Shadow of the Templar: Cuckoo's Egg, Extended Edition: Chapter Ten

On timeline: early to mid-1990s, ten to fifteen years before the events of the books
Spoilers for: the usual
Warnings: same as ever

10.

      Bran's final IGCSE came and went that May with barely a whimper. Once the score was in and Ethan declared him officially 'done' with his schooling, Bran gathered up every last bit of Shakespeare on his shelves and carried it all out to the guest house, where he abandoned it on the stale old bookshelves where Ethan kept everything he no longer cared for but didn't quite wish to throw away. It made a nice little display, actually, all the broken-spined old things with a glass ball on one side and a tangle of white coral on the other. Nice, yes, but Bran abandoned it there without a second thought.

      The life of the mind having come to a close, he threw himself into his training with renewed enthusiasm. (Particularly after lunch, when Jeremiah was off being schooled in life or whatever by Claude.) No matter how hard he tried, though, Bran never managed to broaden his shoulders or put on any serious muscle. Ethan had said he'd always be the slim sort, but Bran had hoped to prove him wrong in that.

      The rest of his time was devoted to working on his upcoming job, or, more to the point, looking as if he was. Bran followed the crime reports for the ward in the newspaper and pored over the building plans and boned up on the shop's particular flavour of alarm system and paid a fellow to visit a flat in the building that had come up for lease and take photos—well, he'd got Ethan to send the fellow in, same difference, really—and scrutinised maps looking for bolt-holes and convenient exits. The hiding place inside the column filled with papers, then overflowed. Finally Bran declared himself done with this unnecessary secrecy and dragged everything up to his room, tacking it to the wall in great swathes of incriminating paper. Ethan winced, mostly at the pinholes in the wall.

      The kitchen was an oven in the sunlight, the unseasonable heat cooking the old house where it stood. Claude had sniffed and referred to it as 'unreasonable heat', and Bran had to agree; June had gone absolutely spare and forgot that this wasn't the Sahara. He'd never been so hot. It was hard to sleep, hard to eat, hard to think, and Bran couldn't imagine why Ethan wanted to do anything, let alone call meetings. Ethan, however, had his own agenda, as he always did. "Think of it as a game," Ethan said. His hand drifted down to lay atop one of the jars.

      Bran grunted and said nothing, only swiped the sweat from his forehead. The three Chinese ginger jars on the kitchen table were an odd lot indeed, not a one of them anything like the others except that they were all fat and had little clattery lids on. One was white and about the size of Bran's head, painted all over with blue flowers and birds and things; one was pale green, taller and slimmer than the first, painted with twisty orange fish and green patterns; the last jar, a bit smaller yet, was all over orange with funny gold flower patterns. Bran had never see any of them before, but he already hated them, just a bit.

      Jeremiah bounced up onto one knee, leaning across the table to grab at the white-and-blue jar, which was closest. "What's in them, then?"

      Ethan's hand flicked from the orange jar to the white one, forestalling Jeremiah's grab. "I'll be getting to that shortly," he said with infinite Ethan-patience, sliding the jar back a few crucial inches.

      "Aaw," Jeremiah said cheerily, his narrow arse thumping back into the chair.

      Ethan started to say something, hesitated, and finally shook his head. "In point of fact, I'll just go on and get to it now," he said, lifting the lid off the white jar and putting it aside before pushing the jar towards Jeremiah again.

      Jeremiah lunged out of his chair again and stuck his hand into the jar. Something inside went 'crunch' in a glassy sort of way and then Jeremiah pulled out a fat handful of blue marbles. "Marbles," he reported, as if it weren't obvious.

      "Marbles," Ethan confirmed, plucking the lids off the other jars. The orange-and-gold jar had yellow marbles in, and the green jar had green ones. Bran, now deeply suspicious, picked up the green jar. Just large and heavy enough to require both hands to lift, and of course nothing held the lid on but a slight raised lip, gravity, and luck. Bran now definitely hated these jars. At least the porcelain was cool against his skin.

      Jeremiah dumped his handful of marbles back into the white jar and clapped the lid back on. "What do we do with them, then?"

      Instead of answering, Ethan put the lids back on the other jars. "I'd like you each to pick a jar."

      Bran hated it so much. "I'll stick with this one, then," he said, hefting the stupid green jar. "Since I've got it and all."

      Jeremiah eyed the orange jar with what was either suspicion or longing, but in the end he just hugged the white one to his chest. "I'll have this one."

      "Very good." Ethan put his hand back on the orange jar. "Now, bear with me for a moment—"

      "Oh, God, and here we go," Bran said under his breath.

      Ethan favoured him with a very small smile. "I'd like you to think of these as extremely valuable items which you have been hired to steal," he said.

      "Oh, God."

      "Bran," Ethan said mildly. "If I may?"

      "Aye, aye, go on, then." Bran settled the green jar in his lap. The marbles inside shifted with a clatter, making the jar lurch against his gut.

      "As I was saying." Ethan cleared his throat and fought off the smile. "In the course of doing your job you will often be called upon to move and hide oddly-shaped items." He tapped the orange jar, making the lid rattle. "Sometimes they will be unwieldy, or heavy, or fragile, or have thousands of little bits, and yet your employer will expect you to deliver the item in perfect condition."

      "And sometimes they're only paintings, like, and sometimes a diamond not half as big as your thumbnail," Bran put in.

      "True." Ethan waited a beat, then went on. "And sometimes you will not be able to deliver the item right away for one reason or another, and perhaps you are being sought, so you'll need to hide... well, your jar."

      "You could just put it in a bank box. Or a locker at the airport or some such."

      "Mm." Ethan was starting to look a bit less amused, though. Bran hunkered down with his jar and drew a finger over his mouth to seal it. Ethan nodded to him. "At any rate. Your job is to take your jar and protect it until such time as I ask you to bring it to me. Hide it, keep it with you, pay someone else to protect it, do whatever it requires to keep your jar safe. Your job is also to find each other's jars and bring them to me. Either one will grant you a win."

      Bran groaned. Jeremiah glanced at him, then back at Ethan. "So... find his jar without letting him find mine, then."

      "Precisely."

      "What are the rules, then?" Jeremiah asked, proving that he'd learned something, at least.

      "Two rules," Ethan said, holding up two fingers. He wiggled the first. "Rule one is that you cannot take any jar off the property. It stays inside the fence at all times."

      "All right..."

      "Rule two," said Ethan, waggling the second finger, "is that you must bring me your jar in its original condition. No chips, no breakage, no missing marbles. Yes, I do know how many marbles are in each jar, to forestall your asking." He smiled a particularly tight little smile and added, "Of course, you may bring me your opponent's jar in any condition whatsoever."

      "All right," said Jeremiah. He stabbed a finger at the orange jar under Ethan's hand. "What about that one, then?"

      "This one? Oh. I'll hide this one." Ethan's fingers described a vague circle about the lid of the orange jar. "I won't be looking for your jars, but you may feel free to look for mine. As a bonus."

      The wave of sour outrage swept over Bran like the tide. For a moment he entertained the fantasy of smashing the jar on the floor right this instant and declaring his intent not to play this ridiculous childish game. There, I lose, but the two of you go on and have fun, he'd say—the mental image was so clear that he thought he'd done so for a few glorious moments, and only the nagging weight against his gut told him otherwise. He emerged from his fantasy to find himself hugging his jar like a great idiot. His jar—"Fuck's sake," Bran said under his breath. Now he'd thought of it as 'his jar'! He was already coming up with places to hide it and ways to keep it safe and undamaged! "Fuck's sake," he said again, aggrieved.

      "Mm?" said Ethan.

      "Nothing."

      "So when are we starting?" Jeremiah asked, pulling the white jar off the table and into his own lap. "Now?"

      "As near as," Ethan said.

      Jeremiah shoved his chair back with a screech and staggered to his feet, clutching his jar. "I'm gone, then," he announced, and he headed for the kitchen door at a fast waddle.

      Bran eased his jar back onto the table and waited impatiently for the door to swing to behind Jeremiah. Once he heard Jeremiah thumping on up the stairs he stood up and went prospecting in the kitchen island, nicking a pile of cloth napkins from their drawer. Most of them he stuffed into the jar, until he couldn't hear the rattling of marbles any longer; the last one went between the jar and its lid to stop that horrible clattering. Ethan sat back in his chair, watching the process with what Bran devoutly hoped was approval.

      The jar wasn't precisely heavy but it was round and smooth and slippery, entirely without convenient handholds, with a lid that wanted to fall off even more now that there was a bit of cloth between it and the lip of the jar. After a bit of fumbling Bran stuffed the lid into his trouser pocket so that it wouldn't fall and break, as much as he might secretly like it to—which meant that he could put a hand into the jar and get a decent grip on its side.

      "Best of luck," Ethan said. "Do let me know if there's anything you need."

      "The loan of the safe in your office, maybe," said Bran, grappling with the jar.

      "If you can suss out the combination, then feel free. It's all yours."

      "Oh, ha ha," Bran said sourly. "Fuck's sake, I hate this." He'd meant it to be a complaint. It came out as a petulant whine that cracked neatly in the middle.

      "Oh?"

      "Well, I mean..." Bran hunched his shoulders in defence. "Haven't I got enough to do, then? Only got a job to plan, it's kicking my arse, and now I've got to play some kiddy game to boot? Looking after a stupid jar all the time, with that little dumbarse poking and prodding and nudging about—"

      Ethan's voice cut across his. "I suggest that you try and think of this game as an unexpected complication in your job," said Ethan, sounding about as flat as Bran had ever heard him. "I understand why you're cross about it, but quite frankly, that's something you need to get over. No job ever goes to plan. It all turns to chaos and luck in the end, and I'm afraid you'll just need to learn to deal with that. Take the jar. Go."

