Bran fancied he could smell Jeremiah right through the wall, and he knew that he could hear him, snorting and kicking in his sleep. Rolling over onto his side, Bran curled up into as tight a ball as he could and stuck his face under the covers, so that he could only smell himself--it didn't help. He reeked of nervous perspiration.

      If he took a shower now, Jeremiah would hear him, and would assume he was jerking off in there--Bran ground his teeth in rage and flipped over onto his other side, putting his back most firmly to Jeremiah's room and Jeremiah alike.

      Bran woke, abruptly, lost and confused in the darkness, unsure of what had woken him. For a moment he lay there, groping after his muddy thoughts--then the muted thumping sound came again, kicking him into full wakefulness. It came from next door. Jeremiah was up and moving about, up to something, probably just using the loo--Jeremiah's bedroom door opened, stealthily enough, and closed again with a faint click. Jeremiah padded off down the stairs. He wasn't silent, but he was quiet enough, for someone who didn't know any better.

      Rolling over, Bran squinted at the clock. Just past four AM. Jeremiah was just hungry or something, Bran thought. It made sense. Enough sense that Bran should have gone back to sleep. Instead, he rolled out of bed and wrestled into a t-shirt, then let himself out.

      The hallway rug was soft under his bare feet. Bran drifted down the back stairs like a ghost, breathing through his open mouth to keep himself quiet, hugging one wall to keep the stairs from creaking. Jeremiah couldn't possibly hear him coming, but still Bran went slowly, his nerves screwed to a high pitch. Blood roared in his ears to counteract the silence; starbursts exploded in his eyes to dismiss the darkness. Somehow he made it down the stairs without incident.

      He heard the sounds before he saw the light: scuffling, thumping, harsh breathing. Bran dropped neatly into a crouch and considered the area. The kitchen was dark. So was the exercise room. The only light was a dirty yellow bar oozing out from under the door that led to the side hallway, where the suction-cup obstacle course was laid out. Bran edged in that direction. The sounds grew louder even as they receded, towards the far end of the hall.

      It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what Jeremiah was doing. Bran crouched outside the closed door and listened for a minute or two, as Jeremiah twisted up and down the long hallway, breathing hoarsely and occasionally muttering under his breath. Did he always get up at four in the morning to do this?

      Bran's musing was interrupted by the sound of Jeremiah falling heavily to the floor just on the other side of the door. "Shit," Jeremiah wheezed, then went silent again; Bran shivered and edged away from the door with absurd care, creeping back up the stairs as fast as he could go.

      "--and roll forward along the outside of your foot," Ethan said, taking a step in extreme slow-motion to demonstrate. "But really, what's most important is to pull your weight just a tick before your heel touches the floor."

      "All right," said Jeremiah. He was hunkered down on the mats, watching Ethan's feet. Bran was in the corner, working with the squeeze-balls and trying to ignore them both.

      "Of course, it's all for naught if you're wearing the wrong shoes," Ethan said, padding in an exaggeratedly slow circle around the crouching Jeremiah. "It can be done well enough in trainers, but for the most part, you'll want specially-made shoes. And, of course, your work-suit will have padded soles."

      Jeremiah abruptly got tired of crouching and sat on his skinny arse on the mats. "Are those shoes special, then?"

      "These? Oh, yes." Ethan lifted his foot to show Jeremiah one of the light-eating mat-black soles. "I suppose you'll find it very funny to know that they're men's dancing shoes, only with a few... additions."

      "Huh."

      "Give it a try," Ethan said.

      Jeremiah bounced to his feet and flicked his hands out, for balance. "So, heel first--"

      "--pull your weight--"

      "--right," said Jeremiah, easing his heel down on the mats. "Then roll forward--"

      "That's it."

      Jeremiah took one exaggerated step, then another, then caught sight of himself in the mirror and started snickering so hard that he missed the next step. "I don't look half silly."

      Bran could only snort in agreement. The downside to Ethan's particular variety of soft-footing it was that it tended to exaggerate the roll of the hips. On Jeremiah, it turned into a sort of crotch-first poncy sashay--to be fair, Ethan walked that way as well, although not quite so aggressively. Jeremiah's eyes met Bran's in the mirror, and he grinned and crotch-thrust at his reflection--Bran yanked his eyes away and did his level best to crush the sand-filled bag in his hand.

      That isn't what I meant, Bran thought, speaking less to God and more to himself even though his hands were still clasped on the prayer rail. At the end of the pew, Liam cleared his throat with a rattle. It isn't what I meant at all!

5.

      December inched on, getting darker and colder. Nothing else changed. The tailors came back for the final fitting of their suits, which was at least noteworthy, if no more interesting than anything else. Bran shrugged into his new dinner jacket and obligingly held out his arms for the tailor, listening with more than half an ear for commotion from the rooms next door. He didn't hear anything. "Thought he'd be screaming for sure," Bran said, mostly to himself.

      "I can't hear a thing," said the tailor, fussing with one of Bran's cuffs. "Suppose he's got over it by now."

      "Suppose," said Bran. Bored out of his skull he glanced at himself in the mirror. The dinner jacket was attractive and all, but it didn't really suit. Ethan carried it off all right--he always looked like he was born to wear whatever he wore--but Bran looked like a schoolboy playing dress-up at best. At least Jeremiah--Jeremy, whatever--was bound to look worse. Bran might still be scrawny, but at least he knew how to damn well stand up straight and walk without flopping about. Besides, knobby wrists didn't matter a bit when his suit was cut to hide them, did they?

      If only he didn't have all those damn spots. The suit smoothed over a lot of his imperfections no matter how uncomfortable he looked stuffed into it, but the spots kept him from looking as mature as he'd like. Even without them he wasn't precisely handsome, but he thought he'd do. Ethan always said that forgettable faces were a bonus in their business anyway.

      The tailor popped up behind him and plucked at the suit's shoulders, resettling them. "There we are," he said, satisfied. "All done. If you'll just pop out of that, I'll have it pressed, and you'll have it back in plenty of time."

      Bran made a vague sound of assent and slithered out of the jacket as gently as he could. A burst of laughter from next door startled him halfway through and Bran jumped, his arms trying to flick up into a guard posture, stopping dead just half a second before the seams could rip; the tailor hissed in concern and hurried to help him get the jacket the rest of the way off, now watching him in the mirror like he was five years old and couldn't be trusted with nice things. It wasn't his fault, Bran thought, blushing savagely in his embarrassment. Whoever'd done the laughing from Jeremiah's room had startled him, that was all.

      "All that I'm saying is that you could try to be a bit less of a Scrooge," Ethan said, the little smile on his face maddeningly, teasingly gentle.

      "I'm not!" Bran said. The second word turned itself into a squawk and he flushed and dipped his head until his chin touched his collar. "I'm not," he repeated, more steadily. "And in any case I don't much care for Christmas, you know that."

      "You do seem to enjoy the gifts, I've noticed." Ethan's voice was dry.

      Bran floundered, then took refuge in the weight machine, pulling off one of the benches and setting it aside. "That's different."

      "Oh, I see."

      "Everyone likes presents," Bran said. "Doesn't matter when they get them, or why. S'got nothing to do with Christmas, presents, except we make it do."

      He knew what was coming before he finished speaking, and Ethan didn't disappoint him. "I see," Ethan said, amused. "So I can return the wrapped things in my closet, then, can I?"

      "Now you're just making fun," Bran said, scowling off at the far wall.

      Ethan raised both eyebrows. "So I am," he said. "Jeremy! Pick it up!"

      "Right!" Jeremiah cried. He broke into a sprint, a ten-kilogram weight swinging wildly in each hand. He barely paused at the far end of the room, dropping the weights on a handy mat before bolting back in Bran's direction. He wrenched a single twenty-five-kilogram weight from the rack, staggered underneath it, and set off towards the far end of the room again. Ethan watched Jeremiah go, then turned his attention back to what he was doing.

      Now that Ethan's attention was safely off him again, Bran could get back to the business of disassembling the weight machines. For most of the year this was the exercise room, full of mats and weights and things; technically, though, it was the ballroom, and they needed to move all the equipment out in order to move the tables and things in for the Christmas party. What sadist had set the equipment up so far away from the storage closets--well, that was a silly question, wasn't it, it had been Ethan. Bran scowled and wrenched a nut loose, freeing a entire stack of weights from their channel.

      Ethan picked up one of the freed benches and slung it across his shoulders. He wasn't in training, so he wasn't in any hurry, and in the time it took him to walk across the room Jeremiah had lapped him three times, arms full of weights, face red with exertion. Ethan put the bench into the storage closet. "Surely you can go faster than that, Jeremy," he said pleasantly.

      Jeremiah huffed out a breath in answer and skidded into the next turn, overbalancing and falling onto one hip before scrambling back off on all fours, oversized hands and feet flailing about everywhere. It was rather like watching a monkey drown, Bran thought, adding another stack of the weights to the dolly beside him. Jeremiah scrambled past him, sought through the rack of free weights, and then staggered back a step. "That's all," Jeremiah wheezed, putting his hands on his knees and gasping for breath. He was red and sweaty, his hair stuck to his forehead. "You said to do everything under forty kilos."

      "So I did." Ethan gave the weight rack a cursory glance. "Well done. Give us ten rounds on the horse before we put it away."

      Jeremiah coughed to clear his throat. "Don't have my gloves or the resin bag or nothing," he pointed out. "Anything."

      "That's true," said Ethan. "You must do the best you can without them. You won't always be able to count on having all your tools with you."

      Jeremiah lifted his head to stare at the vaulting horse, then nodded, stripping his shirt off over his head. "Right," he said, scrubbing his wet hands against his equally-wet trousers. He scrambled for the horse; Bran caught the grips of the dolly and kicked it over, heading for the storage closets, listening with half an ear to the rhythmic thump-thump of Jeremy vaulting behind him.

      By the time all the exercise equipment had been stashed away Bran was sweating and blowing pretty hard himself. His hands were red and felt swollen. Still, however bad he felt, he couldn't look worse than Jeremiah, who was wringing wet, nearly purple, and poking at a new blister at the base of his middle finger. Ethan, of course, looked fine. "Just the mats left," Ethan said cheerily. "And then I think we'll break early for lunch. Jeremy, don't pick at that."

      "What? I wasn't!" Jeremiah whipped his hands behind his back guiltily.

      The mats, at least, were lighter. Since Jeremiah was here Ethan didn't bother to help with them at all--it was always Bran at one end and Jeremiah at the other, piling up the mats and then toting them into the other closet. "God, you're slow," Bran said, rolling his eyes. "Ethan and I'd have had these done already."

      "You want to ask him to help you instead, you be my guest," Jeremiah said tartly, but he put a little more hurry into it anyway.

      The ballroom looked odd, empty. The parquet floors underneath the mats were a little scuffed, but nice enough for all that, and they'd be nicer yet once the cleaning crew had been; the barre had been removed from in front of the mirrors, turning them back into decorations. Everything echoed. "That's a job well done," Ethan said, surveying the empty ballroom with his hands on his hips. "I'll just check the floor while the room's empty, shall I..."

      "The what?" Jeremiah said.

      Bran waved him back. "The floor," he repeated.

      "Tells me a lot, that does," Jeremiah said crossly, but then the floor started up with a rumble and he fell silent with a squeak. Most of the centre of the room dropped a hand's width and rumble-rolled away, vanishing underneath the mirrors to reveal the pit--"A pool?" Jeremiah cried. "We've a bloody pool? You never said!"

      "We don't make use of it much," said Ethan, watching the floor. "We'd have to clear away the exercise equipment to use it."

      Jeremiah spun on his heel. "Wouldn't!" he cried, flinging both hands out at the back wall. "We'd just need to push it together a bit, like, and then we'd only need to pile up the mats, that's nothing, that's fifteen minutes' work..."

      Bran groaned. He could already see where this was going. "You'd like that, then?" Ethan asked, his voice mild.

      "It'd be brilliant!" Jeremiah said. "Come on, Bran, you want to use the pool, don't you?"

      "Not enough to hoick those bloody mats around every day, I don't!"

      "Aaaw!"

      Ethan studied the empty pool for a long moment, then started the floor rumbling shut again. "In any case we'll wait until after Christmas to decide," he said mildly. "I won't have the party smelling of chlorine."

      "Wish we could use it now!" Jeremiah ran a hand through his sodden hair. "It'd feel right nice."

      "Mm?" Ethan said, without looking up.

      "Er, quite nice."

      "Yes. Quite." The floor slotted back into place with a soft pneumatic thump and Ethan dusted his hands together. "That's done, then--we're on holiday until the new year. I suggest you two try and enjoy it."

      Bran woke, muddled, to the soft sound of Jeremiah's bedroom door opening and closing again. He squinted at the clock. 4:17AM. Bran rolled his eyes and went back to sleep.

      "Cor," Jeremiah breathed, hanging onto the door-frame. "Never would have known it was the same room."

      The hired tables filled the ballroom from end to end, each with eight chairs around. The mirrors on the south wall made the room go on forever. Bran, who'd not only been through this many times but had been woken up too early this morning by the racket, still had to concede that it was pretty impressive. "You wait until it's all done," he said, leaning on the opposite side of the door-frame. "With the silver and the candles and all. It's nice."

      "Why are the cloths already on? It's a week yet, innit?"

      "Because I don't much like it when you can see where the table-cloth's been folded," Ethan said from behind them, making them both jump. "I suppose you think that makes me a fussy old woman."

      "Suppose a little," Jeremiah said. He swung halfway into the room, peering down along the wall.

      Ethan smiled, just a little. "Do try not to disturb anything. If I have to force you to wash and re-iron a table-cloth, I will."

      "Disturb anything! I don't dare go in there, even!" Whatever he claimed Jeremiah was still clutching at the door-frame and leaning too far into the room, though, and abruptly Bran couldn't resist the impulse another second: he took a quick and silent step back and booted Jeremiah's arse. With a startled "Waow!" Jeremiah went flailing into the ballroom, staggering a few huge looping drunkard's steps before falling on his face on the parquet floor. He'd missed the tables only by sheer luck.

      Ethan quickly stifled his smile. "Bran," he said.

      "Couldn't resist, me." Bran felt better than he had in a while.

      Charles Fortescue was a tall and whip-thin man, dressed all in severe black, with the most forbidding face Bran had ever seen. He'd been terrified of the man when he was small and he still was, in some ways--not actually terrified, he hastened to reassure himself. It was just... well, the man put him on edge, with those spree-killer grey eyes of his and the tight mouth that never smiled. When he was about Bran found it easiest to be elsewhere, preferably somewhere that locked. He'd used to hide in the guest house; now that he was grown he preferred his own rooms. He had studying to do, after all. Two IGCSEs and one GCSE down, two exams to go, and then he wouldn't ever have to crack a book again if he didn't want.

      Still, he could only study for so long before the rustling and quietly-snapped orders from outside got to be too distracting. Once Bran started thinking about what was out there, he started to feel hungry, and a glance at the clock told him that it was hours yet before lunch. Even when Fortescue's crew was about it was generally easy enough to get about, just stick to the back hallways and the kitchen... Bran shut his text and put it down, sliding his feet back into his discarded trainers.

      The overwhelming smell of pine smacked him in the face as he opened the door. It wasn't ever nice, in Bran's opinion, although Ethan begged to differ. Far too strong, the smell was, and they were always finding sap-sticky spots for a month after. A pair of Fortescue's decorators fell silent as Bran padded out, offering him slight acknowledging nods; once he'd nodded back they went back to winding the pine garland about the hand-rail. One of them wore three rolls of white ribbon strung out along his forearm like so many bog-rolls--Bran stifled a smirk and headed for the back stairs, where he'd be safe from pine and decorators alike.

      A low murmur of voices came from the kitchen. Bran rolled his eyes, bit his lower lip, and steeled himself, pushing on in.

      The three of them were ranged about the kitchen table, taking refuge from the fuss and letting everyone else do all the work. Ethan was Ethan, of course, and Jeremiah was... well, Jeremy, Bran could only suppose. The third was Charles Fortescue, bolt upright in his chair with his long and spidery fingers clasped just so about his cup. "... and I find it an excellent excuse to case the properties," he was saying as Bran came in. They all turned to look at him, but only Jeremiah essayed a little wave.

      "Hallo," Bran said, swallowing his discomfort. "Only came to filch a quick bite--"

      "You're welcome to join us if you like," Ethan said, his little smile as opaque as ever.

      "That's all right," said Bran, not quite having the balls to say I'd rather not. "Got to get back to the books, you know."

      Ethan nodded. "Of course."

      "Here--" Jeremiah reached out and failed to touch Fortescue's arm at the last moment, tapping the table in front of him instead. "Don't they catch on, like? I mean, the posh decorators come in and then bingo, the place is robbed?"

      Ethan's lips twitched, but in the spirit of the end-of-year holiday he'd apparently decided to leave off from Jeremiah's diction lessons. Charles Fortescue turned magisterially back to Jeremiah and inclined his head. "Oh, but I am very careful to ensure that several months pass before any attempt is made."

      "Still," Jeremiah said, a little crease forming in his forehead. "They're bound to catch on sooner or later."

      Fortescue's unnerving light-grey eyes rose to fasten on the wall behind Ethan's head. "You would think," he said. "So far, at least, I have never felt pressed."

      Jeremiah scowled. "You're having me on," he said.

      One of Fortescue's hands detached from his cup and drifted up, his spidery fingers hiding something that looked frighteningly like a smile. "Yes, I am," he said. "In a sense."

      "How, in a sense?"

      "That is how I find the properties in question. However, I am no burglar--I only sell the information. The differing styles of theft tend to cloud the issue nicely. No one can easily link one to another when they were so obviously done by two different people."

      "Oh." Jeremiah sat back, his brow clearing. "Well, that makes more sense, then."

      "And many properties aren't worth the trouble to begin with. Too much security, only tat, or perhaps the client goes out of his way to be kind to me..." Fortescue shrugged. "Only a small percentage of my clients end up being victimised."

      Jeremiah frowned. "Victimised?"

      "Oh, yes. You mustn't ever delude yourself. If you are stealing from a home, you are creating a victim. Even if you are stealing from a business, or a museum, someone will suffer for it--but homes contain victims by default." Charles Fortescue rubbed a long finger across his lower lip, considering. "Not that that should necessarily stop you, mind. You need only--" his hands rose, cupping two handfuls of air "--balance the scales, the cost versus your need."

      "Huh."

      After careful consideration of the refrigerator's contents, Bran fetched out a bottle of Ethan's fancy Italian soda and an apple from the crisp drawer. Anything more and Ethan would look at him, and Bran was in no mood to be looked at this morning, not with the house reeking of pine as it was. Food in hand he stole back on out of the kitchen, leaving them to their discussion.

      He didn't so much feel like going back to his books, though. Stashing his spoils inside the front pocket of his pullover Bran nudged open the ballroom door and poked his head in.

      The room had exploded in greenery and light. Pine boughs were everywhere, bound into swags and garlands with lengths of trailing white and silver ribbons; tiny white lights glinted from deep within the boughs. The tables had been loaded down with this year's centrepieces, unlit candles waiting patiently inside tall glass chimneys--the table decorations got larger and showier every year and this year was no exception.

      A few of Fortescue's decorators had their heads together at the far end of the room, paying Bran no mind. Bran slipped on in. As little as he liked the smell he had to admit that it was pretty enough, even if it always looked more or less the same--Bran rounded the main stairs and came face to face with the tree, three times as tall as he was if it was an inch and positively ablaze with silvered glass balls. Automatically he checked over his shoulder, half-expecting Jeremiah to come up behind him and start blathering, as he did. No one was there. All around him the house hummed with activity, but right here, right now, he was alone.

      Bran leaned against the stairway railing (getting sap on his trousers) and studied the tree. It was a magnificent monster of a thing, stately and silent, the centre of an ocean of perfect, unchanging calm. Maybe Bran had spent the past half a year ignored and abandoned in favour of the new puppy, but right now Bran was glad to be let alone, because he could slit his eyes half-closed and let his defences down. He shuddered out a sigh and stuffed his hands into his front pocket, his fingers touching the cold glass of the soda bottle. Bran became aware of a momentary, rising peace within his soul. If this was God, maybe he'd take it after all.

      "So where are you going all dressed up like that, then?" Jeremiah asked, half-hanging from the banister and swinging back and forth. The pine garland shuddered under his grip. "It's late to be out."

      "Midnight mass," Bran said shortly. "It's Christmas Eve, innit--here, you'd best not pull that off or Ethan'll be cross."

      Jeremiah made a rude noise and sprawled out on the stairs instead, arms and legs all akimbo, looking like he'd fallen down the stairs. His t-shirt rode up to bare his belly. Bran rolled his eyes and went back to looking out the front window, waiting for the splash of headlights that would be Liam and Paula. Anything to get away from Jeremiah--truth be told, the midnight mass wasn't so bad. At least, there were worse.

      Most of the house was dark, although the Christmas tree glowed in its corner, hundred of tiny fairy lights throwing pine-needle shadows everywhere. Ethan had gone to bed an hour ago, reminding Bran only to lock up behind himself; Jeremiah was barefoot and wearing the t-shirt and battered fleece trousers that served him as pyjamas. Bran touched the knot of his tie self-consciously.

      "You go to church at night, then?" Jeremiah ran his fingers through his hair.

      "Only on Christmas Eve." Bran sighed. "Wish it was like that all the time, you want the truth. I like being out late."

      Jeremiah nodded, accepting this. "Can I come?"

      Bran spluttered. "What--no, you can't come! You're not even bloody Catholic, why d'you want to come?"

      "Don't know. Just thought... well, you're going." Jeremiah did not look abashed in the slightest. "Sounded kind of nice, going to church in the middle of the night, like."

      "You haven't even got a tie--"

      "--you've got extras, I saw. You've got three."

      Bran scowled. "Been poking around in my closet, then?"

      "Bit, like. When Ethan told me to bring you your laundry that time."

      "Well, you still can't come. It's not for you anyway."

      Jeremiah shrugged. "When'll you be back? Two or so?"