      "I'm going! I'm going, Jesus!" Stung, Bran reeled back a step, then hurried off with his open jar hugged to his chest.

      Jeremiah's door was shut tight. Bran barely glanced at it, just hurried past. Once he had the door shut and locked, he double-checked to make sure Jeremiah wasn't lurking about under his bed or some such—just in case—then carried the jar into the bathroom and locked himself in there.

      Ethan would probably want the napkins back. Bran fished them all out and dumped them in the laundry, then hunkered down to dig around in the mess under his sink. Thirty seconds of prospecting turned up most of a bag of cotton pads and Bran stuffed them into the jar until he couldn't fit another one in. The lid he mummified in a chunk of surgical gauze with its use-by date already five years past; the rest of the jar he wound in a clean sheet from the linen closet. The padded monstrosity went into a pillowcase, which he knotted shut.

      Carrying the pillowcase under one arm, Bran went to rummage around in his closet. Deep in the back, half-lost under a jacket that had fallen from its hanger, he found the cheap old black rucksack he'd been looking for. He'd never used it much. He couldn't remember where he'd got it. It had just always been in there and he'd never got around to binning it. The pillowcase fit snugly inside, and now the stupid jar had a slight chance of making it through the next month or so without breaking or chipping or otherwise losing Bran the game.

      Slinging the bulging rucksack over his shoulder, Bran went to listen at his door. No one was making noise in the hallway outside, although that wasn't an indicator of anything, not really; Bran opened his door a crack and peeked out. No one to see, either. Jeremiah's door was still shut. Bran crept over and put his ear to Jeremiah's door and was rewarded with the faint sound of someone shifting about inside. Good enough. Bran slunk down the back stairs.

      The day was hot enough as it was, and inside the garage it was an inferno. Bran's forehead went slick instantly. By the time he dug Ethan's old lineman's harness and kit out of the gardening things, Bran was all over sweat and already hating himself. Still, it was a safe bet that he'd be able to put the jar in a place where Jeremiah would never think to look, and never be able to reach even if he did—all Bran had to do was get up there himself. Bran shrugged both arms into the backpack's straps, slung the harness over his shoulder, and lugged his awkward burden out to the garden.

      The forest behind the guest house had been neatly thinned over the years, Ethan's predilection for visibility and safety being what it was. None of the widely-spaced trees inside the back fence had branches lower than ten metres, although they all had round blackened spots where branches had been lopped off and cauterised. They were tricky as anything to climb without equipment. Fortunately, equipment was one thing which Bran had in abundance, even if it was all awful to use. The harness was like a pair of heavy leather pants which he wore outside of his trousers—pants with braces on, yet—and the pole strap clipped onto the front of the harness and mostly just looked stupid. Bran strapped on the hand-claws (a clever little bit of equipment no actual lineman would recognise) and dug into the tree.

      Compared to climbing a wall with the cups, climbing a tree with the lineman's kit was a doddle. He almost didn't need the strap at all. Bran clawed his way up the trunk, showering the forest floor below with little bits of bark—in no time at all he found himself nine meters up, leaning back against the pole strap and catching his breath.

      The rotted hole in the tree's trunk had been there for as long as Bran could recall. When he was small he'd seen birds nesting there, but a few years back they'd stopped coming, for whatever reason. It wasn't a nice, tidy bank vault, but it would do—Bran raked out a few handfuls of dirty twigs and acorns, then gingerly unslung his rucksack and wedged it into the hole, stuffing the straps in after. It fit well enough, and shouldn't be visible from the ground.

      By the time he made it back to earth he was puffing and blowing, drenched with sweat, and thoroughly unhappy—getting back down from a high place was always the hard bit—but all the same, satisfied. He jogged about, double-checking the hole from every angle. He couldn't see a thing, even knowing that it was there. Perfect. Let the little bastard figure that one out. Bran wriggled out of the harness and slung it over his shoulder again. All that was left to do was put the kit back in the garage—Bran glanced towards the house and spotted the white smear of a face at one of the upstairs windows. Instinctively he threw himself back behind the tree, his mind racing.

      It had to be Jeremiah. It couldn't be anyone else. Claude hardly ever went upstairs and Ethan wouldn't be mooning about staring out of upstairs windows. If Jeremiah was watching from the upstairs window then he'd seen everything—he knew where Bran's jar was—Bran looked back up at the hole in the trunk and was nearly sick at the thought of climbing back up. His mind was screaming that he had to, right away, no matter how much he hated the idea. Every fibre of his being that wasn't his mind was dead set against it.

      Bran stood there and dithered until the bobbing face disappeared from the window. He hadn't come up with a plan at all, only stood there and panicked, and it was sheer instinct (and a desperation not to go back up the tree) that threw him out from behind the tree and towards the back of the property. He went the long way round, creeping around behind the guest house and coming at the garage from the front side, where no one was like to be looking out any windows.

      The garage was still a cauldron. It didn't lend itself well to rational thought. Instead of putting the lineman's kit back in among the gardening things Bran crept past the cars and up to the kitchen door, one hand tight about the harness clasps to keep them from clunking. For a miracle, the kitchen was empty. Bran slunk through, as fast as he could, and then dashed down the back hallway to hole up in the dark and empty sitting room. His spinning mind had fastened on something like a plan and was refusing to think of anything better—Bran lurked in the darkness of the sitting room like a great idiot for what must have been a quarter of an hour, catching his breath and cooling down, straining to listen to everything in the house at once. Finally he heard Jeremiah thumping down the back stairs toward the kitchen. Bran caught his breath in a strangled gulp and darted for the front room.

      The front stairs were empty, of course. No one used them much. Bran went up them as quietly as he could, mental fingers crossed against the possibility of running into anyone in the hallway. For just this once, luck was with him, and he made it into his room without being spotted. Bran chucked the lineman's harness under his bed. Let Jeremiah try and get up the tree without that. Bran would like to see him try!

      The jar was safe—no, it wasn't safe—his mind all awhirl Bran went to wash off the sweat of the day. No sooner had he got in the tub than he was too paranoid to stay in. What if Jeremiah were in his room pulling out the harness right now, or already outside climbing the tree...? Bran hurriedly sluiced himself down and got back out, giving himself a cursory towelling-down as he trotted back into his bedroom. The harness was still just where he'd thrown it, which didn't mean a thing, really, but it still made him feel a bit better to see that it was there.

      Still a bit damp, Bran hurried into a track suit and let himself back out of his room. The window at the end of the hall looked out on the back garden. Everything seemed still. It took Bran a moment to pick out which tree was his, but only a moment; there weren't any Jeremiahs lurking about under or up it, or anywhere out back as far as Bran could see. It made him feel better, but only a bit. Tomorrow he'd go and fetch the jar back down, find some place better for it. Or tonight, after dinner. Bran went back to his room and only looked over his shoulder once on the way.

      That afternoon, once he was certain that Jeremiah was off with Claude—once he was absolutely doubly triply sure of it—Bran fetched the lockpicks from their hiding place and let himself into Jeremiah's room. He didn't think Jeremiah was likely to be that stupid, more's the pity, but it couldn't hurt to make sure of it (and it was always possible that Jeremiah had temporarily stashed his jar in his room, meaning to hide it properly later on).

      Jeremiah's door had been locked as tight as it was able to go. On a hunch Bran checked the windows: also locked. That was different. Encouraging, even. Bran locked the door behind himself and set to tossing Jeremiah's room.

      He didn't bother to be stealthy about it. Bran rifled through Jeremiah's closet and looked under his bed and searched all the cabinets in the bath, shuffling things around however he liked. What was Jeremiah going to do about it? Tattle? 'Wah, Bran was in my room looking for that thing you told him to look for'? Bran snorted under his breath and dumped Jeremiah's hamper out onto the bathroom floor, stirring the dirty things about with the toe of his shoe.

      The jar's size made it fairly easy: no need to slash open pillows or turn over the mattress or any of that nonsense. Five minutes later, Bran was done. Ethan would say that Bran ought to leave the room just as he'd found it, but Bran couldn't see the point of that. It wasn't like Jeremiah wasn't going to rifle his things in return, and Bran hadn't hurt anything, or nicked anything, not that Jeremiah had anything he wanted in any event.

      Bran let himself back out. He didn't bother to lock the door behind him. He went straight back to his room and fished the harness out from under his bed. After all, it was a cinch that Jeremiah would be breaking in here sooner or later, and Bran didn't want him finding the damned thing. What to do with it, though, that was the question—no, that wasn't the question at all, was it? Bran hoicked the harness onto his shoulder again and hurried off to rummage through Ethan's desk.

      Twenty minutes later he was disgusting all over again but the hole in the tree was empty and the jar was once again safely slung over his shoulder. Bran let himself back into the garage, gagging at the heat. There was space in the garage for five cars, but at the moment there were only three in residence. Ethan's super-posh-but-boring sedan, dark blue and squarish, sat in the bay nearest the kitchen; square in the middle was the incredibly nondescript silver everyman's car, which Ethan kept around precisely because it was so perfectly unremarkable; and, over in the farthest bay where it wouldn't bother anyone, an ordinary white commercial van—which, come to think of it, was utterly dull as well.

      Bran popped the boot on the silver car and tucked the rucksack behind the tool chest. After a moment's thought he added the harness and kit, mostly just to be an arse about it but also to keep it firmly in Bran's control and out of Jeremiah's. Couldn't hurt to limit his opponent's options, a bit—Bran slammed the boot and stuffed the keys in his pocket. He'd just keep those close. It wasn't like anyone ever took this car out.