      "About then," Bran said suspiciously. "You'd best not be planning to wait up for me. Wouldn't want to see your stupid face in any case."

      "I was only wondering." Jeremiah picked up a stray ribbon end and fiddled with it, no longer looking directly at Bran. His fleece trousers couldn't have been more than a few months old but already there was a small hole worn in the crotch, just large enough to show the white edge of his pants and a darker splash of skin beside them. He rubbed one foot against the other, his bare toes curling over the sweep of his instep, and scratched the inside of his thigh with one absent hand that found and picked at the hole--

      Headlights splashed across the window, much to Bran's relief. He snatched his keys out of his trouser pocket. "Go to bed."

      "I'm going, I'm going." Jeremiah pushed himself up. "Happy Christmas and all that."

      Bran only threw himself out into the cold, shutting the door on Jeremiah and locking it after himself. Liam's car waited in the turnabout, puffing up great clouds of steam, its headlights splashed across the drive; inside the car Liam and Paula were dim and shifting shapes which Bran could barely see. Bran loped down the steps and hurried into the back seat, much relieved.

      Eventually Paula put her hand on Bran's shoulder. It was small, soft and warm, some part of Bran noted, but still he didn't look up. "Bran luv," Paula said quietly. "Time to go."

      "Can we... not?" Bran mumbled, not lifting his face from the circle of his arms. "Five more minutes, even."

      Only a few dim shapes still stirred in the vast dark space of the church. Most everyone else had already left and the music had finally droned to its end. Well after one in the morning by this point, and Bran was exhausted, too tired to lift his head out of his arms, almost.

      Paula hesitated. "Liam's gone to bring the car round," she finally said, patting Bran's shoulder. "I'll come and fetch you when he's come to the front."

      Unwilling to disturb his fragile calm by speaking any more than he needed, Bran nodded. Paula stood by him for a moment, irresolute, then moved off--he could feel the heat of her dissipating. Alone, he could suddenly feel the cold.

      Shutting his eyes, Bran sucked in a shaking little breath and tried again. Help me, he thought, clutching at the wooden back of the pew. I don't care how, just help me, no one else can-- His thoughts stagnated and swirled down into a dark and frightsome place, no longer thoughts, just terrible impressions and guilt and the aching sick feeling in his gut. How long he sat like that he didn't at all know, but eventually Paula called his name from the back of the church, her voice echoing into the Godly emptiness, and Bran dragged himself upright and went to her. She said something to him, but Bran only grunted, not listening at all.

6.

      Come Christmas proper the house was all over lights. The music was already playing, filling the house with the soft sounds of choirs and orchestras to go with the overall smell of pine. In the back, in the kitchen, the hired cooks clattered and cat-called back and forth, banging about and producing some interesting smells of their own. Occasionally the roar of laughter rose from out of the drawing room where Ethan was holding court, him and a few of his closest mates enjoying their private party-before-the-party... Bran sat at the foot of his bed, kicking his stocking foot against the carpet and putting off the moment when he'd have to put on his dinner jacket and tie his tie.

      His trousers were on, anyway, and he'd grudgingly put on the shirt and put in most of the studs. The last two were still in their little box, because Bran didn't much care for the moment when the shirt closed tight about his throat. Like strangling. Here in a minute or so he'd probably put on his waistcoat, although he wouldn't do it up just yet.

      The suit was nice enough, in Bran's opinion, and he looked all right to boot. He'd got his hair cut week before last and it was just the right length, gelled up into smooth spikes. He still had a pair of spots at the corner of his mouth, pink and sore, but most of the others had faded--he'd put on more muscle this year, to boot, and his shoulders felt broader. Not bad at all, in the main. Still and all Bran dreaded the mortifying hours to come, when he'd hear half a hundred times about how much he'd grown and what a handsome lad he'd become--what a likely lad, God, how he hated the word. It wasn't even as if they meant it, they only said it to be polite. Some day he'd be grown and maybe then the compliments they threw at him would be honest ones.

      Reluctantly Bran picked up the tie and slung it loosely about his neck, like a muffler. The effort didn't kill him, and a glance at the clock confirmed that it was a quarter past six--Bran slid into his waistcoat to boot, although he left it unfastened for now. He'd just picked the last stud out of its box and closed the collar about his throat when someone thumped on his door. "Bran?" Jeremiah said, his voice cracking and nervous.

      "God's sake," Bran said, rolling his eyes at his reflection. "What?"

      "I need your help," Jeremiah called back, through the closed door. "I can't remember how the tie goes!"

      Bran sighed heavily. Really, he should have seen that coming. "Awright, awright, just a tick," he said. Out of pure spite he made Jeremiah wait while he buttoned up his waistcoat, getting it settled neatly across his stomach. Even with his tie still loose about his throat he was starting to look sharpish--Bran tried on a smile in the mirror, then sighed and went out into the main room to open his door. "Best," he said, and then his throat closed down before he could finish that thought with make it quick.

      All unsuspecting Jeremiah half-cringed half-smiled at Bran, his puppyish eyes wide with worry. He was carrying his jacket on its hanger in one hand but he had everything else on, down to the tie hanging around his neck, just like Bran's. His own hair was smoothed straight back to expose the high plane of his forehead and the fine bones of his narrow face--Jeremiah didn't suffer from spots, the little bastard. God, it isn't fair, Bran thought, choking down the lump of resentment in his throat. Give my right arm to look like that...

      "You look good, like," Jeremiah said diffidently. "All fancy."

      Bran shook his head to clear it. "S'pose I ought," he said. "S'an expensive suit."

      "I feel right foolish in this stuff, you want to know the truth." Jeremiah took advantage of Bran's momentary dismay and sidled on in, toting his jacket. "Like I'm wearing someone else's clothes."

      "Who said you weren't? Ethan paid for them, right?"

      Jeremiah snickered. "Like to see him try and fit into my suit, I would."

      "I wouldn't!" Bran looked Jeremiah up and down. "You've got the bits hooked together inside your trousers, right? With the loops and buttons and all?"

      Jeremiah looked down at himself, brushing one hand over his immaculate shirt-front. "Think so," he said. "It's not half complicated."

      "Huh," Bran said, half in agreement. He circled around behind Jeremiah and checked to make certain that he hadn't got the waistcoat caught on the shirt's collar--he hadn't--then completed the circle and picked up Jeremiah's tie from where it lay. "Chin up."

      Jeremiah tilted his head back, still watching Bran from out of the corners of his eyes. Bran bit the inside of his cheek and pulled Jeremiah's tie flat across the back of his neck, trying to touch him as little as possible at the same time. Jeremiah was giving off heat like a radiator with only the thin cloth of his shirt between them, and a slip ran Bran's fingers along the side of Jeremiah's throat, which was lightly rough with freshly-shaved stubble (and that wasn't fair at all). Bran fumbled the tie through its loops and wasn't surprised when the knot degenerated into a useless tangle of fabric and fingers. "Damn it," he muttered, pulling the tie loose again.

      "Sorry," Jeremiah said faintly.

      "Shut up." Bran jerked the tie against the back of Jeremiah's neck, making Jeremiah stumble forward half a step. Scowling now Bran ran through the knot again, but everything was backwards and the knot fell apart again. "Christing thing!"

      "Sorry--"

      "Shut your face!" Catching at the back of Jeremiah's neck Bran hauled him into the bedroom and pushed him in front of the mirror. "Stand there and bloody well hold still."

      Obligingly Jeremiah froze, his chin still lifted to bare his throat. Trying not to look at their reflection in the mirror Bran got up behind him, reaching over Jeremiah's shoulders to grab at the ends of the tie again. This time, at least, the tie was the right way around, but having to put his arms around Jeremiah to tie it smacked Bran in the face with the smell of all that clean and soapy skin. Jeremiah's shoulders brushed up against his chest--Bran yanked the tie into its knot as fast as he could go and let his arms drop. "There! Christ."

      "Is that how it's supposed to go?" Jeremiah asked, leaning forward to inspect himself in the mirror. Frowning, he touched two fingers to his tie, nudging it back into place.

      "Yes! Here, watch--" and Bran snatched up his own tie, knotting it about his neck. He was strangling on any number of things and it was a relief to blame the tie, as Jeremiah stared at him in the mirror with his eyes wide--"Got to get into the rest," Bran said, tearing his eyes away from Jeremiah's. "People always come early. They don't know any bloody better, Ethan always says." He ducked away and went in search of his shoes, standing together beside the dresser.

      Cautiously Jeremiah edged the jacket off its hanger and shrugged into it, tugging at the collar before fussing with his cuffs. He looked a bit like a kid in his father's things, but he looked good for all that--for a moment Bran envied him with all his heart. "I'll just... go on down, like," he said. "... ta for the help."

      "Aye, whatever," said Bran, and he didn't look up again until the door had shut behind the perfect spectre of Jeremiah.

      The bell rang first at a quarter to seven, summoning Ethan and his laughing old coterie from the drawing room even as Bran jumped to answer the door. By seven-thirty the party was in full swing, the old house filled from end to end with the roar of party-goers. The door-bell was going constantly, and try as he might Bran couldn't help but be grateful for having a little help this year. Of course, there were drawbacks. "You're never Bran!" said the startled woman at the door. In the coat-room Bran rolled his eyes, dropping his latest load of coats and heading back out at a decent clip.

      "No, ma'am, I'm Jeremy," Jeremiah was saying as Bran rounded the corner. "Bran's about, though--"

      The woman he was speaking to had one be-ringed hand fluttering about her mouth in consternation. "Missus Margotine," Bran said.

      Landry Margotine looked from Jeremy to Bran and back, then burst out laughing. "Ethan's picked up another one, then? Good gracious, is he starting a collection?"

      "Much to my benefit, I'm sure," Jeremiah said. The sheer Ethan-ness of the words was enough to put a hitch in Bran's step, forcing him to shake it off before Landry engulfed him in a dry and powdery old-lady embrace. At least she wasn't pinching his cheeks any more--she let Bran go and considered Jeremiah for a moment before laughing again and grabbing him, as well. The pop of Jeremiah's eyes over her shoulder did a lot to restore Bran's good spirits. Jeremiah eased himself free as quickly as he could. "... may I take your coat?"

      "Oh, of course, thank you..."

      By eight-fifteen the party was a full-on riot, the old house jammed to the rafters with guests all braying and booming and howling without a care for their dignity. It embarrassed Bran just to watch them make fools of themselves with each other--how could they carry on so and not be embarrassed by it? For his part he'd found a place against one wall, self-consciously nursing a wine-glass full of water and watching the revelers while he waited for supper to start. The food was always good, if nothing else.

      Ethan sifted out of the roaring crowd, still laughing at something that someone else had said. By the time Bran realised that Ethan was heading his way, it was too late to dodge him. "Bran," Ethan said, putting his hand on Bran's shoulder. "Could you do me a favour and find Jeremy? He isn't anywhere about that I can find and I wouldn't like to start supper without him."

      Bran hadn't been doing much of anything but he bristled anyway, putting his glass down on the windowsill. "It's his own fault if he misses supper, Ethan!"

      "I know," said Ethan, his earlier laughter dwindling away to a tight and unhappy smile. "But it isn't like him, and I'm worried, and I've got enough to worry about as it is."

      "Awright, awright..." Bran pushed himself off the wall and tugged down the tails of his jacket. "Little brat's always got to be trouble."

      Ethan closed his eyes and opened them again. "Thank you, Bran." He patted Bran's shoulder and drifted away, pausing only to share a quick word with a little knot of free-traders.

      Bran huffed out a breath and made his way through the crowds towards the back hallway. Stupid Jeremiah had probably just got bored and wandered off to do something else, and now everyone was going to have to wait dinner on him just because he didn't know how to behave at a fancy party. Bran would have been all in favour of letting Jeremiah starve, but Ethan had a soft spot where Jeremiah was concerned.

      Just to be on the safe side Bran made a lazy loop around the first floor, making sure that Jeremiah wasn't stashed away in any of the public areas. When that failed to turn him up Bran checked the kitchen, dodging the hired waiters left and right. No Jeremiah. Bran sighed hugely. In his room, then.

      The amazing din was a little less so, up here away from the party. The odd bit of conversation carried clearly to Bran's ears, but for the most part it was just a dull roar--Bran thumped on the door to Jeremiah's suite. "Here! S'time for supper, come out of there! Ethan's cross enough with you as it is!"

      No answer. Bran scowled, then popped the door open. Jeremiah's rooms were dark and felt empty. Still, just to be safe Bran checked all the rooms, going so far as to check under Jeremiah's bed (although what Jeremiah would be doing under there Bran had no idea). Nothing. Bran frowned.

      Jeremiah wasn't in Bran's rooms--and a damned good thing at that--nor was he in Ethan's. The workshop was dark and silent, as was the monstrous solarium. By this time Bran was starting to run out of ideas. Unless Jeremiah was off in the guest cottage or some such, Bran had no idea where the idiot would be.

      Deep in thought Bran thumped back down the back stairs. He made another slow pass through the party, just in case Jeremiah had turned up--he hadn't--then slipped back into the back hallway. Was Jeremiah in the guest cottage? He knew how to get in, right enough, but Bran couldn't see why he would--if Jeremiah just wanted to get away from the party there were closer places to do it. But he'd already looked most everywhere, and he couldn't see why Jeremiah would be in any of the places he hadn't looked...

      Not expecting much to come of it Bran pushed on into the secondary back hallway. The suction cups had all been taken up for the holiday, at least, but this hallway led nowhere but to the storage closets and the laundry room, and Bran couldn't imagine why Jeremiah would be lurking in either of those places. Still, best to check them first before he went to the trouble of going out in the cold.

      He pushed open the door to the laundry room and knew immediately that he was not alone. The room was dark and silent, but some sixth sense made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up--someone was in here. Someone was hiding in here. "Here," Bran said, trying not to make of it a croak. "That you?"

      "Bran," Jeremiah said from somewhere, his voice thick and uncertain.

      Still unnerved Bran stepped into the room and let the door swing shut behind him, plunging them both into darkness. Something kept him from flicking on the lights, some fear of what he'd see--there was a tiny window set high in one wall, just large enough to let in the moonlight, and once Bran's eyes adjusted he found that he could see, more or less. He picked his way into the room, nerves prickling.

      Jeremiah was huddled between the monstrous washer and the equally monstrous dryer, pushed back against the wall with his arms crossed protectively over his chest. In his black dinner jacket he was almost invisible, only the pristine white of his shirt-front giving him away. The pinpoints of light that were his eyes flicked to Bran's, then away.

      "Ethan sent me to find you," Bran said, now thoroughly rattled. "Almost time for supper and he doesn't want to start without you--don't ask me why."

      "I can't," Jeremiah said, rubbing his upper arms like he was cold. His palms whispered over the fabric of his jacket.

      "What d'you mean, you can't? Course you can. You go out there, you sit down, and you eat--no one's going to bloody well care if you use the wrong fork."

      "I can't," Jeremiah said again. His eyes squeezed shut, the twin pinpricks of light blinking out. "Tell Ethan that I'm sorry, I'm not feeling well--"

      "Like hell!" Bran stepped forward and caught at Jeremiah's sleeve. "If I have to put up with this stupid party, so do you!"

      Jeremiah's head snapped up. He wrenched his arm free of Bran's grasp with a jerk and then fell back against the wall, staring down at the floor between his feet. "I can't go back out there!" He shivered. "That's all."

      "That's all? That's all? Decided on the spur of the moment that instead of eating supper you'll just keep the washing machine company all night, that's all!" Bran studied the unresponsive huddle of Jeremiah. "That's a bunch of shite," he concluded.

      "Bran..." It wasn't quite a despairing wail, but there weren't any better words for what it was.

      "Knew you couldn't hack it here," Bran said, sneering it as hard as he could. "Figures it'd take this t' break you--"

      "--it didn't!--"

      "Then what is it? Christ's sake! People are waiting supper on us! Out with it!"

      For a long moment Jeremiah was silent, arms crossed over his chest, fingers knotted tightly about the fabric of his sleeves. He didn't snuffle or anything, but his voice was oddly thick when he spoke again, making Bran's heart cringe. "It's--d'you know that fellow, big round fellow with the black hair, you can tell it's dyed, and he's got on the red plaid waistcoat and the little glasses that make his eyes look all funny?"

      "Aye? George something, innit. Don't know what he does, but he must do something odd to get invited to Ethan's do." Bran frowned. All unthinking he eased a little closer to Jeremiah. "What, did he say something t' you?"

      "No! No, but--"

      "But what? Christ's sake!"

      "He used to hire me, all right?" Jeremiah sucked in a breath that sounded like a sob. Unaware of Bran's stomach flipping over, Jeremiah snuffled and added, "He drives this nasty little blue car, like, and he comes down to the embankments once a week or so, picks up a boy--he's not the worst of them, right, but if he recognises me--"

      "What d'you mean, hire you?" Bran said. His own voice sounded thick and slow to his ears, and really it wasn't like he didn't know--

      The look Jeremiah gave him was half pity and half disbelief, the sparks of his eyes a bit damp. "Hire me," he repeated, his hand trailing down along the front of his trousers in a horrible suggestive way.

      "Yeah, awright, I know," said Bran hurriedly.

      "I'm out of that now," Jeremiah said, his eyes dropping again. "If he recognises me now it'll be awful and maybe he'll say something to Ethan and I couldn't stand it, so..." He flicked a hand at the laundry room. "I ran, like. Figured maybe he wouldn't see me." With another little strangled sound Jeremiah clamped a hand over his eyes and bared his teeth, swaying towards Bran as his head dipped and his shoulders came away from the wall.

      Bran barely heard him over the rising roar of his own blood in his ears. Without really thinking about it Bran scrubbed the back of his hand over his mouth. It was so dark, and Jeremiah so close with all his defences down--Bran rocked forward half a step, trapping Jeremiah in the little space between the washer and the dryer. Jeremiah didn't seem to notice. The tide of blood in Bran's ears rose to flood his mind, and he froze, his nerves all afire as he pictured how the next few minutes might could go if he just got up the nerve, how if he just leaned forward a bit they'd be there together in the little space between the machines, and how Jeremiah might just welcome it... Bran wheezed out a horrible sound and fell back again, shuddering. "Don't be daft," he said, his voice sounding queer to his own ears. "He's not going to recognise you."

      "He might--"

      "He won't," Bran insisted, looking Jeremiah up and down, really looking at him for the first time in a long time. The street rat was long gone, washed clean away. Jeremiah was taller, heavier, more muscular, and clean to boot. With an effort Bran called up his memories of the grimy and ragged urchin that he'd first met and set them next to the current Jeremiah--he couldn't even see the resemblance, save in the sharp chin and narrow face, and even those weren't the same any more. "You don't look a thing like you used to," Bran said, clearing his throat. "There's no way that he could look at you in that fancy suit and recognise the old you, awright?"

      "But--"

      "He won't even be looking. He wouldn't know to." Bran glanced at the door. "And... and you can tell Ethan, like, and Ethan'll make certain that he's not invited again, you know Ethan'd do that for you."

      Jeremiah didn't answer. He rubbed his arms instead.

      Bran sighed and took another step back. "Come on. He's not seated anywhere near the high table in any case, and Ethan won't let anybody eat until you show, and I'm bloody hungry even if you aren't."

      "S'pose," Jeremiah said. "Here... are you sure?"

      "Course! God, come on already."

      Jeremiah dropped his head. This time it looked more like agreement. "Awright," he said. "You go on. Tell Ethan I'll be out in a minute. I'll just get my head on straight, like."

      "Best do," said Bran, edging towards the door in something like relief. "I don't want to have to come looking for you again."

      The party had taken on an odd waiting edge by the time that Bran rejoined it, all the partygoers expecting the announcement of dinner at any time. People had put down their cocktail glasses, abandoned the hors d'oeuvres, broken out of their little conversational groups--eddies in the crowd kept breaking hopefully against the entrance to the dining room, drawn by the good smells from the kitchen. Heads kept turning, watching for any sign that dinner was about to be announced. Bran sidled through the expectant crowd, dodging thoughtful glances, until he found Ethan. "Ethan," he said, catching at Ethan's sleeve, "he'll be out in a tick."

      "Thank you, Bran." Ethan sighed out a long breath, then dug up a smile from somewhere and moved towards the head table. A moment later the clear ringing of a champagne glass being struck with a fork cut across the desultory din--"Ladies and gentlemen," Ethan called, "if you'd just step this way!"

      The anticipatory hush broke upon the instant. The din redoubled. Scowling a little Bran pressed himself against the wall, easing past the party-goers until he too reached the head table and his customary seat at Ethan's right. He dropped into his chair with relief and sat back, staring up at the ceiling. It was bright and cheery in here, the whole place flooded with the Christmas-y smells of roasting goose and pine, but most of Bran's mind was still stuck in that low and dark little room with its odour of dryer sheets and floating lint, recalling a pair of eyes like two sparks in the dimness--he'd rather known that Jeremiah used to be... like that, but he he hadn't really known, had he? Now, though, the maddening idea that once upon a time Jeremiah would have done anything for money had him tightly in its grip--give him a tenner and he'd know just what to do for it, without any fumbling about--the thought of what Jeremiah might know how to do was enough to bring the blood flaming to Bran's cheeks.

      All around him people found their places and sat down, shuffling, laughing, joking with one another. Bran came back to himself with a jerk and looked about--his eyes flicked across George's magnified ones and Bran realised, with a low, sick jolt, that George had been looking in this direction, maybe looking at him. He'd already looked away before Bran realised what he'd just seen. Suddenly Bran had no appetite for anything. How could Jeremiah--with that--the foul mental images that resulted made Bran sick to his stomach and hard inside his trousers all at once. He slumped down in his chair and tried desperately to think of something, anything else.

      A flicker of movement beside him caught his eyes. Jeremiah slid into his seat on the other side of Ethan, murmuring some soft apology. He glanced at Bran, his expression all bravado and nerves, then looked away.

      Hating himself, hating Jeremiah, hating everything, Bran clasped his hands on the table and waited for Ethan to propose the toast.