      "—so Claude says I ought to wear my hair like this all the time," Jeremiah said, dropping his fork and scraping his hair straight back with his hands.

      "With a bone structure like that he'd be mad not to show it off," Claude called over the clatter of dishes. "It'll only get better as he ages, too, you can just tell."

      Bran popped another piece of chicken into his mouth and tried to ignore the ongoing conversation. The car keys in his pocket dug into his hip every time that he shifted, which hurt a bit but reassured him that the jar was still safe. "You could stop primping at the table and eat your bloody food," he suggested. "Princess."

      "Could," Jeremiah agreed, picking up his fork again. His hair fell back into his face. "Prick."

      "I'd listen to Claude on that if I were you," Ethan said, ignoring the latest round of insults. "He's much better with clothes and such than I am."

      "What do you think, though?"

      Ethan nodded at Jeremiah. "I think he's correct."

      "I'll do it, then." Jeremiah pushed his free hand back through his hair.

      "I know a lad who can work miracles with hair," Claude said, finally joining them at table. "It'll be terrific, you'll see."

      Ethan's little smile was absent. "So, how are you two getting on with your jars?"

      Bran shifted, making the key dig into his skin again. "Good enough for the moment, I expect."

      "Same here," said Jeremiah. "Least, I think so."

      "Best to be sure," Ethan said, poking a fork at them in a generally cautionary manner. "Still, 'good enough for the moment' is, well, good enough for now."

      "And no one's come to you with a jar, either." Bran ate more of his chicken.

      "There is that."

      Jeremiah snickered. "Someone's already been in my room looking for it, too. Emptied my hamper all over the floor and left it."

      "Wouldn't touch your dirty clothes," Bran said. "That's disgusting, that is. Got wanker-stink all over them."

      "S'pose you'd know wanker-stink to smell it, wouldn't you?"

      "Boys," Ethan put in, a bit pained.

      Jeremiah's little grin didn't go away. "I only poked through your laundry with my sleeve over my hand. S'pose I needn't have been so nice about it."

      A chill spread up along Bran's spine, making the hair on the back of his neck prickle. "That's 'cos you're disgusting," he said loftily, trying to hide his surprise. "Probably got off on messing around with my unwashed pants and things."

      "You'd probably like it if I did," said Jeremiah.

      Ethan cleared his throat. "Boys," he said again, leaning on it a bit this time, and they subsided.

      After dinner was done and he'd hurried through the dishes, Bran ran up to his room. The walls were still all over papers and charts and maps and such, so it wasn't as if the room were in perfect order in any case. Bran opened his laundry hamper. If it had been stirred about, he didn't know how to tell. Might have been. He pulled out a drawer. He'd never got in the habit of folding anything, so he couldn't tell if his drawers were disorganised, either. It wasn't until he pulled open his closet that anything started to look wrong: two of his shirts had half come off their hangers and were only held up by the other shirts pushing in around them. Bran's shoes were all tossed about, too, but he couldn't be certain that he hadn't left them like that.

      Now that he knew to look, everything seemed a bit off. The covers on his bed weren't quite where he'd left them and the curtain on the tub wasn't closed all the way. Jeremiah had been in here, the little arse—Bran's hand flew to his pocket. His fingers touched the outline of the car keys and he heaved out a deep breath.

      Still, no matter how thoroughly Jeremiah had searched Bran's room, he wouldn't have found the jar, since it hadn't been there to begin with—only the residual creeping feeling of having been invaded kept Bran's hackles up. It was mostly as an attempt to distract himself that he went back out into his study and sat down at his desk, shuffling through the papers there for the thousandth time and sinking back into thoughts about his upcoming job.

      Bran thought that he'd done everything short of build a model of the building he meant to break into in the fall, and he thought he might do that as well if time didn't stop dragging on like it was. He'd drawn in the shelves on the blueprint and used the photographs to figure out what sort of thing was on each one, just in case he wanted to stop on the way out and pick up a box of cheap calculators or leather bracelets or ugly porcelain babies to add to his haul. Honestly, he'd done all the work he could think of ages ago, and now he was only making things up to fill the hours, so that he could pretend to Ethan that he really was planning the job, really.

      Honestly he was only waiting for shorter days and wetter ones, for a better night, by which he meant a worse one, one that would drive everyone indoors early and keep them there. A night that began early enough that no one would question why he was out and about and not in bed, a night with plenty of darkness in which to do his work and get back out. He knew in the back of his mind that he could tell Ethan that and Ethan would agree, or at least allow him to do as he pleased, but it made Bran feel like a hypocrite to just be waiting. So he shuffled his papers about—Bran dutifully pushed some papers into a pile—and learned things that he would never in a million years need to know and tried to visualise everything and plan for every contingency, and all the while he fancied that he could feel Ethan's disapproving gaze on the back of his neck.

      Bran picked up the bundle of photos and leafed through them again, eyes going dull over the images he'd stared at for hours already. Bits of blurry gold and silver winked at him through the glass of the display cases, things that would be long gone by the time he went in, although hopefully things just like them would be there for him to take away. He wasn't looking for anything, just looking to be doing something and telling himself that he might just spot something he'd never seen before. It helped with the guilt, a little.

      He was laying out the photographs in a loose approximation of their places in the store when he heard Jeremiah's bedroom door creak open. It wasn't that it opened—it wasn't that late, after all—but how carefully it opened, and how Jeremiah closed it again with such care that Bran barely heard the click. Jeremiah was trying so hard not to attract attention that it drew all of Bran's attention like a magnet. Bran stood up, took one giant, silent step to the door of the room, and cracked it open just as Jeremiah slunk off down the stairs, trying so visibly hard to be quiet about it, a large bag slung over one shoulder. Bran sucked in his breath. It couldn't possibly be that easy, could it?

      Jeremiah had learned a fair bit about how to walk quietly over the last few months, but to Bran he still sounded a bit like a baby elephant going down the back stairs. Bran waited until Jeremiah reached the bottom of the stairs, then eased out and after him, taking long, slow steps to minimise his own noise. By the time Bran reached the ground floor Jeremiah was fumbling with the sticky lock on the back door, hissing little breaths through his teeth and trying to turn the stiff old bolt quietly, and Bran stole a moment to snatch a dark jacket from the coat closet. Far too warm for it, unfortunately, but he'd rather sweat than be noticed, particularly if it meant that he could put an early end to this stupid game. He got back just as the door creaked to behind Jeremiah, its hinges squealing softly.

      If Jeremiah was clumsy at sneaking about inside, he was absolutely hopeless at doing so outside. Grass and dead leaves crackled under his big stupid feet, and once he tripped and swore under his breath before he caught himself. Bran could have blindfolded himself and still followed the sound. Bran himself was making more noise than he cared to, but it wasn't as if Jeremiah could hear him, not over the racket that he was making.

      Even though the sun was long down it was still hot out, and damp in the bargain. Bran's shirt glued itself to his back. Aside from Jeremiah's crashing about, it was so quiet that Bran could hear the faint sound of Ethan's music from inside the house, and even the occasional car on the road. And dark, wasn't it dark! Ethan pretended not to believe in outdoor lights, although Bran knew that there were plenty, when necessary. Even so, they wouldn't be on now. Once they got away from the small squares of yellow light thrown by the house's windows, all they had was the moon to go by. It was almost enough, except when they were under the trees.

      Jeremiah led Bran on a long, slow, circuitous tour of the garden and the woods behind the guest cottage. A few times he paused and looked around, forcing Bran to hug a tree for cover, but whatever Jeremiah was looking for, he didn't find it. Off he went again, the bag still slung over his shoulder. As exciting as it had been at first, it became deadly dull in a crashing hurry, and Bran was close to calling it all off and going back to the house when Jeremiah suddenly scuttled up to the back of the guest house, dropped to his chest, and wriggled underneath the porch. His kicking trainers were the last things to vanish, little flashes of greyish-white in the night.

      Bran caught his breath, then faded back into the trees. If Jeremiah came out without the bag, it'd be child's play to go and get it. At worst he'd have to go and find a torch, or borrow Ethan's goggles to suss out Jeremiah's hiding spot. Ethan didn't like for him to mess with those, but if Bran waited until after midnight, he could sneak them out of the equipment closet easily enough—Bran's train of thought was derailed by the sound of running footsteps from the front side of the guest cottage, crunching on the gravel path that led to the main house. The back door slammed a moment later.

      All right, so Jeremiah had gone in one end and out the other. He'd still probably left the jar under there somewhere. Bran waited for a minute or two, just to make certain that Jeremiah was honestly gone, then left his hiding place and went to search around in the shrubbery. The cottage was built on a bit of a decline, he discovered, and the back half was up on stout wooden pillars, leaving a largish crawlspace open for opportunists. Bran flopped onto his belly and dragged himself under.

      He regretted it immediately. Without the moonlight to help it was pitch black, and a lot of little feathery things were touching his face; Bran tried to convince himself that it was insulation, or possibly grass, but he knew that they were spider-webs. His skin crawled. At least, Bran hoped that it was his skin doing the crawling. He shook his head violently and the feathery things broke and drifted away.

      At last his eyes adjusted to what little light there was, and Bran was able to properly take stock of his surroundings. The dirt under his palms was sucking damp and smelt bad, sour and ancient, like a pipe had broken ages ago and spilt sewage everywhere. No wonder Jeremiah had run for the house in such a tearing hurry—Bran was for a shower himself after going through this!

      Gritting his teeth, Bran patted his way forward, hoping with every movement that his fingers would happen on fresh cloth. His knees went damp and clammy. The feathery things were everywhere, itching against Bran's skin. Finally, making a whining sound that he hated himself for, Bran propped himself up on his elbows and knees and scratched frantically at his face. It smeared nasty-smelling dirt everywhere but quelled the itch for the moment, at least. It took everything he had to keep going. All that propelled him forward was the vision of Jeremiah's disappointed face.

      Halfway through Bran could see the dim shape of the hole that Jeremiah had used to leave. Gratefully he crawled toward it, making only a token attempt to find the bag. He'd go back into the house and lift a torch, come back and look properly. Should have done that in the first place. Something rodent-y squealed angrily at Bran as he left, and he scrabbled out through the hole so quickly that he caught his jacket on a nail and tore it and didn't even care, so thrilled to be out in the clean moonlight again. He rolled in the grass like a dog just to have some of the worst of the filth off him.

      Finally Bran wiped his hands on the grass and got to his feet. There'd be a torch in the garage—Bran hurried to fetch it, pausing only long enough to check on his jar, there in the boot of the silver car. It was still there. Bran shut the boot as quietly as he could.

      By the time he got back, torch in hand, the guest cottage was all lit up. Bran shrank back behind a tree. Of course, Claude was there, he'd forgotten—he didn't think he'd made that much noise, but all the same, he'd best be quiet. He slunk around to the back of the cottage, dropped to his belly, and thumbed on the torch.

      God, but it was even worse in the light. Bran shuddered and scratched at his neck again. Enough drifting cobweb to make the whole place grey, and spiders everywhere, disturbed and scuttling around. Little alien eyes glinted at him from the far corner, five, six pairs of them. The marks of his passage (and of Jeremiah's) were obvious, long dragging dirt trails that led straight from the hole in the back to the hole in the front.

      Bran couldn't see the bag at all. By that point he didn't even care, he just wanted to finish up and go get clean. He snapped off the torch and heaved himself to his feet, still whining and scratching and imagining spiders all over himself. Unable to stand it a moment longer he stripped off in the garage and stuffed the bundle of his filthy spider-y things directly into the wash before slinking back upstairs, a shamed and filthy spectre wearing nothing but his pants; his face in the bathroom mirror was a horror, covered in clotted smears of dirt and tattered spider-webs. Bran flung himself in the shower at least partly to get away from his reflection.

      Even after his shower Bran lay awake and itched at himself, some bit of his mind absolutely convinced that he was still all over spiders. Close on towards midnight he finally fell asleep, only to be awakened—rudely, oddly, confusingly, early—by the sound of Jeremiah shouting under his bed.

      "Yes!" Jeremiah cried (nearly in his ear) and Bran bolted upright and nearly fell out of bed in a tangle of bedclothes and sweaty sheets. He managed to strangle his little yelp of panic before it could go anywhere—Jeremiah followed his initial shout with a cry of "I'm fine!" and Bran jumped again. Still partly asleep he fell out of bed onto his knees and hauled up the covers, thinking blurry thoughts about Jeremiah having come to steal the lineman's belt. It wasn't there, of course, and neither was Jeremiah. "Honestly!" Jeremiah called, and finally Bran's sleep-stunned brain registered the fact that Jeremiah might have been somewhere very close by but still sounded a bit muffled. He got it, eventually.

      Pulling on a t-shirt Bran went thumping down the back stairs and stuck his head into the gym. Ethan was standing in the centre of the room with his arms out and his head craned back, watching Jeremiah potter about on the ceiling. Every time that Jeremiah pulled a suction cup free Ethan's arms would twitch upwards, as if to catch Jeremiah, should he fall. Jeremiah's head swivelled to pin Bran upside-down in the doorway. "Bran, look!" Jeremiah cried. "I'm on the ceiling all properly!"

      "Making a bloody ruckus, too," Bran said, stifling a yawn. "My room's just above, you prat."

      Ethan barely glanced in his direction before turning his attention once more to the ceiling-bound Jeremiah. "Good morning, Bran," he said over his shoulder, his voice perhaps just a little strained. "It's good of you to join us."

      "Aye, well, I was up late," Bran said, stung. "Working."

      "Oh?"

      "Aye! Said it yourself, didn't you, that this isn't a job that runs from nine to five?"

      "That's true, I did say that," Ethan said. "Jeremiah, come back down now, please."

      "Aaw," said Jeremiah, but he headed back towards the wall.

      Bran leaned in the doorway and watched Jeremiah string himself out sideways, transferring himself back onto the wall one limb at a time. A minute or two and he was backing down, his little arse wiggling frantically as he swung from cup to cup—Bran ducked out of the gym and went upstairs to have another shower.

      It wasn't all bad, though. Rude as his awakening had been, he couldn't deny that he was firing on all cylinders now. Bran ducked his head under the spray and put his thoughts in order: if Jeremiah hadn't put the bag under the guest cottage last night, then he'd probably brought it back into the house with him. It might be in his rooms right now, but somehow Bran didn't think so. Too easy, that. Still, the thing to do was to go and toss Jeremiah's rooms again just as soon as he'd finished with his shower, since Ethan would likely keep Jeremiah occupied until lunch. Also, find a better hiding spot for his jar. Not that the silver car wasn't a good spot, but (Ethan being who he was) there had to be another set of keys to it floating about somewhere. Bran didn't like that one bit.

      Clean and dressed again Bran eased himself back into Jeremiah's rooms, one ear cocked for the sound of approaching footsteps (not that he would hear them, probably, and anyway what would Jeremiah do if he did catch Bran in here?). Jeremiah's little study looked just the same as it had the last time Bran was in—so did the bedroom—Bran flipped open the lid of Jeremiah's hamper and nearly jumped a mile. The empty black bag lay on top of the pile of dirty things, still showing filthy little signs of its trip under the guest cottage. Bran kicked over the hamper; nothing in it but unwashed clothes that stank of Jeremiah. Energised, Bran racketed around, tearing the room apart. If the bag was here the jar might still be here! ... but he found nothing.

      Finally, stymied, Bran let himself back out of the disheveled room, leaving the door unlocked behind him. He could still hear whoops and thumping from downstairs, not that he cared a bit.

      Three days later, it was still hot. None of them were equipped to handle that at all. Claude drooped over the counters and fussed impotently with his little moustache and fed them all salads and fancy sandwiches and anything else he could come up with that didn't need to be cooked; Ethan was slow to answer when spoken to and spent as much time as he could steal closed away in his workroom with the lights down low; Bran sweltered in the mess of his sheets all night and took cold showers in the mornings and ran through his exercises with half a heart at best, sticking to the weight bench until it was time to go and stick to the mats instead.

      Only Jeremiah didn't seem to mind. He still sweated—quite a lot, actually, it was disgusting, he stank all the time—but he ran about paying it no mind. Bran heard him scrabbling about on the roof almost every night, though, and despite everything found himself tempted to go out and join Jeremiah on the dormers. It'd have to be cooler out there. Of course Jeremiah would be there, and that was terrible or at least annoying, and Bran decided he'd rather have another shower instead.

      On the fourth morning they were all dawdling over breakfast, sluggish and tired, dreading the rest of the day. It was cool at that very moment but the newsreaders were predicting another hot one, in tones of surprise and reproach, as if the weather had done it on purpose just to be spiteful. Ethan paused mid-sip to look down at his steaming cuppa with something like revulsion, then abruptly abandoned it on the table, half-drunk. "That's it," he said, throwing up his hands. "I give in. We'll have the pool out after lunch."

      Bran was still blinking and trying to take in the news when Jeremiah went all a-bounce in his chair, firing off questions and enthusiasm in all sorts of directions. It only pissed Bran off to listen to him, but all the same... "Sounds good," he put in, when Jeremiah paused long enough to take a breath.

      "Of course, that means the two of you will have to move the mats after breakfast," Ethan said, just barely smiling. "While I hunt up the chlorine and such."

      "Eugh," Bran said, twisting up his face and not meaning it a bit.

      He'd have meant it and how not half an hour later, though, as he and Jeremiah wrestled yet another mat onto the growing pile at the far end of the room. They were both wringing wet—Bran's t-shirt had huge splotches around the neck and under his arms, and Jeremiah was just sodden like the wet end that he was—and the heavy mats liked to slip from their sweaty hands and crash to the floor, which made Ethan wince and tsk every time. Still, eventually there was a wall by the weight bench made of two piles of mats almost as high as Bran was tall. Bran groaned and flopped out on the floor behind them—he fancied he made a splashing sound when he hit—staring up at the ceiling and waiting to stop steaming quite so badly.

      Jeremiah sprawled out nearly at Bran's feet. One of his arms flopped across Bran's foot, knobby adolescent elbow seeming to break the wrong way across Bran's instep. Bran didn't quite jump, only caught his breath, and in that silent moment all he could hear was Jeremiah's whooping, raspy breathing. "Whoops, pardon," said Jeremiah, reclaiming his arm as natural as you like, swiping the sweat off his face. "It's almost not bloody well worth it."

      "Aye, it's not," said Bran. He hurried to add, "S'pose you got what you asked for, though. With the pool and all."

      "Suppose I did," Jeremiah said. "Least it's done now."

      "For today," Bran pointed out, but just then the floor rumbled back and he threw himself upright to watch the fun. Jeremiah struggled up beside him, propping himself up on his hands.

      The empty pool was a yawning expanse of sky-blue tiles with a rough concrete bottom, completely empty and stained a bit around the drains. Ethan dropped the hose into the shallow end and the water came on with a great screeching thump, a thin stream running down the slope to pool sluggishly in the deepest parts. The resulting puddle was not impressive at all. "How long, then?" Bran called.

      "It'll be ready after lunch," said Ethan, distracted by fiddling with the chemicals. "And of course the whole house will smell of chlorine, but I suppose it's a small enough price to pay."