      The immediacy of his memories had largely faded by the time dinner was over, at least. Jeremiah had regained something of his equilibrium, although he kept his eyes resolutely away from the far table where George had been seated. Bran, however, had been seated closer to the centre of the room, where he could see most everyone and most everyone could see him; he'd caught George's eyes flicking in their direction on several occasions, not with anything like recognition, just looking at the youngest boys here--augh! How he'd made it through dinner and managed to keep up with the conversation he'd never know.

      When dinner broke up and the party shifted, Bran caught Ethan's sleeve. "Ethan," he whispered, trying not to whine. "Ethan, that George fellow, with the glasses--can't you make him go?"

      The look that Ethan turned on him was more bemused than confused, but all the same he took Bran aside into a corner. "What's wrong?"

      "I don't want--" Bran broke off there and looked around, certain that all eyes were on them and startled to find that they weren't. "I can't say! Just... can't you make him go?"

      Ethan looked at him for a long, long moment. "It's important?" he finally said.

      "Honest," Bran said, awash in relief. "I'll tell you about it later."

      "I'll see that it's done," said Ethan. His face set. "I trust you have a good reason."

      Bran nodded, caught himself, nodded again. "Aye," he said, his voice gone rusty. "Think so."

      With a touch on Bran's shoulder Ethan moved off. Bran watched him go. He'd feel better--he looked around just as Jeremiah slipped off through the door into the back hallway. Bran snorted and followed. "Here!"

      Jeremiah jerked like Bran had slipped up behind and punched him in the back of the head. He ducked, his shoulders snapping straight, and when he finally turned around it was hesitant and defensive, like Bran still might decide to punch him. "What?"

      Bran shuffled out of the way of the hustling waiters. "Ethan's going to make George go."

      "What?" Jeremiah said again, as if he hadn't heard, but even as Bran opened his mouth to say it again Jeremiah's face slammed shut like a door. "You told him?"

      "I told him to make George go!" Bran said, rolling his eyes. "That's all! Fuck's sake!"

      "Just like that?"

      "Just like that!" Bran scrubbed a hand over his face. "Awright, so I'll have to explain at some point, but it's Ethan, innit."

      Jeremiah hunched his shoulders. "All right," he said. "I... that's... well, ta for the help."

      "Wasn't for you anyway," Bran said tartly. "He kept looking at me, like. Wouldn't have noticed but after you said..."

      Jeremiah nodded. "Be good to have him gone," he said, all in a breath. "It'll just be dull, then."

      "So dull," Bran agreed. "No one to bloody well talk to."

      "No." Jeremiah made an unhappy laughing sound. "No one, I suppose."

      Whatever Ethan did, it worked a treat. George left ten minutes later, looking mildly frightened, slipping out the back door in the company of half a dozen hired waiters popping out for a smoke after dinner; Bran felt tons better afterward and Jeremiah stood up straight for the first time all evening.

      An hour later, when Bran was leaning against the wall watching the dancers and scheming to snitch an extra glass of champagne--who would notice? Ethan would, that's who--things were almost back to normal. All right, so Jeremiah was over in one corner of the ballroom managing to look both amused and uncomfortable while a lightly-sozzled Landry Margotine insisted on teaching him to dance, but everything else was the same as ever: dull, dull, dull. Pretty, though. And frankly Bran thought that Landry deserved to get her feet stepped on a few times.

      A few minutes later Jeremiah and Landry went spinning gingerly by and Bran watched them go, a little impressed despite himself.

      By the time Bran reeled up to his bedroom it was somewhere beyond late and into early. Champagne buzzed in his mind like a cloud of flies. Underneath the last of his energy his exhaustion was a physical thing, an ache around his heart. Bran stripped out of the bits of his suit and left them strewn across the carpet in his wake, his shirt studs collecting in one hand like coins; he poured them into their little box and abandoned them there, scratching at his shoulder, relieved beyond all measure to be down to his pants and out of his fancy things.

      He could hear thumping from the next room over as Jeremiah settled himself in. Little fool was probably putting his suit in the hamper, not knowing any better, but Bran didn't care a bit, not just now. He just stood there and listened to the little sounds, tracking Jeremiah from one end of the room to the other.

      The water in Jeremiah's bathroom went on, then off. The toilet flushed. Unthinking Bran drifted across the room, still listening. Jeremiah thumped back across his room and threw himself into the bed hard enough to make the springs whine, groaning in relief--the low hum of sound carried clearly to Bran where he stood. The bed whined and squeaked some more as Jeremiah settled in, and Bran put his hand on the wall and closed his eyes.

      The drink had papered over his memories of earlier and splintered them into vague and fractured things. Still, closing his eyes summoned them up from the depths, and Bran thought disjointedly of the sparks of Jeremiah's eyes rising and falling in the dark, and of a half-dressed Jeremiah sheepish at his door, and of the little hole in Jeremiah's fleece trousers late last night when there'd been no one about to see but him--

      He'd never been much for prayer, Bran hadn't, not when mass once a week was almost more God than he could stand, but tonight he flung himself away from the wall and thumped onto his knees by the side of the bed. His hands he knotted into a clumsy, shaking, white-knuckled double fist on the bed in front of him. It wasn't prayer that burst from him, not exactly. Bran flung his mind outwards, into the void, chanting a strangled "No, no, no" under his breath to banish the dark and somehow glutinous thoughts that twined obscenely at the edges of his consciousness. They proved hard to force away but Bran squeezed his eyes shut and kept trying, until pure physical exhaustion drained him of all but the idea of his exhaustion. He dropped to one hip with a great gasping outrush of breath.

      All was silent from next door as Bran climbed wearily into his own bed. His mind simmered blankly along, aware of little besides the cool sheets and the sheer relief of relaxing at last. Turning his back on the wall that he shared with Jeremiah Bran curled up into a little ball on the bed and shut his eyes, hoping that he'd fall asleep before he could start thinking again--but he didn't, and when he eventually gave in and thrust his hand into his pants it was more out of anger than anything else, his quick and joyless orgasm a sullen 'so there' to God.

7.

      Addled by the uncommonly late night and the four (or five) flutes of champagne that he'd managed to nick while Ethan's attention was elsewhere, on Boxing Day morning Bran managed to sleep through all of the noise involved in removing the decorations. By the time he woke, head all tender, every last bit of the pine was gone and the last few hired tables were being moved out one by one, which was harder to sleep through.

      Bran dragged himself into the bath and drank several glasses of tepid water before braving the shower. At some point while the water was running the last of the tables was loaded up and carted away, and Bran stepped out of the shower into a quiet house.

      The only question was how many guests had turned into overnight guests. There were always one or two, and sometimes they hung about for a few days, or in the case of one fellow whom the Yard had most earnestly sought for inquiry a few years ago, upwards of two weeks. Fortunately Ethan usually moved the longer-term guests out to the guest cottage, at which point they became none of Bran's business and really only a slight imposition upon his life.

      The pong of pine still hung about the place when Bran slipped out into the upstairs hall. There were a load of fallen needles strewn about, half-dug into the carpet, but the cleaning service would come in tomorrow and scrub away all the remaining traces of the party, and Bran could live with it until then. Ethan's door was closed, as was Jeremiah's. Bran picked his way downstairs as quietly as he could, keeping an ear open for the inevitable sound of voices. Two steps from the swinging kitchen door and he picked them up, which meant that they were being fairly quiet, which likely meant only one or two guests this year. Best that way.

      Ethan looked up as Bran pushed on in. The kitchen itself was a controlled wreck, with everything put away but all the surfaces in need of a good scrubbing; Ethan, on the other hand, looked irritatingly fresh, as though he'd had an early night and a peaceful sleep. "Good morning, Bran," Ethan said. "You remember Claude, don't you?"

      "Aye, I remember," said Bran, picking his way to the fridge. It'd be jammed with last night's rich leftovers, which was almost, in Bran's opinion, a good enough reason to have the party in the first place. "Pleasure t' see you again, I'm sure."

      Claude (a tubby little man with sleek black hair, a ridiculous little vandyke beard, and the weight of the world's hangovers on his face) raised a weary hand in Bran's direction. "Forgive me," he said hoarsely. "I'm afraid I'll be no good until tomorrow."

      "But at least you'll be good tomorrow," Bran said. "Some people never will, aye?"

      "True, true." Claude buried his baggy-eyed face in one of the large cups and shut his eyes.

      "Claude's agreed to stay on for a while," Ethan said, making Bran freeze in automatic indignation in front of the fridge. Ethan was either unaware or pretending very hard to be. "He'll be seeing to Jeremy's polishing while I see to other things. Oh, and helping with the cooking. Frankly, I could use the help."

      After a moment Bran got himself moving again, digging out a container of last night's lobster spread and a handful of dinner rolls. "Staying in the guest cottage, then?"

      "Oh, yes."

      Bran relaxed a little. A guest out in the cottage was almost like not having a guest at all, and Claude wasn't that bad of a fellow, all told. "So where's our little tyke, then? Still sleeping it off?"

      "Jeremy? He was about earlier." Ethan glanced about, even though it was clear that Jeremiah wasn't in the kitchen. "I don't know where he's got to."

      "Aye, well, whatever." A few moments' fuss with a knife produced a handful of little lobster-spread sandwiches, which Bran tucked into while standing at the counter. Ethan gave him a long look, but as was traditional, he didn't mention it.

      Bran was almost done eating when Jeremiah pushed open the kitchen door and stuck his head warily in. Back in his t-shirt and fleece trousers Jeremiah looked scruffy and sweaty and uninteresting in the morning light. Easy to ignore. Bran did just that, in relief. "Jeremy," Ethan said. "Come in--I'd like you to meet Claude. Claude will be staying with us for a while."

      "Er. Pleased to meet you," Jeremiah said, stepping into the kitchen just far enough to let the door swing to behind him. He sounded a little dubious, which was just about music to Bran's ears.

      Claude essayed a weak smile that didn't stick around long. "Likewise, I'm sure," he croaked.

      Bran snorted and popped the last of his terrible rich breakfast into his mouth. "You met him last night, remember?"

      Jeremiah's eyes flicked to Bran, then away. "I expect that I did," he said carefully, rocking out onto the outsides of his feet, like he did. "But I met such a load of people last night--and it was all such a fuss--"

      "In any case the sentiment was well-meant, I'm sure," Ethan said. "In any case, Claude will be helping you with matters of etiquette and such. He'll be much better at it than I would, I'm certain, and in any case I'll need to spend much of the next year focussing on Bran's progress--"

      Startled, Bran dropped the plate into the sink with a ringing sound. "Here, what?"

      Ethan turned about and hooked an arm over the back of the chair. "Well, you'll be seventeen soon, won't you?" he asked, his voice mild.

      "Aye?" Suspicious now. "What about it?"

      "So it's about time that you started putting all of this training to some use, before you become fully legally responsible for yourself," Ethan concluded. "By the end of next year I'll expect you to have carried off at least one real job."

      Bran's eyes went wide. His heart paused in his chest, then swelled with something that was neither fear nor joy, but some complicated mingling of the two. "Really?" he managed after a moment.

      "Oh, yes. Can't coddle you forever, can I?"

      Jeremiah's attention flicked back and forth, his mouth falling open. "Cor," he finally said, scrubbing a hand over his lips. "That's brilliant, that is. Can I help?"

      "No you bloody well can't!" Bran said, at the same moment as Ethan said, "I don't believe so, Jeremy. Not until your skills are a bit sharper."

      Jeremiah wilted. "Aw."

      "Although if Bran thinks of something for you to do that doesn't put you at too much risk, I don't see why not," Ethan said. "He'll be the one planning the job, after all, not me."

      "Will I get to do this too, then? When I'm older?"

      "Absolutely!" Ethan sounded a bit taken aback. "I'm certainly not training you for my health."

      Jeremiah considered this, then perked up a tad. "That's all right, then."

      "In the meantime, I expect you to listen to Claude," Ethan said. "I'll still be handling your physical education, of course, but Claude will help you to develop the less tangible skills that you'll need."

      Claude passed a hand over his eyes. "Starting tomorrow."

      "Tomorrow," Ethan agreed.

      His mind afire Bran skirted the kitchen island and pushed on into the hall, shouldering Jeremiah aside without thinking about it overmuch. A job--what sort of job, he wondered. Not a museum, couldn't be a museum, not for his first. A jeweller's, then, or a private residence? Bran shivered a bit, his fingers closing on the stairway railing.

      Behind him the kitchen door swept open and swung shut again as Jeremiah followed him out. "Here," Jeremiah said softly, trotting the few steps over and lurching to a halt a bit too close for Bran's comfort. "Who's this Claude fellow? D'you know him?"

      Bran backed up a step, hesitating on the second stair riser. "About as well as you," he said. "He only comes by at Christmas, like."

      "What's he do, then?"

      Bran shrugged. "Pretends to be French, that's most of what I recall. I think he's got some sort of dodgy art-appraisal scheme." He frowned. "Forgery, maybe?"

      "He's all right, though?" Jeremiah asked, glancing back over his shoulder at the swinging door that led into the kitchen.

      "Think so? Never felt anything wrong off him, any rate."

      Jeremiah didn't respond, just frowned at the kitchen, his eyes narrowed. Bran was about to give up and thump on upstairs when Jeremiah finally said, "Don't know that I like it, that's all. Strangers all in our business."

      "Don't be such a baby," Bran retorted, his own misgivings forgotten on the instant. "Ethan's got him staying in the guest cottage anyway--not like he'll be underfoot."

      "Still," Jeremiah insisted, but he let it drop. "So what sort of job is it you'll be doing?"

      "Don't know yet, do I?" said Bran, and he thumped on up the stairs. Halfway along, a minute too late, he realised that he'd let the perfect retort go by--well, now you know how I felt when you popped up, don't you!--but when he looked back over his shoulder, Jeremiah was gone.

      Bran was sitting on his bed and flipping blindly through his useless French text when Ethan rapped perfunctorily on his door and let himself in. "French, is it?" Ethan said, leaning in the doorway.

      "IGCSE in a month or so," Bran agreed. "Not like I don't speak it well enough already."

      "True." Ethan looked away.

      Bran fiddled with the book for another second, waiting. Ethan didn't seem inclined to go on, but Bran knew he wouldn't be standing there unless he had something else in mind, so after a bit Bran sighed and gave in. "What?"

      "I'm hoping that you don't have a problem with my asking Claude to stay on for a bit," Ethan said. His little smile flickered on and off.

      Bran blinked. "No? People are always staying on after Christmas, aren't they, and Claude's not as bad as some."

      "Yes, well." Ethan ran a hand down his face. "It's only that I asked him to stay on before I realised that you might take it as badly as you took my invitation to Jeremy. If that seemed to be the case, I'd intended to apologise."

      Bran fumbled his book and nearly dropped it. "That's different," he said, once he'd recovered.

      "Oh," said Ethan, nodding. "Different. I see."

      "Quit making fun," Bran said, bristling. "It is. You didn't ask Claude to come live right up in the main house for ever and ever and he won't be up in my face all the time or always clinging to you and... and people always stay on after Christmas! It's what happens!"

      "All right. I suppose you've made your point."

      "Too right," Bran muttered, looking down at his book. Some of the shiny plastic was starting to peel off its cover and he picked at it. "So... what about this job, then?"

      "Ah, well, there I suppose I also owe you an apology," said Ethan. "I didn't quite intend to spring it on you in front of everyone. I suppose I spoke before I thought."

      Bran hunched his shoulders, uncomfortable. "S'all right," he said. "What kind of job is it?"

      "Well, that's up to you, now."

      "What? Serious? All of it?"

      Ethan shrugged. "Well, I wouldn't recommend aiming for a museum on your first outing, but if that's what you want to do..."

      "But..." Bran floundered for a moment, then rallied. "I don't have any guidelines?"

      Ethan quirked an eyebrow. "Don't get caught at it?"

      "Besides that!"

      "Part of the job is finding it and planning it," said Ethan, gently enough. "I'm more than happy to answer specific questions or critique your plans, but the idea is to help you become self-sufficient, not just to give you assignments."

      "Well... well... what if I need help? Like, help to do the job?"

      Ethan shrugged. "Hire people?" He kept up the act for another moment, then dropped it. "I'll be giving you a small budget, as if you'd earned money from prior jobs. You'll be able to hire on a certain amount of help."

      "I..." Bran hesitated, turning his book over in his hands. "I haven't got the slightest idea what to do."

      "No? Well, think on it," said Ethan. He straightened up. "You've plenty of time to plan."

      "S'pose." Bran fidgeted for a moment. "Here, Ethan?"

      Ethan paused with his hand on the knob. "Yes?"

      "You... you never really wanted me about, did you?" Bran hunched his shoulders, already aghast at himself, unable to believe that he'd actually said it. Ethan--well, Bran could count on one hand the number of times he'd seen Ethan openly astonished, and now he had another instance to add to his collection. Bran hurried on before Ethan could completely misunderstand. "I don't mean you hate me, it's just... you never planned to have me about, did you? When I was small?"

      Ethan opened and closed his mouth for a moment longer, lost for words, then visibly shook it off. Bran cringed as Ethan came back into the bedroom--oh God but this was exactly the sort of scene he hated, he shouldn't have said anything--but shuffled his feet aside so that Ethan could perch on the side of his bed. "It isn't like that," Ethan said. "It never was."

      Bran looked down at his knotted fingers and made a little sound.

      "I'd already retired when you were born," Ethan went on, now determined to have his say. "Your parents asked me to look after you if ever they couldn't do so, and I said yes."

      "I know," Bran muttered.

      "In our line of work, we always knew that something could very well happen to us at any moment." Ethan's voice was uncommonly heavy; his eyes were on the far wall. "I don't think we actually... expected it to, no, but we always made plans in any case, to cover any eventuality. What's important here--what I want you to remember--is that I said yes, Bran. I thought about it and I said yes."

      If Bran could actually curl up into a ball without Ethan noticing, he would have. As it were he just hunched over and stared at his fingers, waiting for this horrifying talk to be over, hating himself for having got it started. "I know," he said again, his voice somewhere between a groan and a squeak.

      "I suppose I haven't always done the best job of raising you," Ethan said. His hand lifted like he meant to pat Bran's leg, but he reconsidered and let it drop again. "But I've always done my best, and I'm sorry if I've hurt you."

      "No!" Bran squawked. "It isn't that--it isn't that at all!"

      "What is it, then?"

      Bran floundered. "It's just... I don't know. It was just you, like, and then it was you and me, and I was so small and all... I just thought that it must have been a shock or something, that's all!"

      "That it was," Ethan said. "I'm sorry that what happened... happened, but I've never regretted taking you in after."

      "You'd say that anyway," Bran said helplessly. "I mean, you wouldn't cop to it, would you?"

      Ethan's little smile was sad. "No, probably not." He sighed. "I'm not lying, though. For what that's worth." Abruptly he stood up again, moving to the window to give Bran at least some vague semblance of privacy for his embarrassment. "After all, if I didn't love you, I wouldn't have made Jeremiah the offer I did, would I?"

      "What?"

      "Well. I mean. If I wasn't comfortable with having one boy about the place, I certainly wouldn't have acquired another one." Ethan tapped his fingers on the sill in an idle pattern. "And I thought... well, I wanted you to have company. I worry sometimes--you haven't any real friends, you don't go to school with the other boys, it's all work for you--I thought maybe having another lad around might be good for you somehow." Bran was strangling on his shock, so Ethan kept right on. "That didn't turn out how I'd hoped, I'm afraid, although I do appreciate your being patient with him."

      "Thought you wanted him about to mould into your image," Bran said. "Like you can't really with me."

      "That too," Ethan said, with a shrug. "I can have multiple reasons for it, can't I?"

      "... I'll think on the job," Bran said desperately. "I'll come up with something, like."

      For a moment Ethan hesitated in front of the window. Bran watched him with something like dread, afraid that Ethan was going to insist on being embarrassing again, but in the end Ethan only inclined his head. "Feel free to ask me if you have any questions." He headed for the door; Bran made himself be entirely still and quiet until Ethan was gone, just to avoid prompting another round of awful.

      Once the door closed behind Ethan Bran folded into a ball, hands knotted together behind his head, face hidden between his knees. The embarrassment passed, eventually, and Bran was able to pick up his French textbook and stare at it--but his mind was elsewhere, poking gingerly at the idea of his first real job.

      The next morning when Bran came downstairs Claude was rattling about in the kitchen, humming under his breath and looking none the worse for wear. The smell of whatever it was was astonishing, rich and buttery. Ethan was already at table, cup of tea in both hands, communing with his morning cuppa with both eyes shut, as he liked to do; Jeremiah hung over the counter by the stove, watching Claude's hands with fascination. Bran shoved past and dropped into his chair at the table, reaching for the teapot.

      "--that's why you have to keep it moving," Claude said, shaking a pan about over one of the stove burners. "If you leave it, it'll stick."

      "Huh." Jeremiah craned over to look into the pan, then fell back, catching himself against the counter's edge. "Smells nice."

      Claude twitched his head at the kitchen table. "Go on and sit," he said. "I'll bring it over when it's ready."

      Jeremiah let go of the counter and more or less fell straight back into his chair, too fast even for Bran to consider kicking it out from under him. Claude stuck the pan into one of the ovens with a bang that made Ethan wince a bit--Ethan preferred quiet in the mornings, so as to wake up at his leisure.

      Bran dumped more sugar into his tea. Claude banged around with ever more authority until finally he spun up in front of the table and deposited plates of some kind of egg casserole in front of first Ethan and then Bran and Jeremiah. A basket full of toasted bread dropped into the middle of the table and Claude was gone again, fussing over something else.

      Filching a piece of toast from the basket, Bran inspected the eggy thing. It was a fat square of some kind, with onions and bacon in--Bran sliced off a corner and tried it, then ate two helpings. He would have gone for three, but the casserole--Claude called it a 'frittata'--was gone by then, a lot of it into Jeremiah, who insisted to this day on eating like he was still starving to death.

      Once they were done and Jeremiah had cleared the plates away, Ethan sat back in his chair and sighed out a long breath. "God, but I was tired of my own cooking," he said, with a tired little smile. "Thank you, Claude."