      "Can't be that bad," Jeremiah said. "Nothing's that bad."

      "No, no, not that bad."

      "Can't wait." Jeremiah plucked at his wet shirt. "Think I'll go and have another bath."

      "Aye, me too," Bran said, ripping his damp self off the mats and standing up.

      The sound of the water running followed Bran around for the rest of the morning. Since he couldn't do much in the gym with the floor retracted (and the thought of poring over the building plans in this heat made him want to be sick) Bran contented himself with sprawling out in front of the television in the sitting room with a bottle of Ethan's posh Italian soda. He so seldom got to watch anything on the telly that he didn't know what to watch, so he flipped around aimlessly until he got bored with flipping and then half dozed off on the couch, listening to the constant faint rumble of the water. Jeremiah eventually dropped onto the couch next to him, but Bran didn't bother waking enough to drive him off again. He only woke when the smell of the chlorine wafted over him like a ghost. It was just as bad a stink as Ethan had been fearing, but it only made Bran want to get in the pool even more.

      By the time lunch actually came around they were both mad with anticipation, although Bran tried his best not to show it. It was already too hot and it would only get hotter as the day aged on, and the thought of enough cool water to float in was seductive, particularly after four days of this. Lunch was more posh little sandwiches, to no one's surprise, but Claude followed them with some sort of fancy orange ice that Bran had two helpings of (barely resisting the urge to smash his face directly into the cold stuff). Bran had barely dumped his dishes into the sink before he was off up the stairs to dig up his swimming shorts from wherever they had got to. They were wrinkled and smelt a bit musty when he found them, but all the stink in the world couldn't keep Bran out of them—he pulled on his shorts and threw on a t-shirt and headed back downstairs, barefooted.

      The pathetic little puddle had turned into five feet of cool water over the course of the morning. Ethan sat at one end of the pool, fiddling with little bits of paper and frowning. "Almost there," he said absently as Bran came crashing on in. "A few minutes, Bran."

      "Ta, you just tell me when you're ready." Bran sat down on the edge of the pool and stuck his feet in and groaned aloud. It was so nice that he wouldn't have cared if there'd been enough chlorine in there to eat his feet straight down to the bone. For the moment it was enough. Bran swirled his feet in the water and waited with something close to patience.

      The door to the gym slammed open and Jeremiah burst in like an aggravating little missile. "Is it done?" he demanded to know, lurching to a halt not a foot from the pool's edge and bouncing on the balls of his feet. "Can we swim?"

      "Oh, aye, course we can, that's why I'm splashing about in there already," Bran said. "No, you prat. Wait 'til Ethan says."

      "Aaw." Undaunted, Jeremiah pattered around the far edge of the pool, too excited to sit still. Ethan offered him a vague and distracted little smile, still doing things with papers and little tubes; Jeremiah drew up in front of the wall of mirrors, sniggered, and threw up his arms to flex his biceps. The ensuing pose-fest was so ridiculous that Bran wasn't even bothered by it, even though Jeremiah had obviously been bought those swimming shorts when he'd been smaller.

      Ethan huffed out a breath and climbed to his feet. "That ought to—" Jeremiah hurled himself into the water with an almighty booming splash. "—do it," Ethan finished, a bit wry. "Go ahead. I'll be down to join you shortly."

      Bran put his hands on the pool's edge and slid himself into the water, making a point out of doing it quietly, not that Jeremiah cared or even noticed. Jeremiah was splashing around at the shallow end like an idiot child, his laughter echoing off the high ceiling. Bran stopped caring. He was cool for the first time in four days. Edging over to one side he pushed off the wall, intending to let Ethan catch him doing laps like a responsible person. His stroke tightened up as he neared the shallow end, Bran just waiting for Jeremiah to pounce on him and want to play—Jeremiah didn't so much as glance in his direction and Bran hit the far wall, flipped over, and pushed off again, both relieved and a little disappointed.

      Halfway through dinner a few days later, with no warning whatsoever, Ethan touched the side of his water glass with his fork and made it ring. "Gentlemen, I would like to propose a toast."

      He'd caught Bran with his mouth full. Bran swallowed hard and looked up, confused. Glancing around didn't clear up a thing: Claude had raised both eyebrows in mild inquiry and Jeremiah was already sinking down in his chair like he wanted the earth to swallow him up. It was so much like every minute of Bran's life ever that he felt a stab of honest sympathy for the useless little prat.

      Ethan cleared his throat and put on a grave face, although he kept threatening to break out in a smile. "I'd like you all to know that Jeremy officially has a new name—"

      "Aaw," Jeremiah muttered, ducking his head until it seemed he would flatten his nose against his own shoulder.

      "Jeremy?"

      "I didn't want to make a fuss over it," Jeremiah said, kicking the table leg. "But I'm to be Jeremy Archer now, for good and all." He shrugged. "It sounds all right. To the ear and all."

      Claude pursed his lips, considered, then nodded. "It does," he said. "A good name. Have you picked a middle?"

      Jeremiah darted a glance at Ethan, plainly looking for help. "I didn't think of that," he said. "Do I have to have one?"

      "Only if you wish to. It may be your new 'real' name, but all the same I don't think you'll ever be putting it to any legitimate use." Ethan's smile was very thin.

      "Then I don't want one," said Jeremiah, decisively. "Just a load of extra rubbish that I don't need."

      "It's settled, then," said Ethan, lifting his water glass. "So: a toast, if you will, gentlemen. To Jeremy Archer."

      "To Jeremy Archer," Claude echoed, gesturing with his own. Bran groaned under his breath just as Jeremiah said, "Do we have to?" but all the same they both grudgingly picked up their glasses and allowed Ethan to knock his against theirs. "Bloody embarrassment," Bran said under his breath.

      Jeremiah darted a glance at him. "Too right."

      "What?" said Claude.

      "Nothing." Jeremiah's gaze fell back on his plate. "It's nothing."

      Dinner picked itself back up from where it had fallen and started limping along again. Bran stuffed another bite of salad into his mouth and chanced a glance in Jeremiah's direction—he still didn't look like a 'Jeremy'. Truth be told he didn't much look like a 'Jeremiah', either, but it was the name that he'd come with and the name that Bran was used to. Bran wasn't sure what Jeremiah did look like. Besides an arse. He definitely looked that part. "I've got two middle names, you know," Bran found himself saying.

       "What, two? What have you got to do to have two?"

      Bran shifted, uncomfortable. He hadn't meant to start a conversation and he couldn't abandon it now, what with Ethan and Claude both right there. "Well, it's just... I had the one middle name and a last name already, and then when I was adopted..." He trailed off and shrugged. "So I'm Bran Thomas Lindsey West, for all that that matters."

      Jeremiah bit at his lower lip. "Maybe I ought to have one after all, then."

      "S'pose first you can apologise for calling my middle names a load of rubbish," Bran said, although his heart wasn't in it.

      "Didn't mean yours anyway."

      Ethan chuckled. "Perhaps you ought to give Jeremy one of your middle names," he said. "Since you have two and he hasn't any."

      Bran and Jeremiah both said "No!" at the same time. Startled, they jerked away from each other. "I don't want either of those," Jeremiah started to say, just as Bran jumped in with "What does he need mine for?" and then corrected himself halfway through to "What's wrong with my names, then?" and Jeremiah said "They're yours, like!" and by that point Ethan was laughing and there was no help for any of it. Bran shut his mouth with a click and got very interested in his plate.

      "In any case," Ethan said, still laughing a bit. "That actually leads me to the next little bit of business: now that Claude's around, we can see about assigning Jeremy a bit of false legitimacy."

      "How's that?" Jeremiah said. He was still a bit pink.

      "To put it shortly: I intend to let some upright folks come to understand that he's your father," Ethan said. Jeremiah's mouth fell about halfway open, but Ethan simply gestured Jeremiah's surprise away. "We'll fix the both of you up with some false documentation and spread the story about. I don't think it will ever come to much but all the same it's always best to be prepared."

      "I'm not certain about this," Jeremiah said, glancing at Claude and colouring right up again. "No offence, mind, you're a sight better than the father I started with and all, but I can't see how anyone would buy it for a moment. He doesn't look a bit like me."

      Claude coughed. "In all honesty I agree with you, but Ethan believes it'll come across all right."

      "You can always say that you take after your mother," Ethan said, nodding. "And in any case it isn't like Bran and I resemble each other, either."

      "Course not. That's 'cause you're not my real da," Bran said, and then it was his turn to go red. "I mean... you are and all, but not real real—augh! You know what I meant!"

      Ethan smiled at him, his eyes half-shaded. "I know what you meant."

      "Sorry," Bran said weakly. "Really didn't mean it like that..."

      "I know," Ethan said again. "It's all right, Bran. At any rate, as I was saying, most everyone will believe what they're told, not what they can plainly see. If we come right out and claim that Claude is your father, probably it won't be questioned at all."

      Jeremiah still looked uncertain, but he nodded. "All right. So how do we go about it, then?"

      "That part is still a bit up in the air, I'm afraid." Ethan picked up his fork. "I'll have to make a few calls and see."

      The next week felt like it dragged on forever, until Bran was nearly at the point where he'd gladly peel the skin off his face with his nails just to be doing something.

      He was all done with his schooling, which he'd hated all along but had at least filled up the hours a bit. He still sparred with Ethan a few times a week, but for the most part he was left to exercise on his own, and there were only so many hours in the day he could devote to keeping himself in shape. The job was stalled until the fall, and Bran was rapidly coming to begrudge every moment he spent pretending to pore over the blueprints—he could draw them himself by this point—and the jar... oh, the jar.