      Claude waved that away. "Pff, it was little enough."

      "At any rate." Ethan folded his hands about his cup. "Before we break for training, there are a few things I'd like to go over with you all."

      After lunch was done and the dishes seen to, Jeremiah and Claude went off together, who knew where. Ethan settled back in his chair at the breakfast table. "If you don't mind, Bran, I'd like to hear your thoughts on this upcoming job."

      "Aye. Well." Bran warily settled back into his own chair. "Haven't had but a day or so to think--"

      Ethan waved that away. "Of course. I'm just curious to hear what you've come up with so far."

      "Well... museums are right out," Bran said. "Too much security for a first effort, unless they're so piddly that they haven't anything worth taking." He knotted his hands together and cracked his knuckles, then laced his fingers together in another way. "S'pose a private home would be the easiest to crack, but..." He trailed off there.

      "But?" Ethan prompted after a moment.

      "It'd be hard to predict, like. Hard to control. People come home at odd hours and such, or don't go to work, or what have you."

      Ethan nodded, smiling ever so faintly.

      Emboldened, Bran sat forward. "So... it'll have to be a shop, like. Or an importer. But you said that shops were easier than wholesalers because they had to cater to customers..."

      "I did, didn't I?"

      "So... a jewellery shop." Bran frowned. "Er. How much should I be aiming to lift?"

      Ethan thought about it for a moment, rubbing one finger over his lower lip. "I don't think let's worry about that for now," he finally said. "What's most important is that you get in, take something, and get out safely."

      "All right," said Bran, relieved. "And... well, the shop can't be too close by because that would be suspicious, but it can't be too far because I'll need to look about. An hour away on the train, I'd thought. Two, possibly."

      "Ah. Good thinking."

      Bran scowled down at his interlocked fingers, pleased but struggling through the next bit. "Can't be too small or it won't have anything worth taking, but it can't be too big or it'll have nastier alarm systems. An older shop, then, and none of these branch shops."

      Ethan nodded. "Well-reasoned, I'm thinking. What else?"

      "Well... that's all I've got," Bran said. "Have to do some looking around next, find some place likely."

      "Fair enough. For the time being, shall we meet to discuss things after lunch?"

      Bran shrugged. "Good as anything else."

      Ethan inclined his head. "Let me know if you'll be needing train fare."

      "Oh! That's right. You said I had a budget...?"

      Ethan's smile was a tiny thing, there and gone in a flash. "I'll get it to you tomorrow."

      "Tomorrow. Right. I'll just..." Bran fumbled his chair back and stood up. "I'll go and look some things up."

      "Let me know if you have any questions," Ethan called after him, and then the kitchen door swung to behind Bran.

      By the time dinner rolled around Bran was more confused than ever. The yellow pages had turned up a ridiculous wealth of possibilities--he'd had to borrow a map from Ethan and start marking the various locations on it. It'd take him months to look at all of them.

      At least dinner took his mind off things. Whatever Claude did for a living, he was a pretty good cook to boot. Ethan's cooking was serviceable, edible; Claude's was actually good. An afternoon off with Claude had apparently done away with Jeremiah's reservations over Claude--he nattered on about this and that with barely a pause to eat. Bran took advantage of the prattling to eat in silence, thinking about his list of shops and wondering how on earth he was going to whittle it down.

      "Just... start," Ethan said, brushing his fingers over Bran's well-marked map. "Pick a likely location and go visit, look about. Try not to let them notice your interest."

      They were sitting in the breakfast nook again, another day's lunch over with. Jeremiah had been packed off with Claude, the same as he had been every day that week so far. "How do I pick?" Bran wailed, his voice cracking and making him wince. "There's too many, Ethan!"

      Ethan held out a hand. "No, no, stop and think," he said, quietly. "You don't have to find the absolute best target. You only need to find one that looks suitable."

      "Well, yes, but... it'll take months!"

      "Yes?" Ethan quirked an eyebrow. "I might remind you that you have months, Bran. In fact, I'd be disappointed if you didn't use them wisely. There's no hurry. Hurry is the enemy. Take a deep breath, and take your time."

      "But..."

      Ethan stifled a sigh. "Look. Just... go down to London, it's not but an hour away." He touched a circle on the map with a number of pencil ticks on it. "I can guarantee you that you'll come away with a list of at least four shops that would serve your purpose admirably."

      "Well, aye, but..."

      "But nothing. Stop panicking and just do it." Abruptly Ethan sat back in his chair, looking at Bran, his expression unreadable. "You sit your French IGCSE in three weeks or so, don't you?"

      "Aye?"

      Ethan nodded. "Then do nothing until it's done. Let the idea percolate. Just... remember not to call any of the shops from the house, please."

      "I'm not bloody stupid," Bran flared.

      "No." Ethan ran a hand down his face. "I know that you aren't."

      It was odd, how quiet the next few weeks were. They were the quietest that Bran had known since Jeremiah had come along, and in some ways the quietest he'd ever known.

      By the time Bran managed to drag himself out of bed and into the shower, breakfast was almost done, and he'd have to hurry down if he wanted any. Barely a word got exchanged over breakfast: Bran was still half-asleep, Ethan preferred to mull over his plans for the day in peace, Claude was so busy with the cooking that he barely had a moment to say anything, and Jeremiah (always smelling of adolescent sweat, it was foul) stuffed food into his mouth too quickly for words to escape.

      After breakfast they'd leave Claude fussing about in the kitchen and move to the gymnasium--Bran was left to his own devices while Ethan worked with Jeremiah on this or that. It gave Bran a creeping feeling, really. It was as if Ethan considered him done, or as if there were nothing more to teach him. Now it was only a question of keeping himself in top shape, which he could do with two hours of work in the morning and another hour or so in the evening. Dutifully Bran put in his two hours and then left Ethan and Jeremiah with their heads together over the pommel horse, going up to his room to study and fret until lunchtime.

      Once lunch was over and the dishes were done Claude and Jeremiah went off together--who knew where--who cared--and it was Bran's turn to have Ethan's attention. After so many months of being ignored, the new schedule was a balm on Bran's thirsty soul. They spent hours at the kitchen table or upstairs in the workshop, sometimes talking about Bran's upcoming job, sometimes just talking, and for all that Bran was desperate not to seem impressed, it was hard not to be. At some point he'd moved from a child to an adult in Ethan's eyes, without noticing, and suddenly Ethan seemed content to share stories that Bran had never heard before. Sometimes Ethan laughed. It was Bran's own private opinion that he learned more about what it meant to be a thief during those three weeks than he'd learned in all the years to date.

      Tea was Ethan's province, as it was too old-fashioned for Claude. And since Jeremiah was off with Claude, well, it was just Ethan and Bran for tea, along with the occasional guest. Ethan chivvied his friends into long, rambling conversations about their glory days--"How come you never told me any of this before?" Bran asked once, when it was just the two of them.

      "I wasn't certain that you were ready to hear it," Ethan said, fiddling with the handle on his cup. "And I suppose that part of it was selfish: I wanted to tell the stories as they came, without having to censor myself because some story or another was too racy for you. I think you're old enough for this now, though, don't you?"

      "Oh, aye," Bran said, aping a dismissive tone that he wasn't at all feeling. "I can handle it, like."

      The corners of Ethan's eyes wrinkled slightly as he controlled his little smile. "Good to hear it."

      They cleared the tea things away eventually (sometimes not until five or six, even) and moved back into the gymnasium for an hour or so of sparring, which wasn't so much about keeping in shape as it was about keeping in practise. At some point during the sparring Jeremiah would slip back in and join them, which Bran wasn't entirely unhappy about, as it meant that Claude had gone off to the kitchen to start dinner. And dinner was always amazing--Claude might only have been a hobbyist when it came to cooking, but he was terrific at it, probably better at it than whatever it was he actually did for a living. Bran still wasn't sure what that was. He meant to ask and then forgot again.

      After dinner Ethan repaired to his workshop and left everyone up to their own devices. Usually this would have meant that Jeremiah was constantly underfoot, looking to Bran to entertain him, but he seemed to have finally got the message that he wasn't welcome. Bran didn't know what Jeremiah did to entertain himself after dinner, nor did he care. Sometimes he heard the squeak of Jeremiah's trainers on the roof, though, and then he'd roll his eyes and turn up his music.

      "Ta for the ride," Bran told Liam, then shut the car door and loped up the front steps. Behind him Liam put the car back into gear and pulled away; Bran fumbled his house key out of his front pocket and let himself in.

      The grand old house smelled of furniture polish and always, ever so faintly, of cooking and dust. Out here in the front it was quiet. Bran had to nearly hold his breath to hear the faint thumps and voices coming from the gymnasium, and he wouldn't hear anything from the kitchen from this far away unless it was on fire.

      Bran picked his way through the front rooms to the back hallway and considered. To his right there was the gymnasium and the thumping sounds; to the left, the kitchen, and what smelled like something baking with cinnamon in. Bran made up his mind on the instant and banged on into the kitchen.

      "Hallo, Bran," said Claude, most of his attention on the tray of buns on the counter. He was wielding a small pastry bag with verve and dedication--he'd barely glanced up when Bran came in. "How did it go, then?"

      "The test? Aaw, it was a doddle." Bran drifted closer, much of his attention riveted on the buns. They were glossy and sticky with cinnamon, and Claude was dotting them with something that looked like it was all sugar and cream. Maybe if Bran played his cards right--"It's only French, innit," he said. "Here, those look good."

      Claude smiled a little. "I suppose Ethan's taught you all the French you'll ever need," he said. "They're for tea. I don't think Ethan approves of all the sweets, but it certainly can't hurt on occasion."

      "Don't suppose I could filch one?"

      Claude started to respond, then hesitated, then laughed. "Well, I suspect that you could steal one, if you put your mind to it--but they still need to cool for a bit, so, no."

      "Aaaw." Still, Bran couldn't argue with that too much, so he flipped Claude a little wave and headed back out.

      Ethan and Jeremiah were in a huddle by the pommel horse when Bran banged in. Jeremiah was half-kneeling on top of the horse, his arms straight, his elbows locked, his forearms quivering a bit as he kept himself braced up; whatever Ethan was on about, he had most of Jeremiah's attention. Bran kicked off his street shoes and joined them on the mats.

      "Bran," Ethan said, with a quick smile. "How was the test, then?"

      Bran shrugged. "French?"

      It startled a little laugh out of Ethan. "I meant besides that."

      "Easy enough. One of the teachers said I had a fair accent." Bran scratched the back of his neck. "I don't think it's all that, really--"

      One of Jeremiah's arms snapped out from under him and dropped him back to his knees with a thud. "Aow," he said, flapping his arms around to work out the stiffness. "Don't think I'll ever get the hang of French, me."

      "No, probably not," Bran said, with some satisfaction. "You're bloody terrible at languages. I've seen. Can't even speak English properly."

      "I'm better," Jeremiah said defensively. "I've learned loads!"

      "Oh yes. 'Loads'. Brilliant."

      "Try again, Jeremy," said Ethan. Jeremiah dropped the subject (although he gave Bran such a scowl) and raised himself back up, bracing his arms against his weight.