      Bran knew very well he oughtn't to check on the jar at all, or at least not to do so very often. That would be brilliant, wouldn't it, leading Jeremiah right to the jar's hiding place when all he was trying to do was make certain that Jeremiah hadn't found it? So Bran carried the keys about in his pocket and tried not to touch them too often and fretted and came awake in the middle of the night certain that he'd heard the car's boot slam shut. He had little fantasies of fetching out his jar and shoving it into Jeremiah's hands and calling this whole farce off, but he was all too afraid that Ethan would just start the game over. What then?

      And still he checked on the jar at least once a day, often twice, when he was absolutely certain that Jeremiah was off with Claude or in the gym with Ethan or asleep in his bed. It was always there, buried in its padded bag and resting in the tangles of the lineman's belt. Mocking him—Bran felt as though he never slept any more. And over what? A game? A stupid game with no prize and no point?

      As if he wasn't sleeping poorly enough, that Friday he came awake with a jerk at the sound of low buzzing conversation in the hallway. Blearily he rolled over and checked the clock: 2:30AM. The time dumped ice water into his veins and Bran rolled out of bed and scrambled for the door, convinced that Jeremiah had found his jar on one of his nocturnal rampages and gone to give it to Ethan straight away. Bran jerked open the door and stuck his head out into the hallway—"And go back to bed," a sleep-rumpled Ethan was saying, sounding like he was half an inch from laughing. Light spilled out of the bedroom behind him, casting long shadows down the hallway.

      "Can't blame a fellow for trying," said Jeremiah, bouncing on the balls of his feet, unable to hold still at all. He was wearing a black track suit and carrying a handful of something that Bran couldn't quite make out.

      Ethan raised an eyebrow. "Oh, can't I now?"

      Jeremiah sniggered. "What's all this?" Bran asked, knuckling at one eye.

      "Now there, look, you've woken Bran," Ethan told Jeremiah.

       Jeremiah laughed, too loudly, too long. "Wouldn't have woken him if you hadn't pitched me out!"

      "What did you do?" Bran demanded to know.

      Ethan shook his head and pushed a hand through his disheveled curls. "I woke because I thought I'd heard a noise, and, well, I found Jeremiah doing his level best to crack the safe in the workshop."

      "I'd have had it, too, if I'd had another hour—"

      "You were trying to steal something from Ethan?" Bran said, horrified. His voice cracked on 'steal' and he flushed a little, knuckling at his lips.

      Jeremiah flapped a hand at Bran. "No! Not like that, anyhow. It's just... well, he's got to have the orange jar in there, hasn't he?"

      It took a minute to sink in, then Bran collapsed against the door-frame. "This is all about Ethan's jar? Fuck's sake!"

      "Well, that and I figured that if I could suss out the combination I could put my own jar in there, like."

      "It wasn't a bad thought," Ethan put in. "Points for initiative, if nothing else."

      "I can't—" Bran was finding it hard to catch his breath. "Can't believe you'd just break into Ethan's room, try to open the bloody safe—"

      Jeremiah put his hands on his hips. The thing dangling from his hand resolved itself as the stethoscope from the safe-cracking tools, right enough. "Why not?" Jeremiah said. "We're bloody thieves, aren't we?"

      "I did say that you could use the safe if you could open it," Ethan added mildly.

      Bran found himself with nothing to say to that, although his mouth opened and closed like a fish's. "But," he finally said. "You aren't supposed to steal from Ethan—"

      "Go to bed, the both of you," Ethan said firmly. "And if I catch either of you in the workshop I'll just pitch you out."

      "So don't let you catch me," Jeremiah said, snickering. "I got it, me."

      "Have you?"

      Jeremiah flushed a bit. "Ah. Yes. I've got it."

      "Good," said Ethan, and he shut his bedroom door. Jeremiah flashed Bran an amped-up grin and scurried back into his own room, stethoscope still in hand; still unsettled Bran closed his own bedroom door and padded back to bed, befuddled and wired all at the same time. His spot on the bed was still warm but he couldn't quite make himself shut his eyes. It was all so... well, it was wrong, that was all. All his life he'd been raised to believe that his kind needed to support each other against the upright folk and the law, that they shouldn't ever steal from each other... "Because a thief needs all the trust he can broker," Bran recited, his whisper as dry as his lips. Now he felt as if everything Ethan had ever told him was a lie, all thanks to this stupid game. It went against everything he knew and it was baffling and being baffled made him angry—

      No, what was really bothering him was the fact that Jeremiah had thought to break into Ethan's safe and Bran hadn't even considered it. It made perfect sense now that Bran thought of it, although it still made him cringe a bit to think of actually doing it. "Fuck's sake," Bran breathed, opening his eyes to stare blindly up at the ceiling. He could have fiddled open Ethan's safe and put his own jar in there—well, no use doing it now that Jeremiah was so bound and determined to get in.

      With an effort Bran forced the exasperation away and tried to go back to sleep. Sleep wouldn't come for him, though, and he was still working on getting his eyes shut when he heard the tell-tale stealthy click of Jeremiah's door being opened and closed again. For a moment Bran lay there, frozen—then a groundswell of frustrated rage swept him off the bed and to his own door, so quickly that it seemed his feet never touched the ground. Gritting his teeth Bran reined himself in and eased his own door open just the smallest bit, putting an eye to the crack just in time to see Jeremiah creeping off down the back stairs with that black bag slung over his shoulder again. "Rotten little sneak—" Bran hissed, muffling himself almost to silence only with a furious effort.

      Bran snatched a t-shirt off the floor and threw it on, then scrambled down the stairs after Jeremiah, not bothering a bit with stealth. To hell with it. Either he'd managed to be quiet on accident or Jeremiah hadn't been listening for him, though, because when Bran caught up to him at the back door Jeremiah was fumbling with the knob and not paying a bit of attention to anything. Jeremiah barely had time to look up and yelp before Bran slammed him shoulder-first against the door, grabbing for the bag with one hand and for Jeremiah with the other—all of a sudden it was a mad scramble down there in the darkness, as Bran went straight for Jeremiah's bastard throat and found himself with a fistful of Jeremiah's hair instead, while Jeremiah wheezed for air and tried to stomp on Bran's feet and Bran's fingers slipped off the cheap nylon of the bag and scrabbled at Jeremiah's clutching hand instead.

      The whole fight took place in an airless vacuum, the both of them desperate not to bring Ethan down to see what all the noise was, so it startled the hell out of Bran when Jeremiah gave in and started laughing in this effed-up revved-up choked-up voice like someone starting a chain-saw. Jeremiah said something through the laughter—Bran couldn't make it out—and pivoted on one foot to bring the bag around in a murderous arc aimed straight at Bran's head. Bran shrieked out a breathless little noise and threw up both arms to protect his head from five pounds of marbles in a china jar, lurching sideways and slamming his balls straight into the point of Jeremiah's jutting hip in the process. Bran choked.

      The bag bounced softly off his upraised arm with a little puffing sound.

      "Can't believe you jumped me," Jeremiah said, still laughing that fucked-up little laugh. "Thought I'd lead you around for weeks before you gave up on following me—wasn't expecting that!"

      Bran staggered back a step, half-hunched over around the sudden angry throb in his balls. Jeremiah opened the bag and started pulling out handfuls of wadded-up socks like a terrible magic trick. "That what you wanted?" he said, needling Bran with it, really grinding it in, and Bran's next breath snarled out of him and he went for Jeremiah with both hands in fists.

      "Here!" Jeremiah cried, twisting and ducking aside, still wheezing out the remnants of that laugh. Bran bounced off the back door and staggered back, lurching upright, everything he'd ever learned about fighting flying right out of his head on wings of fury. He swung at Jeremiah and missed. He swung again, trying to smash in that bastard face, and managed to hit Jeremiah a glancing blow that struck mostly cheekbone and ear. At least Jeremiah wasn't laughing any more, only wheezing, trying to shove Bran away—Bran smacked aside one of Jeremiah's blocking hands and drove a fist into the opening he'd created. It glanced off a rib and made Jeremiah bark out a breath and Bran basked in the joy of it for maybe a second before Jeremiah drove a knee into his stomach so hard that it felt like his spine might break.

      Roaring out a huge breath Bran reeled backwards. His heel came down on one of the socks still scattered about and his feet flew out from under him and he landed hard on his arse with a second breathless shout of pain. It knocked the fight out of him, at least, since all he could think of was getting his breath back.

      Jeremiah stayed where he was, pressed up against the wall opposite with his hands still hovering in front of his belly. Eventually he made some sort of noise and bent down (Bran jerked back) to pick up the socks that he'd thrown everywhere. "Can't really blame you for that," Jeremiah said, his voice all matter-of-fact. "S'pose it was a dirty trick, wasn't it."

      "Aye," Bran said, although it was more of a wheeze than anything. "Dirty God-damned trick."

      "Good," said Jeremiah, and he swept on back up the stairs.

      "It isn't an actual Selcom system, of course," Ethan said, driving the nail through the metal pressure plate in the door-frame. The door to the laundry room was all over wires and metal things like a child's failed science project, a small alarmed box sitting on top of the dryer. "But I can guarantee you that it works in much the same way, and a few hours' practise with the mockup ought to stand you in good stead."

      "Aye, that it ought." Bran hooked his feet around the stool's legs and watched, eager to get on with it.

      Ethan made a vague 'hmm'ing sound in answer and swung the door to, then opened it again. The bodged-up metal bits clattered against each other and the wires flopped around, but nothing fell off, and Ethan looked satisfied. "You'll remember to use the compass, of course, but in all likelihood there'll only be the two contact points, at the top and bottom, near the right-hand side."

      "Best to be prepared for three or four, though," said Bran, already cringing a bit at how pompous he sounded.