      Bran rolled his eyes and left, picking up his shoes on the way out. "Going to change," he called back over his shoulder.

      By the time he'd gotten out of his street clothes (with some relief) and put on his workout togs, Bran was anxious for this day to get back to normal. He'd barely had time to grab a bite of breakfast this morning before Liam was beeping from the drive--he hadn't had a moment to exercise or anything, and it had left him feeling all logy. A quick workout before tea, that was the ticket, and if he worked hard enough then no one would begrudge him two of those cinnamon buns. Bran nodded to himself and propped a foot on the bed to tie his shoe.

      Someone knocked on his door, a quick, peremptory double rap. "Come in," Bran called, even as Ethan pushed the door open and stuck his head in. It made Bran snort a little. "So what've you left him doing, then?"

      "Oh, pull-ups," Ethan said airily. "I'm sure he can handle those on his own."

      "Aye. Maybe." Bran dropped his foot and propped up the other. "What d'you need?"

      Ethan leaned in the doorway, crossing his arms over his chest. "I'd meant to ask if you planned to go down to London this weekend."

      "Meant to? I hadn't really thought so much about it."

      "Well, there's no hurry, but I expect you'll want to narrow down your choices as soon as possible."

      Bran shrugged, a little uncomfortable for no reason that he could explain. "This weekend or next, then. See how the weather holds."

      "Oh?" The sheer neutrality of the syllable made Bran pause and assemble his blast shields. Ethan hadn't moved, hadn't so much as batted an eye, but there was something assessing in his gaze that hadn't been there a moment ago. "What sort of weather are you hoping for, then?"

      Bran hesitated. "Not too nice," he finally said, feeling his way through. "Not too awful, either. If it's nice then everybody will be out and about--don't care for that idea--but if it's nasty then I'll suffer and people will wonder why I'm out in it."

      "So..." Ethan made a little encouraging gesture.

      "Bit of rain, like? Not too much."

      "And the temperature?"

      "... colder?" Bran guessed. "An excuse to bundle up means... well, it means less of me for nosy parkers to see."

      After a moment, Ethan inclined his head. "Logical," he said. It sounded like he approved.

      "Thought so," said Bran, trying to let out his held breath without letting on. "Still, I'm a bit fussed--can't go in, can I. Not that I'd want to, much, but if I were older I could at least take a look 'round without getting stared at."

      "Probably for the best," Ethan said. He'd straightened up and his voice was brisk. "That's not for this trip in any event. Just look round and see what's what."

      Bran pulled his shoulders in a little. "Aye," he said. "I'll do that."

      "Good." Ethan offered him a small smile and left.

8.

      Saturday dawned cold, wet, and blustery, and it was with some relief that Bran shrugged into his parka. With the hood up and laced tight barely any of his face would show, and he'd just be another shape in the rain--mad to be out and about, perhaps, but he'd even thought up an excuse for that. Project for school, he'd mumble, and if pressed he could show his 'Paul Greaves' school ID. Brilliant.

      Ethan drove him to the station, frowning out the windscreen at the rain. "Try to stay warm," he said.

      "Aye." Bran's mind was far away. The wind rose and howled about the car and he only settled further down in his seat.

      "Do you think you'll be staying in town overnight?"

      Bran thought about it. "Nah," he finally said. "One thing to go, innit, but another to stay. I'll come back tonight and go again tomorrow." If I have to, he thought. "Next weekend, maybe."

      "That's fair." Ethan slowed slightly. "It's cheaper to do so and it looks less suspicious all round. Well thought."

      Bran shrugged, a glow of pride in his gut that he tried not to show. "Aye, well," he said, and dropped the subject.

      Ethan pulled up in front of the station in between gusts. Bran mumbled a quick goodbye and threw himself out of the car before Ethan could offer to come in with him (or not offer, which might have been better or might have been worse, Bran wasn't sure). The car hesitated until Bran got under cover, then Ethan put it into gear and pulled sedately away.

      There weren't too many people about, as it was still early-ish on Saturday morning and a bit nasty to boot. Bran found a bench that wasn't too wet and huddled on it until the train arrived, then found himself a seat and curled up there, bracing his wet trainers against the back of the seat in front of him until other people started to file in. The train was warmer (well, warmer) and dry (dry-ish) and despite his slight nerves Bran dozed off a few minutes later.

      If anything the rain was heavier by the time he got off at Marylebone. Bran hunched his shoulders and stared down at his feet and trudged off, past a thousand little shops he wasn't at all interested in. He'd done his best to memorise the shops that he was interested in--wouldn't do to get caught with a list of jewellers on his person--but they all seemed a thousand miles away from here and from each other. At least he could treat himself to a proper greasy meal before he went home. He'd do that just as soon as it was too cold to bear for another second, he decided.

      It all became a blur after the first few shops. Bran walked for hours, then got on a bus, then got off, and walked for another hour. The difficulty was that he wasn't sure what to look for--all right, he could dismiss that shop because it was a block from a police station, and that one was bloody enormous, and that one had the sign for a nasty security firm in its window, but most of the others had nothing to recommend them nor rule them out. Still, Bran looked. He hadn't anything else to do.

      It wasn't until close on to two o'clock, with his lunch just a greasy memory in his belly, that Bran rounded a corner and found precisely what he was looking for. It was so bleeding obvious that he couldn't breathe for a tick. Bran hitched in a breath and found his way under a grocery awning, fumbling about in his pockets so as to have something to do while he studied the place--then he packed up and moved off, walking all the blocks around, looking for something, anything, that might disqualify the spot.

      He was back on the train by three, his mind afire with possibilities.

      "It's not much of a shop," he told Ethan later that night. "Mostly trinkets and cheap tat, like. But there's a sign in the window, 'we buy gold', and if they buy it, they sell it."

      "I'm not sure there'll be much of a take, either," said Ethan, with a faint frown. "You'll most likely have to drill the box."

      "But! But." Energised, Bran tapped the table in front of Ethan. "Bet you it's not much of a box, not in a rundown shop like that. And there's flats overhead, like, so any noise that I make, they'll all think it's a neighbour."

      Ethan considered the shop listing, then sighed. "You aren't wrong, no. I suspect it will be an easy target and the take will be... commensurate?"

      "Well... aye," said Bran, "but it's my first job, like, and I don't want to get in over my head."

      "And that is fair." Ethan folded away the yellow pages and gave Bran a thorough looking at. "I do think you're capable of more, Bran, but I can't fault you for wanting an easy target your first time out."

      Bran scowled down at his hands, lacing his fingers together. "If it won't do, just say so!"

      "In the end, it must be your call," said Ethan. "I only want you to take what you've learned and apply it. If you feel that this is a worthwhile job, then do it."

      "See, you say that, like, but it's not what you're thinking--"

      "What I'm thinking doesn't matter," Ethan said, raising his voice just enough to make Bran hush. "You're old enough to make your own decisions."

      "Then... then stop sighing and telling me I'm capable of more and all that shite!" Bran cried, squawking a bit in the middle, already cringing at what he was saying. "If you support me so, then support me proper!"

      Silence. Ethan took off his little glasses and rubbed his temples. "You're right, Bran," he said, his voice tired. "I apologise."

      Bran looked away. "Well," he grumbled, and then couldn't think of anything else to say, so he said "Well" again.

      "Go on upstairs and get some sleep," Ethan said. "Tomorrow you'll need to start thinking about how you'll do the job."

      "Already started," said Bran, but he pushed back his chair and went anyway.

      He was dragging arse down the hallway, looking forward to nothing more than a quick shower and a long sleep, when Jeremiah burst out of his own room like a jack-in-the-box. "Well?" Jeremiah demanded, his eyes wide. "Did he say it was all right?"

      "It isn't his decision, is it?" Bran said, shoving past Jeremiah. "He'll abide by whatever I decide. He said."

      "Bet it'll be brilliant," said Jeremiah, tagging along. "Just because it's not posh doesn't mean it hasn't got a lot of money. Bet it has more, even, because they don't spend money trying to be posh."

      Bran banged on into his room, for the moment too focussed on his shower to even shove Jeremiah back out. "He'll see," Bran predicted. "I'll do it up right, do all the fancy things that Ethan's taught us, and I'll come out ahead."

      "Course," Jeremiah said loyally, as Bran shut the door.

      Bran worked up a good head of steam overnight and went down to breakfast the next morning with his hands in fists so tight that his short nails dented the flesh of his palms. He'd barely put anything in his mouth before he pinned Ethan with as adult a glare as he could manage and a brusque "So what I want to know is, how much am I allowed to spend on research, like?"

      "That all depends," Ethan said. "What did you intend to buy?"

      Bran swallowed a bite of egg. "I want the plans to the place, right. And pictures of the inside of the shop, that would be brilliant. And I need to know what sort of alarms they've got and how often the police drive by and if there are shutters--"

      Ethan was nodding along to Bran's plans long before he finished. "All of that can certainly be arranged," he said. Come up to my room after lunch and I'll put you in touch with a few useful fellows."

      "After lunch, then," Bran said, relaxing back into his chair with a touch of relief. He'd got away with it, so far.

      "Have to work with Jeremy after breakfast, but once lunch is done he'll be off with Claude," said Ethan. "So we'll do it then."

      After lunch Bran dumped his dishes into the sink and ran upstairs to Ethan's room. Ethan was already there, sitting at his little rolltop desk and writing something on a notepad. "Bran," he said absently. "Please, sit down."

      Bran dropped into the chair by the side of the desk with a thump. "So--"

      "Mm?" Ethan looked up. There was not the slightest trace of guile in his vague and blue-eyed gaze.

      "Well," said Bran, trying not to fidget, "first off I'll want blueprints and the like."

      Ethan nodded. "Unfortunately you're a bit young to be requesting building plans in person--they'd certainly wonder why you wanted them--but there are a number of people who can help you acquire whatever you're looking for, for a fee." He wrote two numbers on the pad and noted 'PLANS' by each in his small, square hand. "Either of these ladies can help you. I've let them know that you might come asking."

      "Er, so, I'd wanted to know about their alarm systems," Bran said, a little unsettled at how easy this was.

      "The building plans will tell you a bit about that." Ethan wrote 'ALARMS' and added 'CHECK WINDOW'. "Best choice is to see if they've got a little sticker in the window that says what company does their alarms--once you know that I'll know who you ought to call."

      Bran ran his thumb over the knots of his knuckles. "So... I'd wanted to see the inside, like."

      "Mm."

      Bran, who'd been expecting some sort of answer, fumbled for a moment. "And... and I shouldn't ought to go in myself, should I, don't want them to remember my face..."

      "Well..." Ethan's pen made a lazy figure-eight about his fingers. "I'd recommend going in once, and as soon as possible so that they've got plenty of time to forget you again."

      "Aye, but..." Bran swallowed. "I'm only seventeen, like, they'll watch me like hawks to see if I lift anything."

      "So... don't lift anything," Ethan said. "I've several kinds of hidden camera you can use, and you can take your own reference photos while you're there."

      Bran's thumb ticked off his knuckles again. "S'pose that would be easiest, wouldn't it?"

      "Most likely."