      "Oh, without a doubt. I wouldn't go in without at least four lengths in my pack. Even if there are only two contact points you never know when one of your wires might break." Ethan shut the door, flicked a switch, and opened it. An anaemic-sounding buzzer went off and kept going off until Ethan flicked the switch again. "There, I think that's got it. Would you like me to run you through it, or would you prefer to just give it a go?"

      Bran let out a breath he hadn't known he'd kept. "Run me through it once?"

      "Of course." Ethan turned the 'alarm system' back on and picked up one of the prepared wires. It wasn't much to look at: an arm's length of plastic-coated ribbon with a tiny box in the centre and metal contact points at either end. The contact points had sticky stuff on the edges and little pockets on the inside; Ethan picked up a flat metal clip (like nothing so much as a long clothes-peg, only pressed thin, like an elephant had stepped on it) and pinched the end long enough to slide the pockets onto the opened clip. Once closed, the clip held the two contact points back to back, sticky stuff out. "If you don't succeed on the first application, discard the wire and use a fresh," he added, absently shaking the clip to see if the wire would fall out. "The tape can't be counted on to stick if you pull it off and re-position it."

      "Aye," said Bran, mentally upping his supply of wires to five or six.

      Ethan put the wire aside and picked the compass out of the mess on the side table. Running it along the edge of the door made the needle twitch three times: once at the knob, thanks to all the metal, and again at each of the 'alarm system's contact plates, as the needle reacted to the pull of the electric current. "So once you've figured out where the contacts are—" Ethan scratched the edge of the compass against the door to mark the two contacts "—you'll slide in your new circuit—" he picked up the clip, centred it over the mark, and pushed it in between the door and the frame "—and you'll... apply." He pinched the not-at-all-a-clothes-peg again, opening the clip inside the door-frame. The opening jaws of the clip pressed the sticky tape into place. The little box attached to the wire shook once, gently, signaling that the wire was now part of the circuit. Ethan nodded. "Now, if you let the clip close again it'll only pull the sticky tape back off, so be certain you hold the clip open until it's come all the way out." Now he was holding the clip and there was a long loop of rainbow-coloured ribbon wire dangling from the top of the door. The buzzer hadn't yet sounded. Ethan blew out a breath, picked up another length of wire, and got down on one knee to repeat the process.

      When both wires were in place Ethan took hold of the knob and eased the door open. Bran held his breath until the door clicked free of the frame and the buzzer failed to sound; with the extra wire in place the circuit hadn't been broken and the alarm hadn't tripped. "Now you'll just have to be careful not to knock the wires loose," said Ethan. He reached up and pulled the topmost wire free—the sticky tape gave with a little ripping sound and the buzzer rattled. Ethan turned the alarm back off.

      "Right, then," Bran said, untangling his feet and standing up. "I'll give it a go or twenty. Ta for the help."

      "Of course," said Ethan. The laundry table was all over electronics and tools and bits of wire, and he moved away to tidy it up.

      Bran slipped into the gym and let the door swing to behind him, casting the whole vast space into echoing darkness. He patted the wall to his right, his fingers finding and skipping over the pair of switches for the lights. The third switch he tripped. An eerie blue light shot up from beneath the floorboards, almost but not quite hidden by the close-fitted boards. Bran flicked the fourth and last switch and the floor dropped and began to roll back, filling the room with the blue light from the pool. Satisfied, Bran let his towel fall.

      He enjoyed the water like this most of all, in the darkness, by himself. Jeremiah monopolised the pool during the mornings, and often again in the afternoon after Claude had gone off to start supper, but Jeremiah always had something else to do after supper was done. Whatever that was. Bran was certain that he didn't care. Neither Ethan nor Claude gave a toss about the pool any more (now that it wasn't hot out any longer) so the pool was Bran's, and only Bran's, if he waited until the evening to have it.

      And he liked the room dark, too. It made him feel calm. Hidden, even, although of course he was splashing about in the middle of a glowing box of water and wasn't actually hidden at all. Calmness, hiddenness, these were things that Bran had always been taught to cherish and use to his advantage—and things that his life was desperately short on, at least, in his opinion. Stripping his t-shirt off over his head Bran slid into the shallow end of the pool with a bit of a shudder, doing his best not to splash about. It ruined the pleasant illicit feeling if he made a lot of noise.

      Once he'd got used to the temperature Bran kicked off from the wall. He put himself through three or four lazy laps, just enough to make himself feel as if he were exercising, then kicked off one last time and drifted to the centre of the pool, splaying out his arms and just floating. The ceiling was all over glowing patterns reflected from the water. Little triangles, mostly, rocking outwards in expanding circles, as fast as water went. The reflected shadow-shape of Bran didn't look human at all, only like a grey smear. Bran looked up at it and thought about nothing—thought about God.

      Ethan had, in his Ethan-like way, promptly delegated the constant task of testing the water and levelling out the chemicals to Bran. The use of the pool was a privilege rather than a right (said Ethan) and one which Bran must therefore pay for, although not in coin, at least. Bran liked it, rather, although he made certain to complain whenever anyone was in earshot, lest they come away with the idea that he enjoyed doing chores. Cocking about with the little tubes and measuring out the chlorine, though, that was all right. Something to do while he waited for lunch to be done.

      Bran sighed, rolled over in the water, and crawl-stroked lazily to the nearest edge. The cement was rough under his arms and colder than the water around him; Bran rested his chin on his folded arms and thought about nothing at all. From here he could see the chest-high piles of gymnastic mats, still stacked up where he and Jeremiah had put them after lunch; half-hidden behind the mats, the weight-lifting equipment lurked like... Bran wasn't sure what it was like. Construction equipment, maybe. Scaffolding. Over in one corner the pommel horse held up the wall.

      After a few days they'd all stopped being able to smell the chlorine. Ethan had decreed that they'd empty the pool in October at the very latest, never mind the smell or lack thereof, and really by then no one would want to be in the water anyway. For all that Bran had whinged endlessly about the endless stacking and replacing of the mats, he had to admit that he liked having the pool about. Not that he'd tell Jeremiah that. Not at all.

      If he craned his neck just so he could see the rings, hanging still in the darkness like little nooses. Bran stretched out a damp hand and mimed closing his hand over one ring, at this distance only about the size of... well, a ring, the sort that went on your finger. He wasn't sure why he'd done it, and soon enough, he let his hand fall again. Sometimes it was just nice to do things without having a reason for them.

      Still, by the time he got bored of the pool and swam over to the ladder, his thoughts had turned to everyday things again. He really ought to fetch his jar out of the car's boot, and soon. It needed a fresh hiding place. But... that was for later, Bran decided, rubbing his hair with the towel. Right now he was for a brisk shower... and maybe a bit of a wank to go with it, Bran decided, pitching a smallish tent in his swim trunks as soon as he had the thought. Best time for it, really, when the water could wash away all trace—Bran wriggled back into his clinging t-shirt and wrapped the towel tightly about his waist, arranging the folds in front just so.

      Tomorrow, he decided, as he closed the gymnasium floor and turned out the pool lights. He'd move the jar tomorrow.

      "The silver car?" Ethan said, frowning. "Claude is borrowing it for the day. It has to be driven every once in a while, after all."

      Bran leaned heavily into the kitchen counter, clutching at its edge with one hand, and strove to be calm. He'd gone into the garage not expecting a thing—"Oh, aye?" he said, attempting to sound off-hand about it. "Where's he gone, then?"

      "He took Jeremiah into town for a spot of shopping—Bran? Is something wrong? You've gone all pale."

      "Nah, nah, it's nothing," Bran said. In order to wave his hand dismissively, he had to let go of the counter. He lurched sideways and nearly fell over. "Just wondering, is all."

      Ethan's scrutiny was desperately uncomfortable, but after a moment of silence Ethan nodded and turned his attention back to his letters. "They should be back in time for supper, Claude said."

      "So... four-ish, do you think? Five?"

      "Something like that."

      "Right," said Bran under his breath. "Right." He pried himself off the counter and shambled for the door, his mind stuck in a useless red-alert scream. Claude and Jeremiah had taken his jar for a ride into town, and as soon as they opened the boot Jeremiah couldn't help but find the jar. Nothing he could do, nothing at all, nothing... stuck firmly in panic mode, it took Bran until he was halfway up the stairs to realise that there was, after all, something he could do.

      Five minutes later Bran had flung himself out the door and onto his bicycle and was riding pell-mell for town, the car keys jabbing painfully into the bend of his hip. Good, Bran thought, lashing himself with his spite. It deserved to hurt a bit. He'd been meaning to shift the jar to a new hiding place for days now and hadn't got around to it, so he deserved every last bit of this. He deserved to lose, but maybe, by the grace of God...

      "Please," he panted, standing up on the pedals as he swung the bike down the sharp curve of the hill. "Please God just let me get there in time. Please God. Please God. Please." It became his constant refrain as he soared down the hills, town slowly evolving into being around him: please God please God please...

      It wasn't that far, at least, and it was all downhill on the way there, and ten nerve-wracked minutes later Bran was blasting past shops and bars and restaurants, looking everywhere for little silver cars—and finding them. They were everywhere. Every great idiot on God's green earth had one, it seemed, and they were everywhere, but fortunately there were only three or four major shopping centres in the area to search—as long as Claude hadn't done something absurd, like take Jeremiah into London, then maybe Bran had a chance. Of course, given Claude's taste in, well, everything, going down to London didn't seem all that out of character... Bran gritted his teeth and swallowed his bile and raced on.

      Silver car, silver car, silver car, twenty minutes of silver cars. Bran's breath was harsh in his throat. This was bloody hopeless. Why was he even trying? Even if he did manage to find the right silver car amongst the thousands, surely Jeremiah and Claude had already been in the boot—but maybe that didn't matter. Even if Jeremiah had already found the jar, maybe he'd left it in the boot, intending to give it to Ethan when he came back. If Bran could just find the God-damned car...!

      He'd nearly given up by the time he spotted it, parked in an angled spot around the side of a posh little gourmet-foodstuffs emporium. Bran skidded to a stop and put a foot on the roadway, breathing hard. Couldn't be—he couldn't have got that lucky—Bran fumbled the keys out of his pocket and kicked his bike across the street, nearly getting run down in the process. A horn blared. Bran winced away, nearly fell over, and only managed to hit the car park on the far side by sheer luck. Still, there it was. Bran stuck the key into the boot and wrenched it open.

      His rucksack was still there, tucked behind the tool-kit, and Bran snatched it up so quickly that he nearly smashed his jar against the car's side and lost himself the game. His stomach was all knots until he'd shrugged into the rucksack's straps and slammed the car's boot again, and even then it didn't abate until he'd made his getaway, checking back over his shoulder so many times that he nearly ran into a post-box, a garbage bin, and a bollard before he could make himself stop searching for pursuit. Finally the knot in his stomach fell out, although his heart was still going ninety and he was weak in the knees—Bran found a place to pull over and catch his breath, hugging his arms against his chest like he was cold.

      Eventually the spasm passed and Bran slung a leg over his bike again. Now that his panic had passed he was limp with relief, wrung out and shaking. The jar inside the rucksack was awkwardly heavy, a dense knot between Bran's shoulder-blades that threatened to drag him over backward every time he took the bike up any sort of hill, and of course it was up the hills all the way home, because wasn't that just Bran's luck—eventually he gave up and flung himself back off the bike, walking it up the first hill, grimacing down at the handle-bars as he trudged along.

      Why did he care? Why did he have to goddamned well care? If he'd just let it go the game could have been over by now. Course he'd have lost, but he was almost willing to pay that price in order not to have to think about it any longer. What he really hated was caring at all about the game—not even that! He hated having been caught caring about it. Bran hunched his shoulders. It was a stupid game for children and yet Ethan had seen Bran make a right fool of himself over it. Now Ethan was going to think Bran had been in the spirit of the thing all along. Bran would never be free of it.

      By the time he got to within sight of home Bran was exhausted, more from the emotional battering than from anything else. He didn't even realise that technically he'd broken Ethan's rule about not removing the jar from the property until he wasn't breaking the rule any more, and by then he couldn't bring himself to care. He hadn't been the one to remove it, had he? Bran stowed his bicycle in the garage and staggered into the kitchen, his thoughts like lead weights.

      "Find what you were after, then?" Ethan asked, as mild as ever.

      "I hate this idiotic game of yours," Bran snarled, heading for the opposite door, the back hall, and freedom.

      He didn't quite make it. As hard as he tried to get out before Ethan could respond, the kitchen was just too large to navigate in that short a time. "Oh?" Ethan said from behind him, voice shifting from 'mild' to 'very neutral'. "Why is that?"

      "Because!" Bran cried, voice cracking. He flapped his hands and then had to catch the rucksack before it could slide down one of his arms and crash into the counter and shatter the jar into a million pieces. "You always say we should have each other's backs, don't you, since we're all on the wrong side of the law together, but this game with the jars isn't like that! It pits us against each other—that's not how you've taught me to live at all! It isn't right!"

      Ethan made a thoughtful little sound. "... I see."

      "And you give that useless little brat of yours half an inch of room and look, he only starts trying to fiddle your safe!" Bran added. His voice looped up into something perilously close to hysteria. "That's wonderful, that is! Brilliant lesson for him to learn—anything goes, doesn't it, so long as he gets what he's after!"

      "I take your point, Bran," Ethan said, his voice a bit strained.

      "So it's stupid, this game! All of it! Stupid and... and wrong, and... I ought to smash this right now and lose proper," Bran said, letting the rucksack fall into his hand. He shook it in Ethan's general direction, not daring to actually look back over his shoulder. "Let the brat win, I don't care, this is a damn kiddie game anyway."

      "I would prefer that you not," Ethan said. "After all, those jars aren't precisely cheap. If you'd like to forfeit the game, then you only have to say so."

      Bran floundered, choking on a knot of rage and panic. "Fucking... thing," he finally ground out, and he slammed on out of the kitchen before Ethan could respond to that. His ears burned all the way up the stairs to his room, and by the time Bran reached his room he felt like screaming, or punching a hole in the wall, or just destroying something. He stashed the rucksack with the jar in his closet—fuck it—and Bran contented himself with wedging a chair under the door-knob before going to change.

      Bran's anger had mostly collapsed in on itself and become a vicious world-eating sulk by the time Ethan gave the usual perfunctory double-knock and tried to open the door, which jammed itself shut against the chair under the knob. "Oh," Ethan said from the other side of the door, taken aback. "Ah."

      Bran wavered between going to let Ethan in and letting him bloody well stay out there for the rest of his life. There really wasn't but one choice, although it had to be dragged out of him: "Hold on a tick," Bran said, unfolding his legs and sliding off the bed. He grabbed the chair and wrestled it out from under the door-knob, its legs scraping against the carpet with a harsh sound. Bran stepped back, still holding the chair in front of himself, like a shield. "What, then?"

      Ethan pushed the door open. Hovering on the threshold, he offered Bran a slight smile and a rare moment of hesitation. "I thought I'd offer you the use of the office safe for your jar," he finally said. "For a day or two, at any rate, until you can think of a good place to hide it."

      "Wouldn't be smart of me, now, would it?" Bran scowled. "Little arse is already focussed on getting into the safe."

      "Somehow I doubt that he'll manage to break in in the next two days," Ethan said dryly. "But if it will make you feel better, I'll lock my bedroom door as well. I sincerely doubt he'll manage to get through both locks before someone catches him at it."

      Bran shifted his weight from one foot to the other, hugging the chair to his chest. "Can't risk that, can I?" he said, and he knew that he sounded petulant but couldn't seem to stop himself.

      "Anything that you do with your jar carries some element of risk, Bran," Ethan said gently. "Putting it in the safe carries less than most, even if Jeremy is already interested in getting into it."

      "Aye, I know, I know." Bran looked away. "Just hate it, that's all." His voice cracked.

      "I know." Ethan smiled a little. "You've made that very clear."

      Bran narrowed his eyes against the wave of shame. "Well..." He fidgeted. "I suppose it'd be all right, for a bit. But... but you've got to promise that you'll keep your door locked properly."

      Ethan laid his hand lightly over his heart. "I promise."

      "... all right, then," Bran said, rocking back on his heels. "I'll just... go and get it, shall I." Leaving Ethan in the doorway Bran put the chair down and went to fetch the rucksack.

      The massive safe sat beside Ethan's workbench in the corner of the workroom that served Ethan as a second, less legitimate office. It weighed about as much as a decently-sized car and had been bolted to the floor just in case an enterprising someone came along with a construction crane; Ethan being who he was, he'd put an antimacassar and a squat glass vase on top and made the monstrous thing into the world's least attractive side table. The dial on the front was near the size of Bran's hand with all his fingers spread out, and the handle was as long as his arm. Ethan pushed the handle down and the safe sprang open.

      Caught in his curiosity Bran craned over Ethan's shoulder to look. The safe was filled with everything from documents to a rack of neatly-corked test tubes full of coloured fluids to a little stack of gold ingots, each about half the size of a pound note; what was rather conspicuously missing was the orange jar that Jeremiah was so eager to get his hands on. "Huh," Bran said, then shrugged out of the rucksack's strap and held it out.

      "Hm?" Ethan took the rucksack and carefully wedged it into a corner, shifting a few fat bank bags to sit in front of it.

      "Suppose your jar isn't in there after all, is it?"

      Ethan chuckled, shutting the safe door with a loud clang. "It was," he said, spinning the dial until it pointed to zero. "I felt that it would be prudent to move it."

      "Suppose so." Bran looked at the safe, then at Ethan's desk, then back at the safe. "Here, can we shift that?"

      "If you'd like?"

      It took both of them to move Ethan's desk in front of the safe, but it made Bran feel a bit better about it all once they were done. Better yet was leaving the room and watching Ethan lock his bedroom door (and it was a proper lock, Bran knew from experience). The relative safety of his jar took such pressure off Bran that for a moment he thought he might float away.

      Below them a garage door rumbled and the kitchen door slammed. Claude called something that Bran couldn't quite make out, accompanied by the thudding sound of Jeremiah's feet. Ethan offered Bran an opaque little smile and headed downstairs, and after a moment, Bran followed.

      Claude was zipping about the kitchen at speed bunging things into cabinets while Jeremiah lugged in another double armload of bags from the car's trunk. The look he turned on Bran was wide-eyed and innocent and Bran relaxed further: Jeremiah had no idea how bloody close he'd come just then. None at all.

      "Hallo," said Jeremiah, and in his relief Bran forgot himself and smiled back.

      Kneeling to pray that Sunday was a special little agony all its own. On Friday Bran had lost his grip on one of the suction cups and gone flailing off the wall, giving his knee a nasty sideways wrench before his leg cup could pop free. Bran shifted as much weight off his hurt knee as he could, hissing a bit. Got to get that jar out of the safe, he thought. The loft, maybe, or I could bury it in one of the flowerbeds, or put it back in the tree... or I could put a fake bag in the tree and see if he fell for it, see how he likes it...

      "Through Christ our Lord," the priest intoned, and Bran's head jerked up. He'd been so busy thinking of places to hide his jar that he'd entirely forgot to pray.